City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire (8 page)

A parallel effort of hardly less magnitude was required to provision the armada. The Venetians carefully quantified the provisions for each man for a year: 377 kilos of bread and flour, two thousand kilos of cereals and beans, three hundred litres of wine: the mathematics of provisioning a crusader army stacked up huge numbers. The agricultural hinterland of Venice was scoured for produce; wheat was secured from regional centres – Bologna, Cremona, Imola and Faenza – and double-baked in Venetian ovens to make the durable ship’s biscuit which formed the staple of the maritime diet. Not all this food would have been sourced in Venice. Undoubtedly Venetian planners sought to reprovision along the way as they sailed down the coast of Dalmatia, but fulfilling the contract was an enormous challenge.

All this work had to be paid for. The Venetian mint was compelled to produce extra quantities of small silver coins, the
grosso
, to pay the master carpenters, caulkers, rope makers, sail makers, smiths, sailors, cooks and bargees who laboured unceasingly for a year to ready the fleet. In effect, the Republic was living on credit, anxiously awaiting the fulfilment of the contract, and payment.

*

By early summer 1202, the Venetians had assembled the enormous fleet needed to transport and maintain an army of thirty-three thousand men 1,400 miles across the eastern Mediterranean and maintain it for a year. ‘The Venetians had fulfilled their side of the bargain and more so,’ acknowledged Villehardouin. ‘The fleet which they had prepared was so large and so magnificent that no Christian man had ever seen better.’ It was, by any account, an extraordinary feat of collective organisation and a testimony to the effectiveness of the Venetian state, which would in time contribute enormously to the development of the Republic’s maritime capabilities.

The fleet was fully prepared for the scheduled departure date, St John’s Day, 24 June 1202, but the crusade itself was badly coordinated and running late. The word was given for the crusaders to leave their homes at Easter (6 April 1202), but many did not make their final farewells until Pentecost, 2 June. The crusaders arrived in Venice in straggling bands, under their lords and feudal banners. The leader of the whole enterprise, Boniface of Montferrat, did not reach the lagoon until 15 August, but it was already clear by early June that the numbers assembling at Venice fell far short of the contracted thirty-three thousand for whom the Venetians had prepared their magnificent fleet. Some took alternative routes to the Holy Land, shipping from Marseilles or Apulia, for reasons of convenience or lower cost – or perhaps rumour had reached them that the Venetian fleet was intending to strike at Egypt rather than liberate Jerusalem. Villehardouin was quick to heap blame on those who failed to show up because ‘these men and many others besides were fearful of the very perilous venture on which the army gathered at Venice was engaged’. The truth was otherwise: Villehardouin or the crusading lords to whom he had reported had terribly miscalculated the numbers; nor were those who did muster bound by his agreement to take the longer land route to Venice. ‘There was a great shortfall in the number from the army at Venice, which was a grave misfortune – as you will learn later,’ he wrote.

There was still not sufficient room to accommodate the crusader army within Venice itself and the authorities were wary of armed men in the city’s confined spaces. Camps were allotted to them on the desolate sandy island of St Nicholas, the longest of the
lidi
, and which today is known simply as the Lido: ‘So the pilgrims went there and set up their tents and quartered themselves the best they could,’ recalled Robert of Clari, a poor French knight who wrote a vivid first-hand account of the crusade, not from the aristocratic viewpoint of Villehardouin but from that of the rank and file, the expedition’s foot soldiers.

While a trickle of crusaders continued to arrive, the allotted
departure date came and went and the frown on Dandolo’s face deepened by the day. The morale of the assembled force was intermittently buoyed up by the arrival of high-profile figures – Baldwin of Flanders arrived in late June, then Count Louis of Blois, each with his own forces; the papal legate, Peter Capuano, reached Venice on 22 July to add spiritual succour to the cause, but the gap between the contract and the force now gathered remained horribly large. By July there were still only twelve thousand men. ‘In fact’, Villehardouin conceded, ‘it was so well provided with ships, galleys and horse transports, that there were enough for three times the assembled army.’

If this was an embarrassment to the crusading lords, it was potentially ruinous for Venice. The Commune had staked its whole economy on the deal, and for Dandolo who had brokered it and advocated and cajoled the population into accepting the treaty it spelled personal catastrophe. Dandolo, like all the merchants of Venice, believed in the sanctity of contracts. This one, above all others, had to be honoured. According to Clari, he turned furiously on the crusader lords:

‘Lords, you have treated us badly because as soon as your ambassadors had struck the deal with me and my people, I ordered throughout the land that no merchant should go trading, but all should help to prepare the fleet and they have all applied themselves to this and earned nothing for more than one and a half years. They’ve lost a great deal, and for this reason my people, and I too, want you to repay the money you owe. And if you don’t do so, know that you won’t leave this island until the very moment that we’ve been paid, nor will you find anyone to bring you enough to eat and drink.’ When the counts and the crusaders heard what the doge said, they were greatly worried and dismayed.

It is unclear how serious the latter threat was. Clari went on to say that the doge ‘was a great and worthy man, and so did not cease from having them brought sufficient to eat and drink’, but the lot of the ordinary crusader, marooned on the Lido, was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. They were effectively captives in the hot sun; kicking up the sand on the long sea strand, looking out
into the blue-green of the Adriatic on one side, the duller lagoon on the other where Venice shimmered, tantalisingly out of reach, tormenting and exploiting them. ‘Here,’ wrote one chronicler, evidently no friend of Venice,

after pitching their tents, they awaited passage from the Kalends of June [1 June] to the Kalends of October [1 October]. A
sistarius
of grain sold for fifty
solidi
. As often as it pleased the Venetians, they decreed that no one release any of the pilgrims from the aforementioned island. Consequently the pilgrims, almost like captives, were dominated by them in all respects. Moreover, a great fear developed among the commons.

They had come piously for the salvation of their souls and they found themselves betrayed by their fellow Christians. It was inexplicable. The festering resentment would return later in more tangible forms. Disease broke out; ‘the result was that the dead could barely be buried by the living’. And probably not one of them knew that the voyage for which they were so ardently hoping was not destined for the Holy Land anyway. For the poor, the crusade would prove to be a series of broken contracts, made in bad faith by the rich and powerful. Already Venice was being held accountable for the consequences.

When the papal legate, Peter Capuano, reached the city, he released the destitute, the sick and the women from their crusading vows; many others seem to have deserted and gone home of their own accord. Capuano appeared on the scene as the voice and conscience of the pope, rallying the faithful ‘in a marvellous manner’ with his inspirational preaching, but was quite incapable of solving the fundamental problem. The crusaders could not pay; the Venetians could not release them from their debt. The compression of these two irreconcilable forces would create a climate of continuous crisis management for the crusade and have consequences that no one at the time could foresee.

There was a tense stand-off. The Venetians were furious. The barons leading the crusade, shamefaced by their failure to honour
the contract, attempted to get every individual to pay his own passage: four marks for a knight, down to one for a foot soldier. All crusades were bedevilled by the question of ready cash and this was no exception. Many had already paid and refused to contribute more; others could not. The debt remained enormous. In the summer heat of the Lido, fierce disputes broke out amongst the army about how to proceed. Some wanted to leave and seek other routes to the Holy Land. Others were prepared to give all they had for the sake of their souls. The crusade was threatened with shameful disintegration. The aristocratic leaders tried to set an example by handing over their valuables and borrowing more on the Rialto. ‘You should have seen the quantity of fine vessels of gold and silver carried to the doge’s palace as payment,’ recorded Villehardouin self-justifyingly. The gap still remained a staggering thirty-four thousand marks – nine tons of silver. They told the doge they could raise no more.

For Venice and Dandolo the situation was now critical. The doge had personally brokered the deal; he had to manage the crisis. Dandolo was forced to present the situation to the council, and then to the Commune. The mood was ugly; the whole city had bought into this project and everyone had something to lose. Bankruptcy threatened and the people were angry. Time was going by: soon it would be too late in the season to sail anyway and the venture must necessarily collapse; not least of all, Venice was paying host to twelve thousand increasingly restive armed men. Dandolo, with the wisdom of his nine decades and the collective experience of Venetian history behind him, outlined two options; firstly, they could keep the fifty-one thousand marks already collected and abandon the project. This would earn them the opprobrium of all Christendom: ‘we shall henceforth always be considered as rogues and cheats’. Alternatively they could temporarily suspend collection of the debt, and this is what he urged: ‘rather let us go to them and tell them that if they will repay us the thirty-six thousand [
sic
] marks they owe us from the first conquests that they make for themselves, then we will take
them overseas’. Venice concurred, and this was put to the crusaders some time in early September:

… they were most happy and fell at his feet for joy and they loyally guaranteed that they would willingly do as the doge suggested. There was such rejoicing that night that there were none so poor that he did not make great illuminations, and they carried flaming torches on the ends of their lances around their tents and lit them within so that it seemed as if the whole camp was ringed with fire.

Seen from Venice, the Lido was a line of lights.

It was probably on the feast of the Virgin – Sunday 8 September – that a large crowd of Venetians, crusaders and pilgrims gathered in the Church of St Mark for mass. Before the service Dandolo climbed up into the pulpit and delivered an emotional address to the people:

Lords, you are allied with the finest nation in the world, on the most noble mission that anyone has ever undertaken. I am just a weak old man, in need of rest and impaired in body, but I see that no one knows how to govern and lead you better than I, your lord. If you will let me take the sign of the cross to protect and lead you, and let my son take my place and guard the city, I will go with you and the pilgrims to live and die.

There was an explosion of assent. Everyone cried out, ‘We beg you for God’s sake to agree and do so!’ The sight of the old doge, blind, ninety years old, undoubtedly close to the end of life, offering to join the crusade, led to mass crying: ‘many tears were shed because this noble man, if he had wanted, had plentiful reasons for staying at home. He was an old man, and though he had fine eyes in his head, he could see nothing,’ recorded Villehardouin. Descending from the pulpit, Dandolo was led weeping to the high altar, where he knelt and had the cross conspicuously sewn to his doge’s
corno
– the large cotton cap that signified his position – ‘because he wanted people to be able to see it’. This had a galvanising effect on the Venetian population, who ‘began to take the cross in a great throng and large numbers … Our pilgrims
were filled with joy and great emotion at the doge’s cross-taking,’ said Villehardouin, ‘because of his great wisdom and reputation.’ At a stroke the ancient doge had placed himself at the centre of the crusade. Final preparations were hurried on for the departure of the fleet before the end of the sailing season.

The
corno

Yet again there was more to all this than met the eyes of the pious crusaders. Behind the bland agreement to defer the crusaders’ debt ‘until God lets us conquer together’ lay another layer of secret agreements, under which the crusade would unfold like a series of false drawers. In order to square deferment of the debt with the Venetian guarantee of a concrete benefit, Dandolo had engaged in some lateral thinking and put forward a startling proposal to the crusader high command. It was tied up with Venice’s obsession with the geopolitics of the Adriatic, and specifically with the city of Zara on the Dalmatian coast. Venice’s domination of the sea, its enforcement of trading restrictions and tax tariffs, continually irked the Dalmatians. Zara, ‘an exceedingly rich city … situated on the sea’, chafed continuously against Venetian control and had made a series of bids for independence since Doge Pietro Orseolo’s voyage in the year 1000. In 1181 it yet again threw off the Venetian yoke and signed a protective pact with the Hungarian kings. This was to be a repeated pattern. To the Venetians the Zarans were in breach of their feudal oath; worse still
they were also politicking with the Republic’s maritime rivals, the Pisans. It is highly likely that Dandolo had no intention of allowing his fleet to sweep down the Adriatic anyway without cuffing the unruly Zarans, but behind closed doors he had put it to the crusader lords that it was too late in the year to sail to the East; if they were to help subdue Zara, the suspension of the debt could be more readily accepted in Venice. Faced with the prospect of the crusade’s collapse, they agreed.