In one such action the defenders were forced back and could not shut the gates of the tower before the advancing French. It fell by storm. A giant Venetian transport, Aquila Eagle , charged the harbor chain under full sail and snapped it.
Venetian galleys rowed into the harbor, quickly disposing of the weak Byzantine squadron drawn up behind the chain. The crusaders then took up quarters in the unwalled suburbs of Pera and Estanor on the north side of the Golden Horn. Their leaders met to plan their attack on the city itself. Doge Dandolo recommended an attack on the harbor wall. It was less formidable than the land walls, and the big transports could nudge close to serve as floating siege towers.
The French, however, wanted to fight ashore, in their own element. The final decision was to mount a double attack, the Venetians against the harbor wall and the French against the north end of the land wall, adjacent to the Palace of Blachernae. This section of wall was a late addition and somewhat weaker than the original Theodosian land walls.
The double assault was launched on July The Venetian fleet formed up in line and advanced against the harbor wall. The big transports raised flying assault bridges, fashioned from spars and suspended from their foremasts, an arrangement that allowed men on the bridgeheads to fight, three abreast, from positions equal in height to the tops of the towers they were assaulting.
Fire support was provided by mangonels and petraries, catapult-like mechanical artillery set up aboard the ships. Light and speedy by comparison, the maneuverable galleys were ready to throw reinforcements ashore where needed. The attack hung in the balance until Doge Dandolo ordered his own galley to advance and set him ashore.
The courage of the old doge fired up the Venetians, and they pressed home the attack. The Venetian banner was hoisted atop a wall tower. Soon 25 towers—about a mile of wall—were taken. Behind the wall, however, the Varangian guardsmen held their ground.
Unable to advance, the Venetians set fire to nearby buildings. Driven by the wind, the fire then burned much of the city. The Venetians also captured a few horses on the waterfront, and with some irony, as one naval historian put it, sent them around to the French knights. The French attack on the land wall did not go so well.
Emperor Alexius III took to the field in a counterattack, leading an imperial force of nine battles, or massed formations, out the gates. The French met it with seven battles of their own. As often happened with feudal armies, the logic of command and control conflicted with the chivalric impulse to be first in the attack.
Count Baldwin, in command of the leading battle, at first held his ground, but other crusaders went brashly forward—forcing Baldwin to follow, to save face—until they all found themselves dangerously exposed to the Byzantine army and out of sight of most of their own force. Word of the French peril reached Doge Dandolo. Saying he would live or die with the crusaders, he ordered his men to abandon their hard-won towers and redeploy in support of their allies.
And at the sight of Venetian galleys moving up the harbor to set more troops ashore, the emperor retreated into the city. He had achieved his tactical objective, holding off the French and forcing the Venetians to abandon their gains. But Alexius III also had lost his nerve. That night he fled the city with his mistress and a favorite daughter — leaving his empress behind. When the crusaders heard of this, they demanded that young Alexius be crowned alongside his father.
They still had a powerful army and fleet, they had nearly taken the city, and there was no real leadership among the defenders. The demand was granted, and young Alexius was escorted into the city in state, along with the doge and the leading French counts and barons.
And next? It was too late in the season to go on, but the crusaders looked forward to receiving supplies and Byzantine reinforcements. Come spring they could sail on to Egypt and restore the Holy Land to the Cross. Alas, young Alexius could not keep the grand promises he had made. The imperial treasury was empty. Moreover, while the Byzantines and the crusaders were now allies in theory, their relationship was actually poor and grew steadily worse.
The Byzantines detested the crudity of the French and the highhandedness of the Venetians. In turn, the Westerners despised the Byzantines as effete cowards.
After repeated riots, one of which led to a second disastrous fire, individual crusaders no longer dared show themselves in the city. Moreover, Byzantine hatred of the barbarians extended beyond the crusaders to embrace all the Western Europeans who lived in the city — even the Pisans who had fought recently and well on the Byzantine side.
Men, women and children were massacred. Young Alexius IV could not raise enough money to satisfy the crusaders, nor could he force them away. He fell under the influence of a noble adviser, Alexius Ducas, popularly known as Mourtzouphlos, a name that referred to his prominent, bushy eyebrows. Eventually, Mourtzouphlos did a typically Byzantine thing — he lured the young emperor into a trap, kidnapped and imprisoned him, and took the throne for himself.
He slammed shut the gates of the city against the crusaders and put the defenses in order. Wooden superstructures were built atop the towers of the harbor wall, raising them two or three stories and reducing the effectiveness of the Venetian ships as floating siege towers. Gates in the wall were bricked up to eliminate weak spots in the defenses. Mourtzouphlos also took active outreach measures. The crusader fleet was moored in the Golden Horn, directly across from the city.
One December night when the wind blew from the south, he launched a fireship attack against the Venetian fleet. It was a textbook situation — in the confined anchorage, against a lee shore, the Venetians could not simply drop back and let the fireships burn out. But they were not rattled. They manned their galleys, drove off boatloads of archers covering the fire attack, grappled the fireships and towed them clear of the fleet. According to Villehardouin, No men ever defended themselves more gallantly on the sea than the Venetians did that night.
In January, Mourtzouphlos received word that a crusader foraging expedition was raiding the town of Philia, some miles northwest of Constantinople. He ambushed the returning crusaders, but the cornered and outnumbered French knights rallied to the counterattack. They drove off the Byzantines and captured the imperial standard and the holy icon that traditionally accompanied Byzantine emperors into battle.
Mourtzouphlos nonetheless returned to Constantinople and proclaimed a victory. Asked about the standard and icon, he claimed that they were put away in safekeeping.
Word of this lie quickly reached the crusaders, who did the logical thing: they mounted standard and icon on a Venetian galley and paraded them back and forth under the harbor walls. That affair was fatal to the unfortunate prisoner Alexius IV. After several efforts at poisoning failed, Mourtzouphlos had him strangled. Old Isaac II died about the same time, probably without need of assistance.
The crusaders saw they could not hope to have the cooperation of any Byzantine emperor. They resolved instead to conquer the city and take the entire Byzantine Empire for themselves. There was, of course, a price attached to this. The Crusaders had to take the prince back to Constantinople and secure the imperial throne for him. This, his envoys assured the Crusaders, would be easy since the people resented the incumbent ruler of Byzantium, Emperor Alexius III, and would welcome the young man with open arms.
Once again the Crusade was plunged into a terrible crisis. To them the ultimate goal of the Crusade remained Jerusalem, and with this in mind, they accepted the proposal in January With the support of Prince Alexius they would be in a far stronger position to accomplish their aim. The supreme irony is, therefore, that it was through the direct invitation of a Greek prince that the Fourth Crusade turned toward Constantinople.
Contrary to many speculations, there had never been any premeditated plan to do this. Conspiracy theories have abounded. For example, some historians have claimed Doge Dandolo was blinded on an earlier visit to Constantinople and now sought revenge. In reality, contemporaries attest that he could see long after this date. The Venetians have been accused of steering the Crusade toward the wealth of Byzantium, yet the spoils in Egypt were far, far greater.
The reality remains: Prince Alexius was responsible for bringing the Crusade to Constantinople. In June , the fleet sailed through the Dardanelles and down the Bosporus. As they caught their first glimpse of Constantinople, many of the knights were awestruck. Never had they seen such a splendid sight. Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of the county of Champagne, wrote:. I can assure you that all those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed very intently upon the city, having never imagined there could be so fine a place in the entire world.
They noted the high walls and lofty towers encircling it, and its rich palaces and tall churches, of which there were so many that no one would have believed it to be true if he had not seen it with his own eyes, and viewed the length and breadth of that city which reigns supreme over all others. There was indeed no man so brave and daring that his flesh did not shudder at the sight. Nor was this to be wondered at, for never had so grand an enterprise been carried out by any people since the creation of the world.
Roman emperors seeking a safe haven from the barbarians ravaging their homelands had founded Constantinople in the fourth century. At the time of the Fourth Crusade, however, the Byzantine Empire was in a seriously weakened condition. For much of the twelfth century there had been genuine order, but the death of Manuel Comnenus in had provoked a period of instability that continued to plague the empire.
The precarious condition of the Byzantine Empire could only benefit the Crusaders. Emperor Alexius III proved an astute, capable political operator. This was a calamity for the Crusaders; now they would have to fight. On July 5, , across the Golden Horn from Constantinople, they mounted the largest amphibious assault yet attempted in medieval warfare.
The Greeks did not oppose their landing, and the Crusaders quickly drew themselves up into the ordered battle line that they would adopt repeatedly over the next few years. They formed up into seven divisions, according to their origins: two from Flanders; one each from Blois, Amiens, Burgundy, and Champagne; and a rear guard of a combined Lombard and German force. The Venetians remained in charge of the fleet.
Soon the Crusaders captured the suburb of Galata, and then the fleet broke through the huge chain slung across the entrance to the Golden Horn. The chain was designed to protect the slightly weaker walls along the inlet, and its destruction allowed the Crusaders precious access to this more vulnerable side of the city.
Soon both elements of the Crusader army began to engage the Greek forces and to demonstrate their special military expertise. The Venetian ships used scaling ladders and crossbeams to try to breach the walls along the Golden Horn while their comrades deployed themselves on the open land outside the Blachernae Palace at the northwestern tip of the city. By July 17, the Venetians managed to get a hold on the walls, but Emperor Alexius sent his crack troops, the formidable Varangian Guard, to resist them.
These men were mercenaries, often of Scandinavian origin, whose chief weapon was a mighty ax. After a couple days of futile bombardment, the Byzantines decided to deploy their field army. The size of their force — up to seventeen divisions — dwarfed that of the Westerners. The Franks formed up in good order, with archers and crossbowmen in front of the knights.
Even the camp followers joined in, donning horse quilts and copper cooking pots for protection. The Greeks advanced toward the Crusaders. The Western leaders had laid down the strictest instructions not to break ranks before a formal command.
So many times in the past — desperate to perform an act of heroism — individuals or small groups of men had charged at an enemy only to fatally compromise the strength of their forces and to lose their own lives. At one moment the Crusaders nearly lost formation, but they carried on until the enemy stood just across a small brook. The Westerners were terrified; one wrote that it felt as if a huge wave was about to come crashing down on them.
They were poised to retreat when, unbelievably, Emperor Alexius gave the signal for his men to withdraw. The Crusaders were amazed. They could barely comprehend why such a vast force had not challenged them.
It will never be known why the emperor made this decision; perhaps the reputation of the Crusader heavy cavalry — said to be able to charge through the walls of Babylon — deterred him.
Their determined march toward the Byzantine forces may have made him fear the cost of breaking their lines. Retreating before us they dared not fight. In any case, the emperor had lost the will to fight. On that same night, he stole out of Constantinople and fled into exile. The following day, the news began to spread and the Crusaders and their young ally made a triumphal entry into the city.
Plainly, this did not happen. What destroyed the dream of Orthodox-Catholic cooperation? The agreement between Alexius IV and the Crusaders meant that the citizens of Constantinople were required to produce the huge sums of money promised to the Westerners.
The Crusaders began to push for settlement of the debt. The harder Alexius IV tried to pressure his subjects into paying, the more they resisted.
The young man had little political experience and lacked a solid local power base. Soon he was hopelessly trapped. Amid increasing tensions, the virulently anti-Western noble Murtzuphlus murdered the emperor on February 8, Attacks on the Crusader camp followed.
An audacious attempt to destroy the Venetian fleet using fire ships almost succeeded. They struggled for supplies and faced ever-increasing hostility from the Greeks. As they considered their position, few options remained. They could return home as failures or they could carry on to the Holy Land, although their weakened condition made it unlikely that they could recover Jerusalem.
The intention of the Crusaders was then to continue to the Holy Land with promised Byzantine financial and military assistance. On June 23, , the main Crusader fleet reached Constantinople. Smaller contingents continued to Acre.
However, in January , he was deposed by a popular uprising in Constantinople. The Western Crusaders were no longer able to receive their promised payments, and when Alexios was murdered on February 8, , the Crusaders and Venetians decided on the outright conquest of Constantinople. In April , they captured and brutally sacked the city and set up a new Latin Empire, as well as partitioned other Byzantine territories among themselves. Byzantine resistance based in unconquered sections of the empire such as Nicaea, Trebizond, and Epirus ultimately recovered Constantinople in Conquest of Constantinople.
A Medieval painting of the Conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in Over the early decades of the century the Cathars were driven underground while the French monarchy asserted control over the region. The conflict only ended with the Mongol invasion of Hungary in In the Iberian peninsula, Crusader privileges were given to those aiding the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Iberian orders that merged with the Order of Calatrava and the Order of Santiago.
The papacy declared frequent Iberian crusades, and from to the Christian kingdoms drove the Muslims back to the Emirate of Granada, which held out until , when the Muslims and Jews were expelled from the peninsula. Around this time, popularity and energy for the Crusades declined.
One factor in the decline was the disunity and conflict among Latin Christian interests in the eastern Mediterranean.
0コメント