Most awkward of all were the huissiers or palanders. Bluff-bowed and rounded aft, in the fashion of Adriatic vessels, these were transport landing-craft specially designed to carry men and horses. Although they were now closed for sea-going, one could make out the square disembarkation ports cut in their sides (marked by their fringes of oakum and tar) whence the war-horses would be led down ramps on to the invaded shore.

Larger than the palanders but hardly less gainly were the broad-beamed merchantmen which formed the bulk of the fleet. Laden with stores, victuals and war-armament—siege-engines, mangonels, ballistas and spear-hurling catapults—they trailed astern dependent solely on the wind. Behind them again, and scattered all round the horizon as far as the eye could see, there dipped and flashed the lateen sails of small boats. These belonged to the independent adventurers, Italian and Jewish merchants, and pirates from the Aegean Islands. They hovered astern of the Fourth Crusade like seagulls that follow a fishing-fleet for their pickings of gut and offal.

Behind it the fleet left a wake of fear—the island of Andros over-run, the coastline at the mouth of the Dardanelles pillaged and the ancient city of Abydos on the verge of starvation, for the Crusading army had stripped the countryside of the harvest. Abydos, famed for the loves of Hero and Leander, had surrendered within a few hours of the advance guard coming ashore—“Like men,” the Comte de Villehardouin harshly remarked, “who have not sufficient courage to defend themselves.”

It might be wondered what possible chance of defence the citizens of this small port could have had against so overpowering an army and so large a fleet. The surprising thing is that they should ever have been expected to defend their city against an army that “had taken up the Cross” to prosecute the war against the enemies of the Christian Faith. The inhabitants of Abydos were neither Turks nor Moslems, but Greeks of the Orthodox Christian Faith. Their city was one of the toll-gates of the Byzantine Empire. They were citizens of a nation that had fought against the Turks, and against all the barbarian invaders of eastern Europe ever since the Emperor Constantine had founded his capital on the Bosphorus nearly nine centuries before.

Villehardouin commented that everything which the Crusaders took from the neighbourhood of the Dardanelles and from Abydos was paid for, “so that the people of the city did not lose even the smallest coin in exchange”. He was far from consistent, however, for he had earlier suggested that he had always known the object of the Crusade was not the one which the Pope had blessed. Describing the fleet after it had left Corfu on its way to the Aegean Sea, he wrote: “It was a more wonderful sight than has ever been seen before. As far as the eye could reach, the sea was covered with the sails of ships and galleys. Our hearts were filled with joy, and we felt sure that our armament could undertake the conquest of the world” These were hardly the words of a man who would be concerned whether the citizens of a small port were compensated for everything that was taken from them.

The history of the Fourth Crusade has been described as “a history of the predominance of the lay motive, of the attempt of the papacy to escape from that predominance, and to establish its old direction of the crusade, and of the complete failure of its attempt”.[1] Certainly Pope Innocent III, who had promoted the Crusade, had intended that its goal should be Egypt, since Egypt was now the centre of Mahommedan power. It was also (something that could not fail to be of interest to an Italian, son of the noble Trasimondo family) the country most important to Italy’s mercantile communities on account of its proximity to the Red Sea and to the commerce of the Indian Ocean. If the Pope blessed the Crusade, it was always with the understanding that its direction should be towards Egypt. Even now, as the great fleet moved slowly through the Sea of Marmora towards the Bosphorus, messengers were carrying the news to Rome that there could be no doubt the Crusade had left Corfu with the intention of proceeding to Constantinople. The knights and nobles and men-at-arms had turned aside from their holy war against the infidel. By now they should long ago have disembarked and been engaged on the hot sands, and or in the steamy delta-land of Egypt, against the enemies of the Faith.

Like the famous First Crusade of 1097, the Fourth was predominantly a French enterprise. Tibald, Count of Champagne, had been chosen as its leader, but when he had died in May 1201, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, was elected his successor. Hugo, Count of St. Paul, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, were prominent among the leaders. While the bulk of the lesser nobility and men-at-arms were French or French feudatories, the fleet that carried them and the galleys that escorted them were Venetian. Boniface might be the nominal head of the expedition, but to all intents and purposes the man whose galley led the fleet, and whose ability and intelligence controlled it, was Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice.

Over eighty years old, almost totally blind, Enrico Dandolo had been elected Doge in 1193. He had already proved himself one of the most capable and energetic rulers that his city had known. One of his greatest successes had been in restoring the Venetian authority over the Dalmatians (who had rebelled against Venice under the protection of the King of Hungary). In this campaign he had failed to capture the important seaport of Zara—but this was an omission which he rectified only a few months before, when, in November 1202, Zara had fallen to the combined forces of the Crusaders and the Venetians. The city had been razed to the ground, and its walls, towers and palaces destroyed. With this ruthless achievement behind him, the Doge now viewed the prospect of a campaign which, if successful, would secure for his city the inheritance of an empire, and would render his name immortal in the annals of Venice.

His aim was no less than to place upon the throne of the ancient Byzantine Empire a pretender who would be permanently in debt to his protectors, or (and this the Doge may secretly have hoped) if this proved impossible, to capture Constantinople itself and take for the Venetian Republic in his grandiloquent phrase “one half and one quarter of the Roman Empire”.