Ernle Bradford - The Great Betrayal: The Great Siege of Constantinople

Ernle Bradford

To the memory of

JOHN DAVENPORT

Aut Ararim Paribus bibet out Germania Tigrim,

quam nostro illius labatur pectore voltus.

PREFACE

In one of the most despicable acts in history, the Venetians and the Crusaders sacked and destroyed the Bastion of the West. The division and isolation of eastern from western Europe derives from their act. The consequences of the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the army of the Fourth Crusade are felt to this day. The dismemberment of the eastern Empire by the Venetians and the Crusaders not only let the Turks into Europe; it led subsequently to the Balkan problem; and ultimately produced a favourable climate for the current division of eastern and western Europe. All stems from this one tragic eventthe diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople.

For nine hundred years, this great Christian city commanding the trade routes between Asia, Russia and Europe was the bastion and guardian of civilisation. Behind the sheltering arm of the Byzantine Empire, the petty states of Europe were able to drag themselves out of the confusion and chaos left behind by the wreck of the western Roman Empire.

As George Orwell wrote in another context: men can only be highly civilised while other men, inevitably less civilised, are there to guard and feed them. The civilisation of Constantinople itself was only made possible by its soldiers, who continued watchful on the rampart, guarding the frontiers of the Empire against the constant irruptions from the hostile East and the barbarous North. Similarly, the growth of western Europe was only made possible by the fact that, between it and the pressing hordes of Asia and Russia, lay the strong arm of Byzantium, the God-guarded City, with its armies, its complicated system of treaties and its brilliant use of diplomatic subtlety and evasion.

Two questions must be asked: why did the West attack Constantinople; and why have western historians subsequently tended to play down the whole issue? The answer to the first question is threefold. The Crusaders had a long-standing grudge against the Byzantine Empire because it tended to regard the Levant as its lost province (which indeed it was), and tried therefore to use the Crusaders as mercenaries to effect its own interests. Secondly, and far more important, there was the commercial grudge of Venice, which had enjoyed large trading privileges in the Eastonly to desire more. Thirdly, the Normans had been at loggerheads with Constantinople ever since their conquest of parts of formerly Byzantine Southern Italy and Sicily in the eleventh century. But it was the commercial grudge of Venice, aided and abetted by the Machiavellian brilliance of Doge Dandolo, that finally brought about the ruin of the city and the Empire. The Fourth Crusade was predominantly a French enterprise, but it was Venetian cunning that diverted the Crusade to the place where it could best serve Venetian interests.

The reason why western historians have tended to ignore, or cursorily treated, this disastrous series of events is that it has proved an embarrassment to themparticularly if they were of the Roman Catholic persuasion. The destruction of a great Christian civilisation (and of an empire which had so long held both Pagans and Moslems at bay) by Soldiers of Christ destined for the Holy Land, is not an edifying subject. Although the Pope can be excused from any complicity in the plot, yet it was the knowledge that Innocent III would like to see the Orthodox Church brought into union with Rome which gave the plotters sufficient confidence to invade Byzantine territory.

Some historians, also, have taken their cue from Edward Gibbon, whose dislike of Byzantium and its civilisation is notorious. Yet even Gibbon is forced to lament the results of the Fourth Crusade, calculating the loot taken from the city as being worth seven times the annual revenue of England. As for the destruction of works of art and literature, Gibbon remarks that the pilgrims were not solicitous to save or transport the volumes of an unknown tongue The literature of the Greeks had almost centred in the metropolis; and, without compiling the extent of our loss, we may drop a tear over the libraries that have perished in the triple fire of Constantinople.

We may drop more than a tear for the loss of bronzes, marbles, great statuary groups, priceless mosaics, paintings, icons and jewelled reliquaries that were destroyed by the barbarous Crusaders. The burning of the great library of Alexandria by the Arabs in a.d. 640 has occasioned many an historical lament. What may one not feel over the destruction of Constantinoples treasures in 1204?

The contemporary Greek historian Nicetas said of the Crusaders, They have spared neither the living nor the dead. They have insulted God; they have outraged his servants; they have exhausted every variety of sin. The behaviour of the Christian conquerors in 1204 contrasts unfavourably even with that of the Turks, when they took the city in 1453. More hatred seems to have been displayed by these Christian conquerors towards their co-religionists than was to be shown by the Moslems some two hundred years later to their religious enemies. It is a depressing fact that Moslems were usually more tolerant than Christians in their dealings with captured cities and conquered territories. In the history of religions, more intolerance has been displayed by Christians than by the followers of any other Faith.

If Pope Innocent III can be acquitted of any share in the crime of the Crusaders against Constantinople and the Orthodox Church, he was soon to show that this was not due to any element of tolerance or loving-kindness in his nature. Only four years later, in March 1208, he was to initiate a Crusade against the French Catharist heretics, which resulted in the massacre of tens of thousands of men, women and children. As his legate, Arnold the Abbot of Cteaux, was then to say: Kill them all! God will know his own!

The literature concerning the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 is extensive, but this is not the case regarding the citys conquest by the Crusaders. Among English historians, only Sir Edwin Pears in 1886 has fully analysed the causes and the consequences of the Fourth Crusade. Since that time further material has come to light, while the shifting pattern of world history has shown even more clearly how disastrous was the result of this Crusade. To the nineteenth-century historian its worst product was to have let the Turks into Europe. But, many years after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it is possible to see that the subsequent Balkanisation of eastern Europe stems not so much from the Turkish as from the Latin conquest, which alone made the other possible.

It is not difficult to see why Turkish historians have laid so great an emphasis on the capture of Constantinople in 1453. The aggrandisement of the Sultan Mehmet II was naturally to be desired by his contemporaries, and it has continued to the present day. But the fact remains that when the Turks captured the city, it was moribund. Practically nothing remained of what had once been the great Byzantine Empire. The Turks were already on the banks of the Danube, and the fall of Constantinople had been inevitable for many years. Even the victorious Sultan commented on the citys derelict appearance. Vast acres of it were in ruins long before the Turkish army swept in through the breached walls. Vegetable gardens, trees and sown fields grew over the sites of forgotten palaces, roads had reverted to dust tracks, and churches were deserted or roofless.