The imposing towers before us stand in their great strength as a monument to one of whose bodily strength romantic tales are told. Manuel, the youngest son, succeeded his father, John Comnenus, and was acclaimed victorious by the veteran troops that followed him from the Turkish wars back to Constantinople. His reign of thirty-seven years is a record of warfare in many distant lands. By land and sea, against the Turks on the plains of Hungary and along the coasts of Italy and Egypt, this Emperor led his troops to victory.
On one occasion when marching against the Turks, he posted an ambuscade in a wood, and then rode boldly forward in search of perilous adventure, accompanied only by his brother Isaac and the faithful Axuch. He routed eighteen horsemen, but the numbers of the enemy increased, and Manuel to rejoin his army had to cut his way through 500 Turkish horsemen. Of his exploits at sea mention may be made of an incident in the siege of Corfu. Manuel’s ship towing a captured galley passed through the enemy’s fleet. The Emperor stood on the high poop, opposing a large buckler to the volley of darts and stones, and could not have escaped death had not the Sicilian admiral enjoined his men to respect the person of a hero. Many and remarkable are the stories of the Emperor Manuel’s exploits, but the end of his career saw his fortunes wane, his last campaign against the Turks ended in disaster, he lost his army in the mountains of Pisidia, and owed his own safety only to the generosity of the Sultan.
The wall that Manuel Comnenus built stands high, and from its lofty battlements the sentries who held their watch here must have seen many strange and stirring sights. One day in the year 1203, when Alexius III Angelus was Emperor, the watchers on the tower looked down upon a host of glittering lances and waving pennants, on white tents and the pavilions of haughty nobles, for the chivalry of the West was encamped before the city walls, and these were the hosts of the fourth crusade.
The re-conquest of Jerusalem and the safety of the holy places were the motives that impelled this army towards the East, and no doubt many of them were as sincere in their desire to attain beatitude in this manner as their precursors on similar expeditions had been. An illiterate priest, Fulk de Neuilly, followed in the footsteps of Peter the Hermit, and roamed over Europe inciting kings, princes and knights to arm for a Holy War and march in their strength to redeem the sacred places of their creed. His success was nearly as great as that of the first missioner to the Crusades, and Innocent III as soon as he ascended to the chair of St. Peter, supported Fulk de Neuilly, and proclaimed the obligation of a new crusade in Italy, France and Germany. Fulk paid a visit to Richard of England to induce him to join in the adventure. That gallant monarch declined, no doubt quite satisfied with the glory gained in his first crusade, and possibly still reminiscent of its many misfortunes; in fact, the meeting seems to have ended in an unseemly wrangle. At any rate Richard of England was not to be moved, and in the light of his former experiences we cannot altogether blame him.
The propaganda met with considerable success elsewhere in Europe, princes and knights flocked to the standard of the Cross on its eastward march. A valiant noble, Jeffrey of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, who wielded the pen as well as the sword, has left on record the names of those that followed this adventure; there was Thibaut, Count of Champagne, with his hardy bands of Saracens from Navarre; Louis, Count of Blois and Chartres, like Thibaut, a nephew of the Kings of England and of France. Simon de Montfort, who had already expressed his devotion to the Roman Church by cruelly persecuting the Albigenses, also joined the host, and a brother-in-law of Thibaut, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, with his brother Henry and many knights assumed the cross at Bruges. The leaders of this fourth crusade, unlike their predecessors, gave evidence of some consideration for the minor details of a campaign. Instead of rolling like a vast stream across Europe, helping themselves to what they wanted in the name of the Cross, gathering strength in numbers and losing it in cohesion, these new crusaders held a counsel.
Between the solemn ratification of vows offered by these pious warrior pilgrims before the altar and the jousts and tournaments which were never wanting when two or three knights were gathered together, time was actually found to consider ways and means and debate on the many details that the planning of a big campaign entails. As a result of these deliberations, six deputies, the historian Villehardouin among them, proceeded to Venice, then the strongest maritime power in the Mediterranean Sea, to solicit her assistance in providing sea transport.
The six ambassadors were hospitably received by Dandolo, the aged Doge whom we have seen before, standing in full armour on the high poop of his galley in the Sea of Marmora. Negotiations proceeded with all the gravity warranted by the occasion, and before long the Doge was entitled by the representatives of the Republic to make known the terms under which Venetian aid could be secured. The Crusaders should assemble at Venice on the feast of St. John in the following year. Preparations could by then have been made for the conveyance of 4,500 knights and their squires and horses along with 20,000 infantry, and during a term of nine months they should be supplied with provisions, and transported to whatsoever coast “the service of God and Christendom” should require. The pilgrims should pay a sum of 85,000 marks of silver before their departure, and all conquests by sea and land were to be equally divided between the confederates. The republic agreed to join the armament with a squadron of fifty galleys, and how valiantly they bore themselves was revealed to us when we watched the naval pageant from the Asiatic coast of the Sea of Marmora.
Notwithstanding the liberality displayed by the leaders of the Crusade, the full amount due by agreement to the Venetians could not be raised, so that astute Republic requisitioned the services of the Crusaders in their own interests to reduce some revolted cities in Dalmatia. The Crusaders sailed for Zara and regained that city for the Venetian Republic. This led to some serious disagreement between the Venetians and their pilgrim allies, and the Pope even went to the length of excommunicating the victors of Zara. Pope Innocent had designs of his own, only remotely connected with the object of the Crusade, and this movement gave him a welcome opportunity of furthering his plans. He intended to re-establish the power of the Vatican at Constantinople, and fortune had placed a useful instrument in his power. In the camp of the Crusaders was young Alexius, son of Isaac Angelus. Alexius III, when he had deposed his brother Isaac, and deprived him of his eyesight, allowed young Alexius to escape unharmed. The Catholic Princes, the leaders of the Crusade, espoused the cause of the lawful heir to the Eastern Empire, and as a reward for their services Alexius had promised that he and his father would restore the supremacy of Rome over the Eastern Church.
The Crusaders landed at Chalcedon, and from Scutari sailed into the Golden Horn. The sentries on the wall saw these steel-clad warriors land their gaily-caparisoned steeds from the flat-bottomed boats in which they had crossed. What were their feelings when they saw 70,000 of their own troops turn and flee, led by their Emperor, before the invaders had found time to mount or couch their lances?
Then followed lengthy negotiations between the Latin camp and the Palace of Blachernæ, then a siege, and swarms of Franks scaling the walls that Manuel Comnenus built—and in the silence of the night that followed, when the assailants had been beaten back, a whispered rumour ran along the ramparts and grew into a sullen roar—the Emperor Alexius had fled.