City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire by Roger Crowley

possible speed.
    Dandolo wanted the whole army to mount a ship-borne attack across the Golden Horn. The walls here were at their lowest – a single defensive line only thirty-five feet high. His plan was to lower ‘astonishing and magnificent devices’ – improvised flying bridges – from the masts of his tallest ships onto the walls so that men could pour into the city. The Venetians were expert at the practical engineering procedures needed to construct and operate such devices, and comfortable with mounting attacks suspended thirty feet above a pitching deck. These were mariners’ skills. The earth-bound knights paled at fighting in mid-air above a rolling sea and made their excuses; they would conduct their own assault on the land wall near the Blachernae Palace using battering rams and scaling ladders. In the end it was agreed to make a simultaneous attack by land and sea on the north-eastern corners.
    On 17 July, after days of preparation, the Fourth Crusade readied itself for an all-out assault on a Christian city. The flying bridges had been constructed from the yard-arms of the sailing ships, lashed together and planked to create bridges wide enough for three men to walk abreast. They were covered with hide and canvas to protect the attackers from missiles, and mounted on their largest transports. If Clari is to be believed, these structures were a hundred feet long and were hauled up the masts on a complex system of pulleys. The Venetians also mounted stone-throwing machines on the prows of the transports and winched crossbowmen up to the tops in wicker cages; the decks, packed with archers, were covered with ox hides to protect them against the terrifying effects of ‘Greek fire’ – jets of burning petroleum projected from flamethrowers. ‘They organised their attack very well,’ according to Villehardouin. At the land walls, the Franks had mustered scaling ladders, battering rams, mining equipment and their own heavy catapults, ready for a concerted rush.

    That morning they moved forward by land and sea. Dandolo had his fleet drawn up in a single line of ‘a good three crossbow-shots in length’. It advanced slowly across the placid Horn, protected by a torrent of rocks, crossbow bolts and arrows ripping across the sky at the sea walls. They were met by a similar hail of projectiles back, whipping across the decks, pelting the covered flying bridges. The huge sailing vessels – the Eagle , the Pilgrim , the Santa Monica – surged towards the walls until the flying bridges crashed against the battlements so that ‘the men on either side struck at each other with swords and lances’. The noise was extraordinary – the blowing of trumpets, the thudding of drums, the clash of steel, the smashing of rocks hurled by the mangonels, the shouts and screams. ‘The roar of the battle was so loud it seemed as if both land and sea shook.’
    At the land walls, the crusaders propped up their ladders and attempted to force their way in. ‘The attack was forceful, good and strong,’ according to Villehardouin, but they were well matched by the emperor’s crack troops – the Varangian Guard, long-haired axe-wielding Danes and English – and the resistance was stubborn. Fifteen men made it up onto the walls; there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting but the intruders could make no progress; they were hurled back off the ramparts; two men were taken prisoner and the assault juddered to a halt ‘with a lot of men wounded and injured; the barons were extremely disturbed’. Critically, the Venetian attack also started to falter. The fragile low-lying galleys refused to follow the transports in, alarmed by the torrent of missiles being hurled down on them. The whole enterprise hung in the balance.
    It was at this moment that the doge made a critical intervention, probably the single most significant action in the whole long maritime history of the Republic. Dandolo, old and blind, was standing ‘in the prow of