WEB SERIES 2/10 –Le Figaro Hors-Série dedicates an exceptional edition to the Serenissima. At the head of the Fourth Crusade, distracted from its objective, the Venetians organize the sack of Constantinople.
“On the occasion of the magnificent exhibition at the Immersive Grand Palais, Le Figaro Hors-Série takes you along the Grand Canal to discover its history, its palaces, its artists and craftsmen of yesterday and today. At Le Figaro Store: Eternal Venice.
They left Venice on October 1, 1202. A brilliant departure, to the thunder of trumpets. About two hundred and twenty ships, at the helm of which shone Doge Enrico Dandolo’s vermilion silk pavilion. Four thousand five hundred knights, nine thousand squires and twenty thousand infantrymen were to embark on board. Only a third of them were there. anything. Before the armada got under the walls of Byzantium, they stopped several times, first at Zara, a town on the Dalmatian coast that the Venetians were fighting over with the Hungarians. The looters didn’t need to be asked. Excommunicated for this crime, the army of the Fourth Crusade had begun its sacred mission poorly. Fortunately, the papal sanction was partially lifted. It only applies to Venetians who are accused of all evils. Auxiliaries during the Third Crusade, led by Philippe Auguste and Richard Coeur de Lion, are the masters of the papacy-inspired expedition this time. Innocent III no longer wants warlike adventures for princes; he dreams of a great uprising against the infidels. He hadn’t foreseen his holy militia hiding a swarm of demons.
Also read Michel de Jaeghere: “The city is a dream”
On July 17, 1203, the Frankish knights stormed Constantinople, forgetting that they crossed paths to ensure the security of the Christian kingdom of Syria and not to annihilate the Greek empire. Under the city walls the temptation was too great. And the pleas of Prince Alexis, the Byzantine Emperor’s own son, who was dethroned by his brother, too urgent. Didn’t he promise the crusaders to pay them 200,000 marks and put the Eastern Church under Roman tutelage? The bravery of the Byzantines, entrenched behind their ramparts, was unparalleled. Waves of Frankish warriors followed one another ineffectually before old Doge Dandolo, the real mastermind, ordered the Venetian sailors to disembark one by one. Just think of this ninety-six-year-old man who had been at the head of the Republic since 1192, had himself proclaimed commander-in-chief of the expedition, and gave his son Vitale the rank of grand admiral in exchange for logistical support provided by Venice. A man of war with an indomitable will, determined to make his city of less than a hundred thousand people the arbiter of Mediterranean affairs. All of Venice’s galleys and supplies were mobilized for this expedition. In return, the authorities of the Serenissima received 51,000 silver marks.
Enrico Dandolo is an excellent negotiator in this fertile market and at the same time a sober strategist. As Constantinople approached, it was he who led the manoeuvre. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, who was responsible for negotiating with the Venetians to transport the Crusaders to a Muslim Egypt they would never reach, did not hide his admiration as he watched the leader address his troops. “The Doge of Venice, who was old and blind, stood fully armed at the prow of his galley. He had the gonfalon of Saint-Marc in front of him and shouted to his people to cut him down (…). And they did. »
A few months later, the sad episode begins again. After endless and complicated political machinations, the Latins decide to subdue the Greeks. Alexis IV was himself assassinated without keeping his promises. And the city is in chaos. On April 12, 1204, they again stormed Constantinople. It’s a real slaughter this time. The knights multiply the rapes, the murders, the desecrations. A tragic day in the history of Christianity. Once again the Venetians are on the move. The Doge Dandolo, who has become Grand Admiral, keeps the best when dividing the loot: gold forgings that will enrich the treasury of St. Mark, porphyry columns, statues and a quadriga in ancient gilded bronze.
With the second sack of Constantinople, a grand political scheme finally replaced the religious motives of the crusade. The Venetians, great beneficiaries of the expedition, no longer tried to hide their hunger for power. With the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, they secured eastern hegemony in the Mediterranean. Even symbolically, the supremacy of Byzantium was no longer acceptable. Soon Modon, Coron, Cythère, Négrepont, Crete and many archipelagos of the Aegean would fall under Venetian rule. His naval power will be undivided. Doge Dandolo got what he wanted. At home he is celebrated as a hero.