Chapter XXXVI

CONSTANTINOPLE SECURED TO ISAAC AND YOUNG ALEXIUS—USURPATION OF
MOURTZOUPHLOS.

Four days were spent in bringing over from the Asiatic side the provisions. Dandolo proposed to transport all the soldiers with his fleet and assault the water wall of the city, where, presuming upon the defence of their ships, the Greeks had left the fortifications weakest. But the crusaders, accustomed only to land operations, were averse to this plan and marched around the end of the Golden Horn. The fleet met them opposite the palace of Blachern, which occupied the corner of the northwestern wall and thus faced both land and sea. Though the walls extended for seven miles, this spot was regarded as the strongest of all. A wide moat was backed by three enormous lines of masonry, to capture one of which was only to lodge beneath the terrible menace of the others. Immense towers were so close together that to pass between them would be to challenge burial beneath the missiles which could readily be dropped from almost above their heads. Here twice within the preceding half-century the Greeks had discomfited the Arab hosts. At this point the Turks, under Mohammed II., were, two hundred and fifty years later, to make their victorious assault. The Greeks within the city were assisted by armies without, which, under Theodore Lascaris, the hero of the day on the part of the besieged, assailed the camps of the crusaders.

July 17th witnessed the grand assault. Boniface and Baldwin were in command. The battering-rams delivered their blows until one tower fell. Platform-ladders were quickly reared; fifteen Flemings secured a footing on the outer wall, but were slain or captured by men of their own blood, the hired Waring guard. The Venetians’ attack was more successful; their ships were covered with rawhides to protect them from the Greek fire, which flashed like liquid lightning from the walls above and spread in sheets of flame over the water. Bridges had been arranged from the crosstrees, which, as the vessels were anchored close to the shore, reached to the top of the walls. Every huissier carried a mangonel, which returned the stones hurled by the besieged.

The battle being contested thus far with equal skill, Dandolo gave orders to land; he himself set the example. Old and blind, he was carried in the arms of his attendants, and, with the banner of St. Mark floating above him, placed upon the shore. His heroism inspired his men. While the fight raged above their heads, on the bridges that ran from the rigging to the walls, the host below erected their scaling-ladders and emerged upon the parapets. Soon the gonfalon of St. Mark floated from a captured tower. Twenty-five more of these strongholds were quickly taken. The Venetians poured down through the streets of the city. Setting fire to the buildings, their progress was led by a vanguard of flame.

In this terrible emergency the emperor was caught by a momentary impulse of valor, and, putting himself at the head of sixty battalions, sallied from the city to strike the crusaders. The multitude of his men, their splendid accoutrements, and their unanticipated appearance led the crusaders to leave their assault upon the ramparts and range for defence behind their palisades. A more serious consequence of this valiant counter-attack was that it forced Dandolo to leave what he had already conquered and hasten to the assistance of his allies. But the Greeks had exhausted their fury in its first outburst, and made no further onset, contenting themselves with showering arrows from safe distance. Theodore Lascaris, the son-in-law of the emperor, in vain asked the imperial permission to assail the crusaders’ intrenchments. Alexius III. was content with the martial glory of having paraded before his foe; his troops, carrying the eagles of ancient Rome, as if the more to emphasize their shame, retreated without having struck a blow with the naked sword.

The next morning (July 18, 1203) the city was filled with a deeper sense of disgrace as the people learned that the emperor himself had stolen away during the night, taking with him a bag of gold and jewels, leaving his empire to him who could hold it, and his wife amid the spoil. Alexius III. was a despicable character, as cowardly as he was cruel, crafty, but without will power to sustain his own designs when they exacted much energy. His natural weaknesses had been increased by the habits of a voluptuary and drunkard until he had become but a crowned imbecile.

Realizing the condition of affairs, the troops, led by Constantine, the minister of finance, raised the cry for the deposed Isaac. The courtiers ran to his prison in the vaults of the Blachern, broke off his chains, and led the old and blinded man out, as he, having become hopeless of relief, believed, to execution, but, to his grateful surprise, to be seated again upon his throne. The wife of Isaac was sought out in an obscure quarter of the city, where she was living, grateful for even life; while the wife of the fugitive Alexius III. was thrust into a dungeon.

The recall of their former emperor could scarcely have been prompted by affection or even respect for him personally. Isaac was without character. Buffoons despised him for allowing himself to be the chief court fool. His ambition was divided between his sensuality and his extravagance; he had twenty thousand eunuchs, and spent four million pounds sterling on the housekeeping of his palace. His piety seems to have been limited to a belief in the prediction of a flattering patriarch, who had once assured him of an indefinite conquest of the world, for which, however, he made no preparation other than invoking an alliance with Saladin, whose sword he would buy to hew down his Christian opponents.

The news of the change of emperors was not assuring to the leaders of the Latins. Notwithstanding the pretence of having come to right the wrongs of Isaac, their plans necessitated either their own occupancy of the empire or the placing of young Alexius as the creature of their will upon the throne. Alexius, not Isaac, had made the bargain to pay the Westerners for their expedition two hundred thousand marks of silver, to furnish the army and fleet with provision for a year, and to bring the Greek Church into subjection to Rome. Would Isaac assume the same obligations?

The Latins sent a deputation to the palace; they passed between the lines of the same hired soldiers that yesterday guarded Alexius III., equally loyal to whatever hand fed them. There, upon a throne of superlative splendor, the Latin deputies saw the resurrected relic of a former monarch, blind and emaciated. To have rendered the picture sensationally complete, old and blind Dandolo should have stood before Isaac.

Villehardouin, who was one of the deputies, demanded of Isaac the confirmation of the contract made by young Alexius. On learning its nature, Isaac expressed his amazement and the impossibility of meeting it. The deputies assured the old man that his son should never be permitted to enter the city unless his father assumed his pledges. The emperor replied, “Surely the bargain is a hard one, and I cannot see how to carry it out; but you have done so much for him and me that you deserve our whole empire.” With hand trembling with age and fright he set to the compact the golden seal.

The deputies returned to the camp. Young Alexius entered the city, riding, with a retinue of knights, between Dandolo and Baldwin of Flanders, and followed by the Latin clergy; they were met at the gates by the various ranks of Greek ecclesiastics, arrayed in splendid vestments. The churches throughout the city resounded with thanksgiving and the streets with festivity, while within the palace Isaac, having endured a dungeon for eight years, embraced his son whom he could not see.

August 1st Alexius was crowned coemperor in St. Sophia; he immediately cancelled a portion of his indebtedness to his allies, and wrote to the Pope, avowing his purpose to recognize Rome as the ecclesiastical head of the Greek empire. The Pope, knowing the vicissitude of affairs and distrusting the volatile disposition of the youth, replied, urging him to speedily practicalize his good intention. At the same time the Holy Father addressed the crusaders, declaring that, “unless the emperor made haste to do what he had promised, it would appear that neither his protestations nor their intentions were sincere.”

The payment Alexius was able to make to those who had sold themselves to his service was not sufficient to satisfy their ambitious greed; it barely sufficed to pay back to each soldier the money he had been compelled to cash down to the Venetians for his passage, and which had left the Latin army bankrupt in a foreign land. But the Greek treasury was empty and could not meet the expenses of the new government, nor even provide for the personal protection of the emperors against their domestic foes.

If the adherents of the fugitive Alexius III. were not to be feared, there were new aspirants to the throne, which had come to be recognized as the legitimate spoil of usurpers; besides, the emperor’s pledge to recognize the Pope’s supremacy had kindled fury in the breasts of the Greek devotees. The monk was accustomed in those days to finger his dagger as well as his beads. The Waring guard could alone be trusted, but their loyalty would lapse at the first passing of a pay-day. Some men are stimulated by necessity—hardship evokes their genius; but the Latins knew that Alexius was not of this sort. Scarcely out of boyhood, he was already displaying the vices and weaknesses for which his race was notorious. He needed a guardian—a Dandolo or Boniface, or both.

It was therefore evident that if the new régime were not to be an immediate failure, carrying down with it the honor of the Latins, the latter must continue at Constantinople in spite of the fact that the agreement between the Venetians and the army expired at Michaelmas. They were forced to accept Alexius’s proposition that they should remain with him for another year. Thus circumstances conspired to favor Dandolo in his compact with Malek-Ahdel and to check the impatience of the crusaders for a march upon Syria or Egypt.

The reign of Alexius and Isaac was inaugurated by a terrible calamity. According to long custom, the Arab and other Moslem traders had been allowed to occupy a section of the city with their bazaars and mosque. The crusading zeal, baffled of finding its natural vent in Palestine, sought a slight compensation in looting this smaller nest of Infidels. During the fighting that ensued fire was started in several places. Under a strong north wind it swept in a wide swath across the city; then, the breeze shifting, the conflagration raged in another direction. For eight days there was a continual crash of falling houses, palaces, and churches, thousands of the homeless population fleeing through smoke and cinders from the pursuing flames. Many perished, and at the cessation of the ravages multitudes were left in utter destitution. The blackened ruins covered a section half a league in width and two leagues in length, extending from the Golden Horn to the Marmora.

The fury of the elements was followed by as destructive a fury of human passions. The Greek rose to exterminate the Latin resident population. All were driven out. Fifteen thousand of these sojourners escaped across the harbor to Galata, that their lives might be saved in the camp of the crusaders.

This disaster rendered hopeless any further payment of the debt pledged by Alexius. The crusaders took advantage of the situation to inaugurate a plan to capture the city for themselves, to depose both emperors, and seat upon the throne one of their own number. It was first necessary to provoke a formal breach with Alexius and Isaac. A deputation was therefore sent them to demand instant payment or war. The Greek populace resented this insult to their rulers, whose office they worshipped even if they had contempt for their pusillanimity. They retaliated upon the Westerners by attempting to burn the Venetian fleet with fire-boats floated among the ships, and trying to destroy the crusaders’ camp by a sudden cavalry attack.

A more serious menace was in the popular meetings held daily in St. Sophia to denounce the emperors and to demand their displacement to make way for some stronger hand. The leader of this movement was Alexius Ducas, called Mourtzouphlos because of his meeting eyebrows. The populace, with whom this man was unsavory, offered the crown to Nicholas Kanabos. Alexius was kept a virtual prisoner in the Blachern, defended by his Warings. Mourtzouphlos came to the palace, and, persuading Alexius that a mob was about to attack him, pretended to conduct him to a place of safety. Getting him thus to his own tent, Mourtzouphlos put the young man in irons, shod himself with the vermilion buskins, and strode out, proclaiming that he was emperor.

With vast energy the usurper set about refortifying the city. He impressed Dandolo and Boniface with the fact that they had now to deal with a man not unlike themselves in ability and daring. What they were to do must be done quickly. They made to Mourtzouphlos the proposition, “Give us Alexius, and we will depart and allow you to remain emperor.” With this prince in their hands they could still scheme. The reply came, “Alexius is dead.” He had been found lifeless in his chamber (February 1, 1204). Isaac soon followed his son with as mysterious a taking off. Dandolo then proposed a personal interview with the new monarch. The meeting was held a half-mile beyond the palace. Treacherously a squad of Latin horsemen raided the place of conference, capturing some of the imperial body-guard, but Mourtzouphlos escaped.

Nothing now remained for the Latins but to risk all in an assault upon the city.