The Great Betrayal (13 page)

The extraordinary thing was that, on the very night after his bodyguard had shown their devotion to him and had routed the Normans, and after an apparent reversal of all the invaders, the Emperor Alexius III decided to make his escape from Constantinople. To the French chroniclers of these events the flight of the Emperor remained a mystery. But to Nicetas, who as a Byzantine nobleman in the city was in a better position to know the truth, the flight of the Emperor was in accord with his whole character: “He was a man without any pride or self-discipline. He was familiar with all, and was extraordinarily soft and weak-spirited. After his crime against his brother, he had been permanently in fear of the day of retribution, and had been greatly disturbed by anxiety and remorse.”

Alexius, in fact, had none of the iron qualities needed by tyrants. Having achieved the throne by a plot against his brother, he had shrunk from the logical step of killing both his brother and his brother’s son. By merely blinding Isaac and imprisoning him in Blachernae, he had left a dangerous core around which resistance could harden. His gravest error was in allowing his nephew Alexius to escape to Italy. “
Oderint dum metuant
!”—“Let them hate so long as they fear!” However cynical this wisdom, well-known to the ancient Romans, it was something that Alexius as usurper of the throne of New Rome should have learned by heart.

From the moment that the Venetians and the Crusaders had arrived off Constantinople, Alexius III had been meditating flight. Only the exhortations of his relatives, and of those nobles who had aided him to the throne and subsequently benefited by his maladministration, had restrained him. In the meantime, the party which had always secretly supported the blinded Isaac had been growing in strength. Its case was clean-cut and simple—Constantinople and the Empire were threatened only on account of this usurper. Get rid of him, restore Isaac, and all would be well.

The conditions offered by the Doge and the barons were common knowledge. If Isaac’s son, Alexius, was made Emperor and Alexius III deposed, the invaders had no further quarrel with the Byzantines. But what need was there to place young Alexius on the throne when his father was still alive? If it was a question of restoring the legitimate Emperor, then it was better surely to bring the blinded Isaac out of the dungeons of Blachernae and place him on his rightful throne. His son could be made Regent if need be, and trained to succeed his father in due course. There can be no doubt that this, or something like it, was the argument that had made itself increasingly felt among certain circles at the Sacred Palace and Blachernae.

On the night of July I7th-18th, 1203, the Emperor Alexius III outwitted his supporters and escaped. As weak and dishonourable in this as in the rest of his life, he deserted his wife and children. Taking with him only his favourite daughter, the Princess Irene, and several other women and companions (not forgetting 10,000 gold pieces and a collection of priceless gems), he embarked in a ship and slipped southward into the Sea of Marmora.

8

AN EMPEROR IS CROWNED

“At dawn next day our men began to put on their armour,” wrote Villehardouin. “They were already preparing for battle, when the news began to come in from the city…” The Crusaders, who had retired dispirited and exhausted the night before, now learned to their astonishment that the Emperor Alexius had fled.

It is not difficult to imagine how much this news was welcomed. This must surely mean the end of all their troubles. All that remained now (as the Crusaders in their simplicity believed) was to place young Alexius on the throne as Alexius IV, and receive in exchange the money and provisions that he had promised them. Even the dissidents from Corfu must have felt that their difficulties were at an end.

The Doge and the barons can hardly have failed to share in the general enthusiasm. In their possession they had the future emperor of Constantinople, and they were only too happy to restore him to the throne, provided that the promises he had made them were honoured. They could almost anticipate the pleasure that would be felt by the Pope at the result of their expedition. Here was a new emperor who intended to heal the ancient schism between Byzantium and Rome and, by renouncing the heresy of the Orthodox Church, was going to bring the whole of eastern Christendom under the mantle of the Papacy.

“Yet nobody in the camp put much trust in the Greeks…” Already, it would seem, even among Normans and French (unfamiliar with the humid Byzantine climate) a certain element of mistrust had begun to occur. They were not to be disillusioned—in their suspicions, at any rate. Hardly had the cheers died down from the news that Alexius III had abdicated than they learned that the Byzantines had already circumvented them.

Early that morning, as soon as the flight of Alexius had been confirmed, the party in favour of the ex-Emperor had gone down to the dungeons of Blachernae. There they had found the blinded and enfeebled Isaac. They had hastily brought him up into the daylight, clothed him in the imperial robes and installed him as emperor. Now they sent word to the Doge and the leaders of the Crusade that their real emperor was restored.

It is not difficult to imagine the frustration felt by the Doge and his fellow-conspirators. They were on the very eve of success—only to learn that these wily Byzantines had outwitted them, and in a way that they had never expected. In all the discussions in Venice, Zara and Corfu about the aims of the expedition, no mention had ever been made of the deposed Emperor. Perhaps the Doge and his companions had assumed that Isaac was dead. If not, perhaps they had convinced themselves that he would be swiftly disposed of once the claims of his son were made known.

They had counted on placing young Alexius upon the throne, and they had assured the simple Crusaders that in helping to do this they were rectifying a grave wrong. But what argument could they produce against the restoration to the throne of the very man who had been deprived of it, who had been blinded by the usurper and who had lived for the past eight years in the imperial dungeons? Their case for staying in Byzantine territory could only rest upon one thing—that they had brought their fleet and army thus far north on the definite understanding that they would be paid for their services. Everything depended upon this. If Isaac was prepared to confirm the guarantees given by his son, then it would have seemed impossible for the Crusaders to do anything but take their money and go.

Accordingly a deputation was arranged to enter the city, find out the exact circumstances of Isaac’s restoration and demand the fulfilment of his son’s promises. Once this had been done, the barons were prepared to allow Alexius to enter the city and meet his father. They were certainly determined that the only Byzantine guarantor of the agreement should not be allowed into Constantinople at this juncture—possibly to close the gates against them and renounce his pledges.

Geoffrey de Villehardouin and Matthew de Montmorency, together with two Venetians selected by the Doge, were chosen as ambassadors. The four men were conducted to the walls of Blachernae and the great gate began to open. “As soon as it was opened, they dismounted from their horses. Now they saw that the Greeks had stationed the Danes and English, with their battleaxes in hand, along the whole route from the gate to the palace of Blachernae itself. And when they reached the palace they found the Emperor Isaac arrayed in such dazzling robes that it is almost impossible to describe them. Beside him sat the Empress, a very beautiful woman, the daughter of the King of Hungary. Gathered together round them were so many noblemen and their ladies that there was hardly room to move. (All those who yesterday had been the enemies of the Emperor Isaac had now become the most ingratiating of friends.)”

The formality and grandeur of the Byzantine court eclipsed anything that could be found in Europe. An immense complexity and richness in court ritual was part of the imperial tradition. It had been used throughout the centuries to overawe visiting ambassadors, kings and nobles—whether they came from Europe, from Russia or from Asia Minor and the East. The Byzantines were well aware of the importance of first impressions. They were well aware, too, that foreign visitors from whatever land they came, had never seen anything to equal the magnificence of Constantinople’s architecture, nor the pomp and circumstance that surrounded God’s Vice-Regent.

The Sultan of the Seljuk Turks, Arslan II, who visited the city some fifty years before these events, had been so overawed by the glamour of the court that, although invited to do so, he had never had the courage to sit beside the Emperor. His food and refreshments were sent daily to his quarters in vessels of silver and gold—which no one ever bothered to reclaim. In the Sacred Palace itself, far more than in Blachernae, everything was designed to reduce the visitor to a feeling of his own insignificance. The Emperor, clad in his bejewelled and gold-embroidered robes, would receive him seated on the golden throne, while all around him the chief ministers and court officials moved like enamelled flowers in some hieratic procession. Near the throne stood the famous golden plane tree on which mechanical birds moved their wings and sang, while the golden lions and gryphons on either side of the throne opened their mouths and roared. At a given moment, as the visitor was prostrating himself in reverence, the notes of an organ would peal out and the golden throne would whirl aloft, disappearing behind draperies hung from the ceiling. A few minutes later the throne would slowly descend, with the Emperor in a completely new but equally magnificent suit of robes.

But even if the French and Venetian ambassadors on this occasion were not treated to so pyrotechnic a display, there is no doubt from the tone of Villehardouin’s account that they were profoundly impressed. The walls of polychrome marble in Blachernae palace might not compare with the Sacred Palace itself, but they were infinitely grander and more imposing than anything known at the time in western Europe. Bronze fountains spouted water, the ceilings gleamed with golden tesserae, and everywhere there were mosaics of incredible splendour. An eleventh-century Byzantine poem describes the innumerable classical themes used by the mosaic artists: Achilles and Agamemnon; Ulysses defying the Cyclops; and, above all, the feats of the great Alexander, the first man to establish a Greek Empire in the East.
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One thing that must have impressed the Crusaders, no matter what their rank, was the culture and education of the Byzantines. While even important nobles such as Villehardouin himself were scarcely literate, for the skills of reading and writing they left to their priests,
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their Byzantine equivalents were conversant with the Greco-Roman culture upon which their civilisation was based. Women, too, were among the most accomplished citizens in Constantinople. A well-known story dating from the eleventh century illustrates the sophistication of the Byzantine world. The Emperor Constantine IX was on his way to the Hippodrome in company with his Caucasian mistress, Skleraina. One of the attendant courtiers remarked: “
νεμεσις
” (It is no shame). The courtier was quoting from that passage in the Iliad where the old men, looking at Helen as she walked on the walls of Troy, remarked: “It is no shame to fight for such as she!” These two words from Homer were at once recognised, and their appositeness approved by the courtiers of Constantinople. This was at a time in the Middle Ages when most of Europe was uncultured and illiterate.

Throughout the many encounters that were to take place during the next months between the leaders of the Crusaders and the Byzantines, it is noticeable that the former—while despising the citizens of Constantinople—seem constantly uneasy in their presence. Indeed something of the violence of the tragedy that was to overwhelm the city may perhaps be traced to this very fact. No man likes to be made aware that he is culturally and educationally inferior to those whom he regards as weaker than himself. The Crusaders were aware that they were stronger, even perhaps that they represented a more vigorous society. But, like that phenomenon of other days, the rough private soldier of a ‘liberating army’ who is billeted in a castle full of priceless treasures, they felt aware of their own inadequacy.

The Emperor Isaac, blinded and old though he was, seemed transformed into another being. Far from having to deal with an ex-prisoner overjoyed at his release and eager to welcome his liberators, the ambassadors found that they were face to face with the representative of all the imperial past. This was the ruler who was Caesar and Pope in one, the Autokrator.

Villehardouin spoke on behalf of the delegation. “Sire,” he said, “you are no doubt aware of the service we have rendered your son. We for our part have kept the terms of our agreement with him. But we cannot, in all fairness, allow him to return to the city until we have some guarantee for his part of the agreement. Your son therefore beseeches you to confirm the treaty between us on exactly the same terms that he has made.”

Isaac inquired what the terms were. He was told that Alexius had agreed, first of all, to place the whole Empire under obedience to the spiritual jurisdiction of Rome. Secondly, to supply the army with 200,000 silver marks and a year’s provisions. Thirdly, to send 10,000 troops in his own ships to help the Crusaders in Egypt, and fourthly to keep them there at his own charge for a whole year. Lastly, he had agreed to maintain throughout his life, and at his own expense, a force of 500 knights in Outremer, or ‘the Land Overseas’, as the Holy Land and the Crusader territories of the Levant were known.

Isaac, released only a few hours from his dungeon in Blachernae and so suddenly restored to the scarlet buskins and imperial mantle of Constantinople, revealed that his eyesight might be gone, but not his brain. “You ask a great deal of us,” he replied, “more I think than we can possibly perform. However, I realise how much both I and my son owe to you—indeed, if I were to give you the whole empire it would be no more than enough.” A certain irony was evident in his words. Yet there was clearly nothing he could do at that moment but ratify the treaty that his son had made. Villehardouin, de Montmorency, and the two Venetians spurred back to their camp. Happily they held aloft the document ratified by the Emperor, with his golden seal set upon it.