Sack of Constantinople

5 Key excerpts on "Sack of Constantinople"

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  Reconfiguring the Fifteenth-Century Crusade

  • Norman Housley(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  While the methodological focus of their examination is understandable, such a limi- tation causes us to overlook both events and texts of great significance. Without diminishing the importance of the previous examples treated in this chapter, the chorus of outrage that the one event of 1453 unleashed truly sets it apart at this time. As Margaret Meserve has stated: “The Turkish sack struck those who witnessed it, and those in Europe who heard of it soon afterward, as a calamity almost unprecedented in the his- tory of civilization.” 47 It is hard to think of another sack that drew such strong written reactions in the previous three centuries and, if we con- fine ourselves to Europe, in the previous millennium. Yet, as noted, this moment has been curiously ignored by historians of just war and human rights, perhaps because it does not fit so easily into schemas of Christian, juridical or chivalric thought; indeed, the humanists’ greatest spurs were classical texts and reports on the Ottoman threat. But the previous discus- sion helps to remind us of the diverse historical and chivalric sources that may also have informed their thinking, and it cautions us against drawing hard lines between different types of texts and experiences of war. These earlier treatments will also offer useful comparisons going forward. The dramatic seven-week siege of Constantinople has been described and analyzed at length, from the strategic genius of Sultan Mehmed II and his generals, to the dilatory response of Western powers who failed to send aid in time, to the courage on both sides of the battle, but our focus is on the sack and the attention it received from Western writers and audi- ences. 48 In a previous study I explored how the fall of Constantinople in 1453 stands as a watershed moment in perceptions of the Turks.

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  Fighting for the Cross

  • Jaroslav Pelikan(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  It's not necessary to argue for a planned diversion of the Fourth Crusade to take the line that given Constantinople's magnetic pull and the bloody chaos that was Byzantine court politics under the Angeloi emperors, what happened in 1203-4 went with the natural grain of events. The initial conquest of the city on behalf of Alexios IV Angelos was after all no more than Barbarossa was planning for in 1190: clearing the path, literally in 1190, financially in 1203, for the crusade to push onwards to its planned destination. Alexios IVs repudiation of his allies, and his depo-sition by Mourtzouphlos early in 1204, wrecked this plan and necessitated the second siege and capture. The sources for these events are relatively plentiful, facilitating attempts to pinpoint a shift in the crusaders' attitudes towards the inhabitants of 254 FIGHTING FOR THE CROSS Constantinople and its suburbs between 1203 and 1204. 102 For the Greeks this would have entailed a change of status from bystanders in a dynastic conflict, to opponents in a war that the crusaders considered to be both just, because of Alexios IV s binding undertakings to them, and holy, thanks to the assurances given by their prelates that fighting the Greeks would earn them salvation. The weakness of this argument is that it relies on sources that postdate the second conquest, when some writers were using every available idea to justify events retrospectively. It would be truer to say that the combination of legal rectitude and the inescapable bind of the situation facing the crusaders was sufficient in itself to validate the conquest of Constantinople in the combatants' eyes. In other words they were pushed. Of course there were 'pull' factors as well, and they extended beyond the obvious attraction of booty and relics. When the army s bishops had to rally the crusaders in the face of defeat in April 1204 they resorted to violent rhetoric, attacking the Greeks as 'the enemies of God'.

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  Sacred Plunder

  Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade

  • David M. Perry(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  When he dies, the papal legate takes the bishop’s collection and does the same. None of the standard reports of the conquest reveal much reliable informa- tion about its chaotic first few hours. The incendiary rhetoric of Niketas quoted above represents just the barest fragment of his detailed and horrific descrip- tion of the Sack of Constantinople, for which he mourns. In lurid, tragic tones, the chronicler describes the breaking of the altar, the destruction of priceless works of art, and the stabling of mules in the sanctuary. In an ultimate act of impiety, a prostitute was placed on the throne of the patriarch. After describ- ing the outrages committed against women and the old, Niketas concludes by attacking the crusaders for violating their crusading oath. They had promised not to deviate from their planned course until they found the Saracens, but deviate they had. They had promised not to have sexual intercourse, but now they were raping Greek women. “In truth,” he wrote, “they were exposed as frauds. Seeking to avenge the Holy Sepulchre, they raged openly against Christ and sinned by overturning the Cross with the cross they bore on their backs, not even shuddering to trample on it for the sake of a little gold and silver. By grasping pearls, they rejected Christ.”  Niketas attempts to present the incur- Constantinople’s Relics, 1204–1261 21 sion as an unholy war that played out in diametric opposition to the crusaders’ holy mission. With such an agenda, he found the violation of relics rhetori- cally useful. Of all the crimes committed against the city by the conquering Latins, the chronicler chose to recount the sacrilegious looting first and the breaking of the sacred oath last, thus bookending his account with the worst offenses. Niketas sought to convey his horror at the atrocities committed in the name of Christ by these “Franks,” who should have been trying to liberate the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

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  History of the Fourth Crusade

  • Edwin Pears(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Ozymandias Press

    (Publisher)

  The Greek eye-witness gives the complement of the picture of Villehardouin. The lust of the army spared neither maiden nor the virgin dedicated to God. Violence and debauchery were everywhere present; cries and lamentations and the groans of the victims were heard throughout the city; for everywhere pillage was unrestrained and lust unbridled. The city was in wild confusion. Nobles, old men, women, and children ran to and fro trying to save their wealth, their honor, and their lives. Knights, foot-soldiers, and Venetian sailors jostled each other in a mad scramble for plunder. Threats of ill-treatment, promises of safety if wealth were disgorged, mingled with the cries of many sufferers. These pious brigands, as Gunther aptly calls them, acted as if they had received a license to commit every crime. Sword in hand, houses and churches were pillaged. Every insult was offered to the religion of the conquered citizens. Churches and monasteries were the richest storehouses, and were therefore the first buildings to be rifled. Monks and priests were selected for insult. The priests’ robes were placed by the Crusaders on their horses. The icons were ruthlessly torn down from the screens or were broken. The sacred buildings were ransacked for relics or their beautiful caskets. The chalices were stripped of their precious stones and converted into drinking-cups. The sacred plate was heaped with ordinary plunder. The altar-cloths and the screens of cloth-of-gold, richly embroidered and bejewelled, were torn down, and either divided among the troops or destroyed for the sake of the gold and silver which were woven into them. The altars of Hagia Sophia, which had been the admiration of all men, were broken for the sake of the material of which they were made. Horses and mules were taken into the church in order to carry off the loads of sacred vessels and the gold and silver plates of the throne, the pulpits, and the doors, and the beautiful ornaments of the church. The soldiers made the chief church of Christendom the scene of their profanity. A prostitute was seated in the patriarchal chair, who danced, and sang a ribald song for the amusement of the soldiers. Nicetas, in speaking of the desecration of the Great Church, writes with the utmost indignation of the barbarians who were incapable of appreciating and therefore respecting its beauty. To him it was an “earthly heaven, a throne of divine magnificence, an image of the firmament created by the Almighty.”

  The plunder of the same church in 1453 by Mahomet the Second compares favorably with that made by the Crusaders of 1204.

  The sack of the city went on during the three days after the capture. An order was issued, probably on the third day, by the leaders of the army, for the protection of women. Three bishops had pronounced excommunication against all who should pillage church or convent. It was many days, however, before the army could be reduced to its ordinary condition of discipline. A proclamation was made throughout the army that all the booty should be collected, in order to be divided fairly among the captors. Three churches were selected as depots, and trusty guards of Crusaders and Venetians were stationed to watch what was thus brought in. Much, however, was kept back, and much stolen. Stern measures had to be resorted to before order was restored. Many Crusaders were hanged. The Count of St. Paul hung one of his own knights with his shield round his neck because he had not given up the booty he had captured. A contemporary writer, the continuator of the history of William of Tyre, forcibly contrasts the conduct of the Crusaders before and after the capture. When the Latins would take Constantinople they held the shield of God before them. It was only when they had entered that they threw it away, and covered themselves with the shield of the devil.

  I have already mentioned that the Italians resident in Constantinople who had returned to the city with their countrymen were conspicuous in their hostility to the Greeks. Amid this resentment there were examples, however, that former friendships were not forgotten. The escape of Nicetas himself is an illustration in point. He had held the position of Grand Logothete,

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  History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453, Volume II

  • Alexander A. Vasiliev(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • University of Wisconsin Press

    (Publisher)

  John insisted on supporting one of the Turkish pretenders to the sultan's throne; an attempt at revolt failed and the infuriated Murad II decided to besiege Constantinople and crush at once this long- coveted city. But the Ottoman forces, which had not had time enough to recover after the defeat of Angora and which were weakened by internal complications, were not yet ready to deal such a blow. In 1422, the Turks besieged Constantinople. In Byzantine literature there is a special work on this siege written by a con- temporary, John Cananus, entitled, "A narrative of the Constantinopolitan wars of 6930 ( = 1422), when Amurat-bey attacked the city with a great army and would have taken it if the Blessed Mother of God had not preserved it."183 A strong Muhammedan army equipped with various war machinery at- tempted to take the city by storm but it was repulsed by the heroic efforts of the population of the capital. Some complications within the Ottoman Empire compelled the Turks to give up the siege. The capital's relief from danger was, as always, connected in popular tradition with the intercession of the Mother of God, the constant protectress of Constantinople. Meanwhile, the Turkish troops were not satisfied to attack the capital; after an unsuccessful attempt to take Thessalonica, they marched south into Greece where they destroyed the wall on the Isthmus of Corinth built by Manuel, and devastated Morea. 184 Manuel's co-emperor John VIII spent about a year in Venice, Milan, and Hun- gary in search of aid. According to the peace made with the Turks, the Em- peror pledged himself to continue to pay the sultan a definite tribute, and delivered to him several cities in Thrace. The territory of Constantinople was growing still more limited. After this siege, the capital dragged out a pitiful existence for about thirty years in anxious expectation of its unavoidable ruin. 182 George Phrantzes, Annales, I, 37 ; Bonn ed., I I 1-12.

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