The Fourth Crusade is the complicated one, the one where it was decided that the "wrong" kind of Christians were subject to attack by the "right" kind of Christians, so long as the "good" guys had quasi-justifiable motives. Born of the ultimate failure of the
Third Crusade to capture Jerusalem, the Fourth began as amidst political turmoil in Europe, was prodded into action at the behest of creditors, took advantage of the intrigues of the Byzantine court, and wound up convincing itself that the holiest city of Eastern Christendom was not an ally against the Saracens, but a target of opportunity. It's full of deceit and dubious rationalizations, few if any "good" guys, and ends with a scene so savage that its memory has remained an impediment to relations between the Roman and Greek Churches for 800 years.
The Fourth Crusade also holds some valuable lessons. Come, join me in the Cave of the Moonbat for the latest episode in this long (-er than I expected) series that I've decided to unofficially subtitle "The Classes Our President Slept Through"...
The story of the Fourth Crusade reads like the script of a cynical political thriller, complete with scenes of Venetian battleships (played by bireme galleys) bombarding the seaward walls of mighty Constantinople with deck-mounted catapults, unbelievable cowardice on the part of people who had a duty not to act so, and a Cheney-like Doge of Venice cleverly manipulating the action while the Pope who called the Crusade is reduced to impotent threats. So, without further ado, here's your cast of characters:
People of the Fourth Crusade: A Rogue's Gallery
* The Byzantines (a/k/a "Greeks") - had had some difficulties sorting out succession after the last ruler of the Comnenus dynasty was killed by a mob in 1185.
The Comneni had a pretty good run: 90 years, stretching back to the time of the First Crusade, but by the late 12th century, internal dissention was rife, provinces were
rebelling, and the Greeks endured a succession of poor leaders beginning with Isaac II Angelus (r. 1185-1195). He was usurped, blinded, and imprisoned by his younger brother Alexius III, who turned out to be even more corrupt than Isaac. Alexius conspired with Saladin to sell out Frederick Barbarosa, lost Bulgaria and Serbia to the growing power of Hungary, and showed himself to be quite the coward when the cross-bearers came a-siegin'.
* The Holy Roman Empire - was enmeshed in the difficulties faced whenever societies come to regard marriage, territorial claims, and tortured legalisms as political tools and the basis of law. By marriage, a guy named Philip of Swabia - brother of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (d. 1197) - laid claims to once-captured Norman lands now under Greek control. A guy named Otto von Brunswick, with the support of Pope Innocent III, stood in his way, leaving neither strong enough to maintain an effective presence anywhere south of the Alps.
* The Roman Catholic Church - under the leadership of Innocent III beginning in 1198, thought that Rome was in charge of the whole shebang. The Church was wrong. No one marched on his announced starting date in 1199; indeed, the first bull he issued resulted in little more than a truce between England and France, one which was abrogated upon the death of Richard the Lionheart a short time afterward. Control of the Crusade was grabbed up by the lay lords once they finally did take up the cross, and the Pope further drove the sword into his foot by involving the secularly greedy Venetians.
* England - was ruled from 1199 by King John of England, younger brother of Richard the Lionheart, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, By the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, and arguably the worst king England ever had. He lost Normandy to Philip Auguste of France early in his reign, brought England to the verge of civil war through inept management, and was humiliatingly obliged to castrate future monarchs by signing the Magna Carta in 1215, the year before his death. The reign of this particular King John is the main reason you've never heard of a King John II in English history - rulers were loath to name their heirs after this bozo.
* France - was ruled by Philip Auguste, who was, as the 13th century approached, like an opportunist in a candy store. The Germans were in pissing contests with one another and with Rome, Richard's death had permitted him to renew war against an England led by the pathetic King John, and the Pope seemed pretty ignorable. Ignorable, that is, until November, 1199, when a preacher named Fulk of Neuilly showed up at a tournament being held by Count Thibaud of Champagne and gave such a righteous speech that many lords took the oath on the spot. Thibaud was named leader of the Crusade, but this duty was passed on to Boniface of Montferrat (in NW Italy) when Thibaud died in 1201 (Boniface was brother to the assassinated, uncrowned king of Jerusalem and hero of the siege of Tyre, Conrad of Montferrat). The bulk of the forces that wound up marching in 1202 were French, though there were also large contingents of Germans and Italians.
* Venice - was led by a council which elected one of their own to the powerful position of Doge (for the benefit of any Star Trek fans out there, the Venetians are the Ferengi; the Doge is the Grand Nagus). During this time, the Doge was an elderly, possibly blind firebrand named Enrico Dandolo, who was as smart and as devious as any man in the Mediterranean. Venice itself was a great naval power, and controlled a string of colonies throughout the Adriatic, Greece, and the Aegean. It also operated sizeable trading concerns in Muslim Alexandria and Orthodox Constantinople, though relations with the latter had been deteriorating since 1171, when Emperor Manuel had ordered mass arrests of Latins. Thousands more died ten years later, when anti-Latin riots broke out and mobs murdered their way through Constantinople's Venetian quarter.
* The Muslims - Don't really play a role in the Fourth Crusade. Ironic, that.
Just the cost of doing business...
A few lessons from the First, Second, and Third Crusades had sunk in by the time of the Fourth, and one of these was this: It's generally a bad idea to march across Turkey. The water route might have been more expensive, but it was safer and faster, so a group of six knights went to Venice (Genoa had earlier spurned papal requests to officially join the crusade) to negotiate with the doge. After a few days of council deliberations, the old man addressed the French on behalf of the Queen of the Adriatic.
Moonbat-extrapolated dialogue:
"Sure," the doge said, "Since Venice is the only city in Western Christendom that could even contemplate building enough ships, we'll not only agree to provide the transportation - we'll join you as full partners!"
The knights look at each other, flabbergasted. "What kind of tonnage are we talking about?" they finally asked.
"Oh, lots and lots," oozed the doge. "More than you're asking for, actually. We'll provide ships enough for 4500 knights and horses, 9000 squires, and 20,000 infantry, and kick in 50 warships of our own to protect them. They'll be at your disposal on June 29, 1202 - a year from now, plenty of time to get yourselves ready."
"Unh-hunh," the knights muttered, incredulous, "So what's the catch? You gonna want a million marks or something? `Cause we can't pay no million marks..."
"Oh, no" soothed the old doge, "our guys have standard rates for this kind of thing, and we'll of course be happy to give you our `volume discount.' It won't cost you more than 91,000 silver marks, and could be as low as 85,000."
"You want it all up-front, right? One navy, deliverable upon receipt of cash payment in full?"
"No, no, of course not. We're all Christians here. How about this: We'll start building now, and you can pay us in installments. The last of these installments will be payable before we depart next summer. Gives you a whole year to raise the dough."
"Uh, okay, but..."
"Yes?"
"Well, you must want something out of this..."
"Oh, we do," sneered the doge, knowing the battle with these rubes was already won, "but you can think of it as being contingent on the success of the Crusade itself: We want half of all captured stuff and land, and we want to attack Egypt first."
Crusading on the cheap
The desire of the doge to attack Egypt happened to coincide with the strategy of the French: Successful conquest of Egypt would give the Crusaders a new, more defensible base from which to invade the Holy Land, and it would give Venice half of everything taken - which might include, say, Alexandria and Cairo.
Venice lived up to its end of the bargain, building ships at a furious rate over the last half of 1201 and the first half of 1202. They were ready on the appointed day as promised, but the crusaders, predictably, were not. For different reasons, different French lords opted to hire small bands of mercenary ships to sail out of Marseilles, Flanders, and Genoa, which meant that by July, 1202, only about 11,000 of the provisioned-for 33,500 soldiers had shown up at Venice.
Moonbat-extrapolated dialogue:
"Well, well," said the Doge, wringing his hands. "Whatever will we do about this? You say you don't have the money to pay for the fleet that you ordered, the fleet that we built in good faith?"
"In fairness, sir," the knights pleaded, "you kinda pushed that deal on our guys. You sold them more fleet than you knew they'd ever need."
"They're big boys; big enough that you empowered them to negotiate on your behalf. This is the deal they negotiated. Are you telling me you're reneging on our deal? That you're going to stiff the Crusade?"
"Well, no...look: we've already collected everything dime we've got, and it only adds up to 51,000 marks. Take that for now; we'll pay you the rest after we take Jerusalem."
The Doge shook his head sadly. "No can do, my friend. You already came up short once, and now you ask for an IOU on ships we're going to take into battle? I don't think so."
The knights trembled, marveling at how low they had been brought by easy credit, until at long last the Doge pronounced his judgment. "Crusades are holy and all, but the business of Venice is business, and you owe us money. Your men will be confined on the Island of Lido until such time as you pay the balance of what you owe us."
As they were being escorted from the presence of the Doge, one of the knights yelled, "Tell us, oh Doge! Is there nothing we can do to at least delay the final payment? Anything at all?" At that, the aged Enrico Dandolo smiled menacingly...
It's Catholic-on-Catholic crimes that are tearing this community apart
Zara (the modern Croatian town of Zadar) had been a Venetian colony until just fifteen years before, when the uppity little ingrates had defected and declared themselves to be under the protection of the Tsar of Hungary. The Venetians had had little choice but to accept the choice of the people of Zara, but the presence in their city of an army heavily in their debt changed matters more than slightly. Now they offered the Crusaders a deal: Help recapture Zara for Venice, and the terms of payment will be extended. To prove his earnestness, the aged Doge took the crusading oath in a public ceremony that set an example for many other Venetians.
Some crusaders were so pissed and disillusioned at what this was turning into that they up and left; others abandoned the army fearing papal reprisals. Still, most of the army remained, if only to avoid the humiliation of returning home broke and without having fought a single Muslim or traveling any further than Italy. Under threat of excommunication, they set off against Zara on October 1, 1202.
By this point, there was someone else with the crusading armies: Alexius IV, renegade son of Isaac II, the Byzantine emperor who had been usurped, blinded, and imprisoned by his brother (and Alexius IV's uncle) Alexius III. Alexius promised the leaders of the Crusade the full support of Eastern Christendom in their Crusade in exchange for Latin support in returning him to the throne in Constantinople. There are many medieval tinfoil hat stories regarding the odd coincidences of timing surrounding Achmed Chalabi's Alexius IV's deal with the Latins, but as early as Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI in 1197, there had been calls for the conquest of Constantinople, so as to combine the power of Eastern and Western Christendom and present a united front (under one, western, banner) against all the enemies of Christ.
The Crusaders landed on the 10th of November, and promptly laid siege to the town despite the large number of Catholic crosses being displayed on sheets hung from windows. Again some of the army rebelled, but again it was not enough to shift the actions of the commanders, and most of the army remained loyal and active in what turned out to be only a 2-week siege.
In for a penny, in for a pound
Alexius' promise became known to the rank-and-file as they wintered over in Zara, and again the decisions of the beholden-to-the-doge leadership caused dissention and desertion among the crusaders. Again these did not rise to the level of incapacitating the army, the soldiers of which, having been freshly excommunicated by an extremely pissed-off Innocent III, had little left to lose by adventuring against Constantinople. If nothing else, placing Alexius IV on the throne might have results positive enough that earlier transgressions - like this one at Zara - could be forgiven.
The crusaders sailed from Zara in April, 1203, stopped to conquer Corfu, and arrived at Constantinople in late June. Alexius III demanded to know what they wanted, and here credit must be given the leaders of the Crusade, for they shouted in reply that they were there to drive Alexius III from the throne as a traitor. Their subsequent attempts to rally the people of Constantinople to the cause of Alexius IV gained little traction, however, as he was seen by the common people as a Western toady.
The Venetians broke through the great chain that had long protected Constantinople's harbor from invaders on July 5th, and two weeks later, the crusaders attacked in force. Though the Vanagian Guard (an Imperial guard made up largely of English and Danish mercenaries) beat back the Franks on the landward side, but the Venetians - led up the scaling ladders by old, blind Enrico Dandolo himself - took a section of the wall above a narrow beach and set a portion of the city on fire. They were forced to retreat, however, when the Franks proved unsuccessful in their assault.
No thanks are due to Alexius III for his role in defending the Constantinople. He assembled a large force at one point, but then lost the nerve to lead the men into battle; only the self-summoned valor of the Varagians saved the city that day. That night, Alexius III grabbed his daughter, together with as much loot as he could carry, and removed his august presence from the field of battle under cover of darkness. Left with few options, the remaining Byzantine defenders trotted old Isaac II out of prison and restored his kingship - a move the crusaders agreed to, so long as Alexius IV would also be crowned as co-regent. This was done on August 1st, 1203.
Bad feelings all around
Here's how things shook out over the fall and winter, 1203-04:
* Alexius had so many people to pay off around Constantinople that by the time he had semi-secured his throne, there wasn't enough cash left to pay the Venetians.
* Thinking quickly, Alexius levied a burdensome tax upon the people to pay off the people who had installed him on the throne before his unwilling subjects. The tax was not wildly popular, to say the least.
* The Franks were waiting on the promised support, and were behaving poorly as guests of the Byzantines. Penniless, they were fighting in the markets and occasionally pillaging the countryside, and once - in an effort to burn down a mosque - set fire to a significant portion of the city.
* Yet another Alexius popped up as the leader of the anti-Latin faction. The crusaders called him Murzuphlus, and he claimed descent from Alexius Comnenus of First Crusade fame. He was murderously anti-Roman.
* In January, 1204, the short, unhappy reign of Alexius III came when Murzuphlus had him strangled and took the throne for himself. Isaac II was thrown back in prison, where he soon died, presumably with a broken heart but wracked by guilt over his own evil deeds.
* By spring, most of the Latin army had withdrawn to safety across the Golden Horn, Murzuphlus (now styling himself Alexius V) was reinforcing the city's defenses, and Latins and Greeks were openly skirmishing.
* The decision to capture Constantinople was arrived at in February and planned during March, 1204. We could go into the details, but trust me: the terms describing how the Byzantine Empire and the treasures of Constantinople would be divvied up were very favorable to Venice. The reunified Christian empire would in many ways answer to Venice before it listened to the Pope.
It's all good - They're the wrong kind of Christians
In the end, it wasn't much of a fight. The Greeks threw back the first assault, on April 9, which bummed out the army, but the clergy was there to pick up the pieces. The priests, in fact, scrambled to reinvigorate the host; wikipedia says this about their efforts:
The 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 judgement on a sinful enterprise: the campaign they argued, was righteous and with proper belief it would succeed. The concept of God testing the determination of the crusaders through temporary setbacks was a familiar means for the clergy to explain failure in the course of a campaign. The clergy's message was designed to reassure and encourage the crusaders. Their argument that the attack on Constantinople was spiritual just revolved around two themes. First, the Greeks were traitors and murderers since they had killed their rightful lord, Alexius IV. The churchmen used inflammatory language and claimed that "the Greeks were worse than the Jews", and they invoked the authority of God and the pope to take action. To introduce the Jews (supposedly the killers of Christ) as a point of comparison indicates how strongly the clergy wished to convince their audience of Murtzuphlus' evil. Although Innocent III had again warned them not to attack, the papal letter was suppressed by the clergy, and the crusaders prepared for their own attack, while the Venetians attacked from the sea...
Constantinople was unable to repel a second attack on the 13th. The crusaders topped the walls in one place and broke through a gate in another, which prompted Murzuphlus to grab Alexius IV's widow, daughter, and jewels before fleeing the city. Resistance crumbled, and for three days the crusaders sacked Constantinople with a ferocity not seen before or since. According to historian Edwin Pears:
An indiscriminate slaughter commenced. The invaders spared neither age nor sex. In order to render themselves safe they set fire to the city lying to the east of them, and burned everything between the monastery of Everyetis and the quarter known as Droungarios. So extensive was the fire, which burned all night and until the next evening, that, according to the marshal, more houses were destroyed than there were in the three largest cities in France. The tents of the Emperor and the imperial palace of Blachern were pillaged, the conquerors making their head-quarters on the same site at Pantepoptis. It was evening, and already late, when the crusaders had entered the city, and it was impossible for them to continue their work of destruction through the night. They therefore encamped near the walls and towers which they had captured. Baldwin of Flanders spent the night in the vermilion tent of the Emperor, his brother Henry in front of the palace of Blachern, Boniface, the Marquis of Montferrat, on the other side of the imperial tents in the heart of the city.
For 1000 years, mighty Constantinople had gathered and guarded its great wealth, secure in the knowledge that the harbor chain, the sea wall, and the parallel walls on the land approaches would keep those treasures safe. Once the defenses were breached, Constantinople lay at the mercy of the crusaders, and it turned out they had none. Icons, gold, artwork, and treasures of every description were looted in an orgy of death and pillage, enriching the crusaders and bringing the Byzantine capital to its knees. It was the worst incidence of looting the city ever suffered, and its former glory would not be restored until after the Muslim conquests of the 15th century.
The recriminations and fallout weren't limited to historians or Orthodox patriarchs, either; the people of the time signaled their disgust in no uncertain terms. Pope Innocent III himself chastised the crusaders thusly:
"You vowed to liberate the Holy Land but you rashly turned away from the purity of your vow when you took up arms not against Saracens but Christians... The Greek Church has seen in the Latins nothing other than an example of affliction and the works of Hell, so that now it rightly detests them more than dogs"
Of course, later on - when the ships began docking in Italy to offload their tremendous haul of booty - Innocent was obliged to undo the earlier excommunications. What's done is done, he must have figured, so why not re-communicate the soldiers and try'n get them to share some of their portion with the Church? He thus became yet another one of history's dirtbags - a guy simply too pragmatic to stand on his principles.
The sins of the father...
The sack of Constantinople resonates to the current day. There's an outstanding discussion of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views of the event here, which includes, among other noteworthy quotations, this:
Bishop Kallistos Ware comments:
* Eastern Christendom has never forgotten those three appalling days of pillage... What shocked the Greeks more than anything was the wanton and systematic sacrilege of the Crusaders. How could men who had specially dedicated themselves to God's service treat the things of God in such a way? As the Byzantines watched the Crusaders tear to pieces the altar and icon screen in the Church of the Holy Wisdom, and set prostitutes on the Patriarch's throne, they must have felt that those who did such things were not Christians in the same sense as themselves . . .
Can we wonder if the Greeks after 1204 also looked on the Latins as profani? Christians in the west still do not realize how deep is the disgust and how lasting the horror with which Orthodox regard actions such as the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders.
{Ware, The Orthodox Church, NY: Penguin Books, revised 1980 edition}
The Roman Catholic Church somewhat belatedly apologized for what happened in the summer of 1204:
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, 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." In 2004, while Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, was visiting the Vatican, John Paul II said "How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust." As Jonathan Phillips writes in his 2004 book The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, this was "an extraordinary statement -- an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the terrible slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade."
link
Historiorant
The Fourth Crusade was not planned (at least by the rank-and-file) as a sneak attack on Eastern Christendom, though it is certainly arguable that Enrico Dandolo and the secret councils in Venice had their eye on the prize all along. Clever manipulation of logistics and an even more clever extension of credit, along with a cynical exploitation of the faith and sense of honor of the common soldier and their mid-rank leaders, allowed a devious cabal to direct an assault against an "enemy" which theretofore had not been regarded as such. Hmmm...
Sound familiar? It should - there are a lot of parallels between the Fourth Crusade and the current adventure in Iraq. It's a shame our Preznit is so glaringly unfamiliar with the story; were he a more literate literary man, he might recognize the lessons the early 13th century has to teach us about putting the business of war before the people and institutions swept up by it.