Nothing now remained for the Latins but to risk all in an assault upon the city.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
By April 8th all preparations were completed. It was determined to boldly cross the Golden Horn from Galata and assail the water front of the city. At a hundred points at once they flung the bridges from the yard-arms to the top of the wall, while at the same time they battered the base with rams. The air about them was a firmament of flame from the heavy discharges of Greek fire, through which hurtled stones, javelins, and arrows in such storm that flesh could not stand against it. At night the Latins retired, confessing the failure of the first attempt. The churches of the city resounded with grateful prayers, and the streets were riotous with joy.
On the 12th the assault was renewed. The ships now fought in pairs, so that a heavier force of men might land upon the walls from each drawbridge. Two transports, the Pilgrim and the Paradise, having on board the bishops of Troyes and Soissons, carried one of the towers and planted there the banners of these ecclesiastics. Soon four towers more succumbed; the gates beneath them were forced open, and the knights, who had waited by their horses on the transports, dashed into the city. The Venetians say that their blind old hero was among the first to pass the gates, and that there was fulfilled the prophecy of an ancient sibyl: “A gathering together of the powerful shall be made amid the waves of the Adriatic under a blind leader; they shall beset the goat [the symbol of Greek power in Daniel’s vision], ... they shall profane Byzantium, ... they shall blacken her buildings; ... her spoils shall be dispersed.” The Latins charged straight for Mourtzouphlos’s headquarters; his body-guard fought well, but were no match for the heavy-armored knights, and soon fled. Such was the consternation of the Greeks that even the size of the Latins was fabulously exaggerated, Nicetas crediting one gigantic soldier with eighteen yards to his stature, and a proportionate strength.
At night the crusaders, having set fire to the houses on every side of them, occupied the deserted camps of the emperor, which he had set up in the district burned by the previous conflagration. The next day they encountered no opposition, as Mourtzouphlos had fled away through the Golden Gate on the Marmora side of the city. With the exception of the imperial treasury and arsenal, all was given up to be plundered by sailors and soldiers. Before the assault the barons had divided among themselves the palaces. Villehardouin boastfully narrates: “Never since the world was created was there so much booty gained in one city; each man took the house which pleased him, and there was enough for all. Those who were poor found themselves suddenly rich. There was captured an immense supply of gold and silver, of plate and precious stones, of satins and silks, of furs, and of every kind of wealth found upon earth.”
The Greek eye-witnesses give the same picture, but in other colors. They tell how neither matron nor nun, age nor condition, home nor church, was safe from brigandage; nor yet the tombs of the dead, since the coffins of the ancient emperors were opened, that the gems might be taken from their wrappings and golden rings from their finger-bones. The body of Justinian was thus rudely exposed after its sleep of centuries. The sacred chalices of the communion-table were distributed to the crowd for drinking-cups. The vessels of the altar were thrown into heaps, together with the table plate of the rich, to be parcelled out among the victors. Holy vestments were used as saddle-cloths. Mules were driven into St. Sophia and there on the mosaic floors were loaded with the furniture which piety had adored and art had cherished for ages. The altars were broken into pieces, that the bits of precious metal in them might be extracted, and the veil of the sanctuary was torn into shreds for the sake of its golden fringe. A slattern courtesan was enthroned in the chair of the patriarch and entertained the rabble with obscene dances and songs, while men who had left their homes for the service of Christ played at dice upon the tables which represented His apostles.
Nicetas, the historian, describes his own escape. A Venetian, whom he had served a good turn, defended his house as long as he could. When this was no longer possible he led away the unfortunate family and a few friends, roughly treating them as if they were his prisoners. The young ladies of Nicetas’s household blackened their faces to mar their fairness. The beauty of one shone through this disguise; she was seized by some passing soldiers and liberated only at the tearful solicitation of her father. Looking back upon the city, of which he had been a chief ornament and whose epitaph he was to write, Nicetas exclaimed, “Queen of cities, who art become the sport of strangers, the companions of the wild beasts that inhabit the forests, we shall never revisit thy august domes, and can only fly with terror around thee, like sparrows around the spot where their nest has been destroyed.” On the road he came up with the Patriarch of Constantinople, without bag or money, stick or shoes, and with but “one coat, like a true apostle.”
The plunder of the city was evenly divided between the crusaders and the Venetians. The hard cash discovered in treasure vaults or concealed in wells amounted in value to over eight millions of dollars. The value of movable wealth of various kinds has been estimated at one hundred millions.
The greed thus fed, but not satiated, seemed to turn the brains of the conquerors and to transform them into veritable barbarians, as the Greeks denominated them. Works of art were ruthlessly destroyed, bronze statues were melted for the sake of their metal, and rarest marbles broken in the abandon of resuscitated savagery. Thus perished the colossal figure of Juno from Samos, so large that it required four oxen to carry away its head; the statue of Paris presenting the apple of discord to Venus; the famous obelisk surmounted by a female figure that turned with the wind, and covered with exquisite bas-reliefs; the equestrian statue of Pegasus; the “Hercules” of Lysippus, whose thumb was the size of a living man’s waist; the bronze ass which Augustus Cæsar had ordered to commemorate the victory of Antium; the ancient group of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; and the statue of Helen of Troy. Out of the ruin of such inestimable treasures of art the four horses which now adorn the porticos of St. Mark’s in Venice were saved from the general wreck, to stand as a monument among the Venetians not of the glory, but of the vandalism of their ancestors.
But more than the spoils of art and treasure, the sacred relics stored in Constantinople excited the saintly cupidity of the conquerors. In their greed for these objects men utterly forgot the divine law, and silenced the last remonstrance of human conscience. Martin Litz, Abbot of Basel, worming his way through the pillage piles in a church, came upon an old Greek monk at prayer. “Your relics or your life!” was the alternative offered him. Martin thus procured the key to an iron safe and rifled it of bones and jewels, without thought that the eighth commandment held good as between a Romanist and heretics. Gunther, a German monk, telling the story of what he witnessed at this time, rejoices that thus was secured a piece of the True Cross, the skeleton of John the Baptist, and an arm of St. James. As the transportation of these articles to the West was accomplished without their having been again stolen by some shrewder saint or sunk to the bottom of the sea, Gunther believed that they had been watched over by angels especially sent from heaven to convoy the treasure. It would seem that some ghostly intervention must have restrained John the Baptist and St. James from visiting their wrath upon these unconscionable robbers of their bones. The abbey of Cluny received thus the head of St. Clement; the cathedral of Amiens the head of John the Baptist; and the various churches of Europe such articles as Jacob’s pillow at Bethel, the rod of Moses, the wood of the True Cross, the drops of blood shed in Gethsemane, the sponge and reed of Calvary, the first tooth and locks of the infant Jesus, a piece of the bread of the Last Supper, a tear of our Lord, a thorn from His crown, the finger which Thomas thrust into His side, the shirt and girdle of the Virgin Mary. But these did not satisfy the relic-hunters. Churches in Europe competed with one another for the objects of adoration, which brought revenue to their coffers; prices went up, but Byzantine craft was able to make the supply equal the demand. A few years later (1215) the Lateran Council had, in the name of common sense, to caution the faithful against becoming the prey of their own credulity.