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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 defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid Sultanate, the strongest Muslim state of the time. However, a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army’s 1202 siege of Zara and the 1204 sack of Constantinople, the capital of the Greek Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire, rather than Egypt as originally planned. This led to the partitioning of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders.

The Republic of Venice contracted with the Crusader leaders to build a dedicated fleet to transport their invasion force. However, the leaders greatly overestimated the number of soldiers who would embark from Venice, since many sailed from other ports, and the army that appeared could not pay the contracted price. In lieu of payment, the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo proposed that the Crusaders back him in attacking the rebellious city of Zadar (Zara) on the eastern Adriatic coast. This led in November 1202 to the siege and sack of Zara, the first attack against a Catholic city by a Catholic Crusader army. The city was then brought under Venetian control. When the Pope heard of this, he temporarily excommunicated the Crusader army.

In January 1203, en route to Jerusalem, the Crusader leadership entered into an agreement with the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos to divert their main force to Constantinople and restore his deposed father Isaac II Angelos as emperor, who would then add his support to their invasion of Jerusalem. On 23 June 1203, the main Crusader army reached Constantinople, while other contingents (perhaps a majority of all crusaders) continued to Acre.

In August 1203, following the siege of Constantinople, Alexios was crowned co-emperor. However, in January 1204 he was deposed by a popular uprising, depriving the Crusaders of their promised bounty payments. 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 Byzantine Empire into three states centered in Nicaea, Trebizond and Epirus. The Crusaders then founded several new Crusader states, known as Frankokratia, 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 with the Bulgarian Empire. The Nicaean Empire eventually recovered Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire in 1261.

The Fourth Crusade is considered to have solidified the East–West Schism. The crusade dealt an irrevocable blow to the Byzantine/Roman Empire, contributing to its decline and fall.

Background[edit]

Loss of Jerusalem to the truce of 1198[edit]

Between 1176 and 1187, the Ayyubid sultan Saladin conquered most of the Crusader states in the Levant. Jerusalem was lost to the Ayyubids following the siege of Jerusalem in 1187.[1] The Crusader states were then reduced by Saladin to little more than three cities along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea: Tyre, Tripoli and Antioch.[2]

The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was launched in response to the fall of Jerusalem, with the goal of recovering the city. It successfully reclaimed an extensive territory, effectively reestablishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Although Jerusalem itself was not recovered, the important coastal towns of Acre and Jaffa were. On 2 September 1192, the Treaty of Jaffa was signed with Saladin, bringing the crusade to an end. The truce would last for three years and eight months.[3]

The crusade had also been marked by a significant escalation in longstanding tensions between the feudal states of western Europe and the Byzantine Empire.[4][5] During the crusade, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, had almost besieged Constantinople because of the failure of the Byzantines to provide him with safe passage across the Dardanelles. The Byzantines for their part suspected him of conspiring with the breakaway Byzantine provinces of Serbia and Bulgaria. King Richard I of England also seized the breakaway Byzantine province of Cyprus. Rather than return it to the Empire (and realizing his inability to govern it), he sold the island to the Knights Templar.[6]

Saladin died on 4 March 1193, before the expiration of the truce, and his empire was contested and divided between three of his sons and two of his brothers. The new ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Henry II of Champagne, signed an extension of the truce with Egyptian Sultan al-Aziz Uthman. In 1197, the peace was interrupted by the arrival of the German Crusade of 1197. Without the permission of Henry, the Germans attacked the territory of al-Adil I of Damascus, who responded by attacking Jaffa. The sudden death of Henry prevented the relief of the port and the city was taken by force. The Germans did, however, succeed in capturing Beirut in the north.[3]

Henry was succeeded by Aimery of Cyprus, who signed a truce with al-Adil of five years and eight months on 1 July 1198. The truce preserved the status quo: Jaffa remained in Ayyubid hands, but its destroyed fortifications could not be rebuilt; Beirut was left to the crusaders; and Sidon was placed under a revenue-sharing condominium. Before the expiration of the new truce on 1 March 1204, al-Adil succeeded in uniting the former empire of Saladin, acquiring Egypt in 1200 and Aleppo in 1202. As a result, his domains almost completely surrounded the diminished Crusader states.[3]

Constantinople[edit]

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.[7] 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 was home to an estimated population of about half a million people[8] protected by 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,[9] China, India and Persia.[10] 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.

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.[11] 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.[12][13]

Rendezvous at Venice[edit]

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.[14] 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.[15][16] Thibaut was elected leader, but he died in 1201 and was replaced by Boniface of Montferrat.[17]

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.[18] 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. [19]

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 Martin, abbot of 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.[20]

Diversion[edit]

Attack on Zara[edit]

The crusaders conquering the City of Zadar, painted by Tintoretto

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.[21] The Venetians had performed their part of the agreement: there awaited 50 war galleys and 450 transports – enough for three times the assembled army.[22] 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 were collected, and that only by reducing the crusaders to extreme poverty.[23] 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.[22][24]

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.[25] 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.[26][27] 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.[28]

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 or went to the Holy Land on their own. 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.[20]

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.[29] However, this letter, delivered by Peter of Lucedio, may not have reached the army in time. The bulk of the army 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.[30] 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.[31]

Decision to go to Constantinople[edit]

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 Romans. According to the Chronicle of Novgorod Doge Enrico Dandolo had been blinded by the Emperor Manuel I Comnenus while part of an embassy to Constantinople in 1171, and accordingly held personal enmity towards the Byzantines.[32]

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 offer, tempting for an enterprise that was short on funds, reached the leaders of the Crusade on 1 January 1203 as they wintered at Zara.[33] 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,[31] eventually accepted the plan as well. However, there were dissenters. Led by Renaud of Montmirail, those who refused to take part in the scheme to attack Constantinople sailed on to Syria.[31] 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.[34] In addition, 300 siege engines were brought along on board the fleet.[35] 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.[36]

When the Fourth Crusade arrived at Constantinople on 23 June 1203, the city had a population of approximately 500,000 people,[37] a garrison of 15,000 men (including 5,000 Varangians), and a fleet of 20 galleys.[38][39][40][41] For both political and financial reasons, the permanent garrison of Constantinople had been limited to a relatively small force, made up of elite guards 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.[37] 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.[42]

Siege of July 1203[edit]

The Crusader attack on Constantinople, from a Venetian manuscript of Geoffrey de Villehardouin’s history, c. 1330

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. The Tower of Galata held a garrison of mercenary troops of English, Danish, and Italian origin.[43] On 6 July the largest ship in the crusaders’ fleet, the Aquila (Eagle), broke the chain. A section of it was then sent to Acre to boost the defences in the Holy Land.[3]

As the crusaders laid siege to the Tower of Galata, the defenders routinely attempted to sally out with some limited success, but often suffered bloody losses. On one occasion the defenders sallied out but were unable to retreat back to the safety of the tower in time, the Crusader forces viciously counterattacked, with most of the defenders being cut down or drowning in the Bosporus in their attempts to escape.[44] The tower was swiftly taken as a result. 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.[45]

On 11 July, the Crusaders took positions opposite the Palace of Blachernae on the northwest corner of the city. Their first attacks 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.[46]

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.[47] 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.[48] The Imperial officials quickly deposed their runaway emperor and restored Isaac II, robbing the crusaders of the pretext for attack.[48] 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.[48]

Reign of Alexios IV[edit]

Capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204

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».[49]

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.[50] 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[citation needed]. 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.[49] 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.[51]

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.[52]

War against Alexios V[edit]

Venetian mosaic from 1213 depicting the fall of Constantinople

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.[49] The Byzantines hurled large projectiles onto the enemy siege engines, shattering many of them. Bad weather conditions were a serious hindrance to the crusaders. A 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.[49]

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.[49] 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.[49] The churchmen used inflammatory language and claimed that «the Greeks were worse than the Jews»,[49] 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.[citation needed]

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.[53] 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.[50] The crusaders completely took the city on 13 April.

Sack of Constantinople[edit]

The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (Eugène Delacroix, 1840). The most infamous action of the Fourth Crusade was the sack of the Orthodox Christian city of Constantinople.

The crusaders sacked Constantinople for three days, during which many ancient and medieval Greco-Roman 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.[54][20] It was said that the total amount looted from Constantinople was about 900,000 silver marks. The Venetians received 150,000 silver marks that were 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.[55][56]

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 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.[54]

When Innocent III heard of the conduct of his pilgrims he was filled with shame and rage, and he strongly rebuked them.

Holy Land[edit]

The main army that sailed from Venice to Constantinople experienced several waves of defections as men sought to fulfill their vows independently of the leadership. Most of them sailed directly from ports in Apulia (southern Italy) to Acre. According to Villehardouin, the majority of those who set out on the Fourth Crusade went to the Holy Land, while only a minority participated in the attack on Constantinople. Villehardouin, however, regarded those who went to the Holy Land as deserters of the main army and its leadership and he may have exaggerated their number in order to magnify the accomplishments of the minority that besieged Constantinople.[3][57]

Modern historians have tended to disregard Villehardouin’s claims. Steven Runciman thought that only a «tiny proportion» and Joshua Prawer only some «pitiful remnants» of the original army arrived in the Holy Land. Recent studies suggest that the number was substantial but shy of a majority. Of the 92 named individuals who took the crusader vow in Villehardouin’s account, between 23 and 26 of them went to the Holy Land. The rate of «desertion» seems highest among the French faction.[57] Only about a tenth of the knights who had taken the cross in Flanders arrived to reinforce the remaining Christian states in the Holy Land, but over half of those from the Île-de-France did. All told, about 300 knights with their retinues from northern France made it to the Holy Land.[58] Of the contingents from Burgundy, Occitania, Italy and Germany we have less information, but there were certainly defections among the Occitan and German contingents.[3]

A large sum of money raised by the preacher Fulk of Neuilly did reach the Holy Land. Before his death in May 1202, Fulk gave the money to the Abbey of Cîteaux. Abbot Arnaud Amalric sent it to Acre in two installments. It was used to repair walls, towers and other defences that had been damaged by the earthquake of May 1202. A second wall was even added at Acre sometime before 1212.[3]

Apulia to Acre[edit]

Several crusaders, instead of going on to Venice, turned south at Piacenza in the summer of 1202 intending to go directly to the Holy Land from ports in southern Italy. Among them were Vilain of Nully, Henry of Arzillières, Renard II of Dampierre, Henry of Longchamp and Giles of Trasignies with their retinues. They do not seem to have been acting in concert or travelling together. Ultimately, several hundred knights and accompanying infantry reached the Holy Land via south Italian ports. The force was so small that King Aimery of Jerusalem refused to break his truce with the Ayyubids to allow them to go to war, despite the pleas of Renard, who was fulfilling the crusading vow of the late Count Theobald III of Champagne and possessed ample funds. As a result, eighty crusaders under Renard decided to go to the Principality of Antioch, which had no such truce. Advised against such a move, they were ambushed on the road and all but Renard were killed or captured. Renard remained in captivity for thirty years.[57]

When the crusade was diverted to Zara, many crusaders returned home or else remained behind in Italy. Some bypassed the Venetian fleet and found other means of going to the Holy Land. Geoffrey of Villehardouin, the historian’s nephew, was one of them. Stephen of the Perche, was prevented from going with the main army on account of illness. Upon his recovery in March 1203, he took ship in southern Italy and travelled directly to the Holy Land with many others who had remained behind, including Rotrou of Montfort and Yves of La Jaille. Stephen re-joined the main army after the fall of Constantinople.[57]

Following the siege of Zara, more contingents abandoned the main army. The crusaders sent Robert of Boves as an envoy to the pope, but after his mission was done he went straight to the Holy Land. Abbot Martin of Pairis joined him on the trip to Rome and afterwards took ship for Palestine at Siponto. Martin arrived in Acre on 25 April 1203 in the midst of an outbreak of plague. According to the Devastatio Constantinopolitana, after the decision was made at Zara to place Alexios IV on the throne of Constantinople, the leaders of the crusade granted permission for about 1,000 men to leave and find their own way to the Holy Land. In fact, about 2,000 men abandoned the main army at that stage. Most of them were among the poorer crusaders, and two ships carrying them sank with loss of life. The German crusader Garnier of Borland also abandoned the main army after Zara.[57]

From Zara, an official embassy, led by Renaud of Montmirail, was dispatched to the Holy Land. It included Hervé of Châtel, William III of Ferrières, Geoffrey of Beaumont and the brothers John and Peter of Frouville. They were supposed to return to the main army within fifteen days of accomplishing their mission. In fact, they remained in the Holy Land and did not return until after the fall of Constantinople.[57]

In the winter of 1203–1204, Simon V of Montfort led a large contingent of defectors disgusted with the attack on Zara and opposed to the Constantinople venture. He and his men had even avoided the ruins of Zara and camped in Hungary.[59] Among Simon’s followers were his brother, Guy of Montfort; the Yvelinois Simon V of Neauphle, Robert IV Mauvoisin and Dreux II of Cressonsacq; Abbot Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay; and the unnamed abbot of Cercanceaux. Shortly afterwards they were joined by Enguerrand II of Boves.[57][60] They marched up the coast from Zara back to Italy and then down the Italian coast, where they embarked for Palestine.[57]

Flemish fleet[edit]

For reasons unknown, Baldwin of Flanders divided his forces, leading half to Venice himself and sending the other half by sea. The Flemish fleet left Flanders in the summer of 1202 under the command of John II of Nesle, Thierry of Flanders and Nicholas of Mailly.[a] It sailed into the Mediterranean and, according to the chronicler Ernoul, attacked and captured an unnamed Muslim city on the African coast. The city was left in the hands of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and the fleet went on to Marseille, where it wintered in 1202–1203. There the fleet was joined by a number of French crusaders, including Bishop Walter II of Autun, Count Guigues III of Forez, Bernard IV of Moreuil, Henry of Arraines, Hugh of Chaumont, John of Villers, Peter Bromont and the brothers Walter and Hugh of Saint-Denis and their retinues.[57]

The pilots of Marseille had more experience sailing out of sight of land than those of any other Mediterranean port, having been doing it since the mid-12th century. In summer, they could make the trip to Acre in fifteen days. They possessed a fleet sufficient to transport the army of Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade in 1190. It was also a cheaper and more accessible port for the French contingent.[57]

Baldwin sent orders to his fleet in Marseille to sail at the end of March 1203 and rendezvous with the Venetian fleet off Methoni.[b] His messengers must also have brought news of the decision to go to Constantinople before proceeding to the Holy Land. For this reason the Flemish leaders may have opted to ignore the rendezvous and sail directly to Acre. It is also possible that they kept the rendezvous, but not finding the Venetian fleet (which did not get to Methoni before May) went on to Acre alone. They probably arrived there before Martin of Pairis on 25 April 1203.[57] At least a part of the fleet stopped at Cyprus, where Thierry of Flanders made a claim on the island in the name of his wife, the Damsel of Cyprus, daughter of Isaac Doukas Komnenos, former emperor of Cyprus. Thierry, his wife and those knights that had supported him were ordered by Aimery to leave his kingdom, so they went to the Kingdom of Armenia, homeland of Thierry’s mother-in-law.[61]

The Flemish crusaders in Acre encountered the same difficulty as Renard of Dampierre. King Aimery was unwilling to break his truce for the sake of such a small army. The crusaders, therefore, split up. Some entered the service of the Principality of Antioch and others that of the County of Tripoli. Bernard of Moreuil and John of Villers joined Renard of Dampierre and were captured along with him. John of Nesle went to the aid of Armenia and thus found himself fighting some of his former comrades, since Armenia and Antioch were then at war. Sometime before 5 November 1203, however, the truce was broken. The Muslims seized two Christian ships and in retaliation, the Christians had seized six Muslim ships. The Flemish crusaders returned to the Kingdom of Jerusalem to fight.[57]

On 8 November, Martin of Pairis and Conrad of Swartzenberg were sent to the main army, then besieging Constantinople, to press for it to continue on to the Holy Land now that the truce was broken. The envoys arrived on 1 January 1204, but the army was in the midst of heavy fighting and nothing came of their embassy.[57]

Outcomes[edit]

Partition of the Byzantine Empire[edit]

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.[citation needed]

The Latin Empire was soon faced with a number of enemies. Besides the individual Byzantine rump states in Epirus and Nicaea, and the also Christian Bulgarian Empire, there was also the Seljuk Sultanate. The Greek states fought for supremacy against both the Latins and each other.[62]

Impact on the Holy Land[edit]

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.[63]

East–West schism[edit]

Assessing the disastrous results of the expedition he had started, Pope Innocent III 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.[64]

Latin rule in Greece[edit]

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.[citation needed]

Modern reactions[edit]

«O City, City, eye of all cities, universal boast, supramundane wonder, nurse of churches, leader of the faith, guide of Orthodoxy, beloved topic of orations, the abode of every good thing! Oh City, that hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury! O City, consumed by fire…»

Niketas Choniates laments the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders.[65]

The prominent medievalist Sir Steven Runciman wrote in 1954: «There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.»[66] 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).[67]

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.[68]

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.»[69] 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.»[70] This has been regarded as an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the massacres perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade.[71]

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.»[72]

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.

See also[edit]

  • Succession of the Roman Empire

Footnotes[edit]

  1. ^ Nicholas of Mailly joined the main army after the fall of Constantinople.[57]
  2. ^ Baldwin of Flanders’ wife, Marie of Champagne, sailed from Marseille to Acre in the spring of 1204. She was there when she learned of his election as emperor.[57]

References[edit]

  1. ^ John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003), 169
  2. ^ Mayer, Hans Eberhard (1988). The Crusades. p. 136. ISBN 0-19-873097-7.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Benjamin Z. Kedar (2005), «The Fourth Crusade’s Second Front», in A. Laiou (ed.), Urbs Capta: The Fourth Crusade and its Consequences, Paris: Lethielleux, pp. 89–101.
  4. ^ Haldon, John (2002). Byzantium at War. Oxford: Osprey. pp. 87.
  5. ^ Phillips, Jonathan (2004). The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Viking. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-14-303590-9.
  6. ^ «Templar Rule on Cyprus 1191-1192». Helena P. Schrader. Retrieved 2022-08-10.
  7. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  8. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  9. ^ Norman Davies, p. 311, «Vanished Kingdoms. The History of Half-forgotten Europe», ISBN 978-0-141-04886-4
  10. ^ Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 42–43.
  11. ^ John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003)
  12. ^ Brand, Charles M.; Cutler, Anthony (1991). «Stryphnos, Michael». In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1968. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
  13. ^ Guilland, Rodolphe (1967). «Le Drongaire de la flotte, le Grand drongaire de la flotte, le Duc de la flotte, le Mégaduc». Recherches sur les institutions byzantines [Studies on the Byzantine Institutions]. Berliner byzantinische Arbeiten 35 (in French). Vol. I. Berlin and Amsterdam: Akademie-Verlag & Adolf M. Hakkert. pp. 535–562. OCLC 878894516.
  14. ^ Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). pp. 107–111. ISBN 0-14-013705-X.
  15. ^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1976). The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571: The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. American Philosophical Society. p. 7. ISBN 9780871691149.
  16. ^ Edgar H. McNeal (1953), «Fulk of Neuilly and the Tournament of Écry», Speculum, 28 (2): 371–375, doi:10.2307/2849695, JSTOR 2849695, S2CID 162545150.
  17. ^ Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-521-34772-3.
  18. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Edition, page 306 Macropaedia Volume 5
  19. ^ ‘The compact with the Venetians. Villehardouin: Conquête de Constantinople, ch. iv, v, vi, Nos. 18, 24, 30 Old French.
  20. ^ a b c Hughes, Philip. «Innocent III and the Latin East,» History of the Church Archived 2018-12-23 at the Wayback Machine (Sheed & Ward, 1948), vol. 2, pp. 370–372.
  21. ^ D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 232
  22. ^ a b D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 17
  23. ^ Robert de Clari, La Prise de Constantinople, xi–xii, in Hopf, Chroniques Greco-Romaines, pp. 7–9. Old French.
  24. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 57.
  25. ^ Zara is the today the city of Zadar in Croatia; it was called «Jadera» in Latin documents and «Jadres» by French crusaders. The Venetian (Italian) «Zara» is a later derivation of the contemporary vernacular «Zadra».
  26. ^ Madden, Thomas F., and Donald E. Queller. The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
  27. ^ Emeric (king of Hungary). Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
  28. ^ Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, pp. 110–11.
  29. ^ Hindley, Geoffrey (2003). The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. pp. 143, 152. ISBN 9780786711055.
  30. ^ Runciman, Stephen (1975). A History of the Crusades – the Kingdom of Arce and the Later Crusades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 115. ISBN 0-521-20554-9.
  31. ^ a b c Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 98
  32. ^ Madden, Thomas F. (September 29, 2006). Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice. JHU Press. ISBN 9780801891847 – via Google Books.
  33. ^ Richard, Jean (16 September 1999). The Crusades c. 1071 – c. 1291. p. 247. ISBN 0-521-62566-1.
  34. ^ Phillips, Jonathan (2004). The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Viking. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-14-303590-9.
  35. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 113.
  36. ^ Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 99
  37. ^ a b Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  38. ^ D. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 185
  39. ^ Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, p. 157.
  40. ^ Treadgold, W. A Concise History of Byzantium, 187
  41. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 159.
  42. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 162.
  43. ^ Andrea, Alfred. Contemporary Sources For The Fourth Crusade. pp. 191–192.
  44. ^ Andrea, Alfred. Contemporary Sources For The Fourth Crusade. p. 193.
  45. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 164.
  46. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 176.
  47. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 177.
  48. ^ a b c Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 100
  49. ^ a b c d e f g Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, pp. 221–257
  50. ^ a b Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 209.
  51. ^ Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, vol. II, London, 1868, p. 471
  52. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. pp. 25, 65. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  53. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 77. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  54. ^ a b Vryonis, Speros (1967). Byzantium and Europe. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. p. 152.
  55. ^ Konstam, Historical Atlas of The Crusades, 162
  56. ^ W. Treadgold, A History of Byzantine State and Society, 663
  57. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o D. E. Queller; T. K. Compton; D. A. Campbell (1974), «The Fourth Crusade: The Neglected Majority», Speculum, 49 (3): 441–465, doi:10.2307/2851751, JSTOR 2851751, S2CID 163442765.
  58. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04: The Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  59. ^ G. E. M. Lippiatt (2012), «Duty and Desertion: Simon of Montfort and the Fourth Crusade» (PDF), Leidschrift, 27 (3): 75–88.
  60. ^ G. E. M. Lippiatt (2017), Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195–1218, Oxford University Press.
  61. ^ W. H. Rudt de Collenberg (1968), «L’empereur Isaac de Chypre et sa fille (1155–1207)», Byzantion 38 (1): 123–179, at 172–73.
  62. ^ Richard, Jean (16 September 1999). The Crusades c. 1071 – c. 1291. pp. 252–57. ISBN 0-521-62369-3.
  63. ^ page 310, volume 5; «Encyclopædia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition 1983, ISBN 0-85229-400-X
  64. ^ Pope Innocent III, Letters, 126 (given July 12, 1205, and addressed to the papal legate, who had absolved the crusaders from their pilgrimage vows). Text is taken from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook by Paul Halsall. Modified. Original translation by J. Brundage.
  65. ^ Choniates, Niketas; Magoulias, Harry J. (trans.) (1984). O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatēs. Wayne State University Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-8143-1764-8.
  66. ^ Runciman. History of the Crusades. Vol. 3. p. 130.
  67. ^ Queller, D. E. & Madden, T. F. (1997). The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 1201–1204. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812217136.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  68. ^ Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 166–67.
  69. ^ Pope John Paul II (2001). «In the Footsteps of St. Paul: Papal Visit to Greece, Syria & Malta – Words». EWTN. Archived from the original on 2009-12-04. Retrieved 2006-03-26.
  70. ^ «Pope sorrow over Constantinople». BBC News. June 29, 2004.
  71. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade. p. xiii.
  72. ^ Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (April 2004). «News». In Communion. Archived from the original on 2007-10-09.

Bibliography[edit]

Primary sources[edit]

  • 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.
  • Savignac, David. «The Medieval Russian Account of the Fourth Crusade – A New Annotated Translation». academia.edu.

Secondary sources[edit]

  • «Crusades». Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006.
  • Angold, Michael, The Fourth Crusade, Harlow: Pearson, 2003
  • Brand, Charles M. (1968). Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180–1204. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. LCCN 67-20872. OCLC 795121713.
  • 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
  • McNeal, Edgar; Wolff, Robert Lee (1969) [1962]. «The Fourth Crusade». In Setton, Kenneth M.; Wolff, Robert Lee; Hazard, Harry W. (eds.). A History of the Crusades, Volume II: The Later Crusades, 1189–1311 (Second ed.). Madison, Milwaukee, and London: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 153–185. ISBN 0-299-04844-6.
  • Nicol, Donald M. (1988). Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34157-4.
  • 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[edit]

  • 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.
  • Bradford, Ernle. The Great Betrayal: Constantinople, 1204. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967.
  • 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.
  • Hendrickx, Benjamin (1971). «À propos du nombre des troupes de la quatrième croisade et l’empereur Baudouin I». Byzantina. 3: 29–41.
  • 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[edit]

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  • Byzantine & Christian Museum / Franks and Latins in Byzantium

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 defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid Sultanate, the strongest Muslim state of the time. However, a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army’s 1202 siege of Zara and the 1204 sack of Constantinople, the capital of the Greek Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire, rather than Egypt as originally planned. This led to the partitioning of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders.

The Republic of Venice contracted with the Crusader leaders to build a dedicated fleet to transport their invasion force. However, the leaders greatly overestimated the number of soldiers who would embark from Venice, since many sailed from other ports, and the army that appeared could not pay the contracted price. In lieu of payment, the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo proposed that the Crusaders back him in attacking the rebellious city of Zadar (Zara) on the eastern Adriatic coast. This led in November 1202 to the siege and sack of Zara, the first attack against a Catholic city by a Catholic Crusader army. The city was then brought under Venetian control. When the Pope heard of this, he temporarily excommunicated the Crusader army.

In January 1203, en route to Jerusalem, the Crusader leadership entered into an agreement with the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos to divert their main force to Constantinople and restore his deposed father Isaac II Angelos as emperor, who would then add his support to their invasion of Jerusalem. On 23 June 1203, the main Crusader army reached Constantinople, while other contingents (perhaps a majority of all crusaders) continued to Acre.

In August 1203, following the siege of Constantinople, Alexios was crowned co-emperor. However, in January 1204 he was deposed by a popular uprising, depriving the Crusaders of their promised bounty payments. 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 Byzantine Empire into three states centered in Nicaea, Trebizond and Epirus. The Crusaders then founded several new Crusader states, known as Frankokratia, 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 with the Bulgarian Empire. The Nicaean Empire eventually recovered Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire in 1261.

The Fourth Crusade is considered to have solidified the East–West Schism. The crusade dealt an irrevocable blow to the Byzantine/Roman Empire, contributing to its decline and fall.

Background[edit]

Loss of Jerusalem to the truce of 1198[edit]

Between 1176 and 1187, the Ayyubid sultan Saladin conquered most of the Crusader states in the Levant. Jerusalem was lost to the Ayyubids following the siege of Jerusalem in 1187.[1] The Crusader states were then reduced by Saladin to little more than three cities along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea: Tyre, Tripoli and Antioch.[2]

The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was launched in response to the fall of Jerusalem, with the goal of recovering the city. It successfully reclaimed an extensive territory, effectively reestablishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Although Jerusalem itself was not recovered, the important coastal towns of Acre and Jaffa were. On 2 September 1192, the Treaty of Jaffa was signed with Saladin, bringing the crusade to an end. The truce would last for three years and eight months.[3]

The crusade had also been marked by a significant escalation in longstanding tensions between the feudal states of western Europe and the Byzantine Empire.[4][5] During the crusade, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, had almost besieged Constantinople because of the failure of the Byzantines to provide him with safe passage across the Dardanelles. The Byzantines for their part suspected him of conspiring with the breakaway Byzantine provinces of Serbia and Bulgaria. King Richard I of England also seized the breakaway Byzantine province of Cyprus. Rather than return it to the Empire (and realizing his inability to govern it), he sold the island to the Knights Templar.[6]

Saladin died on 4 March 1193, before the expiration of the truce, and his empire was contested and divided between three of his sons and two of his brothers. The new ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Henry II of Champagne, signed an extension of the truce with Egyptian Sultan al-Aziz Uthman. In 1197, the peace was interrupted by the arrival of the German Crusade of 1197. Without the permission of Henry, the Germans attacked the territory of al-Adil I of Damascus, who responded by attacking Jaffa. The sudden death of Henry prevented the relief of the port and the city was taken by force. The Germans did, however, succeed in capturing Beirut in the north.[3]

Henry was succeeded by Aimery of Cyprus, who signed a truce with al-Adil of five years and eight months on 1 July 1198. The truce preserved the status quo: Jaffa remained in Ayyubid hands, but its destroyed fortifications could not be rebuilt; Beirut was left to the crusaders; and Sidon was placed under a revenue-sharing condominium. Before the expiration of the new truce on 1 March 1204, al-Adil succeeded in uniting the former empire of Saladin, acquiring Egypt in 1200 and Aleppo in 1202. As a result, his domains almost completely surrounded the diminished Crusader states.[3]

Constantinople[edit]

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.[7] 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 was home to an estimated population of about half a million people[8] protected by 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,[9] China, India and Persia.[10] 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.

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.[11] 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.[12][13]

Rendezvous at Venice[edit]

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.[14] 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.[15][16] Thibaut was elected leader, but he died in 1201 and was replaced by Boniface of Montferrat.[17]

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.[18] 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. [19]

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 Martin, abbot of 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.[20]

Diversion[edit]

Attack on Zara[edit]

The crusaders conquering the City of Zadar, painted by Tintoretto

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.[21] The Venetians had performed their part of the agreement: there awaited 50 war galleys and 450 transports – enough for three times the assembled army.[22] 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 were collected, and that only by reducing the crusaders to extreme poverty.[23] 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.[22][24]

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.[25] 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.[26][27] 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.[28]

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 or went to the Holy Land on their own. 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.[20]

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.[29] However, this letter, delivered by Peter of Lucedio, may not have reached the army in time. The bulk of the army 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.[30] 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.[31]

Decision to go to Constantinople[edit]

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 Romans. According to the Chronicle of Novgorod Doge Enrico Dandolo had been blinded by the Emperor Manuel I Comnenus while part of an embassy to Constantinople in 1171, and accordingly held personal enmity towards the Byzantines.[32]

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 offer, tempting for an enterprise that was short on funds, reached the leaders of the Crusade on 1 January 1203 as they wintered at Zara.[33] 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,[31] eventually accepted the plan as well. However, there were dissenters. Led by Renaud of Montmirail, those who refused to take part in the scheme to attack Constantinople sailed on to Syria.[31] 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.[34] In addition, 300 siege engines were brought along on board the fleet.[35] 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.[36]

When the Fourth Crusade arrived at Constantinople on 23 June 1203, the city had a population of approximately 500,000 people,[37] a garrison of 15,000 men (including 5,000 Varangians), and a fleet of 20 galleys.[38][39][40][41] For both political and financial reasons, the permanent garrison of Constantinople had been limited to a relatively small force, made up of elite guards 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.[37] 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.[42]

Siege of July 1203[edit]

The Crusader attack on Constantinople, from a Venetian manuscript of Geoffrey de Villehardouin’s history, c. 1330

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. The Tower of Galata held a garrison of mercenary troops of English, Danish, and Italian origin.[43] On 6 July the largest ship in the crusaders’ fleet, the Aquila (Eagle), broke the chain. A section of it was then sent to Acre to boost the defences in the Holy Land.[3]

As the crusaders laid siege to the Tower of Galata, the defenders routinely attempted to sally out with some limited success, but often suffered bloody losses. On one occasion the defenders sallied out but were unable to retreat back to the safety of the tower in time, the Crusader forces viciously counterattacked, with most of the defenders being cut down or drowning in the Bosporus in their attempts to escape.[44] The tower was swiftly taken as a result. 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.[45]

On 11 July, the Crusaders took positions opposite the Palace of Blachernae on the northwest corner of the city. Their first attacks 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.[46]

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.[47] 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.[48] The Imperial officials quickly deposed their runaway emperor and restored Isaac II, robbing the crusaders of the pretext for attack.[48] 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.[48]

Reign of Alexios IV[edit]

Capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204

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».[49]

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.[50] 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[citation needed]. 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.[49] 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.[51]

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.[52]

War against Alexios V[edit]

Venetian mosaic from 1213 depicting the fall of Constantinople

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.[49] The Byzantines hurled large projectiles onto the enemy siege engines, shattering many of them. Bad weather conditions were a serious hindrance to the crusaders. A 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.[49]

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.[49] 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.[49] The churchmen used inflammatory language and claimed that «the Greeks were worse than the Jews»,[49] 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.[citation needed]

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.[53] 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.[50] The crusaders completely took the city on 13 April.

Sack of Constantinople[edit]

The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (Eugène Delacroix, 1840). The most infamous action of the Fourth Crusade was the sack of the Orthodox Christian city of Constantinople.

The crusaders sacked Constantinople for three days, during which many ancient and medieval Greco-Roman 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.[54][20] It was said that the total amount looted from Constantinople was about 900,000 silver marks. The Venetians received 150,000 silver marks that were 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.[55][56]

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 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.[54]

When Innocent III heard of the conduct of his pilgrims he was filled with shame and rage, and he strongly rebuked them.

Holy Land[edit]

The main army that sailed from Venice to Constantinople experienced several waves of defections as men sought to fulfill their vows independently of the leadership. Most of them sailed directly from ports in Apulia (southern Italy) to Acre. According to Villehardouin, the majority of those who set out on the Fourth Crusade went to the Holy Land, while only a minority participated in the attack on Constantinople. Villehardouin, however, regarded those who went to the Holy Land as deserters of the main army and its leadership and he may have exaggerated their number in order to magnify the accomplishments of the minority that besieged Constantinople.[3][57]

Modern historians have tended to disregard Villehardouin’s claims. Steven Runciman thought that only a «tiny proportion» and Joshua Prawer only some «pitiful remnants» of the original army arrived in the Holy Land. Recent studies suggest that the number was substantial but shy of a majority. Of the 92 named individuals who took the crusader vow in Villehardouin’s account, between 23 and 26 of them went to the Holy Land. The rate of «desertion» seems highest among the French faction.[57] Only about a tenth of the knights who had taken the cross in Flanders arrived to reinforce the remaining Christian states in the Holy Land, but over half of those from the Île-de-France did. All told, about 300 knights with their retinues from northern France made it to the Holy Land.[58] Of the contingents from Burgundy, Occitania, Italy and Germany we have less information, but there were certainly defections among the Occitan and German contingents.[3]

A large sum of money raised by the preacher Fulk of Neuilly did reach the Holy Land. Before his death in May 1202, Fulk gave the money to the Abbey of Cîteaux. Abbot Arnaud Amalric sent it to Acre in two installments. It was used to repair walls, towers and other defences that had been damaged by the earthquake of May 1202. A second wall was even added at Acre sometime before 1212.[3]

Apulia to Acre[edit]

Several crusaders, instead of going on to Venice, turned south at Piacenza in the summer of 1202 intending to go directly to the Holy Land from ports in southern Italy. Among them were Vilain of Nully, Henry of Arzillières, Renard II of Dampierre, Henry of Longchamp and Giles of Trasignies with their retinues. They do not seem to have been acting in concert or travelling together. Ultimately, several hundred knights and accompanying infantry reached the Holy Land via south Italian ports. The force was so small that King Aimery of Jerusalem refused to break his truce with the Ayyubids to allow them to go to war, despite the pleas of Renard, who was fulfilling the crusading vow of the late Count Theobald III of Champagne and possessed ample funds. As a result, eighty crusaders under Renard decided to go to the Principality of Antioch, which had no such truce. Advised against such a move, they were ambushed on the road and all but Renard were killed or captured. Renard remained in captivity for thirty years.[57]

When the crusade was diverted to Zara, many crusaders returned home or else remained behind in Italy. Some bypassed the Venetian fleet and found other means of going to the Holy Land. Geoffrey of Villehardouin, the historian’s nephew, was one of them. Stephen of the Perche, was prevented from going with the main army on account of illness. Upon his recovery in March 1203, he took ship in southern Italy and travelled directly to the Holy Land with many others who had remained behind, including Rotrou of Montfort and Yves of La Jaille. Stephen re-joined the main army after the fall of Constantinople.[57]

Following the siege of Zara, more contingents abandoned the main army. The crusaders sent Robert of Boves as an envoy to the pope, but after his mission was done he went straight to the Holy Land. Abbot Martin of Pairis joined him on the trip to Rome and afterwards took ship for Palestine at Siponto. Martin arrived in Acre on 25 April 1203 in the midst of an outbreak of plague. According to the Devastatio Constantinopolitana, after the decision was made at Zara to place Alexios IV on the throne of Constantinople, the leaders of the crusade granted permission for about 1,000 men to leave and find their own way to the Holy Land. In fact, about 2,000 men abandoned the main army at that stage. Most of them were among the poorer crusaders, and two ships carrying them sank with loss of life. The German crusader Garnier of Borland also abandoned the main army after Zara.[57]

From Zara, an official embassy, led by Renaud of Montmirail, was dispatched to the Holy Land. It included Hervé of Châtel, William III of Ferrières, Geoffrey of Beaumont and the brothers John and Peter of Frouville. They were supposed to return to the main army within fifteen days of accomplishing their mission. In fact, they remained in the Holy Land and did not return until after the fall of Constantinople.[57]

In the winter of 1203–1204, Simon V of Montfort led a large contingent of defectors disgusted with the attack on Zara and opposed to the Constantinople venture. He and his men had even avoided the ruins of Zara and camped in Hungary.[59] Among Simon’s followers were his brother, Guy of Montfort; the Yvelinois Simon V of Neauphle, Robert IV Mauvoisin and Dreux II of Cressonsacq; Abbot Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay; and the unnamed abbot of Cercanceaux. Shortly afterwards they were joined by Enguerrand II of Boves.[57][60] They marched up the coast from Zara back to Italy and then down the Italian coast, where they embarked for Palestine.[57]

Flemish fleet[edit]

For reasons unknown, Baldwin of Flanders divided his forces, leading half to Venice himself and sending the other half by sea. The Flemish fleet left Flanders in the summer of 1202 under the command of John II of Nesle, Thierry of Flanders and Nicholas of Mailly.[a] It sailed into the Mediterranean and, according to the chronicler Ernoul, attacked and captured an unnamed Muslim city on the African coast. The city was left in the hands of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and the fleet went on to Marseille, where it wintered in 1202–1203. There the fleet was joined by a number of French crusaders, including Bishop Walter II of Autun, Count Guigues III of Forez, Bernard IV of Moreuil, Henry of Arraines, Hugh of Chaumont, John of Villers, Peter Bromont and the brothers Walter and Hugh of Saint-Denis and their retinues.[57]

The pilots of Marseille had more experience sailing out of sight of land than those of any other Mediterranean port, having been doing it since the mid-12th century. In summer, they could make the trip to Acre in fifteen days. They possessed a fleet sufficient to transport the army of Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade in 1190. It was also a cheaper and more accessible port for the French contingent.[57]

Baldwin sent orders to his fleet in Marseille to sail at the end of March 1203 and rendezvous with the Venetian fleet off Methoni.[b] His messengers must also have brought news of the decision to go to Constantinople before proceeding to the Holy Land. For this reason the Flemish leaders may have opted to ignore the rendezvous and sail directly to Acre. It is also possible that they kept the rendezvous, but not finding the Venetian fleet (which did not get to Methoni before May) went on to Acre alone. They probably arrived there before Martin of Pairis on 25 April 1203.[57] At least a part of the fleet stopped at Cyprus, where Thierry of Flanders made a claim on the island in the name of his wife, the Damsel of Cyprus, daughter of Isaac Doukas Komnenos, former emperor of Cyprus. Thierry, his wife and those knights that had supported him were ordered by Aimery to leave his kingdom, so they went to the Kingdom of Armenia, homeland of Thierry’s mother-in-law.[61]

The Flemish crusaders in Acre encountered the same difficulty as Renard of Dampierre. King Aimery was unwilling to break his truce for the sake of such a small army. The crusaders, therefore, split up. Some entered the service of the Principality of Antioch and others that of the County of Tripoli. Bernard of Moreuil and John of Villers joined Renard of Dampierre and were captured along with him. John of Nesle went to the aid of Armenia and thus found himself fighting some of his former comrades, since Armenia and Antioch were then at war. Sometime before 5 November 1203, however, the truce was broken. The Muslims seized two Christian ships and in retaliation, the Christians had seized six Muslim ships. The Flemish crusaders returned to the Kingdom of Jerusalem to fight.[57]

On 8 November, Martin of Pairis and Conrad of Swartzenberg were sent to the main army, then besieging Constantinople, to press for it to continue on to the Holy Land now that the truce was broken. The envoys arrived on 1 January 1204, but the army was in the midst of heavy fighting and nothing came of their embassy.[57]

Outcomes[edit]

Partition of the Byzantine Empire[edit]

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.[citation needed]

The Latin Empire was soon faced with a number of enemies. Besides the individual Byzantine rump states in Epirus and Nicaea, and the also Christian Bulgarian Empire, there was also the Seljuk Sultanate. The Greek states fought for supremacy against both the Latins and each other.[62]

Impact on the Holy Land[edit]

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.[63]

East–West schism[edit]

Assessing the disastrous results of the expedition he had started, Pope Innocent III 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.[64]

Latin rule in Greece[edit]

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.[citation needed]

Modern reactions[edit]

«O City, City, eye of all cities, universal boast, supramundane wonder, nurse of churches, leader of the faith, guide of Orthodoxy, beloved topic of orations, the abode of every good thing! Oh City, that hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury! O City, consumed by fire…»

Niketas Choniates laments the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders.[65]

The prominent medievalist Sir Steven Runciman wrote in 1954: «There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.»[66] 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).[67]

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.[68]

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.»[69] 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.»[70] This has been regarded as an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the massacres perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade.[71]

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.»[72]

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.

See also[edit]

  • Succession of the Roman Empire

Footnotes[edit]

  1. ^ Nicholas of Mailly joined the main army after the fall of Constantinople.[57]
  2. ^ Baldwin of Flanders’ wife, Marie of Champagne, sailed from Marseille to Acre in the spring of 1204. She was there when she learned of his election as emperor.[57]

References[edit]

  1. ^ John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003), 169
  2. ^ Mayer, Hans Eberhard (1988). The Crusades. p. 136. ISBN 0-19-873097-7.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Benjamin Z. Kedar (2005), «The Fourth Crusade’s Second Front», in A. Laiou (ed.), Urbs Capta: The Fourth Crusade and its Consequences, Paris: Lethielleux, pp. 89–101.
  4. ^ Haldon, John (2002). Byzantium at War. Oxford: Osprey. pp. 87.
  5. ^ Phillips, Jonathan (2004). The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Viking. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-14-303590-9.
  6. ^ «Templar Rule on Cyprus 1191-1192». Helena P. Schrader. Retrieved 2022-08-10.
  7. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  8. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  9. ^ Norman Davies, p. 311, «Vanished Kingdoms. The History of Half-forgotten Europe», ISBN 978-0-141-04886-4
  10. ^ Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 42–43.
  11. ^ John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003)
  12. ^ Brand, Charles M.; Cutler, Anthony (1991). «Stryphnos, Michael». In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1968. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
  13. ^ Guilland, Rodolphe (1967). «Le Drongaire de la flotte, le Grand drongaire de la flotte, le Duc de la flotte, le Mégaduc». Recherches sur les institutions byzantines [Studies on the Byzantine Institutions]. Berliner byzantinische Arbeiten 35 (in French). Vol. I. Berlin and Amsterdam: Akademie-Verlag & Adolf M. Hakkert. pp. 535–562. OCLC 878894516.
  14. ^ Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). pp. 107–111. ISBN 0-14-013705-X.
  15. ^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1976). The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571: The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. American Philosophical Society. p. 7. ISBN 9780871691149.
  16. ^ Edgar H. McNeal (1953), «Fulk of Neuilly and the Tournament of Écry», Speculum, 28 (2): 371–375, doi:10.2307/2849695, JSTOR 2849695, S2CID 162545150.
  17. ^ Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-521-34772-3.
  18. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Edition, page 306 Macropaedia Volume 5
  19. ^ ‘The compact with the Venetians. Villehardouin: Conquête de Constantinople, ch. iv, v, vi, Nos. 18, 24, 30 Old French.
  20. ^ a b c Hughes, Philip. «Innocent III and the Latin East,» History of the Church Archived 2018-12-23 at the Wayback Machine (Sheed & Ward, 1948), vol. 2, pp. 370–372.
  21. ^ D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 232
  22. ^ a b D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 17
  23. ^ Robert de Clari, La Prise de Constantinople, xi–xii, in Hopf, Chroniques Greco-Romaines, pp. 7–9. Old French.
  24. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 57.
  25. ^ Zara is the today the city of Zadar in Croatia; it was called «Jadera» in Latin documents and «Jadres» by French crusaders. The Venetian (Italian) «Zara» is a later derivation of the contemporary vernacular «Zadra».
  26. ^ Madden, Thomas F., and Donald E. Queller. The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
  27. ^ Emeric (king of Hungary). Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
  28. ^ Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, pp. 110–11.
  29. ^ Hindley, Geoffrey (2003). The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. pp. 143, 152. ISBN 9780786711055.
  30. ^ Runciman, Stephen (1975). A History of the Crusades – the Kingdom of Arce and the Later Crusades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 115. ISBN 0-521-20554-9.
  31. ^ a b c Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 98
  32. ^ Madden, Thomas F. (September 29, 2006). Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice. JHU Press. ISBN 9780801891847 – via Google Books.
  33. ^ Richard, Jean (16 September 1999). The Crusades c. 1071 – c. 1291. p. 247. ISBN 0-521-62566-1.
  34. ^ Phillips, Jonathan (2004). The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Viking. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-14-303590-9.
  35. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 113.
  36. ^ Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 99
  37. ^ a b Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  38. ^ D. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 185
  39. ^ Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, p. 157.
  40. ^ Treadgold, W. A Concise History of Byzantium, 187
  41. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 159.
  42. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 162.
  43. ^ Andrea, Alfred. Contemporary Sources For The Fourth Crusade. pp. 191–192.
  44. ^ Andrea, Alfred. Contemporary Sources For The Fourth Crusade. p. 193.
  45. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 164.
  46. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 176.
  47. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 177.
  48. ^ a b c Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 100
  49. ^ a b c d e f g Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, pp. 221–257
  50. ^ a b Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 209.
  51. ^ Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, vol. II, London, 1868, p. 471
  52. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. pp. 25, 65. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  53. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04 – the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 77. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  54. ^ a b Vryonis, Speros (1967). Byzantium and Europe. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. p. 152.
  55. ^ Konstam, Historical Atlas of The Crusades, 162
  56. ^ W. Treadgold, A History of Byzantine State and Society, 663
  57. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o D. E. Queller; T. K. Compton; D. A. Campbell (1974), «The Fourth Crusade: The Neglected Majority», Speculum, 49 (3): 441–465, doi:10.2307/2851751, JSTOR 2851751, S2CID 163442765.
  58. ^ Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202–04: The Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-84908-319-5.
  59. ^ G. E. M. Lippiatt (2012), «Duty and Desertion: Simon of Montfort and the Fourth Crusade» (PDF), Leidschrift, 27 (3): 75–88.
  60. ^ G. E. M. Lippiatt (2017), Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195–1218, Oxford University Press.
  61. ^ W. H. Rudt de Collenberg (1968), «L’empereur Isaac de Chypre et sa fille (1155–1207)», Byzantion 38 (1): 123–179, at 172–73.
  62. ^ Richard, Jean (16 September 1999). The Crusades c. 1071 – c. 1291. pp. 252–57. ISBN 0-521-62369-3.
  63. ^ page 310, volume 5; «Encyclopædia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition 1983, ISBN 0-85229-400-X
  64. ^ Pope Innocent III, Letters, 126 (given July 12, 1205, and addressed to the papal legate, who had absolved the crusaders from their pilgrimage vows). Text is taken from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook by Paul Halsall. Modified. Original translation by J. Brundage.
  65. ^ Choniates, Niketas; Magoulias, Harry J. (trans.) (1984). O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatēs. Wayne State University Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-8143-1764-8.
  66. ^ Runciman. History of the Crusades. Vol. 3. p. 130.
  67. ^ Queller, D. E. & Madden, T. F. (1997). The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 1201–1204. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812217136.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  68. ^ Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 166–67.
  69. ^ Pope John Paul II (2001). «In the Footsteps of St. Paul: Papal Visit to Greece, Syria & Malta – Words». EWTN. Archived from the original on 2009-12-04. Retrieved 2006-03-26.
  70. ^ «Pope sorrow over Constantinople». BBC News. June 29, 2004.
  71. ^ Phillips. The Fourth Crusade. p. xiii.
  72. ^ Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (April 2004). «News». In Communion. Archived from the original on 2007-10-09.

Bibliography[edit]

Primary sources[edit]

  • 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.
  • Savignac, David. «The Medieval Russian Account of the Fourth Crusade – A New Annotated Translation». academia.edu.

Secondary sources[edit]

  • «Crusades». Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006.
  • Angold, Michael, The Fourth Crusade, Harlow: Pearson, 2003
  • Brand, Charles M. (1968). Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180–1204. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. LCCN 67-20872. OCLC 795121713.
  • 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
  • McNeal, Edgar; Wolff, Robert Lee (1969) [1962]. «The Fourth Crusade». In Setton, Kenneth M.; Wolff, Robert Lee; Hazard, Harry W. (eds.). A History of the Crusades, Volume II: The Later Crusades, 1189–1311 (Second ed.). Madison, Milwaukee, and London: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 153–185. ISBN 0-299-04844-6.
  • Nicol, Donald M. (1988). Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34157-4.
  • 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[edit]

  • 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.
  • Bradford, Ernle. The Great Betrayal: Constantinople, 1204. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967.
  • 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.
  • Hendrickx, Benjamin (1971). «À propos du nombre des troupes de la quatrième croisade et l’empereur Baudouin I». Byzantina. 3: 29–41.
  • 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[edit]

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  • Byzantine & Christian Museum / Franks and Latins in Byzantium

Крестовый поход — 1) одна из семи средневековых военных экспедиций из З. Европы на Восток, преимущ. в Палестину, устраивавшихся по призыву церкви под флагом борьбы за освобождение «святой земли» от мусульман (истор.); 2) непримиримая организованная борьба против чего-н. (публиц.). Объявить крестовый поход против алкоголизма. Империалисты мечтают о крестовом походе против СССР. См. также крестовый.

Все значения словосочетания «крестовый поход»

Пе́рвый кресто́вый похо́д был организован в 1096 году решением римского папы Урбана II по просьбе византийского императора Алексея I с целью помощи восточным христианам в защите Анатолии (Малая Азия) от наступления сельджуков. В ходе похода также дополнительной целью стало освобождение священного города Иерусалима и Святой земли от мусульман. Первоначально обращение римского папы было адресовано только французскому рыцарству, но впоследствии поход превратился в полномасштабную военную кампанию, а его идея охватила все христианские государства Западной Европы. Феодалы и простой народ всех национальностей по земле и морю двинулись на Восток, по пути освободив от власти турок-сельджуков западную часть Малой Азии и устранив мусульманскую угрозу Византии, и в июле 1099 года завоевали Иерусалим. Во время 1-го крестового похода было основано Иерусалимское королевство и другие христианские государства, которые объединяются под названием Латинского Востока. Важную роль в истории Крестовых походов сыграли духовно-рыцарские ордены.

Все значения словосочетания «первый крестовый поход»

Пятый крестовый поход (1217—1221) — попытка европейцев вновь приобрести Иерусалим и остальную часть Святой Земли.

Все значения словосочетания «пятый крестовый поход»

Третий крестовый поход (1189—1192) был инициирован римскими папами Григорием VIII и (после смерти Григория VIII) Климентом III. В Крестовом походе приняли участие четверо самых могущественных европейских монархов — германский император Фридрих I Барбаросса, французский король Филипп II Август, австрийский герцог Леопольд V и английский король Ричард I Львиное Сердце.Также союзником европейских монархий выступил правитель Киликийской Армении Левон II.Третьему Крестовому походу предшествовал захват Саладином Иерусалима в октябре 1187 года.

Все значения словосочетания «третий крестовый поход»

ЧЕТВЁРТЫЙ, —ая, —ое. 1. Числ. порядк. к четыре. Четвертый этаж. Четвертые сутки. В четвертый раз.

Все значения слова «четвёртый»

  • Византийская империя, едва восстановившаяся в ослабленном виде после четвёртого крестового похода, вынуждена была вести непрекращающиеся войны с турками-османами.

  • (все предложения)
  • третий крестовый поход
  • первый крестовый поход
  • второй крестовый поход
  • новый крестовый поход
  • альбигойский крестовый поход
  • (ещё синонимы…)
  • рыцарь
  • поход
  • (ещё ассоциации…)
  • четверг
  • этаж
  • вариант
  • ряд
  • десяток
  • (ещё ассоциации…)
  • валет
  • туз
  • (ещё ассоциации…)
  • вылазка
  • палатка
  • палатки
  • костёр
  • лес
  • (ещё ассоциации…)
  • начиная с четвёртой
  • пришла четвёртой
  • (полная таблица сочетаемости…)
  • крестовые походы
  • времена крестовых походов
  • объявить крестовый поход
  • (полная таблица сочетаемости…)
  • крестовые походы
  • поход аргонавтов
  • за время похода
  • поход начался
  • выступить в поход
  • (полная таблица сочетаемости…)
  • Разбор по составу слова «четвёртый»
  • Разбор по составу слова «поход»
  • Как правильно пишется слово «четвёртый»
  • Как правильно пишется слово «крестовый»
  • Как правильно пишется слово «поход»

Всего найдено: 2

Подскажите пожалуйста, как правильно написать: «Первый Крестовый поход» или «первый Крестовый поход»?
Спасибо.

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Правильно: Первый крестовый поход.

Снова обращаюсь к Вам с вопросом,который задал накануне. Мне очень срочно нужен ответ.
1. В каких случаях пишется «Крестовые походы», а в каких «крестовые походы»? Через поиск по Вашей справке я обнаружил примеры написания как с прописной, так и со строчной буквы. Также: писать ли с прописной Первый крестовый поход, Четвёртый крестовый поход и т. п.?
2. Закавычивать ли написанное латиницей слово в предложении «…движения, подобные немецкому Drang nach Osten, или, чтобы избежать политических ассоциаций, связанных с этой фразой, Ostsiedlung»?
3. Правильно ли писать «Орден меченосцев», или всё-таки тут нужна строчная буква — «орден»?
С уважением,
Виктор

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

1. В названии исторической эпохи или исторического события правильно писать прописную букву: Крестовые походы, Первый крестовый поход и т. д. 2. Кавычки не ставятся. 3. Правильно со строчной буквы.

For the album, see The IVth Crusade.

The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and sacked the Christian (Eastern Orthodox) city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, and a key turning point in the decline of the empire and of Christianity in the Near East.

The crusaders established the Latin Empire (1204–1261) and other «Latin» states in the Byzantine lands they conquered. Byzantine resistance in unconquered sections of the empire such as Nicaea, Trebizond, and Epirus ultimately liberated the capital and overthrew the crusader states.

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 previously, after the capture and sack of Jerusalem by the First Crusade. The city was sacred to both Christians and Muslims and returning it to Christian hands had been a primary purpose of the First Crusade. Saladin’s was 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 timelines of his death and the fall of Jerusalem make that impossible.[5] The crusader states had been reduced to three cities along the sea coast, Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch.

The Third Crusade (1189–1192) reclaimed much territory for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the key towns of Acre and Jaffa, but had failed to take 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[6] centered on Constantinople. The experiences of the first two crusades had thrown into stark relief the vast cultural differences between the two Christian civilizations. The Latins (as the Byzantines called 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 saw the Latins as lawless, impious, covetous, blood-thirsty, undisciplined, and (quite literally) unwashed.

Constantinople was 874 years old at the time of the Fourth Crusade, as well as being the largest and most sophisticated city in Christendom.[7] Alone amongst medieval urban centres, it retained the civic structures, public baths, forums, monuments and aqueducts of classical Rome. 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 which dominated trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, China, India and Persia.[8]
As such it was both a rival and a tempting target for the aggressive new states of the west, notably Venice.

The leader 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.[9] The Third Crusade 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’s army quickly disintegrated after his death, 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, heeded 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 favor 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.[10] The new emperor was however 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 defense 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 1198, and the preaching of a new crusade became the prime goal of his pontificate, expounded in his bull Post miserabile.[11][12] 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 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.[13]

Boniface and the other leaders sent envoys to Venice, Genoa, and other city-states to negotiate a contract for transport to Egypt, the object 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. 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 October 1202 originated from areas within France. It included men from Blois, Champagne, Amiens, Saint-Pol, the Ile-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 1202 and make directly for the Ayyubid capital, Cairo. This agreement was ratified by Pope Innocent, with a solemn ban on attacks on Christian states.[14]

Attack on Zara

Main article: Siege of Zara (Zadar)

There was no binding agreement among the crusaders that all should sail from Venice. Accordingly many chose to sail from other ports, particularly Flanders, Marseilles, and Genoa. By 1201 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 .[15] The Venetians had performed their part of the agreement: there lay 50 war galleys and 450 transports—enough for three times the assembled army.[16] 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.[17] This was disastrous to the Venetians, who had halted their commerce for a great length of time to prepare this expedition. In addition to this 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.[16][18]

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, as well as significant financial and trading loss. Following the Massacre of the Latins of Constantinople in 1182, the ruling Angelos dynasty had expelled the Venetian merchant population with the support of the Greek population.[19] These events gave the Venetians a hostile attitude towards Byzantium but it remains unclear if Constantinople was always intended to be the target and the issue remains under fierce debate today. 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.[20] 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.[21][22][23] 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.[24]

The Hungarian king was Catholic and had himself agreed to join the Fourth Crusade (though this was mostly for political reasons, and he had made no actual preparations to leave). 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.[25]

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.[26] However, this letter was concealed from the bulk of the army 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 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.[27]

When Innocent III heard of the sack, he sent a letter to the crusaders excommunicating them, and ordered 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. In any event, Innocent shortly reconsidered his decision. Regarding the Crusaders as having been blackmailed by the Venetians, he rescinded the excommunications against all non-Venetians in the expedition.[28]

Diversion to Constantinople

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. It was a tempting offer for an enterprise that was short on funds. 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,[28] 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 Christendom’s greatest city sailed on to Syria.[28] 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.[1] In addition 300 siege engines were brought along on board the fleet.[29] 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 failed to condemn the scheme outright.[30]

When the Fourth Crusade arrived at Constantinople, the city had a population of approximately 500,000 people,[7] a garrison of 15,000 men (including 5,000 Varangians), and a fleet of 20 galleys.[3][4][31][32] 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.[7] 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 wasn’t 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.[33]

Siege of July 1203

The Crusader attack on Constantinople, from a Venetian manuscript of Geoffreoy de Villehardouin’s history, ca. 1330

To take the city by force, the crusaders first needed to cross the Bosphorus. About 200 ships, horse transports and galleys would undertake to deliver 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 Crusaders’ knights charged straight out of the horse transports, and the Byzantine army fled south.

The Crusaders followed south, 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. However, when the crusaders rallied and the Byzantines retreated to the Tower, 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 the Byzantines taunted the puzzled crusaders, who had been led to believe that the citizens would rise up to welcome the young pretender Alexios as a liberator.[34]

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.[35]

Alexios III finally took offensive action, and led 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.[36] 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.[37] The Imperial officials quickly deposed their runaway emperor and restored Isaac II, robbing the crusaders of the pretext for attack.[37] The crusaders were now in the quandary of having achieved their stated aim, but 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 Isaac II’s authority if his son was raised to co-emperor and on 1 August he was crowned Alexius IV, co-emperor.[37]

Further attacks on Constantinople

Capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204

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.»[38]

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.[39] 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.[38] Opposition to his son and co-emperor Alexios IV had grown during the preceding months of tension and spasmodic violence in and around Constantinople.

A nobleman Alexios Doukas (surnamed 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.[40]

The crusaders and Venetians, incensed at the murder of their supposed patron, demanded that Mourtzouphlos honour the contract which 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.[38]

The Byzantines hurled large projectiles onto the enemy siege engines, shattering many of them. A serious hindrance to the crusaders was bad weather conditions. 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.[38]

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.[38]

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.[38] The churchmen used inflammatory language and claimed that «the Greeks were worse than the Jews»,[38] 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

The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (Eugène Delacroix, 1840). The most infamous action of the Fourth Crusade was the sack of the Orthodox Christian city 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. After a short battle, approximately seventy crusaders managed to enter the city. Some Crusaders were eventually 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 extremely bloody 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.[41] 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, but while attempting to defend themselves with a wall of fire, they ended up burning down even more of the city. This second fire left 15,000 people homeless.[39] The crusaders completely took the city on 13 April.

The crusaders inflicted a savage sacking on Constantinople for three days, during which many ancient Greco-Roman and medieval Byzantine works of art were either stolen or destroyed. The magnificent Library of Constantinople was destroyed. Despite their oaths and the threat of excommunication, the crusaders ruthlessly and systematically violated the city’s churches and monasteries, destroying, defiling, or stealing all they could lay hands on; nothing was spared. 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.[42][43]

When Innocent III heard of the conduct of his pilgrims he was filled with shame and rage, and strongly rebuked them.

According to a subsequent treaty, the empire was apportioned between Venice and the crusade’s leaders, 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 80s. 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 successor 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

Map showing the partition of the Byzantine Empire into The Latin Empire, Empire of Nicaea and Despotate of Epirus after AD 1204

Only a relatively small number of the members of the Fourth Crusade finally reached their originally intended goal — the Holy Land. Research indicates that about a tenth of the knights who had taken the cross in Flanders arrived in Palestine to reinforce the remaining Christian states there, plus about half of those from the Ile-de-France.[44]
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 Church in the West and East was not just complete but also solidified.[45] 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.[46]

Nevertheless, the Pope’s negative reaction was short-lived. When the crusaders took the piles of money, jewels, and gold that they had captured in the sack of Constantinople back to Rome, Innocent III welcomed the stolen items and agreed to let the crusaders back into the Church. 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 was also the Seljuk Sultanate and the Bulgarian Empire. 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. Murtzuphlus’ betrayal and blinding by Alexius III led to his capture by the Latins and his execution in 1205. Not long after, Alexius III was captured by Boniface and sent to exile in Southern Italy. He died in Nicaea in 1211. 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. 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 Ducas, the despot of Epirus and a relative of Murtzuphlus. The Kingdom of Thessalonica was restored to Byzantine rule in 1224.[47]

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. The city was re-captured by the Nicaean Greeks under Michael VIII Palaeologus 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 which aimed at the restoration of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire which was gradually being torn down by the advancing Ottoman Turks. The attempt however, failed, as the vast majority of the 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 which 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.[48]» 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.
[49]

Legacy

«O City, City, eye of all cities, universal boast, supramundane wonder, nurse of churches, leader of the faith, guide of Orthodoxy, beloved topic of orations, the abode of every good thing! Oh City, that hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury! O City, consumed by fire…»

Niketas Choniates laments the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders.[50]

The prominent medievalist Steven Runciman, writing in 1954, stated that «There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.»[51] 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 Thomas F. Madden and Donald E. Queller in 1977 in their book, The Fourth Crusade.[52]

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.[53]

Eight hundred years after the Fourth Crusade, Pope John Paul II twice expressed sorrow for the events of the Fourth Crusade. In 2001, he wrote to Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens, saying, «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.»[54] 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.»[55] This has been regarded as an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the terrible slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade.[56]

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.»[57]

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 fifteen years.

In fiction/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-traveller who saves the life of a Byzantine girl during the carnage and falls in love with her.

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.

See also

  • Alexius III
  • Alexius IV
  • Alexius V
  • Battle of Adrianople (1205)           
  • Constantinople
  • Crusade
  • Crusader states
  • Jews of the Byzantine Empire during the Fourth Crusade
  • Latin Empire of Constantinople
  • Pope Innocent III
  • Principality of Achaea

References

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Phillips, Jonathan (2004). The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Viking. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-14-303590-9.
  2. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 106.
  3. 3.0 3.1 D. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 185
  4. 4.0 4.1 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, p. 157.
  5. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003), 169
  6. Haldon, John (2002). Byzantium at War. Oxford: Osprey. pp. 87.
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 15. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name «Nicolle49» defined multiple times with different content
  8. Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 42–43.
  9. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003), 169-170
  10. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003)
  11. Madden, Thomas F. (August 19, 2008). The Fourth Crusade: Event, Aftermath, and Perceptions: Papers from the Sixth Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East in Istanbul, Turkey. ISBN 0-7546-6319-1.
  12. Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). ISBN 0-14-013705-X.
  13. Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-521-34772-3.
  14. Philips Hughes, «Innocent III & the Latin East,» History of the Church, Sheed & Ward, 1948, vol. 2, p. 370.
  15. D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 232
  16. 16.0 16.1 D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 17
  17. Robert de Clari, La Prise de Constantinople, xi-xii, in Hopf, Chroniques Greco-Romaines, pp. 7-9. Old French.
  18. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 57.
  19. Nicol, David (1993). The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43991-6.
  20. Zara is the today the city of Zadar in Croatia; it was called «Jadera» in Latin documents and «Jadres» by French crusaders. The Venetian (Italian) «Zara» is a later derivation of the contemporary vernacular «Zadra».
  21. Person Page 10465. thePeerage.com.
  22. Madden, Thomas F., and Donald E. Queller. The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
  23. Emeric (king of Hungary). Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
  24. Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, pp. 110–11.
  25. Philip Hughes, «Innocent III & the Latin East,» History of the Church, vol. 2, p. 371, Sheed & Ward, 1948.
  26. Hindley, Geoffrey (2003). The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. pp. 143, 152.
  27. Runciman, Stephen (1975). A History of the Crusades — the Kingdom of Arce and the Later Crusades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 115. ISBN 0 521 20554 9.
  28. 28.0 28.1 28.2 Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 98
  29. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 113.
  30. Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 99
  31. Treadgold, W. A Concise History of Byzantium, 187
  32. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 159.
  33. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 162.
  34. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 164.
  35. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 176.
  36. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 177.
  37. 37.0 37.1 37.2 Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 100
  38. 38.0 38.1 38.2 38.3 38.4 38.5 38.6 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade
  39. 39.0 39.1 Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 209.
  40. Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. pp. 25, 65. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5.
  41. Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 77. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5.
  42. Vryonis, Speros (1967). Byzantium and Europe. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. p. 152.
  43. Hughes, Philip. «Innocent III & the Latin East,» History of the Church, Sheed & Ward, 1948, vol. 2, p. 372.
  44. Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 78. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5.
  45. page 310, volume 5; «Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition 1983, ISBN 0-85229-400-X
  46. Pope Innocent III, Letters, 126 (given July 12, 1205, and addressed to the papal legate, who had absolved the crusaders from their pilgrimage vows). Text taken from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook by Paul Halsall. Modified. Original translation by J. Brundage.
  47. Thurbon, Colin (1981). The Venetians. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books Inc. pp. 25, 65. ISBN 7054 0633 4.
  48. page 308, volume 5; «Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition 1983, ISBN 0-85229-400-X
  49. D’Amato, Raffaele (2007). The Eastern Romans 330-1461 AD. Hong Kong: Concord Publications. p. 42. ISBN 962-361-089-0.
  50. Choniates, Niketas; Magoulias, Harry J. (trans.) (1984). O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatēs. Wayne State University Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-8143-1764-8. http://books.google.com/?id=O8arrZPM8moC.
  51. Runciman. History of the Crusades, vol. 3, p. 130.
  52. Queller, D. E., & Madden, T. F. (1997). The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 1201-1204. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  53. Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 166–167.
  54. In the Footsteps of St. Paul: Papal Visit to Greece, Syria & Malta — Words. EWTN.
  55. «Pope sorrow over Constantinople». BBC News. June 29, 2004.
  56. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. xiii.
  57. In Communion » News — issue 33

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Nicetas Choniates, The Sack of Constantinople
  • Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople (see also excerpts from another translation)
  • The Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders (excerpts from several contemporary accounts)
  • The Fourth Crusade 1204: Collected Sources (excerpts from several contemporary accounts)
  • Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople
  • Pope Innocent III, Reprimand of Papal Legate
  • Chronicle of Morea

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, London: Hambledonm and London, 2003
  • 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): 237–277; 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 and New York: Hambledon and London, 2003. ISBN 978-1-85285-298-6.
  • 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.
  • Kazdhan, 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: 117–143.
  • 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


For the album, see The IVth Crusade.

The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and sacked the Christian (Eastern Orthodox) city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, and a key turning point in the decline of the empire and of Christianity in the Near East.

The crusaders established the Latin Empire (1204–1261) and other «Latin» states in the Byzantine lands they conquered. Byzantine resistance in unconquered sections of the empire such as Nicaea, Trebizond, and Epirus ultimately liberated the capital and overthrew the crusader states.

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 previously, after the capture and sack of Jerusalem by the First Crusade. The city was sacred to both Christians and Muslims and returning it to Christian hands had been a primary purpose of the First Crusade. Saladin’s was 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 timelines of his death and the fall of Jerusalem make that impossible.[5] The crusader states had been reduced to three cities along the sea coast, Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch.

The Third Crusade (1189–1192) reclaimed much territory for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the key towns of Acre and Jaffa, but had failed to take 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[6] centered on Constantinople. The experiences of the first two crusades had thrown into stark relief the vast cultural differences between the two Christian civilizations. The Latins (as the Byzantines called 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 saw the Latins as lawless, impious, covetous, blood-thirsty, undisciplined, and (quite literally) unwashed.

Constantinople was 874 years old at the time of the Fourth Crusade, as well as being the largest and most sophisticated city in Christendom.[7] Alone amongst medieval urban centres, it retained the civic structures, public baths, forums, monuments and aqueducts of classical Rome. 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 which dominated trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, China, India and Persia.[8]
As such it was both a rival and a tempting target for the aggressive new states of the west, notably Venice.

The leader 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.[9] The Third Crusade 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’s army quickly disintegrated after his death, 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, heeded 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 favor 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.[10] The new emperor was however 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 defense 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 1198, and the preaching of a new crusade became the prime goal of his pontificate, expounded in his bull Post miserabile.[11][12] 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 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.[13]

Boniface and the other leaders sent envoys to Venice, Genoa, and other city-states to negotiate a contract for transport to Egypt, the object 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. 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 October 1202 originated from areas within France. It included men from Blois, Champagne, Amiens, Saint-Pol, the Ile-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 1202 and make directly for the Ayyubid capital, Cairo. This agreement was ratified by Pope Innocent, with a solemn ban on attacks on Christian states.[14]

Attack on Zara

Main article: Siege of Zara (Zadar)

There was no binding agreement among the crusaders that all should sail from Venice. Accordingly many chose to sail from other ports, particularly Flanders, Marseilles, and Genoa. By 1201 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 .[15] The Venetians had performed their part of the agreement: there lay 50 war galleys and 450 transports—enough for three times the assembled army.[16] 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.[17] This was disastrous to the Venetians, who had halted their commerce for a great length of time to prepare this expedition. In addition to this 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.[16][18]

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, as well as significant financial and trading loss. Following the Massacre of the Latins of Constantinople in 1182, the ruling Angelos dynasty had expelled the Venetian merchant population with the support of the Greek population.[19] These events gave the Venetians a hostile attitude towards Byzantium but it remains unclear if Constantinople was always intended to be the target and the issue remains under fierce debate today. 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.[20] 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.[21][22][23] 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.[24]

The Hungarian king was Catholic and had himself agreed to join the Fourth Crusade (though this was mostly for political reasons, and he had made no actual preparations to leave). 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.[25]

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.[26] However, this letter was concealed from the bulk of the army 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 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.[27]

When Innocent III heard of the sack, he sent a letter to the crusaders excommunicating them, and ordered 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. In any event, Innocent shortly reconsidered his decision. Regarding the Crusaders as having been blackmailed by the Venetians, he rescinded the excommunications against all non-Venetians in the expedition.[28]

Diversion to Constantinople

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. It was a tempting offer for an enterprise that was short on funds. 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,[28] 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 Christendom’s greatest city sailed on to Syria.[28] 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.[1] In addition 300 siege engines were brought along on board the fleet.[29] 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 failed to condemn the scheme outright.[30]

When the Fourth Crusade arrived at Constantinople, the city had a population of approximately 500,000 people,[7] a garrison of 15,000 men (including 5,000 Varangians), and a fleet of 20 galleys.[3][4][31][32] 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.[7] 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 wasn’t 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.[33]

Siege of July 1203

The Crusader attack on Constantinople, from a Venetian manuscript of Geoffreoy de Villehardouin’s history, ca. 1330

To take the city by force, the crusaders first needed to cross the Bosphorus. About 200 ships, horse transports and galleys would undertake to deliver 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 Crusaders’ knights charged straight out of the horse transports, and the Byzantine army fled south.

The Crusaders followed south, 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. However, when the crusaders rallied and the Byzantines retreated to the Tower, 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 the Byzantines taunted the puzzled crusaders, who had been led to believe that the citizens would rise up to welcome the young pretender Alexios as a liberator.[34]

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.[35]

Alexios III finally took offensive action, and led 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.[36] 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.[37] The Imperial officials quickly deposed their runaway emperor and restored Isaac II, robbing the crusaders of the pretext for attack.[37] The crusaders were now in the quandary of having achieved their stated aim, but 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 Isaac II’s authority if his son was raised to co-emperor and on 1 August he was crowned Alexius IV, co-emperor.[37]

Further attacks on Constantinople

Capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204

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.»[38]

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.[39] 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.[38] Opposition to his son and co-emperor Alexios IV had grown during the preceding months of tension and spasmodic violence in and around Constantinople.

A nobleman Alexios Doukas (surnamed 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.[40]

The crusaders and Venetians, incensed at the murder of their supposed patron, demanded that Mourtzouphlos honour the contract which 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.[38]

The Byzantines hurled large projectiles onto the enemy siege engines, shattering many of them. A serious hindrance to the crusaders was bad weather conditions. 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.[38]

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.[38]

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.[38] The churchmen used inflammatory language and claimed that «the Greeks were worse than the Jews»,[38] 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

The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (Eugène Delacroix, 1840). The most infamous action of the Fourth Crusade was the sack of the Orthodox Christian city 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. After a short battle, approximately seventy crusaders managed to enter the city. Some Crusaders were eventually 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 extremely bloody 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.[41] 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, but while attempting to defend themselves with a wall of fire, they ended up burning down even more of the city. This second fire left 15,000 people homeless.[39] The crusaders completely took the city on 13 April.

The crusaders inflicted a savage sacking on Constantinople for three days, during which many ancient Greco-Roman and medieval Byzantine works of art were either stolen or destroyed. The magnificent Library of Constantinople was destroyed. Despite their oaths and the threat of excommunication, the crusaders ruthlessly and systematically violated the city’s churches and monasteries, destroying, defiling, or stealing all they could lay hands on; nothing was spared. 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.[42][43]

When Innocent III heard of the conduct of his pilgrims he was filled with shame and rage, and strongly rebuked them.

According to a subsequent treaty, the empire was apportioned between Venice and the crusade’s leaders, 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 80s. 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 successor 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

Map showing the partition of the Byzantine Empire into The Latin Empire, Empire of Nicaea and Despotate of Epirus after AD 1204

Only a relatively small number of the members of the Fourth Crusade finally reached their originally intended goal — the Holy Land. Research indicates that about a tenth of the knights who had taken the cross in Flanders arrived in Palestine to reinforce the remaining Christian states there, plus about half of those from the Ile-de-France.[44]
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 Church in the West and East was not just complete but also solidified.[45] 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.[46]

Nevertheless, the Pope’s negative reaction was short-lived. When the crusaders took the piles of money, jewels, and gold that they had captured in the sack of Constantinople back to Rome, Innocent III welcomed the stolen items and agreed to let the crusaders back into the Church. 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 was also the Seljuk Sultanate and the Bulgarian Empire. 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. Murtzuphlus’ betrayal and blinding by Alexius III led to his capture by the Latins and his execution in 1205. Not long after, Alexius III was captured by Boniface and sent to exile in Southern Italy. He died in Nicaea in 1211. 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. 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 Ducas, the despot of Epirus and a relative of Murtzuphlus. The Kingdom of Thessalonica was restored to Byzantine rule in 1224.[47]

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. The city was re-captured by the Nicaean Greeks under Michael VIII Palaeologus 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 which aimed at the restoration of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire which was gradually being torn down by the advancing Ottoman Turks. The attempt however, failed, as the vast majority of the 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 which 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.[48]» 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.
[49]

Legacy

«O City, City, eye of all cities, universal boast, supramundane wonder, nurse of churches, leader of the faith, guide of Orthodoxy, beloved topic of orations, the abode of every good thing! Oh City, that hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury! O City, consumed by fire…»

Niketas Choniates laments the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders.[50]

The prominent medievalist Steven Runciman, writing in 1954, stated that «There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.»[51] 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 Thomas F. Madden and Donald E. Queller in 1977 in their book, The Fourth Crusade.[52]

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.[53]

Eight hundred years after the Fourth Crusade, Pope John Paul II twice expressed sorrow for the events of the Fourth Crusade. In 2001, he wrote to Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens, saying, «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.»[54] 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.»[55] This has been regarded as an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the terrible slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade.[56]

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.»[57]

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 fifteen years.

In fiction/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-traveller who saves the life of a Byzantine girl during the carnage and falls in love with her.

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.

See also

  • Alexius III
  • Alexius IV
  • Alexius V
  • Battle of Adrianople (1205)           
  • Constantinople
  • Crusade
  • Crusader states
  • Jews of the Byzantine Empire during the Fourth Crusade
  • Latin Empire of Constantinople
  • Pope Innocent III
  • Principality of Achaea

References

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Phillips, Jonathan (2004). The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Viking. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-14-303590-9.
  2. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 106.
  3. 3.0 3.1 D. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 185
  4. 4.0 4.1 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, p. 157.
  5. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003), 169
  6. Haldon, John (2002). Byzantium at War. Oxford: Osprey. pp. 87.
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 15. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name «Nicolle49» defined multiple times with different content
  8. Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 42–43.
  9. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003), 169-170
  10. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, (1995; repr., London: Folio Society, 2003)
  11. Madden, Thomas F. (August 19, 2008). The Fourth Crusade: Event, Aftermath, and Perceptions: Papers from the Sixth Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East in Istanbul, Turkey. ISBN 0-7546-6319-1.
  12. Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). ISBN 0-14-013705-X.
  13. Runciman, Steven (1954). A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-521-34772-3.
  14. Philips Hughes, «Innocent III & the Latin East,» History of the Church, Sheed & Ward, 1948, vol. 2, p. 370.
  15. D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 232
  16. 16.0 16.1 D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade The Conquest of Constantinople, 17
  17. Robert de Clari, La Prise de Constantinople, xi-xii, in Hopf, Chroniques Greco-Romaines, pp. 7-9. Old French.
  18. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 57.
  19. Nicol, David (1993). The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43991-6.
  20. Zara is the today the city of Zadar in Croatia; it was called «Jadera» in Latin documents and «Jadres» by French crusaders. The Venetian (Italian) «Zara» is a later derivation of the contemporary vernacular «Zadra».
  21. Person Page 10465. thePeerage.com.
  22. Madden, Thomas F., and Donald E. Queller. The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
  23. Emeric (king of Hungary). Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
  24. Phillips, The Fourth Crusade, pp. 110–11.
  25. Philip Hughes, «Innocent III & the Latin East,» History of the Church, vol. 2, p. 371, Sheed & Ward, 1948.
  26. Hindley, Geoffrey (2003). The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. pp. 143, 152.
  27. Runciman, Stephen (1975). A History of the Crusades — the Kingdom of Arce and the Later Crusades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 115. ISBN 0 521 20554 9.
  28. 28.0 28.1 28.2 Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 98
  29. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 113.
  30. Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 99
  31. Treadgold, W. A Concise History of Byzantium, 187
  32. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 159.
  33. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 162.
  34. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 164.
  35. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 176.
  36. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 177.
  37. 37.0 37.1 37.2 Runciman, Steven. The Kingdom of Acre and the later Crusades, (1954; repr., London: Folio Society, 1994), 100
  38. 38.0 38.1 38.2 38.3 38.4 38.5 38.6 Phillips, The Fourth Crusade
  39. 39.0 39.1 Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. 209.
  40. Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. pp. 25, 65. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5.
  41. Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 77. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5.
  42. Vryonis, Speros (1967). Byzantium and Europe. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. p. 152.
  43. Hughes, Philip. «Innocent III & the Latin East,» History of the Church, Sheed & Ward, 1948, vol. 2, p. 372.
  44. Nicolle, David (2011). The Fourth Crusade 1202-04 — the Betrayal of Byzantium. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd. p. 78. ISBN 978 1 84908 319 5.
  45. page 310, volume 5; «Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition 1983, ISBN 0-85229-400-X
  46. Pope Innocent III, Letters, 126 (given July 12, 1205, and addressed to the papal legate, who had absolved the crusaders from their pilgrimage vows). Text taken from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook by Paul Halsall. Modified. Original translation by J. Brundage.
  47. Thurbon, Colin (1981). The Venetians. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books Inc. pp. 25, 65. ISBN 7054 0633 4.
  48. page 308, volume 5; «Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition 1983, ISBN 0-85229-400-X
  49. D’Amato, Raffaele (2007). The Eastern Romans 330-1461 AD. Hong Kong: Concord Publications. p. 42. ISBN 962-361-089-0.
  50. Choniates, Niketas; Magoulias, Harry J. (trans.) (1984). O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatēs. Wayne State University Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-8143-1764-8. http://books.google.com/?id=O8arrZPM8moC.
  51. Runciman. History of the Crusades, vol. 3, p. 130.
  52. Queller, D. E., & Madden, T. F. (1997). The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 1201-1204. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  53. Sherrard, Philip (1967). Byzantium. Nederland: Time-Life Books. pp. 166–167.
  54. In the Footsteps of St. Paul: Papal Visit to Greece, Syria & Malta — Words. EWTN.
  55. «Pope sorrow over Constantinople». BBC News. June 29, 2004.
  56. Phillips. The Fourth Crusade, p. xiii.
  57. In Communion » News — issue 33

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Nicetas Choniates, The Sack of Constantinople
  • Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople (see also excerpts from another translation)
  • The Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders (excerpts from several contemporary accounts)
  • The Fourth Crusade 1204: Collected Sources (excerpts from several contemporary accounts)
  • Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople
  • Pope Innocent III, Reprimand of Papal Legate
  • Chronicle of Morea

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, London: Hambledonm and London, 2003
  • 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): 237–277; 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 and New York: Hambledon and London, 2003. ISBN 978-1-85285-298-6.
  • 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.
  • Kazdhan, 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: 117–143.
  • 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


крестовый поход в 1202—1204 годы. После смерти Тибо Шампанского, поход возглавил маркграф Бонифаций Монферрат.

Кретоносцы собрались на острове Лидо около Венеции. Венецианцы (см. статью дож Энрико Дандоло), вместо Египта высадили крестоносцев у Константинополя. Константинополь пал.

Была создана Латинская империя. Первым её императором избрали Болдуина Фландрского. Бонифаций Монферрат стал королём Фессалоник. Венецианцы получили треть Константинополя. Византийцы создали Никейскую Империю.

В объявленный папой Иннокентием III Четвертый Крестовый поход отправились преимущественно французы и венецианцы. Перипетии этого похода изложены в книге французского военачальника и историка Жоффруа Виллардуэна «Завоевание Константинополя» — первой пространной хронике во французской литературе.

Предпосылки

По первоначальной договоренности венецианцы обязались доставить французских крестоносцев по морю к берегам Святой Земли и обеспечить их оружием и провиантом. Из ожидавшихся 30 тыс. французских воинов в Венецию прибыло только 12 тыс., которые в силу своей малочисленности не могли оплатить зафрахтованные корабли и снаряжение. Тогда венецианцы предложили французам, чтобы в качестве платы те оказали им помощь в нападении на подвластный венгерскому королю портовый город Задар в Далмации, который был главным соперником Венеции на Адриатике. Первоначальный план — использовать Египет в качестве плацдарма для нападения на Палестину — был на время отложен. Узнав о планах венецианцев, папа запретил поход, однако экспедиция состоялась и стоила ее участникам отлучения от церкви. В ноябре 1202 объединенная армия венецианцев и французов обрушилась на Задар и основательно его разграбила.

После этого венецианцы предложили французам еще раз отклониться от маршрута и повернуть против Константинополя, с тем чтобы восстановить на троне свергнутого византийского императора Исаака II Ангела. Смещённый с престола в результате заговоров и интриг, в которых Византия к тому времени уже основательно погрязла, он давно уже обивал пороги европейских властителей, пытаясь склонить их к походу на Константинополь, и раздавал обещания о щедром вознаграждении. Поверили посулам и крестоносцы, думая, что смогут рассчитывать, что в благодарность император даст им денег, людей и снаряжение для экспедиции в Египет. Не обращая внимания на запрет папы, крестоносцы прибыли к стенам Константинополя, взяли город и вернули Исааку трон. Однако вопрос о выплате обещанного вознаграждения повис в воздухе — восстановленный император «передумал», а после того, как в Константинополе произошло восстание и императора с сыном сместили, надежды на компенсацию и вовсе растаяли. Тогда крестоносцы обиделись. По свидетельствам участников похода, маркграф Бонифаций, стоя под стенами города, передал императору посление следующего содержания: «мы тебя из merde достали, в merde же и утопим». Крестоносцы захватили Константинополь во второй раз, и теперь уже грабили его в течение трех дней начиная с 13 апреля 1204. Уничтожались величайшие культурные ценности, было расхищено множество христианских реликвий. На месте Византийской была создана Латинская империя, на трон которой был посажен граф Балдуин IX Фландрский.

Просуществовавшая до 1261 г. империя из всех византийских земель включала лишь Фракию и Грецию, где французские рыцари получили в награду феодальные уделы. Венецианцы же владели константинопольской гаванью с правом взимать пошлины и добились торговой монополии в пределах Латинской империи и на островах Эгейского моря. Тем самым они выиграли от Крестового похода больше всех, но до Святой Земли его участники так и не добрались. Папа пытался извлечь из сложившейся ситуации собственные выгоды — он снял с крестоносцев отлучение от церкви и принял империю под свое покровительство, надеясь укрепить союз греческой и католической церквей, но союз этот оказался непрочным, а существование Латинской империи способствовало углублению раскола.

Подготовка к походу

В 1198 Римским Папой стал Иннокентий III. Новый Папа планировал воодушевить рыцарей на новый поход в Святую землю. К этому времени крестоносцы уже делали несколько неудачных попыток отвоевать Иерусалим. Иннокентий III хотел стать во главе Крестового похода и тем самым восстановить авторитет Рима, который был подорван Германией. Разослав легатов во все католические страны с требованием отдать сороковую часть имущества на новый поход, Папа начал сбор средств (в том же 1198).

Иннокентий III в своем послании о крестовом походе обещал всем рыцарям, которые будут участвовать в войне за Святую землю, освобождение от налоговой повинности, списание всех долгов, сохранность и неприкосновенность имущества. Это послание привлекло огромное количество бедняков и должников, которые планировали поправить свое положение за счет похода.

Однако крупное рыцарство и короли не спешили участвовать в походе, так как многие были заняты локальными войнами. Для агитации Крестового похода на рыцарские турниры и собрания церковь посылала священников, которые убеждали воинов помочь освободить Святую землю. Самым известным таким проповедником был Фулько Нёльи, который привлек к походу 200 000 войнов и собрал огромные денежные средства.

Осада Задара (Зары)

Предводители войска крестоносцев, собравшихся к лету 1200 г. во Франции, обратились к Венеции, располагавшей наилучшим военным и транспортным флотом, с просьбой перевезти их армию в Египет. В 1201 г. дож Венеции Энрико Дандоло подписал с послами крестоносцев договор, по которому Венеция присоединялась к участию в крестовом походе, и обязывалась перевезти 4500 рыцарей, 9000 оруженосцев и 20000 пехотинцев при условии уплаты 85 тыс. марок серебром. В июне 1202 г. корабли уже были готовы, но лишь треть «пилигримов» прибыла в Венецию. Другие отправились через Фландрию, Марсель, Апулию или задерживались в пути. Вожди похода, даже продав свои драгоценности и отдав наличные средства, смогли собрать лишь часть суммы, которую необходимо было внести целиком. Блокированные на острове Лидо, воины Христовы нуждались во всем необходимом и начали роптать, поход был под угрозой срыва. Тогда дож предложил предводителю похода монферратскому маркизу Бонифацию отсрочку при условии, что воины помогут Венеции овладеть далматинским портом Задаром (во времена IV крестового похода Задар был крупным горо­дом-портом и торговым центром на восточном побережье Адриа­тики, соперником Венеции), незадолго перед тем передавшимся под власть венгерского короля, тоже, кстати, взявшего крест. Несмотря на запрет папы поднимать оружие против христиан и на протест части знатных и рядовых «пилигримов», покинувших затем лагерь и вернувшихся на родину, князья уступили требованию Венеции и после ожесточенной двухнедельной осады, 24 ноября 1202 г. Задар был взят штурмом и разграблен. К этому времени было уже слишком поздно предпринимать заморскую переправу, и экспедиция перезимовала в Задаре . Через три дня между франками и венецианцами разразилась настоящая война, повлекшая за собой много жертв. Лидерам похода с огромным трудом удалось прекратить этот конфликт. Папа Иннокентий III отлучил всех участников разграбления христианского Задара от Церкви, но вскоре по политическим мотивам сменил гнев на милость, фор­мально оставив в силе отлучение венецианцев — инициаторов ве­роломного захвата, и разрешив крестоносцам в дальнейшем пользоваться венецианским флотом для отправки своих отрядов на завоевание Константинополя.

История средних веков. В 2 т. Т.1.: Учебник, под ред. С. П. Карпова, М., 2000

Взятие Константинополя

Предлогом для нападения на Константинополь послужила борьба за византийский престол, и крестоносцы явились в столицу Византии для того, чтобы восстановить на троне императора, которого они считали законным. 13 апреля 1204 г. Константинополь был захвачен крестоносным войском. Часть населения погибла, православные храмы были разорены, множество памятников античного искусства разрушено. Дикие бесчинства крестоносцев резко контрастировали со сравнительно сдержанным поведением мусульманских завоевателей в отношении христианских святынь на Востоке. И в самом деле, погромы рыцарей Креста в византийской столице побили все рекорды вандализма. Католические завоеватели опустошили город, как никто. Массовое уничтожение веками накопленных культурных ценностей, совершенное в Константинополе рыцарями и церковниками, без сомнения, нанесло серьезный ущерб европейской цивилизации.

После взятия Константинополя возникло еще одно крестоносное государство — так называемая Латинская империя (название дано позднейшими историками, сами крестоносцы именовали свое государство Римской империей). Часть захваченных земель отошла к Венеции. Власть православного императора сохранилась в Малой Азии (Никейская империя, названная так поздними историками по имени временной столицы). Византийцы, поддержанные турками и главной торговой соперницей Венеции, Генуей, отвоевывали у Латинской империи территорию за территорией, пока, наконец, в 1261 г. вновь не овладели Константинополем. Латинская империя пала, но и возрожденная Византия никогда уже не оправилась от такого потрясения. Английский историк Дж. Годфрей пишет: в результате трагедии 1204 г. «Европе и христианству были нанесены раны, которые, как выяснилось со временем, оказались неизлечимыми».

Результаты Четвёртого крестового похода

Четвертый крестовый поход, превратившийся из «пути ко Гробу Господню» в венецианское коммерческое предприятие, приведшее к разграблению Константинополя латинянами, обозначил глубокий кризис крестоносного движения. Итогом этого похода стал окончательный раскол западного и византийского христианства.

Собственно Византия после этого похода перестаёт существовать как государство более 50 лет; на месте бывшей империи создаются государства: Латинская империя, Никейская империя, Эпирский деспотат и Трапезундская империя. Часть бывших имперских земель в Малой Азии были захвачены сельджуками, на Балканах — Сербией, Болгарией и Венецией.

Католическая энциклопедия.
.
2011.

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