He was right. Little like it has ever happened anywhere else, except during the invasions of Attila the Hun. Constantinople has never been the same since.
The robbery was even more wholesale than the slaying. Churches, private homes, and palaces were stripped to their bare stone walls, and then all that was not hidden by private looters was piled where it could be seen and divided.
“The booty was so great that no one could tell you of it,” said Villehardouin.
It included gold and silver; vessels and precious stones; silk and samite; robes of vair and robes of ermine; rare and irreplaceable books; icons; beautiful carved chests; and, of course, all the coinage in the treasury. In fact, everything that was not too heavy to move.
The Venetians were immediately paid the 50,000 marks reckoned to be their share. Even after that, not counting what had been stolen and hidden, there may have been 400,000 silver marks’ worth of rare prizes. To say nothing—and there was no knight who didn’t want one—of 10,000 fiery steeds!
There was no one who was too lofty or too pious to take his share of this booty. The abbots and the warrior-bishops laid their hands on every holy relic they could find. Most of these went to France, where they disappeared during the French Revolution. The doge took the four famous bronze horses of the Hippodrome, and even today the Venetians point to them on the façade of the church of Saint Mark just as proudly as if they had not helped themselves to them. There was hardly a knight who did not wear rich fur-trimmed robes. There was hardly a common foot soldier or even a jackallike camp follower who did not have a fat purse, and a heavy chain of gold to boot. The proud Byzantines returned to ruined churches and to charred and plundered houses. Fabled Byzantium had become an empty shell.
The Byzantine Empire became an empty shell too. The crusaders captured the new emperor and made him jump from the top of one of the tall marble columns. Then, after a lot of bickering, they elected one of their own number to succeed him. There was an empire, but it was now a Latin empire and no one but the crusaders recognized it. Even they did not leave it all its territory. Venice took over a third of Constantinople and most of the Byzantine islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas. Every knight or baron who wanted it was given a fief or a principality in southern Greece. Besides that, three Byzantine “governments in exile,” each claiming to be the real one, sprang into being. One was at Trebizond near the eastern end of the Black Sea. One was in Epirus, which is more or less the same as modern Albania. The third and most important was at Nicaea, which was just across the straights in Asia Minor.
So for fifty-seven years, there was not one Byzantine Empire, but four of them, plus half a dozen other small states that all squabbled with each other. Then, in 1261, Michael Paleologus, a great-grandson of one of the old emperors recaptured Constantinople and put on the imperial crown.
But although there was only one Byzantine Empire again, it was little more than a shadow. Nor could any of the nine Byzantine emperors who followed Michael restore the old-time glory. The crusaders had done too good a job. Constantinople was now too poor and shabby. Its trade was gone. Its famous bazaars were filthy, and their booths were empty of wares. Most of the population had moved away. Even the emperors themselves lived hand to mouth. Although they tried to keep up the ancient ceremony, they couldn’t do it. At the wedding of a daughter of one of the emperors, the guests had to eat off earthenware plates.
Besides that, and probably because of it, anarchy reigned during the 200 years that the empire somehow lingered drearily on. Mercenary bands moved about the countryside robbing and stealing, instead of fighting for the emperor. They even moved on Constantinople when they weren’t paid, or thought they were not paid enough.