Read Online City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire by Roger Crowley - Free Book Online

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 stillthey 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.
    This was theologically extremely tricky. The first stop on the crusade was to be the conquest of another Christian – and Catholic – city. Worse still, its new overlord, Emico of Hungary, had himself taken the cross. They would be attacking another crusader. It was true that Emico had shown no sign of actually going on crusade; as far as the Venetians were concerned he had cynically signed up purely for papal protection against such reprisals, but this still smacked of cardinal sin. Furthermore Innocent had been alerted by Emico to such a possibility and had already sent Dandolo an explicit warning ‘not to violate the land of this king in any way’. No matter. Dandolo promptly muzzled the papal legate, Peter Capuano, by preventing him from accompanying the fleet as the pope’s official spokesman, and continued to ready the ships. The slightly forlorn legate blessed the crusade whilst reserving his position on its objective and hurried back to Rome. Innocent prepared a threatening epistle. His early fears about the treacherous Venetians seemed to be fully confirmed. Within the assembling Christian army word probably leaked out that the first objective was to be a Christian city and Boniface of Montferrat, the titular leader of the crusade, politely excused himself from accompanying the expedition on its initial mission: he evidently wanted no part in Venice’s imperial projects, but the whole crusading expedition was caught between a rock and a hard place – it either went to Zara or it disintegrated.
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    Preparations were now hurried forward. In early October siege machines, weapons, food, barrels of wine and water were laboriouslycarried, winched or rolled aboard the ships; the knights’ chargers were led snorting up the loading ramps of the horse transports and coaxed into the leather slings designed to let them swing with the lurch and roll of the sea; the doors were then caulked shut ‘as you would seal a barrel, because when the ship is on the high seas the whole door is underwater’. Thousands of foot soldiers, many of whom had never put to sea before, were crammed into the dark, claustrophobic holds of the troop carriers; the Venetian oarsmen took their places on the rowing benches of the war galleys; the blind Dandolo was led aboard the doge’s sumptuous vessel; anchors were raised, sails unfurled, ropes cast off. Venetian history would be strung together on the recital of its great maritime ventures, but few would surpass in splendour the departure of the Fourth Crusade. None would have a deeper effect on the Republic’s ascent to empire. It marked Venice out as a power whose maritime capabilities were unmatched in the Mediterranean basin.
    For the landlubber knights, it was a spectacle that took the breath away and moved them to hyperbole: ‘Never did such a magnificent fleet sail from any port,’ was Villehardouin’s verdict. ‘One might say that the whole sea sparkled on fire with ships.’ To Robert of Clari, ‘it was the most magnificent spectacle to behold since the world began’. Hundreds of ships spread their sails across the lagoon; their banners and ensigns fluttered in the breeze. Standing out in the massed armada were some