Venice at War

Upon first arriving in Venice, the American humorist Robert Benchley wired home: “STREETS FILLED WITH WATER. PLEASE ADVISE.”

Venice is one of the stranger places on the planet, since the canal system and pedestrian walkways fully replace city streets. Whether one is hauling freight or hauling oneself, the only two options are by foot or by boat. Venetians live in a lagoon, and as we discover in this month’s volume, City of Fortune by Roger Crowley, their poverty of land did much to shape the Venetians’ place in the medieval world. The book itself is popular history, and it focuses on the Venetian Republic, specifically the period between the Fourth Crusade and Venice’s fall to the Ottomans. The Venetians used their financial might to seize and hold land scattered across the Mediterranean, in an attempt to make their sea-based state (Stato da Màr) a land-based state (Stato da Terra).

Our author opens with a solid description of the Fourth Crusade (A.D. 1202-1204). The Fourth, as you recall, is the one that set out to free the Holy Land (the crusader’s basic remit), but somehow turned back on itself with the crusaders sacking Christian Constantinople instead. Even given today’s general prejudice against the crusades — they are inconvenient to modern politics, so we don’t talk about them — the Fourth Crusade remains a particular black sheep.

Crowley explains the Fourth in purely economic terms. The Venetians were not entirely respectable in the Middle Ages, due largely to their trade with the Muslims. Islam was pressing on Constantinople, threatening Christianity well beyond the Holy Land. In response the Christian world attempted a trade embargo of the Muslims, which the Venetians did not honor. The Venetian argument was that since they had no land to farm, their only means of survival was trade, which they interpreted as trade with all partners. The pope grudgingly bought that argument…trade with the Muslims and through Muslim-controlled lands was an economic link with the far East, which had importance to the West.

The other source of Venetian income was shipbuilding, and to conquer the Holy Land from Europe, you need boats…lots of boats.

Pope Innocent III called the Fourth Crusade with strategic intent. The Muslims were being supplied by the Egyptians, and so the original plan of the crusade was to sail to Egypt, cut the Muslim supply lines there, and then move to the Holy Land for conquest thereafter. The only people who had both the technical skill and the financial capacity to supply the crusader navy were the Venetians, however unsavory their reputation. Negotiations were led on the crusader side by a Frenchman, Geffroi de Villehardouin. Representing the Venetians was Doge Enrico Dandolo himself. In one of the great blunders of history, Dandolo proposed, and Villehardouin accepted, a fixed-price contract for the Venetians’ part in the Fourth Crusade. The sum was astronomical: 85,000 marks for a nine-month engagement. This amount was to pay for new ships, refurbished ships, and Venetian men to sail them; the Venetians further kicked in fifty galleys at their own expense. The amounts involved should have given both parties pause. The Venetians would have to (and did) cease all other activities and fully devote their economic output to the mission. From the crusader side, the expense was truly enormous, more than the total annual income of France. But Villehardouin had experience raising crusader armies, and he fully expected to recruit 33,000 troops for the undertaking, making the per-capita expense manageable. (Crowley implies, but does not explicitly explain, that the troops or their lords were responsible for paying their share of the Venetian expense.) On that basis, Villehardouin bought the contract.

A fixed and large cost to be financed by voluntary subscription revenue…what could go wrong?

Weak sales is what could go wrong. Villehardouin was able to raise troops to pay something over 50,000 marks, but that left them with a deficit of 34,000 marks, or nine tons of silver. Which in turn left all parties in a bind: as we’ve seen, Venice had devoted its total output to the crusade…they couldn’t afford to forgive the debt, they needed the money. Plus, for a nation whose existence was based on trade, a contract was a near-holy instrument and required enforcement. The crusaders were contractually bound, but they just didn’t have the money. For them, abandoning the crusade was not an option, given the sunk cost to date, and also with a mind to the large body of armed troops they had assembled, who fully expected fulfill their holy oath. Yikes.

So a secret decision was reached between the crusaders and the Venetians. They would make the crusade financially profitable.

The Venetians had always planned to use the crusade as a chance to display their might to their rivals along the Dalmatian coast as they traveled toward Egypt. What if roughing up the competition a little turned into some profitable roughing up? The troops were assembled and on the move…a little sack and pillage here and there could work down the 34,000 mark balance to everyone’s benefit.

And thus did a tumble downhill begin: attacking other Christians was distinctly not in the crusader’s remit, and the pope, who became wise to the plan, grew increasingly restive, excommunicating all concerned. All of this had to be kept from the troops, who were still expecting to save the Holy Land, and for whom excommunication would have been a very serious matter, indeed. When the sack of a city called Zara failed to make much of dent in the 34,000 mark deficit, the crusader and Venetian eyes turned to a larger prize, Constantinople. True, these were Christians (as had been the Zarans), but of the Eastern Orthodox church, and many of them were Arians, which made them heretics in the eyes of the Roman church. Additionally, Constantinople was a thorn in the Pope’s side, so the hope was that a successful conquest for Roman Christianity would entice the pope to lift his excommunication.

All of which came to pass, after many machinations. And that, children, is how Venice came to control three-eighths of Constantinople, along with other lands, granted in the Partitio terrarium imperii Romaniae (Partition of Land Rights of the Roman Empire) of 1204. With it began the Venetian land empire.

I do our author a disservice with this review. Crowley’s discussion of the Fourth Crusade encompasses only a third or so of his work. We focus on it here because it is his best section, in which he describes background and motivation in addition to action. The remaining two sections focus on Venice’s wars with Genoa, and with their battles with the Ottomans. Crowley has a flair for writing descriptions of battle scenes, and in these latter two sections he indulges himself fully in same. Unfortunately he does so at the expense of explanation — just why, other than greed and general cantankerousness, did these guys care so much about the lands involved that they took great risk and spilled their own blood for them? If there is an answer, I lost it in the battle details.

In many ways City of Fortune turned out not to be my own cup of tea, but I am indebted to Mr. Crowley for his discussion of the Fourth Crusade. And for reinforcing the oldest rule in consulting:

Never, ever bid fixed price.