CHAPTER IX

.

THE FIFTH CRUSADE.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1198. Election of Innocent III.]

At its outset, if not in its results, the fifth crusade exhibits something like a return to the spirit of the age which gave so vast a force to the preaching of the hermit Peter and the eloquence of Urban II. In the chair of St. Peter there was now seated a man of far greater power than the pope who stirred the Western world to a fever of enthusiasm at the council of Clermont. At the age of thirty-seven—an age without example, perhaps, in the annals of the papacy—Lothair, of the house of Conti, cardinal of St. Mark, had been chosen pope by the unanimous voice of all the cardinals who were present, at a time when every other power seemed to be tottering, if not in the very throes of dissolution. The Byzantine empire was in its decrepitude; the Latin kingdom of Palestine was reduced to a mere strip of coast; an infant was king of Naples; the French king Philip Augustus was paying in whatever measure the penalties of an evil life; the man who was hoping to wear the English crown was the vindictive and despicable John, whose treachery had slain his father. Everywhere was disunion, faction, and deadly hatred: and in the midst of this chaos appeared the one man whose serene tranquillity, based on the consciousness of a superhuman commission and on the sanction of a divine law, was undisturbed by the storms raging around him. The influence, righteously acquired by Leo and Gregory the Great, and vastly extended (not altogether by the most righteous means) by Gregory VII. (p. 20) was wielded with even greater effect by the youthful pontiff whose eye surveyed with calm yet exhaustive scrutiny the troubled scene of European politics.

[Sidenote: Effect of the crusades in extending the jurisdiction of the pope.]

To this exalted position the undefined claims of previous popes would probably never have raised Innocent III., had it not been for the crusades. In these enterprises the popes had a pretext ready to hand for interfering with the affairs of every nation and country, for suspending or annulling civil jurisdiction, for levying taxes under the name of alms, for releasing barons from the allegiance due to their sovereigns, inferior tenants from their chiefs, debtors from their creditors. The crusade became a task which the popes might impose for their souls’ health on refractory emperors and kings. All whose hearts were filled with the love of Christ must long to take part in the holy work of rescuing his sepulchre from the hands of the unbelievers. If any were careless or indifferent to a duty thus constraining, it must be because their lives were not as pure, their faith not so sound as it should be, and by such men the divine power for rebuke and even chastisement committed to the vicars of Christ and of the prince of the apostles must make itself felt. If kings and great feudal chiefs would prove themselves to be good Christians, they must put on the cross: and the assumption of the badge imposed an obligation from which, if the popes were bent on keeping them to it, it would be almost, if not altogether, hopeless for them to escape. If they resisted, their sentence was excommunication; and excommunication, not removed, meant death here and hereafter.

[Sidenote: Weakening of the Imperial power.]

The effect of this policy (for such, however sincere some of the popes may have been, it assuredly must be called) showed itself especially in the weakening of the imperial power, without which such a supremacy as that of Innocent III. over the sovereigns of his age would have been an impossibility. The emperor Conrad had been driven to take the cross by the awful pictures which Bernard drew of the judgment day (p. 90): he came back shorn practically of all his power. Barbarossa had obeyed the papal bidding, only to die in a distant land; and the struggle was to be renewed in a later crusade with a sovereign who was only in his cradle when the cardinal Lothair began his career as pope.

[Sidenote: Growing mistrust of the court of Rome by the peoples of Europe.]

But if the crusades and the undefined powers which they brought to the popes carried to its utmost height the fabric of their supremacy, they began at the same time to undermine it. At no time had the Roman court possessed a high reputation for pecuniary probity; more commonly it had been known as the seed-bed in which venality, jobbery, and corruption flourished with rank luxuriance. All at once, owing to the new impulse given to the energies of Christendom, the popes became the possessors or administrators of revenues more vast than any of which in earlier ages they could have ventured to dream. Then as in these enterprises failure followed on failure, and the results attained seemed wholly inadequate to the outlay, the suspicion was awakened that the funds obtained for the crusades were sometimes diverted to other purposes. The suspicion might be unjust, and the popes might appoint barons and bishops not belonging to their court to be trustees of revenues which were not even to be kept in Italy. Still in spite of these precautions the old sayings were repeated, and they came not unfrequently with chilling force just when the crusading enthusiasm had been fanned into the fiercest flame.

[Sidenote: Efforts of Innocent to remove this mistrust.]

This suspicion threatened to be fatal to the new enterprise which Innocent sought to promote for the salvation of the Holy Land,—nay, for that of all Christians whether of the East or the West. Not even Urban II. had been more fervent in his exhortations, more lavish in his promises of eternal happiness, more stern in his threatenings of endless perdition. Still from these loftier regions he had to descend to defences against charges of personal corruption, and to appoint for the management of the crusading revenues committees to which it was supposed that suspicion could not possibly attach itself. More than this, the pope and his cardinals must show themselves ready to bear to the full the burdens which they sought to lay upon others. A tenth of all their revenues would be devoted to the rescue of the Holy Land from the power of the infidel. The clergy in all other countries were to contribute at least a fortieth part, and the laity should be everywhere urged to contribute to the utmost of their power. The funds so raised were to be put into a safe place, the amount only being notified at Rome: and hard-hearted indeed must he be who would hold aloof from such a work of love and mercy.

[Sidenote: Fulk of Neuilly.]

But the indifference with which his words were everywhere received furnishes a fresh proof that the work of a genuine crusade can be set in motion only by the combination of authority with the enthusiasm of the demagogue. So it had been in the days of the hermit Peter (p. 26), and of the saint who had tried to cover the hermit with contempt. So, happily for Innocent, it was now, when Fulk, a parish priest of Neuilly near Paris, was smitten with the crusading fever. Even as a priest he had for a time led a life of miserable slackness, if not of gross vice; but his heart was touched with the penitence which was kindled in Mary Magdalene or Mary of Egypt. He had striven to atone for his sins by the severest asceticism, and to remedy his deplorable ignorance by attending the lectures of Peter the Chanter, in whom Innocent hoped to find the most eloquent preacher of his crusade. This hope was not to be realized. Peter was seized by a fatal illness, but his last words bequeathed to Fulk the mission which he had himself received from the pope.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1189.]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1198. The mission of Fulk sanctioned by the pope.]

Even before the death of Peter, Fulk had preached in the streets and lanes of the great city, and his words had melted the most obdurate and evil-lived sinners to tears. Still the spell of his oratory seemed to be losing its power, and he had gone back to his parish work at Neuilly when the last charge of Peter the Chanter animated him with an irresistible impulse. He came forward now not merely as the preacher of a crusade, but as the stern reprover of vice and of spiritual wickedness in high places. Like Urban and Eugenius, Innocent saw his opportunity. He wrote to Fulk, expressing his hearty approbation of his work, and bidding him, in concert with some of the Black and White monks, and with the sanction of the legate Peter of Capua, go up and down the land calling on all men to repent and to give proof of penitence by hastening to the land of promise.

[Sidenote: Effects of his eloquence.]

Soon the tidings spread from city to city that a preacher had appeared whose powers were not inferior to those of St. Bernard. His miracles were not indeed so numerous, nor, for the most part, of the sort which ascribed to Bernard the excommunication of troublesome flies, who under this potent sentence fell dead from the ceiling, and were swept up from the floor by shovelfuls. His humour was not less ready than his eloquence. His hearers strove for pieces of his clothing to be kept as sacred relics. One noisy bystander had caused him special annoyance. He turned to his audience, and told them that he had not blessed his own garments, but that he would bless those of this man. In a moment the man’s clothes were in tatters, and the fragments carried off in triumph as relics endowed with miraculous power.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Death of Fulk.]

Yet, taken at its best, the effect of Fulk’s preaching was not equal to that of Bernard or of Peter the Hermit. His words might enjoin high austerities: his appearance might not belie his words, but it did not convey indisputable evidence of their truth. He looked and lived much like other men; and, what was worse, he had to do battle with the fatal suspicion which Innocent had striven with the utmost earnestness to shake off. He became the receiver of vast sums of money; and murmurs would make themselves heard which asserted that all these moneys were not used as they ought to be. His influence was on the whole waning: but he was not to see the beginning of the enterprise which he had so strenuously promoted. Fulk died of a fever at Neuilly, while the crusaders were still at Venice, and his mantle seemed to fall on the Cistercian abbot Martin.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1200. The chiefs of the fifth crusade.]

Other preachers also girded up their loins for the great work, and their words told especially on some of the younger men among the French princes. Foremost among these was Theobald, count of Champagne, who had seen only twenty summers, and whose goal was well nigh reached already. With him Louis, count of Blois and Chartres, cast in his lot, followed by Simon of Montfort, the infamous leader of the yet future Holy War against the Albigensians, Walter of Brienne, and with many others, last but not least Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, the historian of the crusade. Some months later the badge was assumed by Baldwin, count of Flanders, by Hugh of St. Pol, by the count of Perche, and many more.

[Sidenote: Mission from the French barons to Venice.]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1201.]

[Sidenote: Compact for the conveyance of the crusaders to Palestine.]

The followers of these chiefs amounted already to a formidable army. But the leaders had no adequate navy at their command, and the history of all the preceding expeditions had convinced men at last of the desperate risks to be encountered in the land journey across Europe and the Lesser Asia. One state alone there was which was fully equal to all demands that might be made upon it for ships; and of the crusades this state at least had no just reason to complain. These armed pilgrimages had vastly increased its commerce and its profits, and had produced in Europe a general desire for eastern products which insured the continuance of this wide-spread trade. To Venice accordingly the eyes of the crusading chiefs were turned, and the envoys of the counts of Blois, Flanders, and Champagne appeared there in the first week of Lent before the doge, or duke, Henry Dandolo, venerable in his age of more than ninety years, and the victim of that Byzantine cruelty which had almost, if not wholly, deprived him of his sight. ‘Sire,’ said Villehardouin, the ambassador from the count of Champagne, ‘we are come in the name of the great barons of France, who are pledged to avenge by the conquest of Jerusalem the insults offered to our Lord Jesus Christ. From no other state can they obtain the help which they desire, and they implore you for the sake of the Holy Cross and the Holy Sepulchre to furnish them with ships and all other things necessary for conveying their men across the sea.’ ‘On what terms?’ asked the doge. ‘On any that you may name,’ was the reply, ‘so long as we may be able to bear them.’ The doge promised an answer at the end of eight days; and when these were passed, the envoys were told that for four marks of silver for each horse and two for each man the republic would furnish ships, provisioned for nine months, for the conveyance of 4,500 knights with their horses, 9,000 squires, and 20,000 infantry. The total cost would be 85,000 marks of silver; but the republic would further join the expedition with 50 galleys of its own. The terms were not unreasonable, and the envoys departed, some homewards, some to seek further aid from Genoa and Pisa. Here they fared but ill; and Villehardouin reached Troyes only to find Theobald the count of Champagne prostrate with hopeless sickness. In his joy at seeing him, the young man mounted his horse: but it was for the last time. In a few days he died, and the count of Perche soon followed him to the grave.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Failure of the crusaders to make up the sum agreed on with the Venetians.]

The count of Champagne was to have been the chief of the enterprise. The offer of the command was now refused by the duke of Burgundy as by many others: it was accepted at last by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. But it was not until the following year that the crusading forces were fairly in motion; and their lack of cohesion was at once seen in all its mischievous effects. Venice may have driven—there is no just ground for thinking that she had driven—a hard bargain; but as it was certain that from her terms she would make no abatement, it was clear that the interests of the crusaders should lead them to adhere to or give up the compact in a body. To divide their forces was merely to lay a heavier burden on those who should still seek the aid of Venice. But of two courses the crusaders were well nigh sure to choose the worse, and while some sailed across the bay of Biscay and through the straits of Gibraltar, others embarked at Marseilles. Others again found their way to ports in Southern Italy, leaving Villehardouin to deplore at Venice the wretched mischief wrought by these desertions. It seemed at first that they had dealt a death-blow to the enterprise. The Venetian fleet was ready, in perfect order and magnificently equipped: but the price, the 85,000 silver marks, must be paid in advance, and the counts of Flanders and St. Pol and the marquis of Montferrat could only make up 51,000 after selling all their plate and putting the utmost strain upon their credit.

[Sidenote: Proposal to commute the payment by an expedition against Zara.]

Of this dilemma the doge proposed a solution which at first excited the astonishment, the dismay, and even the disgust of the crusaders. The war which pope Innocent had striven to kindle was strictly a holy war, directed only against the infidel for the rescue of lands, which formed the inalienable heritage of Christendom. But the Venetian doge now announced that the 34,000 marks might be discharged by conquering for the republic the town of Zara, which had been, so he averred, unjustly seized by the king of Hungary. The summer wore on. The feast of the Nativity of the Virgin had come round, when Dandolo, ascending the pulpit in the church of St. Mark, declared his readiness to live or die with the pilgrims of the cross, and then, going to the high altar, fixed the blood-red badge on his high cotton cap. The sight called forth the tears and wakened the enthusiasm of all who were present. The less pleasant features of the compact lost their repulsive aspect; and the interests of Venice were further consulted by the agreement that she should have one half of all conquests that might be made.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1195. Mission to Rome to seek aid for the dethroned Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus.]

A new actor now appeared upon the scene. For some years past the palace of the Byzantine Cæsars had been defiled by a series of bloody murders or of mutilations still more cruel. Emperor after emperor had been put to death or blinded and thrust into a dungeon. The latter penalty was the doom of Isaac Angelus when his throne was usurped by his brother Alexios, a tyrant not wise in his generation. Isaac, laxly guarded, was able to communicate with his partisans; his son Alexios, having contrived to make his escape in a Pisan vessel to Ancona, appeared to plead his cause before Innocent at Rome. He received no genial welcome. The pope had perhaps a better hope of bringing about the submission of the Eastern to the Western church through the possessor of a throne than through claimants or pretenders. He was better received at the court of his brother-in-law, the Swabian chief Philip; and his messengers now appeared in Venice to implore the help of the commercial republic and the high chivalry of Western Christendom.

[Sidenote: Determination of the Venetians to insist on the expedition to Zara.]

Not impossibly the vision which this crusade was destined for time to realize may have floated before the mind of Dandolo, as he listened to their earnest pleadings; but for the present he confined himself to words of encouragement and sympathy. The task immediately before them was the conquest of Zara; and Venice stuck to her bond with inflexible pertinacity. In vain the abbot Martin, who with his followers had crossed the Tyrolese Alps, protested against the invasion of territories belonging to the Hungarian king who had himself assumed the cross. They were told that the scheme might be given up on the payment of the 34,000 silver marks. In vain Innocent sent his cardinal legate Peter of Capua with orders to interdict the Venetians from assailing Zara even with their own forces, and to lead the army of the pilgrims himself to Palestine. The legate was told that he might embark in their fleet if he pleased, but that he must not dare to exercise his legatine authority when he had done so. The indignant cardinal hastened to Rome. Some few drew back from the enterprise: and the marquis of Montferrat pleaded pressing engagements which withheld him at present from taking the command.

[Sidenote: Siege and conquest of Zara.]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Nov. 15.]

But with the main body of the crusaders the Venetian fleet set sail, in a magnificent order and with a display of power which seemed capable of sweeping everything before it. The people of Zara, dismayed at the sight of the armament, offered at once to surrender on the best terms which they could get. The doge promised to consider the matter with the barons: but while they were thus in council, Simon of Montfort, the destined hero of a bloody crusade against heretical Christians, upbraided the Zarans with their cowardice, and assured them that the conquest of Zara was no part of the crusading plan. When the summons for the envoys came from the doge’s tent, they were nowhere to be found. They had hastened back into the city, and the walls had been manned for a siege. In the camp Guido, the abbot of Vaux Cernay, warned the army that they were pilgrims of the cross, under oath not to make war against Christians in communion with the Holy See. In high wrath Dandolo insisted that the barons should keep to their engagements. Few dared, perhaps few wished, to gainsay him. For five days Zara was besieged; on the sixth it fell. The doge took possession, but he divided the spoil with his allies.

[Sidenote: Proposal to divert the crusade to the restoration of Alexios at Constantinople.]

[Sidenote: December.]

The reduction of Zara raised hopes which were to be speedily disappointed. The crusaders wished to sail at once for the Holy Land. The doge was determined to guard his conquest against attacks from the Hungarian king. Winter was coming on; the countries of Western Asia were suffering grievously from famine, and a voyage then undertaken would bring with it the miseries of starvation. The only course was to make Zara their winter quarters. The proposal called forth vehement opposition, which was not suppressed without bloodshed. The arrival of the marquis of Montferrat to take the chief command gave promise of more harmonious action; but the crusade was to be a second time diverted from its original purpose. Envoys came from the Byzantine Alexios and the Swabian Philip urging that the purposes of the expedition would be better achieved by placing Alexios on the throne of Constantinople than by attempts, which would certainly be in vain, to wrest Palestine from the Saracens. They insisted that the crusader’s vow was really a vow to promote in every way the cause of God, of right, and of justice; and in no way would this cause be more surely furthered than by restoring the disinherited prince to the throne of which he had been robbed by an usurper. They pleaded that in this instance interest and duty went hand in hand. It would be the first business of Alexios after his restoration to bring the Eastern church into submission to the Roman church and see; his next task would be to aid the crusaders to the best of his power in the work which they had most at heart. He would not only feed the whole army and give them 400,000 silver marks: but he would also join them in person, or send 10,000 men at his own charge.

[Sidenote: Resolution to accept the terms proposed by Alexios.]

[Sidenote: Negotiations with the pope for the removal of the interdict.]

The announcement of this proposal drew from the abbot of Vaux Cernay the passionate rejoinder that they were in arms only against Saracens, and that to Syria only would they go. But though he was firmly seconded by his partisans, there was practically no reply to the retort that in Syria they could do nothing, and that Jerusalem could be won only through Constantinople or Egypt. Words and tempers ran high: but the treaty with Alexios was accepted by the marquis of Montferrat and the count of Flanders, and the destination of the army was fixed. The numbers of that army were slowly diminished through the weeks of winter. The terrors of the papal interdict hung like a cloud over the host, and the barons resolved to send envoys who should assure Innocent that the diversion to Zara, which they and he alike lamented, was to be laid wholly to the charge of those faithless knights who by departing from other ports left their comrades without the means of paying the money due to the Venetians. Of the new compact made with Alexios they prudently said nothing: and Innocent, while he agreed to suspend the interdict till the arrival of his legate Peter of Capua, insisted that the barons must still make atonement for their offence. Against the Venetians he took a higher tone. The envoys must carry with them a letter excommunicating these marauders. The marquis Boniface received the brief, but, instead of publishing it, he wrote to Innocent, sending the submission of the barons and saying that the Venetians were about to entreat his forgiveness for the conquest of Zara. No such entreaties came: and Innocent issued fresh orders that his brief should be placed in the hands of the doge. If this was done, it produced no result: and Innocent was startled, if not dismayed, when he learnt that the spoilers of Zara were making ready to sin on a larger scale. He denounced the whole scheme with seemingly vehement indignation. The emperor of Constantinople may have been guilty of blinding his brother and usurping his throne; but his empire, he insisted, was under the special protection of the Holy See. It was no part of their business or their vow to avenge the wrongs of the prince Alexios; it was their first and paramount duty to avenge the wrongs done to their Redeemer, the sign of whose cross they bore upon their shoulders. Nay, more, the Byzantine emperor had, at the special request of the pope, promised to furnish provisions for the crusaders: and the promise of the Eastern Cæsar might be trusted. If it should fail, then they might forcibly take what they wanted, at the same time paying or promising to pay the value in money.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1203. Easter.]

[Sidenote: Vain attempts of Innocent to oppose the expedition.]

Dandolo was in no mood to have his course checked by either papal pleadings or papal threats. The day of embarkation had arrived, and Simon of Montfort, impenetrable in his gloomy bigotry, hastened away to join the king of Hungary, the faithful servant of the pope. The other chiefs went on board the Venetian fleet, with perhaps a shrewd suspicion that their success would be followed by a marked change in the tone and language of the pope. But whatever might be his desire to keep on good terms with the reigning monarch, his longing to see the Byzantine church brought back to Roman subjection was altogether more intense. This submission would be the immediate result of the enthronement of Alexios, and the crusaders would depart for the Holy Land, (the vision of a Latin empire at Byzantium had not yet dawned upon their minds,) rich not only in the blessing of the pope, but in a wealth of sacred relics which, now stored up in the churches of the capital, ought to pass into the hands of the faithful children of the Roman obedience.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1203. Arrival of the fleet at Constantinople.]

About the time of the summer solstice, the Venetian fleet anchored in the Propontis nine miles to the west of the Imperial city. A few days later the army was at Scutari, where they received a message from the reigning emperor Alexios promising them aid in their passage through Asia Minor, on the condition that during their stay on the shores of the Bosporos they should do his subjects no harm. The reply was a summons to the usurper to descend from his throne, with a promise that on this condition they would obtain for him the pardon of his nephew, the rightful sovereign.

[Sidenote: Flight of the usurper Alexios.]

This young prince was paraded by the Venetian fleet in front of the walls; but the proclamation which called upon the people to acknowledge him as their sovereign was received with contemptuous silence or with showers of arrows, and no alternative remained but that of open war. The struggle presents few features of real interest: as a series of military operations it has little value or none. The imperial fleet consisted, it is said, of only twenty ships, and these useless, the anchors, cables, and sails having been sold by the admiral, a brother of the empress. The army exhibited all the pageantry of war, and lacked almost every soldierly quality. The port of Constantinople and the town of Galata were soon in the possession of the invaders, and the siege of the city was begun, so far as the efforts of a force which could assail but an insignificant extent of wall deserves the name. The first flag planted on one of the towers was placed there by the men of Dandolo’s ship; and Dandolo himself, setting fire to the surrounding houses, kept off the imperial troops while his crew fortified themselves in their position. The Latins and the Greeks were now face to face. The splendid ranks of the Byzantine army stood, as it might seem, ready for battle, when Alexios gave the signal for retreat and sealed his own downfall. That night he fled from the city. The blind Isaac Angelus, drawn from his dungeon, was again clad in the imperial robes, and his son Alexios was admitted to share his imperial dignity.

[Sidenote: The crusaders are compelled to spend the winter at Constantinople.]

The task of the crusaders in Europe seemed to be now done. Their heralds announced to the Egyptian sultan that they would soon take summary vengeance unless he surrendered the Holy Land. The Pisans who had aided the usurping Alexios made up their quarrel with Venice. The French barons asked the forgiveness of the pope for the attack made upon Constantinople, and Innocent replied that it must depend on the fulfilment of the promises made by Alexios. This prince, having paid part of the money which he had sworn to give them, bade them remember how dear must be to himself the cost of alliance with them, and how greatly he must need their help to stem the tide of unpopularity. In short, he let them know that in or near Constantinople they must find their winter quarters. It was absurd to think of encountering the risk of a voyage during the winter: and even if they went, they could do nothing against the Turks until spring. He would then see that nothing should be left undone towards furthering the success of the crusade.

[Sidenote: Efforts of Mourzoufle to detach Alexios from the crusaders.]

The northern pilgrims received these proposals with murmurs of anger. But the decision lay really with Dandolo, and Dandolo declared that at this season of the year the ships of the republic should not be exposed to useless dangers. The army remained where it was: but new troubles came thick and fast. Religious antagonism ran out into brawls and fights. An accidental conflagration preyed for eight days on the streets and houses of the city. The rage excited by these losses was increased by the exactions to which the young Alexios was driven in order to meet his engagements with the crusaders, and was lashed into madness when his officers stripped the churches of their gold and silver ornaments. The indignation of the people found utterance in the vehement eloquence of Alexios Ducas, called Mourzoufle from his dark and shaggy eyebrows; and his protests so far swayed the youthful emperor as to make him remiss in carrying out his compact with his allies. These told him plainly that to that compact he must strictly adhere, or, failing in this, must prepare himself for war.

[Sidenote: Deposition and death of Alexios.]

During the night following the day in which he received this warning Alexios sent a squadron of fire-ships against the Venetian fleet. The danger was great; but the Venetian sailors were as prompt as they were brave. The deadly ships were turned aside into open water, and a Pisan merchant ship was the only vessel set on fire and destroyed. It was the last exploit of Alexios. Another revolution hurled him from the throne, which after one or two more emperors had been set up and put down passed to Mourzoufle. The new Cæsar showed some aptitude for war, but he preferred to try the effect of negotiations with Dandolo. The old doge retorted that with an usurper he could have no dealings, and that, if he sought peace, he should replace his master Alexios on the throne. Mourzoufle resolved that this demand should not be made a second time: and that night Alexios was slain in prison.

[Sidenote: Resolution to set up a Latin dynasty in Constantinople.]

For the fate of their former ally the crusaders professed to feel a profound sympathy; and their grief prompted the resolution of cutting the evil at its root by placing a Latin emperor on the seat of the Eastern Cæsars. The compact was accordingly drawn up. The booty to be obtained within the city was to be shared equally between the French and the Venetians; and a committee of twelve, half French, half Venetian, should elect the new sovereign, who was to have one-fourth part of the city with the palaces of Blachernai and Boukoleon, the rest of the city being shared by the two allied powers. Venice, freed from all feudal obligations to the Greek empire, should be equally free from all feudal dependence on the Latin sovereign, while the Latin patriarch should be chosen from the nation to which the emperor might not belong.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1204. April. Siege and conquest of Constantinople.]

[Sidenote: Horrible excesses of the crusaders.]

The second siege of Constantinople is as devoid of interest as the first. The success of the Greeks on the first day was followed by a series of disasters which on the fourth day enabled the Latins to force their way through the gates. Mourzoufle shut himself up in his palace. A third conflagration desolated the city. In the morning the conquerors learnt that the usurper had fled with many of the inhabitants. The Latin conquest was accomplished. The Byzantine clergy alone urged continued resistance; but when they presented Theodore Lascaris to the people as their emperor, their silence showed that the appeal was made in vain. Then, seeing that nothing more could be done, the patriarch John Kamateros fled from the sight of the awful scenes which disgraced the triumph of the Latins. The three Western bishops had strictly charged the crusaders to respect the churches and the persons of the clergy, the monks, and the nuns. They were talking to the winds. In the frantic excitement of victory all restraint was flung aside, and the warriors of the cross abandoned themselves with ferocious greed to their insatiable and filthy lewdness. With disgusting gestures and in shameless attire an abandoned woman screamed out a drunken song from the patriarchal chair in the church of Sancta Sophia, the magnificent work of Justinian. Wretches blind with fury drained off draughts of wine from the vessels of the altar: the table of oblation, famed for its exquisite and costly workmanship, was shattered: the splendid pulpit with its silver ornaments utterly defaced. Mules and horses were driven into the churches to bear away the sacred treasures; if they fell, they were lashed and goaded till their blood streamed upon the pavement. While the savages were employed on these appropriate tasks, the more devout were busy in ransacking the receptacles of holy relics, and laying up a goodly store of wonder-working bones or teeth to be carried away to the churches of the great cities on the Rhine, the Loire, or the Seine. ‘How,’ asks the pope, ‘shall the Greek Church return to ecclesiastical unity and to respect for the Apostolic See, when they have seen in the Latins only examples of wickedness and works of darkness, for which they might justly loathe them worse than dogs?’ The question might well be asked: and we may be well assured that Innocent would not be likely to over-colour the picture in favour of the Greeks, and that his informers would not care to put before him in their naked hideousness iniquities which it would be a sin to describe.

[Sidenote: Election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, emperor of the East.]

The first task of the conquerors was to elect a chief and share the spoil. The committee of twelve met in the chapel of the palace and invoked the aid of the Holy Spirit. The six French electors were all ecclesiastics,—the abbot of Loces, the bishops of Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, and the archbishop-elect of Acre. Their first choice fell on Dandolo. His wisdom, his energy, his undaunted courage, seemed to point him out as the best man fitted to rule the empire in the winning of which he had played the chief part. But the old man cared little for the office, and to the Venetians the combination of the powers of emperor and doge in the same person probably boded ill for the best interests of the commercial republic. There remained only two who could well be placed in competition for the prize. The marquis of Montferrat, the lord of a petty principality at the foot of the Alps, could be no object of Venetian jealousy, while his age and character well qualified him for the office. But Baldwin of Flanders, at the age of thirty-two, was in the first flush of vigorous manhood; he was come of the race of Charles the Great, and the French king was his cousin. He was also the feudal sovereign of a wealthy territory and the leader of a powerful army raised among his own people. The electors came to an unanimous decision, and this decision announced to the barons, who were waiting outside, that the count of Flanders was the Eastern Cæsar. Boniface of Montferrat at once did homage to him as his lord; and the old doge was the only man not called upon to make this act of submission. Borne on the shields of his comrades Baldwin was carried to the church of Sancta Sophia and there was invested with the purple buskins. Three weeks later he was crowned by the papal legate, the new patriarch not having been yet elected.

[Sidenote: Election of Thomas Morosini as patriarch of Constantinople.]

This election was to the Venetians a subject of greater anxiety than the choice of a temporal sovereign. There was no room here for the fear that Venice might become an insignificant dependency of a vast empire; and they set to work with their usual promptitude and coolness. The canonical regularity of the election was, as they supposed, ensured by the appointment of Venetian priests to be canons of Sancta Sophia; and these canons were placed under oath to elect none but a Venetian. Their choice fell on Thomas Morosini, a member of one of their noblest houses and a man highly esteemed by Innocent III.

[Sidenote: Embassies from Baldwin and the Venetians to the pope.]

The Roman pontiff played his part with consummate skill. While the usurping Alexios was on the throne, he had striven to secure through his help the submission of the Eastern church. No sooner had he fled, than Innocent reminded his nephew Alexios of the promises of obedience which he had personally made, and urged the crusaders to insist on the immediate fulfilment of this promise. In no other way could they justify themselves for diverting to other purposes the forces which had been enrolled solely for the redemption of the Holy Land. He had now to deal with a new order of things. The emperor Baldwin had prayed him to ratify the compact made with the Venetians, to stir up afresh the zeal of Western Europe for the maintenance of the Latin empire in the East, to send forth new armies who in the countries now brought under Latin sway would assuredly reap an abundant harvest, and to reinforce the Latin clergy by a multitude of new recruits. The Venetians had besought his forgiveness for attacking Zara, his sanction of the conquest of Constantinople. They could not bring themselves to believe that the people of Zara were really under his protection, and hence they had determined to bear with the excommunication in patient silence until the pontiff should learn the truth. For what they had done at Byzantium the young Alexios was chargeable, not they. He had tried to send fire-ships among their fleet, and it was indispensable for their own safety and that of their allies to deprive him of the power of doing further mischief.

[Sidenote: Answers of Innocent III.]

The satisfaction which Innocent felt, and avowed that he felt, was expressed in carefully guarded terms. He was rejoiced to be able to revoke the excommunication of the Venetians, and so high was his admiration of the valour and wisdom of Dandolo that he could not comply with the prayer of the venerable doge to be relieved from further obligation under his vow. The hero who could bear so lightly the burden of ninety winters must not deprive the crusade of services which would ensure success to the enterprise and a glorious reward for himself. To the delicate praise which thus took the form of a command he added the assurance that he had taken the Latin empire under his special protection, and had prayed the sovereigns and prelates of the West to exert themselves to the utmost in its behalf. He had felt himself bound to pass a stern condemnation on the deeds of horrible violence and lewdness committed by the crusaders in the sacking of a Christian city; but he could not withhold the admission that the history of the conquest was a memorable commentary on the parables of the talents and the vineyard. The Greeks had done nothing with the good things committed to their trust: far from aiding, they had seriously hindered, the warriors of the cross and even done their best to destroy them. They had kept up a causeless schism; they had turned a deaf ear to all entreaties which called upon them to come back to the unity of the Church; and they had now paid the penalty by seeing their inheritance in the hands of better husbandmen who would bring forth fruit in due season. But if Innocent was thus complaisant with the secular empire, he laid a heavy hand on the spiritual power which the Venetians hoped to secure as their special portion. The pope had a stern censure for the conduct both of the Venetians and the French in daring to seize on the temporalities of the Eastern church and to portion out along with other lands and property all that might remain over and above the amount deemed sufficient for the maintenance of the Latin clergy. Nor could he allow the validity of Morosini’s election, whether by a self-constituted chapter or by priests chosen by a purely secular authority. The election, in short, was null and void; but so great was his regard for the Venetians, so high his esteem for Morosini, that he would himself appoint to the Byzantine patriarchate the man whom they had chosen, and invest him with singular privileges. These privileges involved a reservation of certain appeals to the pope; and the very plenitude of the powers thus bestowed served only to show with the greater clearness the paramount sovereignty of the Roman pontiff to whom he owed his dignity and his jurisdiction.

[Sidenote: Results of the crusades to the pope and to the Venetians.]

The great crusade promoted by Innocent had thus produced results very different from those which he had looked for. It had not touched the power of the Syrian sultans; it had not struck a blow on the soil of Palestine. But on the whole he had no cause to complain. It had widely extended the limits of his supremacy, and had subdued a spiritual rebellion which had rent asunder the seamless robe of Christ. But if the pope was a gainer, Venice had secured to herself advantages, more solid perhaps, certainly more enduring. By the conquest of Zara she had laid the foundations of her vast commercial empire; and her factories at Pera needed only the defence of her fleets, while the Latins in Byzantium had to guard themselves against attacks by land. She had her settlements in the richest islands of the Egean, and in every harbour was seen the flag of the maritime republic. This growth of her commerce was, moreover, fostering in her a spirit of antagonism to ecclesiastical authority, of which Innocent seems to have foreseen the issue, and which he sought with all his power to crush. The abbot of St. Felix in Venice was consecrated, by the command of Ziani, the successor of Henry Dandolo, to the archbishopric of Zara, the sanction of the pope not being first asked. The wrath of Innocent blazed forth at once. He reviewed in the harshest terms the general policy of the Venetians in the conduct of the crusade. It was true that they had taken Zara, and even that they had overthrown the Byzantine empire: but what would not an army, which had won such victories, have achieved in the Holy Land? Had the crusaders fulfilled their vows, not only must Egypt have been subdued, and the cross replaced on the dome of Omar, but Syria itself must have been swept clear of all Saracen dominion. That this glorious result had not been brought about already, was the fault of the Venetians and of them alone. He could not therefore recognize their archbishop, and he insisted on their submission under pain of the censures which were ready to fall upon them. There is no evidence to show that the Venetians took the reproof to heart, or that they vouchsafed any reply.

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