The Savoyard Crusade

Pope Urban V

Today is the feast of Blessed Urban V, one of the “Avignon Popes” and an ardent supporter of the crusades against the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It was Pope Urban V who called for what would become known to history as the “Savoyard Crusade” in 1363 though it would not really get started until 1366. The original leaders of this crusade were supposed to be the kings of France and Cyprus but neither of them actually ended up going so the name for the whole adventure comes from the man who did actually lead the fight, the “Green Count” Amedeo VI of Savoy, one of the forefathers of the Italian Royal Family and one of the most celebrated figures in the long history of the House of Savoy. King Louis I of Hungary was also persuaded to participate, fresh off of a victory over the Bulgars, even taking a son of the Czar of Bulgaria prisoner. Count Amedeo VI assembled his army, mostly from his own lands, while Urban V had difficulties finding transport for them as the Venetians preferred to trade with the Muslims rather than make war on them. Promised support from the German Emperor likewise never materialized.

Count Amedeo made it to Venice, though his funds from the Pope were cut back because he would not be going to the Holy Land itself (though Urban V still blessed the enterprise), this change did help persuade the Venetians to be more cooperative in transporting the Savoyard crusaders and on June 21, 1366 the small army set sail down the Adriatic. Political complications boiled the entire time with the King of Hungary not moving to assist as he had promised and with tensions between the Pope and the Byzantine Emperor John V (a first cousin of Count Amedeo VI) over the papal demand that the Emperor reunite with the Catholic Church in exchange for Latin assistance to his besieged empire. Nonetheless, Count Amedeo forged ahead into the Turkish waters of the Dardanelles, joined by the Emperor’s son-in-law and the Patriarch of Constantinople with a contingent of soldiers. The Emperor himself was, at the time, being held prisoner by the Bulgarians.

On August 22 the Savoyard crusaders landed and made their initial attack on the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula. The Italian soldiers attacked the walls and must have intimidated the Turkish defenders for they fled during the night, leaving the local populace to open the gates and welcome in their Christian liberators. Count Amedeo worked feverishly to establish new garrisons for the important positions such as the key fortresses and the entrance to the straits. As the Turks continued to retreat, the Savoyard knights harried them in pursuit, driving them from the peninsula. Early in September they reached the city of Constantinople itself, most of them staying with their fellow-Italians in the Genoese quarter, some in the famous Galata Tower itself (which was in the Venetian quarter). While in Constantinople, the “Green Count” also sent messengers to make contact with his trapped cousin the Byzantine Emperor John V. Of course, the Emperor asked Amedeo VI to come quickly to his rescue.

The “Green Count” had no papal authorization to make war on the Bulgarians but he could hardly ignore the request for help from his cousin and the Byzantine Empress promised sufficient funding for the expedition to rescue her embattled husband. The “Green Count” made his decision and, leaving loyal Italian troops behind to hold their position in Constantinople, set out in early October across the Black Sea to Bulgaria to find the Emperor. His small army finally landed though exactly where and whether certain cities taken resisted or not is still debated by historians. One fortress that resisted fiercely was Nesebar (or Mesembria) which refused to surrender, forcing the Savoyard troops to take heavy casualties storming the citadel. Then, as was customary at the time, the defenders were put to the sword and the city pillaged. Several more towns were captured afterward until the Savoyard troops had secured control of the Gulf of Burgas.

The "Green Count" Amedeo VI

Throughout the rest of October, November and into December cities were taken, raids were launched and all the while messengers tried to arrange the safe return of the Emperor with the local Bulgarian authorities. Finally, in late January the following year, Emperor John V was delivered to the “Green Count” unharmed. By the time the Savoyard troops returned to Constantinople, after the Emperor had gone ahead of them, a lavish ceremony was prepared to welcome them with the assembled crowd shouting, “Long live the count of Savoy, who had delivered Greece from the Turks and the Emperor, our lord, from the hands of the Emperor of Bulgaria!” With all of that out of the way, the “Green Count” wanted nothing more than to get back to his original purpose of making war on the Islamic hordes. This he did but he had, by this time, a greatly depleted force from what he had started out with.

There were more battles against the Turks but as often defensive as opposed to offensive ones and ultimately the Savoyard crusaders were mostly fighting for the means to travel back to Italy. The “Green Count” did his Christian duty off the battlefield as well by trying to patch-up the East-West Schism of Christianity, naturally to no avail. He had brought along a Latin Patriarch of Constantinople but, to avoid offending the Greeks, had put him up in Gallipoli rather than the city of Constantine itself. He was not to stay however as the Latin Patriarch, Paul, set sail with the rest of the Savoyard crusaders when the left in June of 1367, handing their conquered territories over to the Byzantines. The following month the “Green Count” and his remaining crusaders arrived back on Italian shores in Venice to great acclaim.

Count Amedeo VI and his men had fought many great battles and the history reads better than any fictional adventure, fighting heathen armies, conquering fortresses, rescuing an emperor but, in the end, the fruits of their victory did not last. The count had left the city of Emona in the hands of his natural son, Prince Antonio, who was tricked into an ambush and ending up dying in a Bulgarian prison. Gallipoli was held by Christian forces for the next ten years until it was handed over to the Turks by the son of Emperor John V in return for Turkish support against his own father. Such was the way of the Byzantines.

Massacre of the Latins

Flag of the Republic of Venice

It is now about the anniversary of an horrific atrocity that most of the world has forgotten, a brutal killing spree known as the Massacre of the Latins. This occurred in April of 1182 in Constantinople, the first city of the Byzantine Empire. At the time, the Italian city-states were powerful forces in the Mediterranean and Italian cities such as Venice, Genoa and Pisa had their own territorial concessions in Constantinople to serve their networks of commerce. Italian states dominated the trade and shipping of the region during that time and, particularly for cities like Venice and Genoa, often served as navies-for-hire in the employ of the Byzantine Emperors. However, there was a great deal of jealousy and mistrust of the "Latins" (as all Roman Catholics were called in the east but in this case they were almost entirely Italian) on the part of the Byzantines and it was not uncommon for the various Byzantine emperors to play the Italian city-states off against each other. There was also always plenty of plots and intrigues within the Byzantine court as men fought for the throne and each faction would usually have the support of one Italian state that would be employed against the others on promises of preferential treatment when that particular contestant for the throne became emperor.

Empress Maria of Antioch

By 1180 the Emperor Manuel I died. He had opposed Venice and so favored Genoa and Pisa but after his death his widow Maria of Antioch (a princess from a French family in the Catholic crusader states) ruled as regent for his infant son Alexios II and she had a pro-Italian, pro-Catholic policy. That was not tolerated for long and in April of 1182 she was overthrown by Andronikos I who came to power on a wave of anti-Italian xenophobia. Byzantine mobs charged into the Italian concessions and began massacring everyone in sight. The new Emperor did nothing at all to stop them or to restore order and the result was butchery on an unimaginable scale. Some of the Italians, sensing the danger, managed to escape before the attack but the vast majority of the 60,000 were trapped and helpless in the face of the Byzantine rampage. Men, women and children were killed in horrific fashion. Homes were destroyed, Catholic churches desecrated, even charitable houses were looted. Priests were tortured and murdered, women and girls were raped and the papal legate was decapitated and had his head tied to a dog and chased through the streets. Sick and dying people were stabbed to death in their hospital beds. It was savagery on an unbelievable scale. Those who were not killed in the bloodbath were sold into slavery to the Muslim Turks. They may well have envied the dead. The boys might have been forced into any number of forms of servitude, the men as well, perhaps serving as galley slaves, the women and girls had it worst of all, many forced into sexual slavery in the harems of the powerful.

The death of Andronikos I

It is little comfort that, eventually, Andronikos I is deposed and delivered up to mob justice and killed by his own people, including a few Latins who had, by that time, returned. There can be little sympathy for someone with the blood of tens of thousands of helpless men, women and children on his hands. He also, after overthrowing Maria of Antioch, forced her own son to sign the order for her execution. It is important to remember such an atrocity in order to understand the depth of division that has existed between the Catholic west and the Orthodox east, particularly as it is so often glossed over. Whereas the undoubted outrages of the Fourth Crusade are well known to history, the Massacre of the Latins that came first is seldom mentioned at all. It is also worth noting that, whereas Pope St John Paul II apologized, on behalf of the Catholic west, for the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, the Ecumenical Patriarch, nor any other Orthodox leader, has ever acknowledged or issued a similar apology for the Massacre of the Latins. Little wonder then that efforts at reunification and Christian solidarity have yet to find success.

The Italian Defender of Constantinople

The fall of Constantinople must rank as one of the most tragic events in the history of Western Civilization and, contrarily, there were few if any greater and more symbolic victories for the forces of the Ottoman Empire. On the Christian side, the most famous defender of the city was, of course, the great Emperor Constantine XI. However, the commander of his army which defended the last citadel of the old East Roman Empire was an Italian, and from a republic no less; a condottiero from Genoa named Giovanni Giustiniani Longo. It is not known exactly when he was born but he was the son of one of the most prominent Genoese families, related to the famous Doria family. When Constantinople was imperiled by the Ottoman forces of Sultan Mehmed II, Giovanni Giustiniani used his own fortune to recruit and equip some 700 soldiers and a naval armada to carry them. When he arrived at Constantinople, he so impressed the Emperor that Constantine XI named him commander of his land forces. It was a wise decision given that, we are told, Giustiniani was an expert at siege warfare and the defense of fortified places.

His were not the only non-Greek forces to arrive to help. About 3/5 of the defenders of Constantinople were westerners, most of them Italians. Alvise Diedo was the commander of the Venetian naval forces and he and his men decided that they would stay and help defend the city. Another was the Venetian ambassador Girolamo Minotto who was determined, in his diplomatic capacity, to maintain the neutrality of the Republic of Venice yet, in his personal capacity, he was no less determined to prevent the Turkish capture of Constantinople and fought on the walls alongside the other defenders of the city. Cardinal Metropolitan Isidore of Kiev, the Papal Legate, also recruited about 200 soldiers in Naples, with funds provided by the Pope, to aid in the defense of Constantinople. There also numerous other brave individuals who participated such as Maurizio Cattaneo and the Bocchiardo brothers, Paolo, Antonio and Troilo. All of these men were ultimately under the command of Giovanni Giustiniani and, not surprisingly, he had to prove himself an able diplomat as well as a soldier in prevailing upon the Greeks and the Italians to work together in their common goal of repelling the Turks. Even getting the Italians alone to cooperate was not always easy given the long-standing rivalry between Venice and Genoa at that time.

The courage of Giustiniani and his skill at the art of siege warfare was instrumental in Constantinople holding out as long as it did against the hopelessly large odds against them. When the final attack came on May 29, 1453 Giustiniani was wounded while fighting on the wall to repel the invaders. The exact circumstances remain unknown and sources differ as to whether he was wounded by a crossbow bolt or debris from a cannon shot as well as whether his wound was in the arm, leg or torso but whatever the case may be it was sufficient to put him out of action. This caused morale to drop among the hard-pressed soldiers on the wall and eventually panic began to set in. Giustiniani was helped out of the combat area and as the men began to waver following his absence, Sultan Mehmed II took notice and ordered an all-out assault. The defenders were finally overwhelmed, Emperor Constantine XI falling in the attack as he rushed headlong into the Turkish column pouring into the city. Cardinal Isidore of Kiev was able to escape only by dressing a dead man in red robes and he watched as the Turks decapitated the corpse and carried the severed head through the streets thinking they had killed the Churchman.

Meanwhile, Giustiniani was helped back to his ship by a handful of his men who had survived but he died of his wounds at sea sometime early the next month. His loyal troops took his body back to the island of Chios (a Greek island which then belonged to Genoa) and buried him in the village of Pirgi. Giustiniani and his men were among the most well armed, trained and disciplined that the small garrison had and most were posted at the St Romanos Gate. He, and those with him, played a critical part in the historic battle that saw the city of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who envisioned a great capital city there on the banks of the Bosporus, fall to a non-European foe; irretrievably so it seems. Given east-west tensions, men like Giustiniani and his soldiers who fought to defend Constantinople often seem forgotten. They should not be and deserve to be remembered for their courage and sacrifice alongside Emperor Constantine XI and the thousands of others who lost their lives in the battle for the last citadel of Eastern Rome.


*Note - I have been unable to find an actual picture of Giovanni Giustiniani. Those above are simply pictures of Condottieri of the same general period.