GEOFFROY DE VILLEHARDOUIN AND

THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

C O L I N M O R R I S Pembroke College, Oxford

The Conquest of Constantinople, by GeofTroy de Villehardouin, was much the most popular history of the fourth Crusade during the Middle Ages, and is still today the most easily available of the contemporary accounts.’ It deserves its popularity. I t gives a vivid description, told by one of the commanders, of the series of events by which a Crusade was turned to the destruction of the Christian Byzantine Empire. Villehardouin was in an unusually good position to give us a record of the decisions of the high command and the reasons for them. The story, as we see it through his eyes, is of the progressive diversion of the expedition until it achieved what at the start had been in no way envisaged-the creation of a Latin Empire of Constantinople. When Villehardouin and his colleagues negotiated a treaty with Venice for the provision of a fleet in spring 1201, it was secretly specified that the objective was to be Egypt. The failure of the crusaders in the summer of 1202 to meet their obligations to Venice led to the capture of Zara in November of that year. During the following winter, a series of negotiations led to an agreement to go to Constantinople to restore the young Alexius to the throne from which his father had been deposed. Although this objective was achieved after the first siege of the city in the summer of 1203, it was followed by a rapid deterioration in relations between the Greeks and the Crusaders. In April 1204, the Westerners succeeded, in a second siege, in breaking into the city. Its treasures were sacked; its provinces divided between the Franks and the Venetians; and a highly insecure Latin Empire was erected upon the ruins.

Edmond Faral, editor of the standard text of the work, took a high view of its historical merits, and was inclined to express himself with some force about those who doubted them:’

It has become fashionable in recent years to accept immediately as true any evidence contrary to that of Villehardouin, and to welcome

1 M. R. B. Shaw, Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, Penguin Classics. 1963. References in the article am to this translation. I am grateful for the publishers’ consent to the use of uotations from it.

a Villehardouin, Lo Conqudte % Constantinople. ed. E. Faral, Paris ig$I+, pp. xiv and xix.

94

COLIN MORRIS 2 5

eagerly any assertion which can be set against him, no matter how unsupported or suspect it may be. . . Yet the criticisms which have been directed against Villehardouin according to this odd method disappear completely if only one studies them.

Critics of Villehardouin have tended to centre their criticism upon the idea that the book was a calculated piece of propaganda which deliberately distorted the events leading to the diversion of the Crusade:

We know that Villehardouin wrote in order to justify this remark- able crusade; but it is a tribute to his high intelligence that he realized that an apology based on false statements would have been valueless; too many people had been involved in these startling events. SO he told the truth; but he did not tell it a112

What is the truth of the matter? T o answer this question we must first examine the attitudes, both conscious and unconscious, which lie behind the work.

Villehardouin was in an excellent position to tell the story of the Crusade, for he was one of the small group of leaders, and involved in all the major decisions. Moreover, he took himself seriously as an historian, stating his claims in a passage unusual in so reticent a man:

Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, and the author of this work-who has never, to his knowledge, put anything in it con- trary to the truth, and who was present, moreover, at all the conferences recorded in its pages. . . (p. 57)

The general atmosphere and spirit of the work suggests that he made this claim sincerely. His narrative is confined to events at which he himself had been present; when he has to fill in the background, he does so as briefly as possible. He shows little tendency to glorify him- self or insist on his own importance. He probably wrote in 1207,

reasonably close to the events concerned.‘ The high quality and reliability of the work may be seen by comparison with another eye- witness, Robert of Clari, who had little first-hand knowledge of any- thing before summer 1202, was outside the inner circle of leaders, was given to rambling accounts of a variety of matters on which he was not well informed, and wrote later than Villehardouin.6 Nonethe- less, it is important to check the work by reference to the mass of

a A. Pauphilet, ‘Robert de Clari et Villchardouin’, in Mdlanges A. Jeanroy, Paris 1928. p. 564. The same general position is stated by H. Grkgoirc, ‘The question of the diversion of the Fourth Crusade‘, Byurntion, XV, p. 158, although Grkoire is concerned rather with the events themselves than with Villehardouin’s sincerity.

4 The evidence for the date and method of composition is considered in Faral, Con- gudte, pp. xiii-xvi. The most natural view is that it was certainly not started before the

nal fall of the city in 1204, and finished in 1207 (after the death oE Boniface of Montferrat in September, but before hearing of the death of Ioannitsa of Bulgaria at abori t the same time).

6 La Conqudte de Constantinople, ed. P. Lauer, Paris 19x4. English translation by E. H. McNeal, Columbia 1936.

36 other eye-witness evidence, which (in spite of Faral's complaints about the use of remote and late evidence by Villehardouin's critics) is abundant. There are letters from the leaders who settled in the East;" reminiscences by returned Crusaders;' and descriptions by Greeks who were present at the fall of Constantinople.8 Moreover, there is the further possibility of internal criticism of the work. Reticent as he was about himself, Villehardouin unconsciously revealed a good deal about his attitude to life, and this naturally shaped the work which he wrote.

He was a military commander above all else, in turn Marshal of Champagne and Marshal of Romania (the Latin Empire); an experi- enced soldier, probably a veteran of the third Cru~ade;~ and his history is outstanding for the skill with which military events are described. The account of the first siege of Constantinople in July 1203 is a model of clarity, and it is common for him to pause in his narrative to bestow an accolade on someone who had performed a deed of special bravery. This strong military interest throws light on the literary form of the book. Villehardouin was influenced by the style and atmosphere of the chansons de geste. While he did not copy the fantasies of some of these, his sober account was governed by similar tastes and conventions. At exciting moments, he addresses his readers directly, in the manner of the chansons:

Now let me tell you of an event so marvellous that it might be called a miracle. (p. 71)

He liked to present a formal debate or confrontation, as the epic writers did, and he preferred to state the terms of treaties, not by incorporating the text as a chronicler would have done, but by putting them into the mouths of one of the characters. This is not to say that Geoffroy is a careless writer, but only that he must be assessed, not as chronicler nor annalist nor modern historian, but as a writer of a real-life epic.

His keen military interests were accompanied by indifference to affairs which many Crusaders would have thought important. In the affairs of clerks, he has little interest. He took almost no notice of the

0 For exam le, the letters of Baldwin of Flanders (Monunenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum &I, ed. G. E. Peru, Hanover 1869, p. 224) and Hugh of St. Pol (G. L. Tafel and G. M. Thomas, Urkunden zur . . . Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, Oester- reichische Geschichts-quellen XII, I, p. 304).

7 Robert of Clari has already been mentioned. Abbot Martin of Pairis is to be found in P. Riant, Exuviae sacrae constantinopolitanae, Geneva 1877. t. I. pp. 57-126. The memoirs of bishop Conrad of Halberstadt are incorporated in the Gesta episco orum Halberstadensium. ed. L. Weiland, M.G.H. Scri t, xxiii, Hanover 1874. p. lit! The Deuastatio Constantinopolitana, which may have teen written by a follower of Boniface of Montferrat. is printed in C. Hopf, Chsoniques grdco-romanes intdites w peu connues, Berlin 1873, 86.

8 Nicetas CKbniates was edited by I. Bekker in Corpus Scriptorurn Historiae Byzantinae, Bonn 1835; and an anonymous account by Hopf, op, cit.,

9 J. Longnon. Re herches sp1r la vie de Geo#roy dc Vif;ehardmcin (Bibliothtgue de l*&cole des Hautes dtudes 276, 1939) pp. 59-63.

VILLEHARDOUIN AND THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

. 93.

27

relations of the papacy with the Crusade, and did not consult the papal letters to its leaders, of which he must have been aware. Partly, no doubt, this was due to his embarrassment at the turn of events, for Innocent I11 had persistently attempted to prevent the expedition from being turned against Christians. Villehardouin omits these prohibitions; wrongly states that Innocent ‘very willingly’ confirmed the Franco-Venetian treaty of spring 1201; ’~ and he describes the sensational episode of the excommunication of an entire Crusade in such a roundabout way that it is hard to make out that the Crusaders were in fact excommunicated (p. 53). There is real evasion and sup- pression here, of a somewhat clumsy and naive kind. There is genuine indifference, also, to ecclesiastical and spiritual matters. He expresses no interest in the moral condition of the Crusade, and, if he occasion- ally puts down a failure to the sins of the Crusaders, it is not a matter on which he wants to spill much ink. The relics of Constantinople, which moved other writers to raptures of enthusiasm, seemed to Ville- hardouin worth a sentence.l’ He had a simple theology of his own, consisting principally in an uncritical belief in divine providence. Several times we are told that, whatever the original intentions of the human actors, ‘events turn out as God wills’ (p. 36). While he does not argue the case, it seems clear that he thought that the supreme instance of providential over-ruling of human purposes was the fourth Crusade itself. I t was a marvel that an operation designed for an attack on Egypt should end by attacking Constantinople; a greater marvel still that so small a force should overcome so great a city. The steps by which the diversion took place were neither fore- seen nor intended by the participants, for the providence of God was directing them to the humbling of the Greeks at the hands of the Latins. Villehardouin’s wonder at this is vividly expressed in a passage after the final fall of the city:

So the troops of the Crusaders and the Venetians were duly housed. They all rejoiced and gave thanks to our Lord for the honour and the victory He had granted them, so that those ~7ho had been poor now lived in wealth and luxury. Thus they celebrated Palm Sunday and the Easter Day following, with hearts full of joy for the benefits our Lord and Saviour had bestowed on them. And well might they praise Him; since the whole of their army numbered no more than twenty thousand men, and with His help they had conquercd four hundred thousand, or more, and that in the greatest, the most powerful, and most strongly fortified city in the world. (pp. 92-3)

10 p. 35. In fact, the pope attached the specific condition that the Crusade must not be diverted against Christians (Gesta Innocentii III c. 83) and Register VII, 18 (Migne P.L. 414 cols. cxxxi and 301).

11 His carelessness of ecclesiastical affairs was such that he failed to make out the best possible case for the diversion. One real advantage, in the eyes of contemporaries, was the opportunity it gave for a reunion of the Greek and Latin churches. Geoffroy fails to stress the point, and after the fall of the city never mentions the arrangements made to implement the union.

COLIN MORRIS

28 VILLEHARDOUIN AND THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

These, then, are the presuppositions with which ViUehardouin wrote. In spite of his first-hand knowledge, his circumstances were such as to make distortion easy. He probably had to depend largely on his own memory, and the lapse of about five years was sufficient to make this precarious. The weakness of his method is shown by his unsathfactory handling of dates.12 He very rarely gives a specific date, and one‘s impression is that he remembered very few, and did not care to seek information about them. Much of the narrative is wrapped in total chronological obscurity. From the beginning up to the treaty signed in spring 1201, it is not even possible to be sure what year he is talking about.” The stay at Venice in summer 1202 is completely without dates, and so is the first siege of Constantinople. The absolute dates given for the years 1202-3 suggest that they have been remembered accidentally because of their connection with a feast of the French church, and they form a very tenuous time- scheme.l* These absolute dates are usually right, or at least fit quite well with dates given by other writers. Sometimes a well-meant effort to remember a date ends in misfortune. The Rattle of Philia in 1204 is dated close on Candlemas and near Lent (p. 86); Candlemas is 2 February, and in that year Ash Wednesday was 10 March. Ville- hardouin is given to narratives which take events from day to day, and are studded with such notes of time as ‘next day’ or ‘three days later’. They read like a lively account of an episode, remembered long after and decorated with a few suitable intervals of time; they are usually unclear, and when they can be checked they appear to be wrong.15 There is, I think, no need to conclude from this that Villehardouin was suppressing some information for purposes of his

12 Faral was impressed by the ‘precision and exactitude’ of Villehardouin’s chronology, and therefore believed that he ‘perha S’ had personal notes or a diary on which it was based. On the following gage, Faral gecame surer of this theory: he ‘must have been using (notes) in all roba ility’ (op. cit. pp. xiv-xv). As I am f a r from convinced that the chronology of tl?e work is good, I assume, on the contrary, that Geoffroy had no diary.

1s The question is discussed by E. John, ‘A note on the preliminaries of the Fourth Crusade’, Byrantion, XXVIII, 1958, p. 95.

14 The absolute dates for IPOP are: Octave of Remigius St. Martin’s eve and day

In 1203 we have: Easter Monday Pentecost eve departure from Corfu St. John Baptist eve and day St. Peter coronation of Alexius St. Martin

departure from Venice arrival a t Zara

departure from town of Zara

St. Stephen’s and Chalcedon

return of Alexius to Constantinople An earlier date mentioned is the visit of Boniface of Montferrat to thc general cha ter at Cfteaux. The former Marshal of Champagne still remembered that ‘this takes pyace every year on Holy Cross Day in September’ (p. 38).

15 Faral admired these narratives, declaring that when added up the intervals agree rigorously with the absolute dates provided. I have been unable to find any instance where such time-schemes can be checked, for nowhere does the author provide a definite date a t both the beginning and end of one of the sequences. The intervals mentioned for the siege of Zara certainly do not agree with the statements of other eye-witnesses. The Gesta episcoporurn and Devustalio give the fall of h e city as 24 or 25 November, and the arrival of Alexius’ envoys as I January i ~ o g ; intervals different from those of Geoffroy.

COLIN MORRIS 29 own, nor even that he was careless about his history. The epic tradi- tion in which he was writing had not taught him to pay attention to precise chronology, and it is not realistic to seek in his work an accuracy of dating which we might hope to find in a very good chronicler.

The whole spirit of the book is that of the reminiscences of a soldier and man of affairs. They are substantially honest and careful, and he is usually accurate on the main points. Unhappily, he shared with other writers of memoirs an inclination to omit painful facts. His evasion of the issues presented by papal policy, and clumsy attempt to skate round the excommunication, have already been noticed. After the establishment of the Latin Empire, in the midst of a detailed narrative of political events, there is at least one significant omission, for there is no mention of the rejection of the offer of alliance made by Ioannitsa, the Bulgarian king. The results of this foolish decision were so disastrous that Villehardouin perhaps found the episode too painful to record. His lack of frankness does not stop with the avoid- ance of a few awkward episodes. He was a man of strong and simple views, and did not have the sympathy and imagination to be fair to those with whom he disagreed.

The most striking instance of this appears in his treatment of the numerous Crusaders who opposed the successive diversions to Zara and Constantinople. For this group, Villehardouin has a standard description which becomes almost a technical term. They are ‘those who wished the army to be disbanded’. He sets out to discredit them from their first appearance at Venice, when they protested at the plan to attack Zara:

‘We’ve paid for our passage,’ they said, ‘and if the Venetians are willing to take us, we’re quite ready to go. If not, we’ll make shift for ourselves, and go some other way.’ (They said this, in actual fact, because they would have liked the army to be disbanded.) (p. 42)

Geofioy is rarely prepared to allow his opponents to state their views at all, and even when he mentions them, he at once repeats his accusation that they wanted to dissolve the army.l6 Interestingly enough, he does not libel them by inventing political or personal ambitions for them. He appears as unfair rather than dishonest, and as a result ends with an implausible picture of an opposition with a motiveless desire to destroy the Crusade on which it had come. His comments arc in a sense close to the truth, for the leadership argued precisely that the policy of the dissentients would inevitably lead to the break-up of the expedition.“ This uncritical hostility to Simon

16 ‘The Cistercian Abbot of Vaux had something to say, in common with those who were eager to have the army disbanded. They all declared they would ncver give their consent, since it would mean marching against Christians’ (p. 51).

1 7 The Crusade would not have bccn able to set out at all had not the leaders romised to recover Zara for Venice in payment of the outstanding debt. The only hope otccontinu- ing beyond Zara in thc spring of 1203 (by which time only six months’ supplies remained)

30 de Montfort and the other opponents of the diversion is matched by a strong admiration for Venice. Both of these attitudes must have become deeply ingrained over the years of fighting, in which the Venetians were his comrades-in-arms and the shortage of manpower deepened his resentment against those who abandoned the expedi- tion. I t is significant that Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, appears in these pages not as a subtle politician, but as a brave gentleman and faithful colleague in war. In part, indeed, one is bound to respect Geoffroy for his bias towards Venice. He showed no sign (as some other writers did) of wishing to shift the blame for the whole affair onto the shoulders of Venice. He gave full details of the Crusaders’ obligations, and of their failure to meet them, in spite of the fact that he, as one of the envoys, was responsible for the acceptance of the unrealistic terms. Nonetheless, we are left with a completely unsatis- factory picture of the attitude of Venice, with no mention of the long- standing political and economic ambitions which the city had enter- tained in the eastern Mediterranean. In this connection, it will be useful to examine Villehardouin’s account of his two stays at Venice, which illustrate a number of the weaknesses in his approach.

In the spring of 1201, he went with five other envoys to negotiate for shipping. They arrived, we are told, ‘in the first week of Lent’ (p. 31). Thereafter, they experienced a series of delays, the length of which is indicated, not always quite clearly, by Villehardouin. At the end of them he tells us, not very helpfully, that ‘we were now in Lent’ (p. 35). The treaty survives, and its date does not confirm this already confused He is, however, largely correct about the terms of the treaty,’* although his use of the document is odd. The treaty is not quoted in the text, but placed as a speech in the mouth of the Doge. A vivid conversation is set before us in grand epic style, but it is only created at the cost of historical plausibility. The negotia- tions, on this showing, followed an eccentric course. The envoys presented their credentials to the Doge, and four days later stated their errand to the Venetian Council. They gave no details, simply asking for the advice of the Venetians and for their help

in any way that you care to advise or propose, so long as our lords can meet your conditions and bear the cost. (p. 33)

Thus it came about that the proposals were made by the Doge, speak-

VILLEHARDOUIN AND THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

was to accept Alexius‘ offer of assistance. To oppose the diversion was therefore arguably to want to disband the expedition.

is dated I April, a week after Easter. Faral’s suggestion I, p. 819) that the o&iaf%;; was written and dated after the departure of the envoys h as a ring of des eration about it, for the sealing is described by Geofioy, and the obvious meaning oPthe narrative places this in Lent (p. 35).

19 There are two significant mistakes. The Venetians are said to have promised supplies for nine months, as against the year specified in the treaty; and (according to the best manuscri ts) the payment due is said to be 94,000 marks instead of 85,000. If Villehardouin hatfthe text in front of him, he was using it carelessly.

18 The Venetian portion of the treaty is given in Tafel & Thomas, op. cit..

COLIN MORRIS 3' ing in language close to that of the treaty.20 Although he had not been told how many Crusaders were expected, he promised transport for a specific number. The following day, the envoys signified their acceptance without any further negotiation. It is inconceivable that they did not supply some estimate of numbers, and highly unlikely that the terms were settled without argument; indeed, other writers mention disagreement over details. Villehardouin ends by recording papal confirmation, omitting to mention the condition that the Crusade must not proceed against Christians (p. 35). The whole account is characteristic. Much of it is accurate and careful, but the chronology is extremely vague, his desire to draw a picture of gentlemanly co-operation has led to implausibility, and he is evasive about the attitude of the Pope.

Similiar features are apparent in his description of the stay at Venice in the summer of 1202. Again, there are no firm dates until the departure of the expedition after 1 October. The delay was caused by the failure of the Crusaders to produce the number of troops, and therefore the passage-money, to which their envoys had committed them. While Villehardouin was an honest man to have admitted this so clearly, much of his handling of the episode is unfair and even dis- honest. He tried to shift the blame upon the Crusaders who travelled from other ports. The case is a poor one, for there was no evident obligation upon the pilgrims as a whole to avail themselves of the travel arrangements prepared by Villehardouin and his associates. Moreover, his sympathy for Venice drew him into serious falsehoods designed to whitewash the citizens. Thus he described the generous provision made for the Crusaders during their stay there, on the Isle of St. Nicholas:

The Venetians set up a market for them, as abundantly supplied as anyone could desire with everything necessary for the use of horses and men. (p. 43)

The author of the Devastatio gave a very different picture, asserting that the Crusaders were held on the Isle virtually as captives:a1

Moreover, there grew a great fear among the people, so that many returned to their own country, many hastened to Apulia to other ports and took ship; only a small part remained there, among whom a terrible plague raged to the point where the dead could scarcely be buried by the survivors.

I t is interesting to find that this author thought that the shortage of numbers was partly due to maltreatment by Venice; and other eye-witnesses support the Devastatio.22 The discrepancy is so great

20 As the treaty was drafted in the first and second persons, the Venetian section could

91 ed. Hopf, p. 87. 92 Bishop Conrad of Halberstadt (p. 117) and the Soissons account. The latter is not

easily be transformed into a speech by the Doge.

32 VILLEHARDOUIN AND THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

that it is hard to think that Villehardouin made an honest mis- take.

The central drama in the history of the Crusade is that of the diversion from Egypt to Constantinople, and it is necessary to end by formulating’ a position on Villehardouin’s handling of it. It- has already been argued that he is not a fair witness. His whole method of writing history made it difficult to be objective. It gave him no firm chronological framework, and although his policy of confining himself to eye-witness experiences had much to commend it, it dis- couraged him from reporting the attitudes and interests of his characters, as distinct from their public actions. He perhaps never had much perception about human character, and five stormy years had formed his prejudices firmly. Of Venice, he will record nothing ill; while the seceders do not receive the vestige of a fair hearing, and the papal policy (unacceptable as it was to the leaders of the Crusade) is given very little notice. Bias and unfairness, however, are substan- tially different from the deliberate re-writing of history in order to conceal what happened; and we must consider now the criticism that Villehardouin consciously re-told the story of the diversion so as to conceal the existence of a plot. It has been alleged that GeofEroy knew that Boniface of Montferrat and the Venetians intended, in advance of the Crusade, to deflect it to their own purposes; and that his profession to believe that the workings of providence had led the Crusade to Byzantium was intended to obscure the scandalous truth. Villehardouin tells us that the Crusaders were approached at Venice in the autumn of 1202 by the young Alexius with the proposal that they should restore him to the throne which he claimed (p. 45); that the leaders, against heavy opposition, came to terms with him at Zara in the winter of 1202-3 (pp. 51-2); and that the army as a whole agreed to go to Constantinople after a stormy discussion at Corfu (p. 56). So far as it goes, this seems to be the truth.2s The question is what it omits. The young Alexius had arrived in the west during 1201, per- haps in the spring. He approached Innocent 111, Philip of Suabia and Boniface of Montferrat for aid in recovering the throne from the usurper, Alexius Villehardouin omits any mention of these negotiations, and his description of Alexius’ approach to the Crusad- ing leaders in the autumn of 1202 reads as if he had just arrived in Italy. Indeed, he goes out of his way to stress that the claimant’s appearance was a complete surprise:

Here let me tell you of one of the most remarkable and extraordinary events you have ever heard of. (p. 44)

always reliable, hut it owed something to Bishop Nivelon of Soissons. one of the leaders, and it appears well informed about conditions at Venice. See P. Riant, op. cit.. p. 5.

28 Other accounts differ in details, but in substance Villehardouin appears well informed about the facts, even if he is remarkably unfair to the opposition. who are given a better hearing by other writers.

24 The evidence and previous literature is well summarized by. J. Folda, ‘The Fourth Crusade, 1x01-1104. Some Reconsiderations’, in ByzuntinoSluvtccr, s6, 1965. p, 177.

COLIN MORRIS 33 Villehardouin must have heard of the negotiations of 1201, and the absence of any mention has given rise to the suspicion that he was deliberately concealing a plot. The suspicion is increased by the fact that he was closely associated with the two parties who had the strongest interest in intervening at Byzantium: Venice (with whom he had signed the treaty of 1201) and Boniface of Montferrat (whom he had proposed as leader of the expedition).

In spite of this, I find it hard to believe that one of the major pur- poses of the work was to remove all traces of the ‘plot’ from history. By 1207, when Villehardouin finished the book, the question of justifying the diversion was no longer a lively issue, for the Pope had accepted the consequences of the conquest.z5 GeoEroy’s silence about the conversations of 1201 is probably the result of simple lack of interest in them. He always wrote supremely as an eye-witness, and avoided reporting episodes at which he had not been present. The conversations had in any case not been conclusive,2fi and he had only limited second-hand evidence about them.27 In the circumstances, it would have been surprising if he had reported them. On the other hand, he is the only eye-witness to make it clear that Alexius had approached the Crusade before it left Venice-a very odd feature if it was his set purpose in writing to suppress traces of the early planning of the diversion.

We may doubt, indeed, whether Villehardouin measures up to the role of an adroit and skilful propagandist, for which he has sometimes been cast. He is both more honest, and more clumsy, than that. He is capable of distorting the facts, and he does so in largely omitting any consideration of papal policy, in his treatment of the opposition to the diversion, and in his presentation of Franco-Venetian relations. His blundering evasions and awkward omissions have left some fairly clear marks on his narrative, but I doubt if the absence of the 1201 negotiations is one of these. He can be faulted more severely for his failure to give any indication of the strong interests which both Venice and Boniface had in Byzantium-a failure characteristic of his whole method of writing. His work should be considered a rather special example of a familiar type of source: the reminiscences of a successful general. It is special in the sense that Villehardouin, although not unintelligent, was remarkably narrow in his outlook. In some ways, he is the perfect representative of the closed mind; his

25 The letters of the leaders to the west in 1203-5 were obvious1 concerned with the justification of the diversion, for papal policy was still undecide2 For Villehardouin, however, it is difficult to accept in a specific sense Pauphilet’s judgcrnent that ‘he wrote in ordcr to justify this remarkable Crusade’.

2 6 No contemporary suggested that an agreement had been reached before Zara. It may well be that Boniface and Venice were both hoping to deflect thc Crusade, but there was no definite scttlement with Alexius.

27 What inforniation hc had must have come from Boniface, who died shortly before tlic completion of the book. Alexius had been available as a source on the voyage from Corfu to Constantinople, but one suspects that he was not very intimate with Ville- hardouin.

34 VILLEHARDOUIN AND THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

sympathies and interests were restricted, even by the standards of an age and class not given to breadth of vision. I t is also special in a careful concentration upon what was actually seen and heard. The result is a rather curious mixture, the character of which perhaps explains the very divergent views which have been taken of its value. His judgements of men and motives are badly astray, for he saw his memories in the distorting mirrors of loyalty and resentment. The book in consequence shows signs of omission and evasion, often of a clumsy kind, and occasionally of deliberate falsehood. At the same time, he really knew the episodes he was describing, and basically had an honest intention to preserve for posterity the great events which he had witnessed. The greatness of the book, and the secret of its popularity, lie in this single-minded intention. Ignoring all complexities of policy and motive, it presents in dramatic sim- plicity the exciting chain of events which led to the conquest of Constantinople.