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Authors: Roger Crowley
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enormous castellated sailing vessels, rising like towers over the sea with their high poops and forecastles, each one badged with the glittering shields and streaming pennants of the crusader lords to whom they had been assigned, as symbols of magnificence and feudal power. The names of some of these survive: the Paradise and the Pilgrim , carrying the bishops of Soissons and Troyes, the Violet and the Eagle . The sheer height of these vessels was to play a significant part in the events ahead. Crusaders in their surcoats bearing the crosses of their nations – green for Flanders, red for France – crowded the stacked decks. The Venetian galley fleetwas led forward by the doge’s vessel, painted a significant vermilion, in which Dandolo sat beneath a vermilion canopy, ‘and he had four silver trumpets which trumpeted before him and cymbals making a tremendous sound’. Volleys of noise swept across the panoramic sea. ‘A hundred pairs of trumpets of both silver and brass which sounded the departure’ blared across the water, drums and tabors and other instruments thumped and boomed; the brilliantly coloured pennants streamed in the salt wind; the oars of the galleys dashed the waves; black-robed priests mounted the forecastles and led the whole fleet in the crusader hymn ‘ Veni Creator Spiritus ’. ‘And without exception, everyone, both great and small, wept with emotion and the immense joy that they felt.’ With this triumphant din and the pious release of pent-up feelings the crusading fleet swept out of the mouth of the lagoon, past the Church of St Nicholas and the outer spits of the Lido, for so many months a prison, and into the Adriatic.
Yet there were uneasy notes amongst the splendid noise. The Violet sank on departure. There were those with profound spiritual doubts about attacking Christian Zara; far away in Rome Pope Innocent was sitting, pen in hand, preparing to excommunicate any crusader who dared to do so. And the missing sum of thirty-four thousand marks would continue to haunt the expedition all the way round the coast of Greece, like an albatross dangling from the tall masts.
‘A Dog Returning to its Vomit’
OCTOBER 1202–JUNE 1203
The Venetians had every intention of using this magnificent fleet along the way to reassert their imperial authority in the upper Adriatic, to cuff insubordinate cities, threaten pirates and levy sailors. Where Venice saw this as a legitimate assertion of feudal rights, many of the crusaders, frustrated and impoverished by the long wait on the Lido, already perceived the whole venture as a perversion of crusading vows. ‘They forced Trieste and Mugla into submission,’ an anonymous chronicler bluntly asserted as the fleet worked its way down the coast, ‘they compelled all of Istria, Dalmatia, and Slavonia to pay tribute. They sailed into Zara, where their [crusading] oath came to naught. On the feast of Saint Martin they entered Zara’s harbour.’ Venetian ruthlessness was not always well received.
The fleet smashed through the harbour chain, forced its way in and proceeded to disembark thousands of men. The doors of the transports were prised open; the groggy, disorientated horses were led blindfolded onto dry land; catapults and siege towers were unloaded and assembled; a host of tents, with banners flying, was pitched outside the city walls. The Zarans surveyed this ominous enterprise from their battlements and decided to surrender. Two days after the fleet’s arrival they sent a delegation to the crimson pavilion of the doge to offer terms. The business of Zara was a purely Venetian matter, but Dandolo, either out of scrupulousness or a desire to make the Zarans sweat, declared that he could not possibly accept this until he had conferred with the French barons. He left the delegation kicking its heels.
Zara and its harbour
Unfortunately for Dandolo – and as it turned out even more unfortunately for Zara – at almost the
Yet there were uneasy notes amongst the splendid noise. The Violet sank on departure. There were those with profound spiritual doubts about attacking Christian Zara; far away in Rome Pope Innocent was sitting, pen in hand, preparing to excommunicate any crusader who dared to do so. And the missing sum of thirty-four thousand marks would continue to haunt the expedition all the way round the coast of Greece, like an albatross dangling from the tall masts.
‘A Dog Returning to its Vomit’
OCTOBER 1202–JUNE 1203
The Venetians had every intention of using this magnificent fleet along the way to reassert their imperial authority in the upper Adriatic, to cuff insubordinate cities, threaten pirates and levy sailors. Where Venice saw this as a legitimate assertion of feudal rights, many of the crusaders, frustrated and impoverished by the long wait on the Lido, already perceived the whole venture as a perversion of crusading vows. ‘They forced Trieste and Mugla into submission,’ an anonymous chronicler bluntly asserted as the fleet worked its way down the coast, ‘they compelled all of Istria, Dalmatia, and Slavonia to pay tribute. They sailed into Zara, where their [crusading] oath came to naught. On the feast of Saint Martin they entered Zara’s harbour.’ Venetian ruthlessness was not always well received.
The fleet smashed through the harbour chain, forced its way in and proceeded to disembark thousands of men. The doors of the transports were prised open; the groggy, disorientated horses were led blindfolded onto dry land; catapults and siege towers were unloaded and assembled; a host of tents, with banners flying, was pitched outside the city walls. The Zarans surveyed this ominous enterprise from their battlements and decided to surrender. Two days after the fleet’s arrival they sent a delegation to the crimson pavilion of the doge to offer terms. The business of Zara was a purely Venetian matter, but Dandolo, either out of scrupulousness or a desire to make the Zarans sweat, declared that he could not possibly accept this until he had conferred with the French barons. He left the delegation kicking its heels.
Zara and its harbour
Unfortunately for Dandolo – and as it turned out even more unfortunately for Zara – at almost the
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