The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was a Latin
Christian armed expedition called by Pope
Innocent III. The stated intent of the expedition
was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city
of Jerusalem, by first conquering the powerful
Egyptian Ayyubid Sultanate, the strongest
Muslim nation of the time. However, a sequence
of economic and political events culminated
in the Crusader army sacking the city of Constantinople,
the capital of the Greek Christian-controlled
Byzantine Empire.
In late 1202, financial issues led to the
Crusader army sacking Zara, which was then
brought under Venetian control. In January
1203, en-route to Jerusalem, the Crusader
leadership entered into an agreement with
the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos to divert
the Crusade to Constantinople and restore
his deposed father as Emperor. The intent
of the Crusaders was then to continue to Jerusalem
with promised Byzantine financial and military
aid. On 23 June 1203, the bulk of the Crusaders
reached Constantinople, while smaller contingents
continued to Acre.
In August, following clashes outside Constantinople,
Alexios was crowned co-Emperor. However, in
January 1204, he was deposed by a popular
uprising. The Crusaders were no longer able
to receive their promised payments from Alexios.
Following the murder of Alexios on 8 February,
the Crusaders decided on the outright conquest
of the city. In April 1204, they captured
and plundered the city's enormous wealth.
Only a handful of the Crusaders continued
to the Holy Land thereafter.
The conquest of Constantinople was followed
by the fragmentation of the Empire into three
rump states centred in Nicaea, Trebizond and
Epirus. The Crusaders then founded several
Crusader states in former Byzantine territory,
largely hinged upon the Latin Empire of Constantinople.
The presence of the Latin Crusader states
almost immediately led to war with the Byzantine
successor states and the Bulgarian Empire.
The Nicaean Empire eventually recovered Constantinople
and restored the Byzantine Empire in 1261.
The Crusade is considered to be one of the
most prominent acts that solidified the schism
between the Greek and Latin Christian churches,
and dealt an irrevocable blow to the already
weakened Byzantine Empire, paving the way
for Muslim conquests in Anatolia and Balkan
Europe in the coming centuries.
== Background ==
Ayyubid Sultan Saladin had conquered most
of the Frankish, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,
including the ancient city itself, in 1187.
The Kingdom had been established 88 years
before, after the capture and sack of Jerusalem
in the First Crusade, which had been a Byzantine
holding prior to the Muslim conquests of the
7th century. The city was sacred to Christians,
Muslims and Jews, and returning it to Christian
hands had been a primary purpose of the First
Crusade. Saladin led a Muslim dynasty, and
his incorporation of Jerusalem into his domains
shocked and dismayed the Catholic countries
of Western Europe. Legend has it that Pope
Urban III literally died of the shock, but
the timing of his death makes that impossible.
The crusader states had been reduced to three
cities along the sea coast: Tyre, Tripoli,
and Antioch.The Third Crusade (1189–92)
reclaimed an extensive amount of territory
for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the
key towns of Acre and Jaffa, but had failed
to retake Jerusalem. The crusade had also
been marked by a significant escalation in
long standing tensions between the feudal
states of western Europe and the Byzantine
Empire, centred in Constantinople. The experiences
of the first two crusades had thrown into
stark relief the vast cultural differences
between the two Christian civilisations. The
Latins (as the Byzantines referred to them
because of their adherence to the Latin Rite)
viewed the Byzantine preference for diplomacy
and trade over war as duplicitous and degenerate,
and their policy of tolerance and assimilation
towards Muslims as a corrupt betrayal of the
faith. For their part, the educated and wealthy
Byzantines maintained a strong sense of cultural,
organizational, and social superiority over
the Latins.Constantinople had been in existence
for 874 years at the time of the Fourth Crusade
and was the largest and most sophisticated
city in Christendom. Almost alone amongst
major medieval urban centres, it had retained
the civic structures, public baths, forums,
monuments, and aqueducts of classical Rome
in working form. At its height, the city held
an estimated population of about half a million
people behind thirteen miles of triple walls.
Its planned location made Constantinople not
only the capital of the surviving eastern
part of the Roman Empire but also a commercial
centre that dominated trade routes from the
Mediterranean to the Black Sea, China, India
and Persia.
As a result, it was both a rival and a tempting
target for the aggressive new states of the
west, notably the Republic of Venice.
One of the leaders of the Third Crusade, Holy
Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, openly
plotted with the Serbs, Bulgars, Byzantine
traitors, and even the Muslim Seljuks against
the Eastern Empire and at one point sought
Papal support for a crusade against the Orthodox
Byzantines. Crusaders also seized the breakaway
Byzantine province of Cyprus; rather than
return it to the Empire, Richard I of England
sold the island to the Knights Templar. Barbarossa
died on crusade, and his army quickly disintegrated,
leaving the English and French, who had come
by sea, to fight Saladin. In 1195 Henry VI,
son and heir of Barbarossa, sought to efface
this humiliation by declaring a new crusade,
and in the summer of 1197 a large number of
German knights and nobles, headed by two archbishops,
nine bishops, and five dukes, sailed for Palestine.
There they captured Sidon and Beirut, but
at the news of Henry's death in Messina along
the way, many of the nobles and clerics returned
to Europe. Deserted by much of their leadership,
the rank and file crusaders panicked before
an Egyptian army and fled to their ships in
Tyre.
Also in 1195, the Byzantine Emperor Isaac
II Angelos was deposed in favour of his brother
by a palace coup. Ascending as Alexios III
Angelos, the new emperor had his brother blinded
(a traditional punishment for treason, considered
more humane than execution) and exiled. Ineffectual
on the battlefield, Isaac had also proven
to be an incompetent ruler who had let the
treasury dwindle and outsourced the navy to
the Venetians. His actions in wastefully distributing
military weapons and supplies as gifts to
his supporters had undermined the empire's
defenses. The new emperor was to prove no
better. Anxious to shore up his position,
Alexios bankrupted the treasury. His attempts
to secure the support of semi-autonomous border
commanders undermined central authority. He
neglected his crucial responsibilities for
defence and diplomacy. The emperor's chief
admiral (his wife's brother-in-law), Michael
Stryphnos, reportedly sold the fleet's equipment
down to the very nails to enrich himself.
== The Crusade begins ==
Pope Innocent III succeeded to the papacy
in January 1198, and the preaching of a new
crusade became the prime goal of his pontificate,
expounded in his bull Post miserabile. His
call was largely ignored by the European monarchs:
the Germans were struggling against Papal
power, and England and France were still engaged
in warfare against each other. However, due
to the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly, a crusading
army was finally organised at a tournament
held at Écry-sur-Aisne by Count Thibaut of
Champagne in 1199. Thibaut was elected leader,
but he died in 1201 and was replaced by an
Italian count, Boniface of Montferrat.Boniface
and the other leaders sent envoys to Venice,
Genoa, and other city-states in 1200 to negotiate
a contract for transport to Egypt, the stated
objective of their crusade; one of the envoys
was the future historian Geoffrey of Villehardouin.
Earlier crusades focused on Palestine had
involved the slow movement of large and disorganised
land hosts across a generally hostile Anatolia.
Egypt was now the dominant Muslim power in
the eastern Mediterranean but also a major
trading partner of Venice. An attack on Egypt
would clearly be a maritime enterprise, requiring
the creation of a fleet. Genoa was uninterested,
but in March 1201 negotiations were opened
with Venice, which agreed to transport 33,500
crusaders, a very ambitious number. This agreement
required a full year of preparation on the
part of the Venetians to build numerous ships
and train the sailors who would man them,
all the while curtailing the city's commercial
activities. The crusading army was expected
to consist of 4,500 knights (as well as 4,500
horses), 9,000 squires, and 20,000 foot-soldiers.
The majority of the crusading army that set
out from Venice in early October 1202 originated
from areas within France. It included men
from Blois, Champagne, Amiens, Saint-Pol,
the Île-de-France, and Burgundy. Several
other regions of Europe sent substantial contingents
as well, such as Flanders and Montferrat.
Other notable groups came from the Holy Roman
Empire, including the men under Bishop Martin
of the Pairis Abbey and Bishop Conrad of Halberstadt,
together in alliance with the Venetian soldiers
and sailors led by the doge, Enrico Dandolo.
The crusade was to be ready to sail on 24
June 1203 and make directly for the Ayyubid
capital, Cairo. This agreement was ratified
by Pope Innocent, with a solemn ban on attacks
on Christian states.
== Attack on Zara ==
There was no binding agreement among the crusaders
that all should sail from Venice. Accordingly,
many chose to sail from other ports, particularly
Flanders, Marseille, and Genoa. By May 1202,
the bulk of the crusader army was collected
at Venice, although with far smaller numbers
than expected: about 12,000 (4–5,000 knights
and 8,000 foot soldiers) instead of 33,500.
The Venetians had performed their part of
the agreement: there awaited 50 war galleys
and 450 transports – enough for three times
the assembled army. The Venetians, under their
aged and blind Doge Dandolo, would not let
the crusaders leave without paying the full
amount agreed to, originally 85,000 silver
marks. The crusaders could only initially
pay 35,000 silver marks. The Doge threatened
to keep them interned unless full payment
was made so a further 14,000 marks was collected,
and that only by reducing the crusaders to
extreme poverty. This was disastrous to the
Venetians, who had halted their commerce for
a great length of time to prepare this expedition.
In addition, about 14,000 men or as many as
20–30,000 men (out of Venice's population
of 60–100,000 people) were needed to man
the entire fleet, placing further strain on
the Venetian economy.Dandolo and the Venetians
considered what to do with the crusade. It
was too small to pay its fee, but disbanding
the force gathered would harm Venetian prestige
and cause significant financial and trading
loss. Dandolo, who joined the crusade during
a public ceremony in the church of San Marco
di Venezia, proposed that the crusaders pay
their debts by intimidating many of the local
ports and towns down the Adriatic, culminating
in an attack on the port of Zara in Dalmatia.
The city had been dominated economically by
Venice throughout the 12th century but had
rebelled in 1181 and allied itself with King
Emeric of Hungary and Croatia. Subsequent
Venetian attempts to recover control of Zara
had been repulsed, and by 1202 the city was
economically independent, under the protection
of the King.King Emeric was Catholic and had
himself taken the cross in 1195 or 1196. Many
of the crusaders were opposed to attacking
Zara, and some, including a force led by the
elder Simon de Montfort, refused to participate
altogether and returned home. While the Papal
legate to the Crusade, Cardinal Peter of Capua,
endorsed the move as necessary to prevent
the crusade's complete failure, the Pope was
alarmed at this development and wrote a letter
to the crusading leadership threatening excommunication.In
1202, Pope Innocent III, despite wanting to
secure papal authority over Byzantium, forbade
the crusaders of Western Christendom from
committing any atrocious acts against their
Christian neighbours. However, this letter
was concealed from the bulk of the army who
arrived at Zara on 10–11 November 1202,
and the attack proceeded. The citizens of
Zara made reference to the fact that they
were fellow Catholics by hanging banners marked
with crosses from their windows and the walls
of the city, but nevertheless the city fell
on 24 November 1202 after a brief siege. There
was extensive pillaging, and the Venetians
and other crusaders came to blows over the
division of the spoils. Order was achieved,
and the leaders of the expedition agreed to
winter in Zara, while considering their next
move. The fortifications of Zara were demolished
by the Venetians.
When Innocent III heard of the sack, he sent
a letter to the crusaders excommunicating
them and ordering them to return to their
holy vows and head for Jerusalem. Out of fear
that this would dissolve the army, the leaders
of the crusade decided not to inform their
followers of this. Regarding the Crusaders
as having been coerced by the Venetians, in
February 1203 he rescinded the excommunications
against all non-Venetians in the expedition.
== Diversion to Constantinople ==
The commercial rivalry between the Republic
of Venice and the Byzantine Empire and the
living memory of the Massacre of the Latins
did much to exacerbate the feeling of animosity
among the Venetians towards the Byzantines.
According to the Chronicle of Novgorod Doge
Enrico Dandolo had been blinded by the Byzantines
during the 1171 expedition to Byzantium and
thus held personal enmity towards the Byzantines.Boniface
of Montferrat, meanwhile, had left the fleet
before it sailed from Venice, to visit his
cousin Philip of Swabia. The reasons for his
visit are a matter of debate; he may have
realized the Venetians' plans and left to
avoid excommunication, or he may have wanted
to meet with the Byzantine prince Alexios
IV Angelos, Philip's brother-in-law and the
son of the recently deposed Byzantine emperor
Isaac II Angelos. Alexios IV had recently
fled to Philip in 1201 but it is unknown whether
or not Boniface knew he was at Philip's court.
There, Alexios IV offered to pay the entire
debt owed to the Venetians, give 200,000 silver
marks to the crusaders, 10,000 Byzantine professional
troops for the Crusade, the maintenance of
500 knights in the Holy Land, the service
of the Byzantine navy to transport the Crusader
Army to Egypt, and the placement of the Eastern
Orthodox Church under the authority of the
Pope, if they would sail to Byzantium and
topple the reigning emperor Alexios III Angelos,
brother of Isaac II. This tempting offer,
for an enterprise that was short on funds,
reached the leaders of the Crusade on 1 January
1203 as they wintered at Zara. Doge Dandolo
was a fierce supporter of the plan; however,
in his earlier capacity as an ambassador to
Byzantium and someone who knew the finer details
of how Byzantine politics worked, it is likely
he knew the promises were false and there
was no hope of any Byzantine emperor raising
the money promised, let alone raising the
troops and giving the church to the Holy See.
Count Boniface agreed and Alexios IV returned
with the Marquess to rejoin the fleet at Corfu
after it had sailed from Zara. Most of the
rest of the crusade's leaders, encouraged
by bribes from Dandolo, eventually accepted
the plan as well. However, there were dissenters.
Led by Reynold of Montmirail, those who refused
to take part in the scheme to attack Constantinople
sailed on to Syria. The remaining fleet of
60 war galleys, 100 horse transports, and
50 large transports (the entire fleet was
manned by 10,000 Venetian oarsmen and marines)
sailed in late April 1203. In addition, 300
siege engines were brought along on board
the fleet. Hearing of their decision, the
Pope hedged and issued an order against any
more attacks on Christians unless they were
actively hindering the Crusader cause, but
he did not condemn the scheme outright.When
the Fourth Crusade arrived at Constantinople
on 23 June 1203, the city had a population
of approximately 500,000 people, a garrison
of 15,000 men (including 5,000 Varangians),
and a fleet of 20 galleys. For both political
and financial reasons, the permanent garrison
of Constantinople had been limited to a relatively
small force, made up of elite guard and other
specialist units. At previous times in Byzantine
history when the capital had come under direct
threat, it had been possible to assemble reinforcements
from frontier and provincial forces. On this
occasion, the suddenness of the danger posed
by the Fourth Crusade put the defenders at
a serious disadvantage. The main objective
of the crusaders was to place Alexios IV on
the Byzantine throne so that they could receive
the rich payments he had promised them. Conon
of Bethune delivered this ultimatum to the
Lombard envoy sent by the Emperor Alexios
III Angelos, who was the pretender's uncle
and had seized the throne from the pretender's
father Isaac II. The citizens of Constantinople
were not concerned with the cause of the deposed
emperor and his exiled son; hereditary right
of succession had never been adopted by the
empire and a palace coup between brothers
was not considered illegitimate in the way
it would have been in the West. First the
crusaders attacked and were repulsed from
the cities of Chalcedon and Chrysopolis, suburbs
of the great city. They won a cavalry skirmish
in which they were outnumbered, defeating
500 Byzantines with just 80 Frankish knights.
=== Siege of July 1203 ===
To take the city by force, the crusaders first
needed to cross the Bosphorus. About 200 ships,
horse transports, and galleys delivered the
crusading army across the narrow strait, where
Alexios III had lined up the Byzantine army
in battle formation along the shore, north
of the suburb of Galata. The Crusader knights
charged straight out of the horse transports,
and the Byzantine army fled south. The Crusaders
followed and attacked the Tower of Galata,
which held the northern end of the massive
chain that blocked access to the Golden Horn.
As they laid siege to the Tower, the Byzantines
counterattacked with some initial success.
The crusaders rallied, and the Byzantines
retreated to the Tower, but the crusaders
were able to follow the soldiers through the
Gate and took the Tower. The Golden Horn now
lay open to the Crusaders, and the Venetian
fleet entered. The Crusaders sailed alongside
Constantinople with 10 galleys to display
the would-be Alexios IV, but from the walls
of the city citizens taunted the puzzled crusaders,
who had been led to believe that they would
rise up to welcome the young pretender Alexios
as a liberator.On 11 July, the Crusaders took
positions opposite the Palace of Blachernae
on the northwest corner of the city. Their
first attempts were repulsed, but on 17 July,
with four divisions attacking the land walls
while the Venetian fleet attacked the sea
walls from the Golden Horn, the Venetians
took a section of the wall of about 25 towers,
while the Varangian guard held off the Crusaders
on the land wall. The Varangians shifted to
meet the new threat, and the Venetians retreated
under the screen of fire. The fire destroyed
about 120 acres (0.49 km2) of the city and
left some 20,000 people homeless.Alexios III
finally took offensive action, leading 17
divisions from the St. Romanus Gate, vastly
outnumbering the crusaders. Alexios III's
army of about 8,500 men faced the Crusaders'
seven divisions (about 3,500 men), but his
courage failed, and the Byzantine army returned
to the city without a fight. The unforced
retreat and the effects of the fire greatly
damaged morale, and the disgraced Alexios
III abandoned his subjects, slipping out of
the city and fleeing to Mosynopolis in Thrace.
The Imperial officials quickly deposed their
runaway emperor and restored Isaac II, robbing
the crusaders of the pretext for attack. The
crusaders were now in the quandary of having
achieved their stated aim while being debarred
from the actual objective, namely the reward
that the younger Alexios had (unbeknownst
to the Byzantines) promised them. The crusaders
insisted that they would only recognize the
authority of Isaac II if his son was raised
to co-emperor, and on 1 August the latter
was crowned as Alexios Angelos IV, co-emperor.
=== Further attacks on Constantinople ===
Alexios IV realised that his promises were
hard to keep. Alexios III had managed to flee
with 1,000 pounds of gold and some priceless
jewels, leaving the imperial treasury short
on funds. At that point the young emperor
ordered the destruction and melting of valuable
Byzantine and Roman icons in order to extract
their gold and silver, but even then he could
only raise 100,000 silver marks. In the eyes
of all Greeks who knew of this decision, it
was a shocking sign of desperation and weak
leadership, which deserved to be punished
by God. The Byzantine historian Nicetas Choniates
characterized it as "the turning point towards
the decline of the Roman state".Forcing the
populace to destroy their icons at the behest
of an army of foreign schismatics did not
endear Alexios IV to the citizens of Constantinople.
In fear of his life, the co-emperor asked
the crusaders to renew their contract for
another six months, to end by April 1204.
Alexios IV then led 6,000 men from the Crusader
army against his rival Alexios III in Adrianople.
During the co-emperor's absence in August,
rioting broke out in the city and a number
of Latin residents were killed. In retaliation
armed Venetians and other crusaders entered
the city from the Golden Horn and attacked
a mosque (Constantinople at this time had
a sizable Muslim population), which was defended
by Muslim and Byzantine residents. In order
to cover their retreat the Westerners instigated
the "Great Fire", which burnt from 19 to 21
August, destroying a large part of Constantinople
and leaving an estimated 100,000 homeless.
In January 1204, the blinded and incapacitated
Isaac II died, probably of natural causes.
Opposition to his son and co-emperor Alexios
IV had grown during the preceding months of
tension and spasmodic violence in and around
Constantinople. The Byzantine Senate elected
a young noble Nicolas Canabus as emperor,
in what was to be one of the last known acts
of this ancient institution. However he declined
the appointment and sought church sanctuary.A
nobleman Alexios Doukas (nicknamed Mourtzouphlos)
became the leader of the anti-crusader faction
within the Byzantine leadership. While holding
the court rank of protovestilarios, Doukas
had led Byzantine forces during the initial
clashes with the crusaders, winning respect
from both military and populace. He was accordingly
well-placed to move against the increasingly
isolated Alexios IV, whom he overthrew, imprisoned,
and had strangled in early February. Doukas
then was crowned as Emperor Alexios V. He
immediately moved to have the city fortifications
strengthened and summoned additional forces
to the city.The crusaders and Venetians, incensed
at the murder of their supposed patron, demanded
that Mourtzouphlos honour the contract that
Alexios IV had promised. When the Byzantine
emperor refused, the Crusaders assaulted the
city once again. On 8 April Alexios V's army
put up a strong resistance, which did much
to discourage the crusaders. The Byzantines
hurled large projectiles onto the enemy siege
engines, shattering many of them. Bad weather
conditions were a serious hindrance to the
crusaders. Fierce wind blew from the shore
and prevented most of the ships from drawing
close enough to the walls to launch an assault.
Only five of the wall's towers were actually
engaged and none of these could be secured;
by mid-afternoon it was evident that the attack
had failed.The Latin clergy discussed the
situation amongst themselves and settled upon
the message they wished to spread through
the demoralised army. They had to convince
the men that the events of 9 April were not
God's judgment on a sinful enterprise: the
campaign, they argued, was righteous and with
proper belief it would succeed. The concept
of God testing the determination of the crusaders
through temporary setbacks was a familiar
means for the clergy to explain failure in
the course of a campaign. The clergy's message
was designed to reassure and encourage the
Crusaders. Their argument that the attack
on Constantinople was spiritual revolved around
two themes. First, the Greeks were traitors
and murderers since they had killed their
rightful lord, Alexios IV. The churchmen used
inflammatory language and claimed that "the
Greeks were worse than the Jews", and they
invoked the authority of God and the pope
to take action.
Although Innocent III had again demanded that
they not attack, the papal letter was suppressed
by the clergy, and the crusaders prepared
for their own attack, while the Venetians
attacked from the sea. Alexios V's army stayed
in the city to fight, along with the imperial
bodyguard, the Varangians, but Alexios V himself
fled during the night. An attempt was made
to find a further replacement emperor from
amongst the Byzantine nobility, but the situation
had now become too chaotic for either of the
two candidates who came forward to find sufficient
support.
=== Sack of Constantinople ===
On 12 April 1204, the weather conditions finally
favoured the crusaders. A strong northern
wind aided the Venetian ships in coming close
to the walls, and after a short battle approximately
seventy crusaders managed to enter the city.
Some were able to knock holes in the walls,
large enough for only a few knights at a time
to crawl through; the Venetians were also
successful at scaling the walls from the sea,
though there was fighting with the Varangians.
The Anglo-Saxon "axe bearers" had been amongst
the most effective of the city's defenders,
but they now attempted to negotiate higher
wages from their Byzantine employers, before
dispersing or surrendering. The crusaders
captured the Blachernae section of the city
in the northwest and used it as a base to
attack the rest of the city. While attempting
to defend themselves with a wall of fire,
however, they burned even more of the city.
This second fire left 15,000 people homeless.
The crusaders completely took the city on
13 April.
The crusaders sacked Constantinople for three
days, during which many ancient Greco-Roman
and medieval Byzantine works of art were stolen
or ruined. Many of the civilian population
of the city were killed and their property
looted. Despite the threat of excommunication,
the crusaders destroyed, defiled and looted
the city's churches and monasteries. It was
said that the total amount looted from Constantinople
was about 900,000 silver marks. The Venetians
received 150,000 silver marks that was their
due, while the crusaders received 50,000 silver
marks. A further 100,000 silver marks were
divided evenly up between the crusaders and
Venetians. The remaining 500,000 silver marks
were secretly kept back by many crusader knights.Speros
Vryonis in Byzantium and Europe gives a vivid
account of the sack:
The Latin soldiery subjected the greatest
city in Europe to an indescribable sack. For
three days they murdered, raped, looted and
destroyed on a scale which even the ancient
Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable.
Constantinople had become a veritable museum
of ancient and Byzantine art, an emporium
of such incredible wealth that the Latins
were astounded at the riches they found. Though
the Venetians had an appreciation for the
art which they discovered (they were themselves
semi-Byzantines) and saved much of it, the
French and others destroyed indiscriminately,
halting to refresh themselves with wine, violation
of nuns, and murder of Orthodox clerics. The
Crusaders vented their hatred for the Greeks
most spectacularly in the desecration of the
greatest Church in Christendom. They smashed
the silver iconostasis, the icons and the
holy books of Hagia Sophia, and seated upon
the patriarchal throne a whore who sang coarse
songs as they drank wine from the Church's
holy vessels. The estrangement of East and
West, which had proceeded over the centuries,
culminated in the horrible massacre that accompanied
the conquest of Constantinople. The Greeks
were convinced that even the Turks, had they
taken the city, would not have been as cruel
as the Latin Christians. The defeat of Byzantium,
already in a state of decline, accelerated
political degeneration so that the Byzantines
eventually became an easy prey to the Turks.
The Fourth Crusade and the crusading movement
generally thus resulted, ultimately, in the
victory of Islam, a result which was of course
the exact opposite of its original intention.
When Innocent III heard of the conduct of
his pilgrims he was filled with shame and
rage, and he strongly rebuked them.
According to a subsequent treaty, the empire
was apportioned between Venice and the leaders
of the crusade, and the Latin Empire of Constantinople
was established. Boniface was not elected
as the new emperor, although the citizens
seemed to consider him as such; the Venetians
thought he had too many connections with the
former empire because of his brother, Renier
of Montferrat, who had been married to Maria
Komnene, empress in the 1170s and 1180s. Instead
they placed Baldwin of Flanders on the throne.
Boniface went on to found the Kingdom of Thessalonica,
a vassal state of the new Latin Empire. The
Venetians also founded the Duchy of the Archipelago
in the Aegean Sea. Meanwhile, Byzantine refugees
founded their own rump states, the most notable
of these being the Empire of Nicaea under
Theodore Laskaris (a relative of Alexios III),
the Empire of Trebizond, and the Despotate
of Epirus.
== Outcome ==
Only a relatively small number of the members
of the Fourth Crusade finally reached their
originally intended goal of the Holy Land.
Research indicates that about a tenth of the
knights who had taken the cross in Flanders
arrived to reinforce the remaining Christian
states there, plus about half of those from
the Île-de-France.
During the ensuing half century the unstable
Latin Empire siphoned off much of Europe's
crusading energy. The legacy of the Fourth
Crusade was the deep sense of betrayal felt
by the Greek Christians. With the events of
1204, the schism between the Churches in the
East and West was not just complete but also
solidified.As an epilogue to the event, Pope
Innocent III, the man who had unintentionally
launched the ill-fated expedition, spoke against
the crusaders thus:
How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks,
no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions
and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical
union and to a devotion for the Apostolic
See, when she has seen in the Latins only
an example of perdition and the works of darkness,
so that she now, and with reason, detests
the Latins more than dogs? As for those who
were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus
Christ, not their own ends, who made their
swords, which they were supposed to use against
the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they
have spared neither religion, nor age, nor
sex. They have committed incest, adultery,
and fornication before the eyes of men. They
have exposed both matrons and virgins, even
those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts
of boys. Not satisfied with breaking open
the imperial treasury and plundering the goods
of princes and lesser men, they also laid
their hands on the treasures of the churches
and, what is more serious, on their very possessions.
They have even ripped silver plates from the
altars and have hacked them to pieces among
themselves. They violated the holy places
and have carried off crosses and relics.
Nevertheless, the Pope accepted the new situation.
When the crusaders took some of the piles
of money, jewels, and gold that they had captured
in the sack of Constantinople back to Rome,
Innocent III accepted the stolen items. Furthermore,
at the Fourth Council of the Lateran the Pope
welcomed and recognised to it western (Catholic)
prelates from Sees established in the conquered
lands – thus recognising their legitimacy
over formerly Orthodox areas.The Latin Empire
was soon faced with a number of enemies. Besides
the individual Byzantine Greek states in Epirus
and Nicaea, there were also the Bulgarian
Empire and the Seljuk Sultanate. The Greek
states fought for supremacy against both the
Latins and each other.Several of the major
Greek and Latin protagonists in the event
died or were killed in the years following
the fall of the city. The betrayal and blinding
of Murtzuphlus by Alexios III led to his capture
by the Latins and his execution in 1205. Not
long after, Alexios III was captured by Boniface
and sent to exile in Southern Italy. He died
in Nicaea in 1211. In 1205, Kaloyan of Bulgaria
crushed the Latin Crusaders with his Cuman
light cavalry. On 14 April 1205, one year
after the conquest of the city, Emperor Baldwin
was decisively defeated and captured at the
Battle of Adrianople by the Bulgarians. In
1205 or 1206, the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan
mutilated him and left him to die, while others
suggest he was kept captive in the famous
Baldwin's Tower in the Bulgarian capital Veliko
Turnovo, where he died under unknown circumstances.
The Venetian Doge Dandolo died in May 1205.
On 4 September 1207, the Bulgarians killed
Boniface in an ambush. He was succeeded by
his infant son Demetrius of Montferrat, who
ruled until he reached adulthood but was eventually
defeated by Theodore I Doukas, the despot
of Epirus and a relative of Murtzuphlus. The
Kingdom of Thessalonica was restored to Byzantine
rule in 1224.Various Latin-French lordships
throughout Greece – in particular, the Duchy
of Athens and the principality of the Morea
– provided cultural contacts with western
Europe and promoted the study of Greek. There
was also a French cultural work, notably the
production of a collection of laws, the Assises
de Romanie. The Chronicle of Morea appeared
in both French and Greek (and later Italian
and Aragonese) versions. Impressive remains
of crusader castles and Gothic churches can
still be seen in Greece. Nevertheless, the
Latin Empire always rested on shaky foundations.
Constantinople was re-captured by the Nicaean
Greeks under Michael VIII Palaeologos in 1261,
and commerce with Venice was re-established.
During the middle of the 15th century, the
Latin Church (Roman Catholic Church) tried
to organise a new crusade aimed at restoring
the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, which
was gradually being torn down by the advancing
Ottoman Turks. The attempt failed, however,
as the vast majority of Greek civilians and
a growing part of their clergy refused to
recognize and accept the short-lived near-union
of the Churches of East and West signed at
the Council of Florence and Ferrara by the
Ecumenical patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople.
The Greek population, reacting to the Latin
conquest, believed that the Byzantine civilization
that revolved around the Orthodox faith would
be more secure under Ottoman Islamic rule.
Overall, religious-observant Greeks preferred
to sacrifice their political freedom and political
independence in order to preserve their faith's
traditions and rituals in separation from
the Roman See.
In the late 14th and early 15th centuries,
"crusades" on a limited scale were organised
by the Kingdoms of Hungary, Poland, Wallachia,
and Serbia. These were not the traditional
expeditions aimed at the recovery of Jerusalem
but rather defensive campaigns intended to
prevent further expansion to the west by the
Ottoman Empire. During the Ottoman siege of
Constantinople in 1453, up to 2,000 Venetian
and Genoese volunteers formed part of the
approximately 9,000 defenders of the city.
== Legacy ==
The prominent medievalist Steven Runciman
wrote in 1954: "There was never a greater
crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade."
The controversy that has surrounded the Fourth
Crusade has led to diverging opinions in academia
on whether its objective was indeed the capture
of Constantinople. The traditional position,
which holds that this was the case, was challenged
by Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden
in their book The Fourth Crusade (1977).Constantinople
was considered as a bastion of Christianity
that defended Europe from the advancing forces
of Islam, and the Fourth Crusade's sack of
the city dealt an irreparable blow to this
eastern bulwark. Although the Greeks retook
Constantinople after 57 years of Latin rule,
the Byzantine Empire had been crippled by
the Fourth Crusade. Reduced to Constantinople,
north-western Anatolia, and a portion of the
southern Balkans, the empire fell to the Ottoman
Turks who captured the city in 1453.Eight
hundred years later, Pope John Paul II twice
expressed sorrow for the events of the Fourth
Crusade. In 2001, he wrote to Christodoulos,
Archbishop of Athens, "It is tragic that the
assailants, who set out to secure free access
for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against
their brothers in the faith. The fact that
they were Latin Christians fills Catholics
with deep regret." In 2004, while Bartholomew
I, Patriarch of Constantinople, was visiting
the Vatican, John Paul II asked, "How can
we not share, at a distance of eight centuries,
the pain and disgust." This has been regarded
as an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church
for the massacres perpetrated by the warriors
of the Fourth Crusade.In April 2004, in a
speech on the 800th anniversary of the city's
capture, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
I formally accepted the apology. "The spirit
of reconciliation is stronger than hatred,"
he said during a liturgy attended by Roman
Catholic Archbishop Philippe Barbarin of Lyon,
France. "We receive with gratitude and respect
your cordial gesture for the tragic events
of the Fourth Crusade. It is a fact that a
crime was committed here in the city 800 years
ago." Bartholomew said his acceptance came
in the spirit of Pascha. "The spirit of reconciliation
of the resurrection... incites us toward reconciliation
of our churches."The Fourth Crusade was one
of the last of the major crusades to be launched
by the Papacy, though it quickly fell out
of Papal control. After bickering between
laymen and the papal legate led to the collapse
of the Fifth Crusade, later crusades were
directed by individual monarchs, mostly against
Egypt. One subsequent crusade, the Sixth,
succeeded in restoring Jerusalem to Christian
rule for 15 years.
== In fiction and music ==
The Fourth Crusade is depicted in Poul Anderson's
novel There Will Be Time from the point of
view of a 20th-century time traveler who saves
the life of a Byzantine girl during the carnage
and falls in love with her.
Neal Stephenson's and Nicole Galland's novel
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O deals with events
leading up to and during the Sack of Constantinople
from the perspective of modern time travellers.
Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino begins shortly
after the Sack of Constantinople.
The second volume of Judith Tarr's trilogy
The Hound and the Falcon – titled The Golden
Horn – also depicts the Fourth Crusade and
Sack, showing it from its prelude through
the aftermath in a historical fiction/fantasy
setting that captures elements of both the
Latin and Greek sides of the conflict.
The IVth Crusade is the title of British death
metal band Bolt Thrower's fourth studio album
released in 1992.
== See also ==
== References ==
=== Notes ===
=== Bibliography ===
==== Primary sources ====
Choniates, Nicetas. "The Sack of Constantinople".
Fordham.edu.
Chronicle of Morea
de Villehardouin, Geoffrey. "Chronicle of
The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople".
Fordham.edu.
Pope Innocent III. "Reprimand of Papal Legate".
Fordham.edu.
Robert of Clari. "The Conquest of Constantinople".
deremilitari.org. (see also excerpts from
another translation)
"The Fourth Crusade 1204: Collected Sources".
Fordham.edu. (excerpts from several contemporary
accounts)
"The Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders".
shsu.edu. 1204. Archived from the original
on 2007-09-27.
"The Medieval Russian Account of the Fourth
Crusade – A New Annotated Translation".
academia.edu.
==== Secondary sources ====
"Crusades". Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006.
Angold, Michael, The Fourth Crusade, Harlow:
Pearson, 2003
Charles Brand. Byzantium Confronts the West,
1180–1204, Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press, 1968
Godfrey, John. 1204: The Unholy Crusade. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980
Harris, Jonathan, Byzantium and the Crusades,
Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2014. ISBN 978-1-78093-767-0
Harris, Jonathan, 'Collusion with the infidel
as a pretext for military action against Byzantium',
in Clash of Cultures: the Languages of Love
and Hate, ed. S. Lambert and H. Nicholson,
Turnhout: Brepols, 2012, pp. 99–117
Hindley, Geoffrey. The Crusades: A History
of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War. New York,
NY: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003. New
edition: The Crusades: Islam and Christianity
in the Struggle for World Supremacy. New York,
NY: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2004.
Lilie, Ralph-Johannes. Byzantium and the Crusader
States, 1096–1204. Translated by J. C. Morris
and Jean E. Ridings. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993; originally published in 1988.
Madden, Thomas F. (2003). Enrico Dandolo and
the Rise of Venice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-7317-1.
Madden, Thomas F., and Donald E. Queller.
The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1997
Marin, Serban. A Humanist Vision regarding
the Fourth Crusade and the State of the Assenides.
The Chronicle of Paul Ramusio (Paulus Rhamnusius),
Annuario del Istituto Romano di Cultura e
Ricerca Umanistica vol. 2 (2000), pp. 51–57.
McNeal, Edgar, and Robert Lee Wolff. The Fourth
Crusade, in A History of the Crusades (edited
by Kenneth M. Setton and others), vol. 2,
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1962
Nicol, Donald M. Byzantium and Venice: A Study
in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations, Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
Noble, Peter S. Eyewitnesses of the Fourth
Crusade – the War against Alexius III, Reading
Medieval Studies v.25, 1999.
Phillips, Jonathan. The Fourth Crusade and
the sack of Constantinople. New York: Viking,
2004. ISBN 978-0-14-303590-9.
Queller, Donald E. The Latin Conquest of Constantinople.
New York, NY; London, U.K.; Sydney, NSW; Toronto,
ON: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1971.
Queller, Donald E., and Susan J. Stratton.
"A Century of Controversy on the Fourth Crusade",
in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History
v. 6 (1969): 237–77; reprinted in Donald
E. Queller, Medieval Diplomacy and the Fourth
Crusade. London: Variorum Reprints, 1980.
Thomas F. Madden. Crusades: The Illustrated
History
== Further reading ==
Angold, Michael. The Fourth Crusade: Event
and Context. Harlow, NY: Longman, 2003.
Bartlett, W. B. An Ungodly War: The Sack of
Constantinople and the Fourth Crusade. Stroud:
Sutton Publishing, 2000.
Harris, Jonathan, Byzantium and the Crusades,
London: Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2014. ISBN 978-1-78093-767-0
Harris, Jonathan, "The problem of supply and
the sack of Constantinople", in The Fourth
Crusade Revisited, ed. Pierantonio Piatti,
Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
2008, pp. 145–54. ISBN 978-88-209-8063-4.
Kazhdan, Alexander "Latins and Franks in Byzantium",
in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh
(eds.), The Crusades from the Perspective
of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Washington,
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001: 83–100.
Kolbaba, Tia M. "Byzantine Perceptions of
Latin Religious ‘Errors’: Themes and Changes
from 850 to 1350", in Angeliki E. Laiou and
Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (eds.), The Crusades
from the Perspective of Byzantium and the
Muslim World Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks,
2001: 117–43.
Nicolle, David. The Fourth Crusade 1202–04:
The betrayal of Byzantium, Osprey Campaign
Series #237. Osprey Publishing. 2011. ISBN
978-1-84908-319-5.
== External links ==
Byzantine & Christian Museum / Franks and
Latins in Byzantium
