The leaders agreed. The Holy Land would have to wait a while to be redeemed.
It would be impossible to exaggerate the excitement of the crusaders when they heard the magic name of Constantinople. For they all knew about the fabulous city. Minstrels told about it in the long sagas they sang before huge crackling fires on winter nights. They spoke of its shining metal towers and called it Micklegarth, or Bigtown.
Its fame was also spread throughout the West by Russian traders. In those days, the Russians were like the vikings who roved the oceans from America to the Greek Sea. They had enslaved the backward Slavic tribes of Kiev and Moscow and once a year, when the ice melted, these snub-nosed, green-eyed marauders made their vassals cut down huge trees and hollow them into boats. Aboard these, they floated down the great rivers, and then sailed across the foggy Black Sea and up the Bosporus until they reached the enormous city, the biggest they had ever seen. There they traded honey and marten skins and dried fish and even caviar for pepper and brocades and carved ivory and delicate enamels. These Russians, too, were dazzled by Constantinople and had their own name for it. They called it Tsargrad, or Caesar City.
But long before there were Russians or any other kind of vikings, the city had amazed our ancestors. “I see before my eyes something I had often heard about but would never believe!” exclaimed Athanaric, a guttural-speaking king from the forests of Germany. “Look at the walls. Look at the buildings, look at the harbor filled with ships! Look at the men of every nation crowding the alleys and bazaars. Look at the disciplined soldiers! Surely God himself must be the emperor!” said Athanaric.
The mighty Charlemagne, who had been crowned emperor of the West, once sent an embassy to Constantinople to discuss the possibility of marrying the Byzantine empress Irene. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, a learned Spanish Jew, was astonished at its splendor. It was richer, he said, than any other city in the world. Why, the ordinary merchant wore garments of silk ornamented with gold and precious stones! He rode about his business on horseback as a prince does!
It was the city of Justinian, the great lawgiver, whose book of laws was still studied in the crusaders’ own cities of Paris and Bologna 700 years after his reign.
Only the wisest of them knew that he was much more than a lawgiver. A tall towheaded country boy from what is modern Yugoslavia, he was more than just one of the great Byzantine emperors. He was one of the great rulers of all time. It was his generals who reconquered Africa, Italy, and parts of Spain, and almost restored the ancient Roman Empire. It was he who ordered the most famous architects of the time to build the church of Santa Sophia. Most of the finest Byzantine mosaics were done during his reign, and the Orthodox Christian Church was first firmly established then. The Age of Justinian was the first great age of the Byzantine Empire when its power affected the whole Mediterranean world.
It was the city of great soldiers like the cruel Basil the Bulgar Slayer, who had cold-bloodedly blinded 15,000 of his Bulgarian enemies, but who had permanently broken the power of these wild raiders; like John Kercuas, an Asia Minor Napoleon; and like Nicephorus Phocas, who had rolled back the Arabs, the deadliest foes of the Byzantines, whether they fought on camel back or on a warship at sea.
It was the city of foxy Alexius Comnenus, and his dark-eyed daughter, Anna, who wrote even better histories than Villehardouin.