A CRUSADE THAT WENT ASTRAY

More than 750 years ago—the exact date was May 24, 1203—a mighty and crowded armada sailed away from the beautiful island of Corfu just off the northwest corner of Greece.

It headed southward toward a brilliant blue sea.

The weather was balmy. The myrtle was in bloom. The leaves on the twisted gray olive trees flashed silver. The sky was fine and clear. The wind was gentle and favorable. Indeed, it barely ruffled the water. But it filled hundreds and hundreds of sails of every possible color. Red sails. Golden sails. Lavender sails. Green sails. Orange sails. And sails of a wonderful bright yellow. Even Geoffrey of Villehardouin, a bold French baron and famous historian who was one of the passengers, could not say how many they were. But he did know that they took his breath away.

“I, Geoffrey,” he scratched out slowly, “to my knowledge have not ever lied by one word, and I bear witness that never was yet seen so fair a sight. As far as the eye could reach, there was no space without sails, and ships, and vessels.”

Certainly there were enough ships to cover miles of ocean. Flat, broad-beamed palanders, built especially to carry troops and horses—the 4,500 knights with their fiery steeds, the 9,000 esquires, and the 20,000 foot soldiers who made up the expedition.

Swift galleys to protect the mighty convoy. These galleys had oars as well as sails, and they lashed the waters to foam as they hurried about their tasks. There were even some fat, slow merchant vessels. Just as it is today, business was business in the Middle Ages, even when you went to war.

But business or no business, the men crowding the rails were carried forward by another, nobler purpose. And before each of them had left his drafty castle in Normandy or France or Italy, he had sworn this solemn oath: “I will put on the cross, and march to redeem the land where Jesus lived, and where He died for us.”

Once before it had been redeemed by Godfrey of Bouillon and the other saints and heroes of the First Crusade. But then the famous Arab leader Saladin had won it back, and not even Richard the Lion-Hearted, the knightly king of England, could defeat Saladin.

“We will succeed where Richard failed. Deus vult! God wills it!”

The crusaders had a plan. Instead of landing on the enemy-held beaches of Palestine, they would sail to Egypt and fight their way across the desert and up through the famous Gaza strip, about which we read even today, to Jerusalem. The back door would be easier than the front door. They could not fail.

Their hearts, therefore, were high as they sailed along the rugged coast with its deep inlets and its violet mountains—past rocky Ithaca, the legendary home of the wily Ulysses; past yellow beaches where the ancient Greeks drew up their craft before they sailed to rescue Helen of Troy; finally, past the southernmost tip of Greece where the storms were supposed to meet. Then suddenly something happened. Instead of continuing toward the Holy Land, the mighty fleet altered its course and turned north. What possibly could be the reason? The leaders knew, but most of the fighting men were puzzled.

Soon a whisper ran from lip to lip. There was a new destination. Constantinople the Golden—the fabled Byzantium! The capital of the Greek, or Eastern Roman, Empire! The legendary El Dorado city with its glitter and its glory which was set on the Bosporus, a narrow little body of water that divides Europe from Asia, separating the West from the East.

It was the tough old doge of Venice who had changed the crusaders’ minds for them. Henry Dandolo was eighty years old and blind, but he knew that ducats did not grow on trees, and he was just as eager to get back the money he had loaned them as any Venetian merchant over whom he ruled. The crusaders had promised to give the Venetians four silver marks for each man and two silver marks for each horse that they transported to the East, but now after months of borrowing and begging and promising instead of paying, they still owed them 34,000 marks. What could be done about it?

Facing the knights and barons in the great, glittering church of Saint Mark, the old doge stroked his white beard and had an answer. “You are fighting men. Pay us back with fighting. The king of Hungary has taken Zara from us. Take it back again and give it to us.”

They did, but even then the Venetians were not satisfied.

“There is a richer prize ahead. Win us Constantinople. Capture it for us, and we will really call quits.”

The leaders agreed. The Holy Land would have to wait a while to be redeemed.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the excitement of the crusaders when they heard the magic name of Constantinople. For they all knew about the fabulous city. Minstrels told about it in the long sagas they sang before huge crackling fires on winter nights. They spoke of its shining metal towers and called it Micklegarth, or Bigtown.

Its fame was also spread throughout the West by Russian traders. In those days, the Russians were like the vikings who roved the oceans from America to the Greek Sea. They had enslaved the backward Slavic tribes of Kiev and Moscow and once a year, when the ice melted, these snub-nosed, green-eyed marauders made their vassals cut down huge trees and hollow them into boats. Aboard these, they floated down the great rivers, and then sailed across the foggy Black Sea and up the Bosporus until they reached the enormous city, the biggest they had ever seen. There they traded honey and marten skins and dried fish and even caviar for pepper and brocades and carved ivory and delicate enamels. These Russians, too, were dazzled by Constantinople and had their own name for it. They called it Tsargrad, or Caesar City.

But long before there were Russians or any other kind of vikings, the city had amazed our ancestors. “I see before my eyes something I had often heard about but would never believe!” exclaimed Athanaric, a guttural-speaking king from the forests of Germany. “Look at the walls. Look at the buildings, look at the harbor filled with ships! Look at the men of every nation crowding the alleys and bazaars. Look at the disciplined soldiers! Surely God himself must be the emperor!” said Athanaric.

The mighty Charlemagne, who had been crowned emperor of the West, once sent an embassy to Constantinople to discuss the possibility of marrying the Byzantine empress Irene. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, a learned Spanish Jew, was astonished at its splendor. It was richer, he said, than any other city in the world. Why, the ordinary merchant wore garments of silk ornamented with gold and precious stones! He rode about his business on horseback as a prince does!

It was the city of Justinian, the great lawgiver, whose book of laws was still studied in the crusaders’ own cities of Paris and Bologna 700 years after his reign.

Only the wisest of them knew that he was much more than a lawgiver. A tall towheaded country boy from what is modern Yugoslavia, he was more than just one of the great Byzantine emperors. He was one of the great rulers of all time. It was his generals who reconquered Africa, Italy, and parts of Spain, and almost restored the ancient Roman Empire. It was he who ordered the most famous architects of the time to build the church of Santa Sophia. Most of the finest Byzantine mosaics were done during his reign, and the Orthodox Christian Church was first firmly established then. The Age of Justinian was the first great age of the Byzantine Empire when its power affected the whole Mediterranean world.

It was the city of great soldiers like the cruel Basil the Bulgar Slayer, who had cold-bloodedly blinded 15,000 of his Bulgarian enemies, but who had permanently broken the power of these wild raiders; like John Kercuas, an Asia Minor Napoleon; and like Nicephorus Phocas, who had rolled back the Arabs, the deadliest foes of the Byzantines, whether they fought on camel back or on a warship at sea.

Man standing in boat

It was the city of foxy Alexius Comnenus, and his dark-eyed daughter, Anna, who wrote even better histories than Villehardouin.

The crusaders knew about him! By his quick thinking and crafty talking this same Alexius, Emperor Alexius I, had not only persuaded their grandsires and great-grandsires of an earlier crusade to stay out of Constantinople, but he had also talked them into fighting the Turks for him. He had even talked some of them into becoming his vassals. He had received the leaders in the Sacred Palace, however, and they told the other barons what they saw there. From then on Constantinople was a city of marvels to the men of the Middle Ages. They also began to covet its wealth.

To be sure, not all the crusaders were happy at the thought of attacking another Christian city, especially when they remembered how angry the Pope had been at the taking of Zara, also a Christian city. But the doge of Venice had an answer for every objection.

The Byzantines, the people of Constantinople, were not really true Christians at all, he said. They were heretics.

The crusaders were not conquering Constantinople; they were restoring it to its rightful ruler. On board was the young Alexius, who ought to sit on the throne as Alexius IV. Alexius was a worthless young man, but his father had been emperor until he was deposed and blinded by his own brother.

Besides that, how could the crusaders pay back Venice all they owed her if they did not take Constantinople?

The young Alexius not only promised that he would settle all their debts if they took the city for him, but that he would give them enough money to go on to their destination. He said that he would ride with them at the head of a Byzantine army of 10,000 soldiers. He promised that as long as he lived he would equip and maintain out of his own treasury 500 of their knights.

A majority of the brave knights were convinced by these arguments and by the thought of all the fighting men and gold. Among them was Geoffrey of Villehardouin who tells us most of what we know about the Fourth Crusade.

It took almost a month to make the voyage. After the crusaders rounded the tip of Greece, they sailed past the remains of ancient Sparta, past Athens, and at the island of Andros they stopped for water. A little later, they drifted past the site of the ancient town of Troy. Finally, they touched at Abydos on the historic Dardanelles, where they raided the countryside and filled their holds with grain. “Great was the need thereof!” muttered Geoffrey.

On June 23, 1203, they dropped anchor within sight of Constantinople. The snow-covered Thracian mountains lay to the west, and grape-colored Asia Minor to starboard. “And be it known to you,” scratched out Villehardouin, his pulses beating, “that no man among us was so hardy that he did not tremble.” For in every direction, there was nothing but high walls and towers and rich palaces and mighty churches.

The next morning banners and pennants were flown from the castles of every ship. The coverings were taken from the shields. The bulwarks were made ready for action. Then the sailors weighed anchor and spread sails to the wind.

“Thus we passed before Constantinople and so near that we shot at their vessels. There were so many people on the walls and towers that it seemed as if there could be no more people in the world.”

Four weeks later the city was in their hands, and although Geoffrey and his fellow crusaders did not realize it, this event marked a turning point in history. For 900 years Constantinople had stood proudly and safe, ruling her empire and giving orders like a queen. But from now on she would be at the mercy of others.

That is not what Geoffrey and his companions were thinking about as they rode into the fabled streets, however. They were remembering all they had heard about the magic city. They were wondering if even half of it was true.