Free City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire by Roger Crowley Page B

lands, ‘lest, by any chance, fouling their hands with the massacre of Christians, they commit a sin against God’, and had written to the Byzantine emperor to say that he had done so. Alexius Angelus was young, ambitious and foolish. He was making unwise promises he could not guarantee, telling the crusader lords what they wanted to hear. But an inner circle of Frankish barons was already acquainted with the scheme and they were receptive. Boniface of Montferrat, the leader of the whole venture, had family grievances against the Byzantine emperor. Afterwards Innocent would lay the blame for what ensued squarely on the Venetians, but it was not their idea. It is uncertain if Dandolo knew in advance of the plan to divert the crusade to Constantinople; it is likely that he appraised it with a very cool eye. He certainly knew much more about the inner workings of Constantinople than most of the French barons, and he did not invest much confidence in the young Angelus. As for Angelus, the treaty being put forward in his name would eventually cost him his life.
    The decision as to whether to attack a second Christian city on their way to the Holy Land was put to a restricted council of secular and religious leaders at Zara the next day. It immediately reopened furious and schismatic debate, which threatened, yet again, to jeopardise the whole expedition. Opinion was sharply divided. The abbot of Vaux again railed against it ‘for they had not agreed to wage war against Christians’; on the other side an iron pragmatism was put forward: the army was short of funds, the debt remained outstanding, this would provide both money and men to retake the Holy Land: ‘You should know that the Holy Land overseas will only be recovered via Egypt or Greece [Byzantium], and that if we turn down this offer we will be shamed forever.’ Dandolo must have weighed it carefully: the debt would be handsomely repaid and an emperor favourable to their interests wouldbe highly valuable in Constantinople, yet the Venetians also had a lot to lose. The Republic was once more trading profitably there and its resident merchants would again make easy hostages if the bid failed, but poverty was ultimately the driver of events. The crusade could simply fail for lack of money and food; if Angelus could easily be installed, Dandolo reasoned that ‘we could have a reasonable excuse for going there and taking the provisions and other things … then we should well be able to go overseas [to Jerusalem or Egypt].’ After careful consideration he decided to join those in favour, ‘partly’, declared one anti-Venetian source, ‘in the hope of the promised money (for which that race is extremely greedy), and partly because their city, supported by a large navy, was in fact arrogating to itself sovereign mastery over that entire sea’. This was a retrospective judgement of the way things fell out.
    Eventually, a powerful caucus of French barons, led by Boniface, overrode all objections and voted to accept the proposal. It was quickly signed and sealed in the doge’s residence. Alexius was to arrive two weeks before Easter. It was effectively stitched up – and had possibly been agreed in outline long before the crusade set sail. The common crusaders would be taken wherever their feudal masters wanted and the Venetians sailed. Even Villehardouin had to admit that ‘this book can only testify that among the French party only twelve swore oaths, no more could be obtained’. He conceded that it was highly contentious: ‘so the army was in discord … Know that men’s hearts were not at peace, because one of the parties worked to break up the army, the other to hold it together.’ There were significant defections. Many of the rank and file ‘gathered together and, after having made a compact, swore they would never go there’. A number of high-ranking knights, similarly disgusted, took the same course. Some returned home, disappointed; others sought