and depar crusade Venice. Oct. 8 was embraced and approved by Thibaut, count of Champagne, Assembly who had been unanimously chosen general of the confederates. ture of the But the health of that valiant youth already declined, and soon from became hopeless; and he deplored the untimely fate which con- A.D. 1202, demned him to expire, not in a field of battle, but on a bed of sickness. To his brave and numerous vassals the dying prince distributed his treasures; they swore in his presence to accomplish his vow and their own; but some there were, says the marshal, who accepted his gifts and forfeited their word. The more resolute champions of the cross held a parliament at Soissons for the election of a new general; but such was the incapacity, or jealousy, or reluctance, of the princes of France that none could be found both able and willing to assume the conduct of the enterprise. They acquiesced in the choice of a [August, stranger, of Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, descended of a race of heroes, and himself of conspicuous fame in the wars and negotiations of the times; 52 nor could the piety or ambition of the Italian chief decline this honourable invitation. After visiting the French court, where he was received as a friend and kinsman, the marquis, in the church of Soissons, was invested with the cross of a pilgrim and the staff of a general; and immediately repassed the Alps, to prepare for the distant expedition of the East.53 About the festival of the Pentecost, he displayed his banner, and marched towards Venice at the head of the Italians: he was preceded or followed by the counts of Flanders and Blois, and the most respectable barons of France; and their numbers were swelled by the pilgrims of Germany, whose object and motives were similar to their the privilege that all pilgrims who visited the Holy Sepulchre under her protection should be safe (a privilege of great pecuniary value). It is clear that this treaty, carefully concealed, proves that the diversion of the Fourth Crusade was a deliberate plan and not an accident. The treaty was first exposed by Hopf (Ersch und Gruber, Enzyklopädie, vol. 85, p. 188). It is mentioned by Ernoul (William of Tyre's Continuator), Recueil, vol. 2, p. 250.] 52 By a victory (A.D. 1191) over the citizens of Asti, by a crusade to Palestine, and by an embassy from the pope to the German princes (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 163, 202). 53 [Boniface of Montferrat went in October, 1201, to the court of Philip of Swabia, who was son-in-law of Isaac Angelus; and he remained there till the first months of 1202, when he departed with an embassy to Pope Innocent to plead at Rome the cause of young Alexius. (See Gesta Innocentii, 84.) At Philip's court a plot was hatched. See below, note 63.] 54 See the crusade of the Germans in the Historia C. P. of Gunther (Canisii Antiq. Lect. tom. iv. p. v. viii.), who celebrates the pilgrimage of his abbot Martin, VOL. VI.-26 A.D. 1201] Siege of own. The Venetians had fulfilled, and even surpassed, their engagements; stables were constructed for the horses, and barracks for the troops; the magazines were abundantly replenished with forage and provisions; and the fleet of transports, ships, and galleys was ready to hoist sail, as soon as the republic had received the price of the freight and armament.55 But that price far exceeded the wealth of the crusaders who were assembled at Venice. The Flemings, whose obedience to their court was voluntary and precarious, had embarked in their vessels for the long navigation of the ocean and Mediterranean; and many of the French and Italians had preferred a cheaper and more convenient passage from Marseilles and Apulia to the Holy Land. Each pilgrim might complain that, after he had furnished his own contribution, he was made responsible for the deficiency of his absent brethren: the gold and silver plate of the chiefs, which they freely delivered to the treasury of St. Mark, was a generous but inadequate sacrifice; and, after all their efforts, thirty-four thousand marks were still wanting to complete the stipulated sum. The obstacle was removed by the policy and patriotism of the doge,56 who proposed to the barons that, if they would join their arms in reducing some revolted cities of Dalmatia, he would expose his person in the holy war, and obtain from the republic a long indulgence, till some wealthy conquest should afford the means of satisfying the debt. After much scruple and hesitation, they chose rather to accept the offer than to relinquish the enterprise; and the first hostilities of the fleet and army were directed against Zara,57 a strong city of the Sclavonian coast, which one of the preaching rivals of Fulk of Neuilly. His monastery, of the Cistercian order, was situate in the diocese of Basil. [Gunther was prior of Päris in Elsass. The work has been separately edited by the Count de Riant, 1875.] 55 [The price was 4 marks a horse and 2 a man; which, reckoning the mark at 52 francs, amounts to £180,000. Pears, Fall of Constantinople, p. 234.] 56 [According to Robert de Clari, the Venetians kept the Crusaders imprisoned in the island of S. Niccolò di Lido, and applied the screw of starvation. Two proposals were then made; the first was, that the expedition should start for the East, and that the spoil of the first city d'outremer which they attacked should be appropriated to pay the debt to Venice; the second was that Zara should be attacked, but this was confided only to the chiefs and concealed from the mass of the host, until they reached the doomed city. The account in the text, which represents the enterprise against Zara as started for the purpose of accommodating the difficulty, and the Venetians as honestly prepared at this stage to transport the Crusaders to the East, provided they were paid, is the account which Villehardouin successfully imposed upon the world.] 57 Jadera, now Zara, was a Roman colony, which acknowledged Augustus for its parent. It is now only two miles round, and contains five or six thousand in 403 had renounced its allegiance to Venice and implored the protection of the king of Hungary.58 The crusaders burst the chain or boom of the harbour; landed their horses, troops, and military engines; and compelled the inhabitants, after a defence of five days, to surrender at discretion; their lives were spared, but the revolt was punished by the pillage of their [Nov. 24] houses and the demolition of their walls. The season was far advanced; the French and Venetians resolved to pass the winter in a secure harbour and plentiful country; but their repose was disturbed by national and tumultuous quarrels of the soldiers and mariners. The conquest of Zara had scattered the seeds of discord and scandal; the arms of the allies had been stained in their outset with the blood, not of infidels, but of Christians; the king of Hungary and his new subjects were themselves enlisted under the banner of the cross, and the scruples of the devout were magnified by the fear or lassitude of the reluctant pilgrims. The pope had excommunicated the false crusaders, who had pillaged and massacred their brethren; 59 and only the marquis Boniface and Simon of Montfort escaped these spiritual thunders: the one by his absence from the siege, the other by his final departure from the camp. Innocent might absolve the simple and submissive penitents of France; but he was provoked by the stubborn reason of the Venetians, who refused to confess their guilt, to accept their pardon, or to allow, in their temporal concerns, the interposition of a priest. the cru The assembly of such formidable powers by sea and land Alliance of had revived the hopes of young 60 Alexius; and, both at Venice saders with and Zara, he solicited the arms of the crusaders for his own prince, the restoration and his father's 61 deliverance. The royal youth Xierius habitants; but the fortifications are strong, and it is joined to the mainland by a bridge. See the travels of the two companions, Spon and Wheler (Voyage de Dalmatie, de Grèce, &c. tom. i. p. 64-70; Journey into Greece, p. 8-14); the last of whom, by mistaking Sestertia for Sestertii, values an arch with statues and columns at twelve pounds. If in his time there were no trees near Zara, the cherrytrees were not yet planted which produce our incomparable marasquin. 58 Katona (Hist. Critica Reg. Hungariæ, Stirpis Arpad. tom. iv. p. 536-558) collects all the facts and testimonies most adverse to the conquerors of Zara. See the whole transaction, and the sentiments of the pope, in the Epistles of Innocent III. Gesta, c. 86-88. 60 A modern reader is surprised to hear of the valet de Constantinople, as applied to young Alexius on account of his youth, like the infants of Spain, and the nobilissimus puer of the Romans. The pages and valets of the knights were as noble as themselves (Villehardouin and Ducange, No. 36). The Emperor Isaac is styled by Villehardouin, Sursac (No. 35, &c.), which the Greek young was recommended by Philip, king of Germany; 62 his prayers and presence excited the compassion of the camp; and his cause was embraced and pleaded by the marquis of Montferrat and the doge of Venice. A double alliance and the dignity of Cæsar had connected with the Imperial family the two elder brothers of Boniface; 64 he expected to derive a kingdom from the important service; and the more generous ambition of Dandolo was eager to secure the inestimable benefits of trade and dominion that might accrue to his country. Their influence procured a favourable audience for the ambassadors of Alexius; and, if the magnitude of his offers excited some suspicion, the motives and rewards which he displayed might justify the delay and diversion of those forces which had been consecrated to the deliverance of Jerusalem. He promised, in his own and his father's name, that, as soon as they should be seated on the throne of Constantinople, they would terminate the long schism of the Greeks, and submit themselves and their people to the lawful supremacy of the Roman church. engaged to recompense the labours and merits of the crusaders by the immediate payment of two hundred thousand marks of silver; to accompany them in person to Egypt; or, if it should be judged more advantageous, to maintain, during a year, ten He may be derived from the French Sire, or the Greek Kúp (kúpis) melted into his proper name [from Sire; for Kúp could not become Sur]; the farther corruptions of Tursac and Conserac will instruct us what licence may have been used in the old dynasties of Assyria and Egypt. 62 [Whose court he visited A.D. 1201.] 63 [The conduct of the Marquis of Montferrat was not more ingenuous than that of Dandolo. He was, no more than Dandolo, a genuine crusader; he used the crusaders for his own purpose, and that purpose was, from the beginning, to restore Alexius. The plan was arranged during the winter at the court of Philip of Swabia, to which Alexius had betaken himself after his escape from Constantinople; Boniface, as we have seen, was there too (above, p. 401, note 53); and there can be no doubt that there was a complete understanding between them. Cp. Gesta Innocentii, 83. Philip nursed the dream of a union of the eastern and the western empires. Thus Boniface and Dandolo (for different reasons) agreed on the policy of diverting their expedition to Constantinople long before it started; they hoodwinked the mass of the crusaders; and the difficulties about payment were pressed only for the purpose of accomplishing the ultimate object.] 64 Reinier and Conrad the former married Maria, daughter of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus; the latter was the husband of Theodora Angela, sister of the Emperors Isaac and Alexius. Conrad abandoned the Greek court and princess for the glory of defending Tyre against Saladin (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 187, 203). 65 Nicetas (in Alexio Comneno, 1. iii. c. 9 [p. 715, ed. Bonn]) accuses the doge and Venetians as the first authors of the war against Constantinople, and considers only as a κῦμα ὑπὲρ [leg. ἐπὶ] κύματι the arrival and shameful offers of the royal exile. thousand men, and, during his life, five hundred knights, for the service of the Holy Land. These tempting conditions were accepted by the republic of Venice; and the eloquence of the doge and marquis persuaded the counts of Flanders, Blois, and St. Pol, with eight barons of France, to join in the glorious enterprise. A treaty of offensive and defensive alliance was confirmed by their oaths and seals; and each individual, according to his situation and character, was swayed by the hope of public or private advantage; by the honour of restoring an exiled monarch; or by the sincere and probable opinion that their efforts in Palestine would be fruitless and unavailing, and that the acquisition of Constantinople must precede and prepare the recovery of Jerusalem. But they were the chiefs or equals of a valiant band of freemen and volunteers, who thought and acted for themselves; the soldiers and clergy were divided; and, if a large majority subscribed to the alliance, the numbers and arguments of the dissidents were strong and respectable.66 The boldest hearts were appalled by the report of the naval power and impregnable strength of Constantinople; and their apprehensions were disguised to the world, and perhaps to themselves, by the more decent objections of religion and duty. They alleged the sanctity of a vow, which had drawn them from their families and homes to rescue the holy sepulchre ; nor should the dark and crooked counsels of human policy divert them from a pursuit, the event of which was in the hands of the Almighty. Their first offence, the attack of Zara, had been severely punished by the reproach of their conscience and the censures of the pope; nor would they again imbrue their hands. in the blood of their fellow-Christians. The apostle of Rome had pronounced; nor would they usurp the right of avenging with the sword the schism of the Greeks and the doubtful usurpation of the Byzantine monarch. On these principles or pretences, many pilgrims, the most distinguished for their valour and piety, withdrew from the camp; and their retreat was less pernicious than the open or secret opposition of a discontented party, that laboured, on every occasion, to separate the army and disappoint the enterprise. Villehardouin and Gunther represent the sentiments of the two parties. The abbot Martin left the army at Zara, proceeded to Palestine, was sent ambassador to Constantinople, and became a reluctant witness of the second siege. |