LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE

Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert of Clari—the two writer-crusaders—were among the last people to see Constantinople in all its glory, and even they were not able to walk through streets filled with magnificence for very long.

The knights and barons of the Fourth Crusade had promised to put the young Alexius on the throne. This they did, and for good measure they put his old blinded father back on the throne beside him too. They let the rulers wear the imperial purple shoes and the glittering brocaded robes, pretending to have restored the imperial power. Alexius and his father could indeed wield the scepter and wear the crown and be absolute monarchs, provided they did everything the crusaders told them to.

In return, the young Alexius had promised to pay the crusaders 200,000 marks of silver, to lead an army to the Holy Land with them, and to maintain and equip 500 of their knights in armor for as long as he lived.

Men pulling horse statue

This, however, was another matter, and when the two emperors made even a half-hearted attempt to live up to their promises, the Byzantines revolted. Another Alexius—Alexius Bushy Eyebrows—was made emperor and he made it known that the Venetians and the crusaders could whistle for their money. Not a single copper coin, let alone 200,000 silver ones, would they ever get from him!

This gave the crusaders the chance they had long been waiting for and probably planning for, and they didn’t waste any time in taking it. Proclaiming Bushy Eyebrows, as they called him, a traitor and a caitiff villain, they attacked the city with ships, ladders, and men-at-arms. On April 13, 1204, after five days of desperate fighting, they burst into it. There for three days and nights, the Christian soldiers—wearing the cross upon their shoulders—burned, robbed, and murdered the Christian Byzantines.

“Even the followers of Mahound, the false prophet, were more merciful when they took Jerusalem!” cried a Byzantine.

He was right. Little like it has ever happened anywhere else, except during the invasions of Attila the Hun. Constantinople has never been the same since.

The robbery was even more wholesale than the slaying. Churches, private homes, and palaces were stripped to their bare stone walls, and then all that was not hidden by private looters was piled where it could be seen and divided.

“The booty was so great that no one could tell you of it,” said Villehardouin.

It included gold and silver; vessels and precious stones; silk and samite; robes of vair and robes of ermine; rare and irreplaceable books; icons; beautiful carved chests; and, of course, all the coinage in the treasury. In fact, everything that was not too heavy to move.

The Venetians were immediately paid the 50,000 marks reckoned to be their share. Even after that, not counting what had been stolen and hidden, there may have been 400,000 silver marks’ worth of rare prizes. To say nothing—and there was no knight who didn’t want one—of 10,000 fiery steeds!

There was no one who was too lofty or too pious to take his share of this booty. The abbots and the warrior-bishops laid their hands on every holy relic they could find. Most of these went to France, where they disappeared during the French Revolution. The doge took the four famous bronze horses of the Hippodrome, and even today the Venetians point to them on the façade of the church of Saint Mark just as proudly as if they had not helped themselves to them. There was hardly a knight who did not wear rich fur-trimmed robes. There was hardly a common foot soldier or even a jackallike camp follower who did not have a fat purse, and a heavy chain of gold to boot. The proud Byzantines returned to ruined churches and to charred and plundered houses. Fabled Byzantium had become an empty shell.

The Byzantine Empire became an empty shell too. The crusaders captured the new emperor and made him jump from the top of one of the tall marble columns. Then, after a lot of bickering, they elected one of their own number to succeed him. There was an empire, but it was now a Latin empire and no one but the crusaders recognized it. Even they did not leave it all its territory. Venice took over a third of Constantinople and most of the Byzantine islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas. Every knight or baron who wanted it was given a fief or a principality in southern Greece. Besides that, three Byzantine “governments in exile,” each claiming to be the real one, sprang into being. One was at Trebizond near the eastern end of the Black Sea. One was in Epirus, which is more or less the same as modern Albania. The third and most important was at Nicaea, which was just across the straights in Asia Minor.

So for fifty-seven years, there was not one Byzantine Empire, but four of them, plus half a dozen other small states that all squabbled with each other. Then, in 1261, Michael Paleologus, a great-grandson of one of the old emperors recaptured Constantinople and put on the imperial crown.

But although there was only one Byzantine Empire again, it was little more than a shadow. Nor could any of the nine Byzantine emperors who followed Michael restore the old-time glory. The crusaders had done too good a job. Constantinople was now too poor and shabby. Its trade was gone. Its famous bazaars were filthy, and their booths were empty of wares. Most of the population had moved away. Even the emperors themselves lived hand to mouth. Although they tried to keep up the ancient ceremony, they couldn’t do it. At the wedding of a daughter of one of the emperors, the guests had to eat off earthenware plates.

Besides that, and probably because of it, anarchy reigned during the 200 years that the empire somehow lingered drearily on. Mercenary bands moved about the countryside robbing and stealing, instead of fighting for the emperor. They even moved on Constantinople when they weren’t paid, or thought they were not paid enough.

The Byzantines also had to fight off outside enemies. The Bulgarians renewed their old-time warfare and nibbled away at the shrinking empire. A great Serbian king proclaimed himself Roman emperor as well as Serbian monarch. He almost succeeded. The Byzantines had to fight the Genoese, and sometimes the Venetians, and even the Frank barons, descendants of the crusaders.

Finally the Ottoman Turks appeared upon the scene, and that was the last blow. These wonderful fighters conquered all of Anatolia and then step by step they worked their way into Europe. It was not long before the Byzantine Empire was only Constantinople itself with a few square miles of the surrounding countryside. The Byzantines soon couldn’t even raise an army without Turkish permission, and usually that permission wasn’t granted.

In 1453, which is one of the famous dates in history, even that much freedom seemed too much to the Turks, and their young ambitious sultan, Mohammed II, decided to take the city. Slowly and carefully he laid plans to do so.

First he built one tower here and another there, ringing the city and cutting off escape from it. Then he brought up a mighty navy of 493 ships, and a great army of 200,000 men. It was the first army in history to be equipped with siege guns, and one of these was so big it took 100 oxen to drag it. Mohammed, too, was so determined to take Constantinople that when his ships could not break through the iron chain the Byzantines had laid across the Golden Horn, he had a whole fleet of them dragged overland, with the crew still sitting at the oars—and all this in a single night.

What could the Byzantines do against all this power? They had only 8,000 soldiers, and many of these were monks and untrained citizens. To be sure, they were led by two heroes, one an Italian mercenary, the other the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI. Both of them heroically lost their lives in the battle to defend Constantinople.

But heroism was not enough, and the city’s walls, mighty as they were, could be smashed by cannon balls. After a month of siege the howling Janizaries entered it. Once again, Constantinople was sacked and looted, and although the Turks were not nearly so ruthless as the crusaders had been, this time it did not rise again.

The empire did not rise again either. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople, which had once been Byzantium, became Istanbul. It has been Istanbul ever Since.

On that day, the Byzantine Empire ended too.

For more than a thousand years, it had carried the torch of Western civilization, a torch that had been given to it by the Greeks and Romans. Now, new nations took up the burden. Spain, France, and England had become united and powerful. Italy was filled with all the wonderful art and thought and writing and wealth that came with the Italian Renaissance. Germany was stirring with new ideas. Even in distant Poland, Copernicus would soon be looking through his telescope and teaching us that the sun did not revolve around the earth, but rather that the planets revolve around the sun. In only forty years Columbus would discover America.

Boats and city

So their job became our job, and it still is. They were not perfect, but let us hope that we do it as well as they did. Let us hope that our civilization lasts as long.