On the 8th of April, 1204, the whole army, having embarked on board the ships,[791] as had been previously concerted, attacked the city by water. The vessels approached close to the walls, and a tremendous fight began between the assailants and the besieged: but no hope smiled on the Franks; they were repelled in every direction; and those who had landed,[792] were forced to regain their vessels with precipitancy, approaching to flight. The Greeks rejoiced in novel victory, and the Franks mourned in unwonted defeat. Four days were spent in consultations regarding a further attempt; and the chiefs, judging that no one vessel contained a sufficient number of troops to effect a successful assault on any particular spot,[793] it was resolved to lash the ships two and two together, and thus to concentrate a greater force on each point of attack. On the fourth day the storm was recommenced, and at first the fortune of battle seemed still in favour of the Greeks; but at length, a wind springing up, drove the sea more fully into the port, and brought the galleys closer to the walls.[794] Two of those lashed together, called the Pilgrim and the Paradise, now touched one of the towers, and, from the large wooden turret with which the mast was crowned, a Venetian and a French knight named Andrew d’Arboise sprang upon the ramparts of the city.[795]
The crusaders rushed on in multitudes; and such terror seized the Greeks, that the eyes of Nicetas magnified the first knight who leaped on the walls to the unusual altitude of fifty feet.[796] One Latin drove before him a hundred Greeks;[797] the defence of the gates was abandoned; the doors were forced in with blows of axes; and the knights, leading their horses from the ships, rode in, and took complete possession of the city. Murzuphlis once, and only once, attempted to rally his troops before the camp he had formed, in one of the open spaces of the town. But the sight of the Count of St. Pol, with a small band of followers, was sufficient to put him to flight; and a German having set fire to a part of the buildings[798] no further effort was made to oppose the victorious crusaders. The fire was not extinguished for some time; and the Latin host, in the midst of the immense population of Constantinople, like a handful of dust in the midst of the wilderness, took possession of the purple tents of Murzuphlis, and keeping vigilant guard, passed an anxious and a fearful night, after all the fatigues and exploits of the day. Twenty thousand was the utmost extent of the Latin numbers;[799] and Constantinople contained, within itself, four hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms. Each house was a citadel, which might have delayed and repelled the enemy; and each street was a defile, which might have been defended against a host. But the days of Leonidas were passed; and the next morning the Latins found that Murzuphlis had fled, and that their conquest was complete. Plunder and violence of course ensued;[800] but there was much less actual bloodshed than either the nature of the victory or the dangerous position of the victors might have occasioned.
Fear is the most cruel of all passions; and perhaps the fact that not two thousand persons were slain in Constantinople after the storm, is a greater proof of the courage of the Latins than even the taking of the city. Many noble and generous actions mingled with the effects of that cupidity and lust which follow always upon the sack of a great town. Nicetas mentions a striking example which happened to himself, wherein a noble Venetian dedicated his whole attention to protect an ancient benefactor;[801] and a body of Frenchmen, in the midst of the unbounded licentiousness of such a moment, were moved by a father’s agony to save his daughter from some of their fellows. This is the admission of a prejudiced and inveterate enemy; and it is but fair to suppose, that many such instances took place. The great evils that followed the taking of the eastern capital, originated in the general command to plunder. Constantinople had accumulated within it the most precious monuments of ancient art,[802] and these were almost all destroyed by the barbarous hands of an avaricious soldiery. Naught was spared; the bronzes, which, valueless as metal, were inestimable as the masterpieces and miracles of antique genius, were melted down,[803] and struck into miserable coin; the marble was violated with wanton brutality; all the labour of a Phidias or a Lysippus was done away in an hour; and that which had been the wonder and admiration of a world left less to show what former days had been, than the earth after the deluge.
In this the Latins were certainly barbarians; but in other respects—unless subtilty, deceit, vice, and cowardice can be called civilization, and courage, frankness, and honour can be considered as barbarism—the Latins deserved not the opprobrious name by which the Greeks designated them.
The plunder of the city was enormous. In money[804] a sufficient sum was collected to distribute twenty marks to each knight, ten to each servant of arms, and five to each archer. Besides this, a vast quantity of jewels and valuable merchandise was divided between the French and Venetians; and the republic, who understood the value of such objects better than the simple Frankish soldiers, offered to buy the whole spoil from their comrades, at the rate of four hundred marks for a knight’s share, and in the same proportion to the rest. The booty—with a few individual instances of concealment,[805] which were strictly punished with death when discovered—was fairly portioned out; and, after this partition, the twelve persons selected to choose an emperor proceeded to their deliberations. They were bound by oath to elect without favour the best qualified of the nobles; and after a long hesitation, between the Marquis of Montferrat and the Count of Flanders, they named the latter.[806] In all probability the determining consideration was, that Baldwin, by his immediate connexion with France, was more capable of supporting the new dynasty than the Marquis, whose Italian domains could not afford such effective aid. To prevent the evil consequences of rivalry, the island of Crete and the whole of Asiatic Greece were given to Montferrat, who afterward, with the consent of Baldwin, exchanged them for the Sclavonian territory. Baldwin was then raised upon a buckler,[807] and carried to the church of St. Sophia. After a brief space of preparation, he was formally proclaimed, and crowned as emperor; and, according to old usage, a vase filled with ashes,[808] and a tuft of lighted wool, were presented to the new monarch, as a symbol of the transitory nature of life and the vanity of greatness—emblems too applicable to himself and his dominions; for ere two years had passed, Baldwin had gone down into the grave; and less than the ordinary life of one man elapsed before the dynasty that he established was again overthrown.
CHAPTER XIV.
Divisions among the Moslems—Among the Christians—Crusade of Children—Innocent III. declares he will lead a new Crusade to Syria—The King of Hungary takes the Cross—Arrives in Syria—Successes of the Pilgrims—They abandon the Siege of Mount Thabor—The King of Hungary returns to Europe—The Duke of Austria continues the War—Siege of Damietta—Reinforcements arrive under a Legate—Famine in Damietta—The Moslems offer to yield Palestine—The Legate’s Pride—He refuses—Taking of Damietta—The Army advances towards Cairo—Overflowing of the Nile—The Army ruined—The Legate sues for Peace—Generous Conduct of the Sultaun—Marriage of the Heiress of Jerusalem with Frederic, Emperor of Germany—His Disputes with the Pope—His Treaties with the Saracens—He recovers Jerusalem—Quits the Holy Land—Disputes in Palestine—The Templars defeated and slaughtered—Gregory IX.—Crusade of the King of Navarre ineffectual—Crusade of Richard, Earl of Cornwall—Jerusalem recovered—The Corasmins—Their Barbarity—They take Jerusalem—Defeat the Christians with terrible slaughter—Are exterminated by the Syrians—Crusade of St. Louis—His Character—Arrives in the Holy Land—Takes Damietta—Battle of Massoura—Pestilence in the Army—The King taken—Ransomed—Returns to Europe—Second Crusade of St. Louis—Takes Carthage—His Death—Crusade of Prince Edward—He defeats the Saracens—Wounded by an Assassin—Returns to Europe—Successes of the Turks—Last Siege and Fall of Acre—Palestine lost.
The fifth crusade had ended, as we have seen, without producing any other benefit to Palestine than a deep depression in the minds of the Turks, from the knowledge that the weak dynasty of the Greeks had been replaced by a power of greater energy and resolution. The famine also, which about this time desolated the territories of the Egyptian sultaun, and the contests[809] between the remaining Attabecs and the successors of Saladin, crippled the efforts of the Moslems; while the courageous activity of Jean de Brienne[810] defeated the attempts of Saif Eddin. Nevertheless, many bloody disputes concerning the succession of Antioch, and the fierce rivalry of the orders of the Temple and Hospital, contributed to shake the stability of the small Christian dominion that remained.
Each year,[811] two regular voyages of armed and unarmed pilgrims took place, from Europe to the Holy Land: these were called the passagium Martii, or the spring passage; and the passagium Johannis, or the summer passage which occurred about the festival of St. John. A continual succour was thus afforded to Palestine: and that the spirit of crusading was by no means extinct in Europe is evinced by the extraordinary fact of a crusade of children[812] having been preached and adopted towards the year 1213. Did this fact rest alone upon the authority of Alberic of Three Fountains Abbey, we might be permitted to doubt its having taken place, for his account is, in several particulars, evidently hypothetical; but so many coinciding authorities exist,[813] that belief becomes matter of necessity.