The Fourth Crusade:Who Would Believe This Story

If you scroll down the page to a post about a week earlier, you will find a detailed account of the First Crusade [1096-1099]. Christian Crusaders in that campaign eventually captured Jerusalem and established several “Christian Kingdoms” in a part of the Eastern Mediterranean coast in a region still primarily Islamic. But the achievement was temporary at best, and a Second Crusade was attempted [1147-1149] without recapturing Jerusalem.
 
Perhaps better leadership was needed. Thus, the Third Crusade (1189–1192) was an attempt led by King Philip II of France, King Richard I of England [“Richard the Lion Hearted”] and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to reconquer the Holy Land following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. For this reason, the Third Crusade is also known as the Kings' Crusade.[13] This is the Crusade in which Frederick “Red Beard” Barbarossa drowned crossing a river while on his horse in full armor.
 
It was partially successful, recapturing the important cities of Acre and Jaffa, and reversing most of Saladin's conquests, but it failed to recapture Jerusalem, which was the major aim of the Crusade and its religious focus. After this expedition, it was time to reexamine the Crusade concept and revisit the military and political presuppositions.
 
THE FOURTH CRUSADE
 
“Crusade Fever” waxed and waned for much of the Middle Ages. There was a Fifth Crusade [1217-1221] which also failed to take Jerusalem, but by that time the word “Crusade” became a generic term for organized warfare against heretics and hostile religious movements, notably the Cathars or Albigensians. But the Fourth Crusade is easily one of the most captivating tales of the medieval era. It changed mindsets on military strategy, economics, diplomacy, rules of combat, and religion. The most powerful pope of the Middle Ages convoked it, and it exposed the limits of those papal powers as well. Innocent III [r. 1198-1216] was just 37 when he was elected to the Chair of Peter. He died at the relatively early age of 55; we can only wonder what he might have achieved had he lived longer. He was a reformer of the Church who set the rule requiring annual confession and communion—admittedly a low bar, but a window into the times.
 
Innocent’s zeal to begin a new crusade was delayed as the six individuals appointed by the pope to plan and execute the Crusade had much to occupy themselves. In Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople [2005] the author begins with a lengthy essay on the evolution of crusading over the century prior to the fourth. To cite just a few, the three previous crusades had marched men nearly two-thousand miles each way with battles, skirmishes, and sieges along the way. Could an entire crusade more effectively sail to the East, such as to Alexandria, Egypt, and proceed north into the region of Jerusalem? If so, to whom could the Crusaders turn to build a massive fleet for 30,000 knights and their horses? Second, how would the Crusade raise the funding? Third, how would the Crusade inspire enthusiasm for yet another war, after the recent defeat of the Third Crusade six years earlier? How would all segments of the force stay in communication—an army estimated on paper to be three forces of 10,000 knights each, as well as with the pope? And would the pope be a competent commander?
 
WHEELING AND DEALING
 
The “crusade committee” of six included the knight Geoffrey of Villehardouin, whose responsibilities included chronicling the war. Geoffrey’s information is a veritable gold mine to historians…and just about anyone interested in medieval times. We have solid information, then, on many aspects of the planning of the war. The decision was made to make the fourth venture a water voyage. The idea of moving an army by water was not new. Hannibal, after all, had shipped his army across the Mediterranean from Africa along with elephants and obliterated a Roman army around 200 B.C. The issue was less technology than money, and here is where the Crusade started tallying up errors.
 
The committee decided to negotiate with Venice, then on the rise as an economic and political power on the Adriatic. At the time of this crusade the “doge” or leader of Venice was Dandolo, a blind 90-year-old as crafty as any leader the crusading armies had encountered in past efforts. All negotiations begin with projections, of course, and the Crusader team worked from a figure of 30,000 knights needing transport and supplies. Dandolo, for his part, guaranteed 250 ships and supplies, constructed within a 12–18-month window, for 94,000 gold ducats. He would meet this challenge by putting Venice’s economy on hold while 50% of his city’s workforce engaged in the shipbuilding venture.
 
Pope Innocent agreed to these terms, perhaps too quickly. Few knight recruits were coming forth, and equally stressful, neither were funds. It was a major contrast to the call to crusade in 1095, a century earlier, when every man with a club tried to join the knightly force for the glory of God, a plenary indulgence, and perhaps unexpected booty. By 1200 crusading had lost some of its spiritual attractions. Each knight in the Fourth Crusade was expected to contribute to the cost of the Crusade, and for the first time in history, a pope taxed all clergy in the Roman West to meet costs of the war.

The Crusade did not have a clean beginning from the get-go; many clusters of knights drifted into Venice, the launching point of the invasion, either too early or maddeningly late. Moreover, the best estimate of Crusade strength at time of launch was 13,000 or thereabouts, not the 30,000 planned. The Crusaders’ cash in hand was woefully short of the 94,000 ducats. From this point, control of the Crusade passed from Innocent to Dandolo. Innocent was not initially aware of his newly disadvantaged place in the order of things, and to his credit he did later try to ward off two of the most infamous acts of war conducted by “Christian armies.”
 
Dandolo, in virtual control of both the crusading army and his own sizeable Venetian force, determined that with the force at his command, he could deliver a fatal blow to his trading rival, the Christian city of Zara. That Venice would strike another Christian city was, at the least, morally offensive. Many crusaders protested the idea, and when Pope Innocent learned of it, he threatened to excommunicate the entire Crusade. Dandolo was not troubled by the pope’s threat, and a mixed force of Crusaders and Venetians took the city inside of two weeks. The citizens fled and the invaders sacked the city. Ironically, the Crusaders and the Venetians engaged in a battle between themselves for the rewards of war in which about one hundred soldiers were killed.
 
WHAT NEXT?
 
The mixed army wintered at Zara as two sets of negotiations were underway. The crusaders sent a delegation to Rome to convince Innocent to lift the excommunication. [Innocent would, later, for all “non-Venetians.”] Meanwhile, a new face appeared upon the scene who would turn the Crusade into an entirely different direction from its final goal of Jerusalem.
 
The “minister without portfolio” was Alexis, the son of Isaac II Angelos, the former emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire based in Constantinople. Young Alexis had been working his way through Europe seeking military assistance for his father, who Alexis claimed had been stripped of his throne, blinded, and imprisoned by his brother, Alexis’ uncle. Few Western regional powers wished to deal with him. Innocent refused to hear him. But Alexis made his way to the Crusade encampment at Zara and made his case to the Crusade leaders and Dandolo that his father’s overthrow had been highly unpopular, and that with a show of manpower—specifically the combined Crusader/Venetian force, would be welcomed by the citizenry of Constantinople and ultimately by the Eastern Empire.
 
The decision was one of the most fateful in medieval Christian history. What factored into the strategy of the decision to sail to Constantinople instead of Alexandria/Jerusalem? Apparently, the Crusade and Venetian leaders did not believe that their combined armies of 20,000 would actually fight a full-scale war against a city of 500,000 fortified by sea and land. Rather, they believed Alexis that a show of force and the reemergence of the imprisoned emperor’s son would be enough to open the doors to Constantinople. Second, the Crusaders needed supplies to push on to Jerusalem; Alexis had assured them that Constantinople would amply equip them for their trip south. Third, the Crusaders—at least in its leadership circle—carried religious motives into their discussions. They had been assured by young Alexis that reunion with Rome might be made possible by a restoration of his father’s crown, including Constantinople’s pledge toward reunion in exchange for a lifting of the excommunication issued 150 years earlier. Putting much trust in Alexis, the united armies pressed on to the heart of the Eastern Empire.
 
THE BATTLE
 
There are many accounts of the siege of Constantinople, but they all have these facts in common. The Crusade discovered upon arrival that young Alexis had grossly misread—to put it kindly--the situation back home. When Dandolo presented Alexis on a benign visit to the dignitaries at the main gate of the city walls, many of the citizens did not recognize Alexis, while others were content with the status quo under his uncle. The Crusaders then took the role of God’s servants, stating that they could not walk away from an unlawful usurpation of the crown, a violation of the “divine right of kings” principle.
 
Essentially, the confrontation evolved very quickly into a war. Constantinople could have destroyed the land force handily, and the sea force eventually. But the Crusaders and the Venetians coordinated their strengths such that both arms executed their movements at distinct points simultaneously. When the opposing infantry of each side eventually met face to face, Geoffrey of Villehardouin confesses that he was terrified at how outnumbered the Crusader force appeared compared to the Constantinian opposition. But then a strange thing happened: the Eastern Emperor halted hostilities and eventually left the city to its fate. Phillips speculates that Alexis III was a gentle man who shied away from violence and unnecessary loss of life. The citizens, confused and angry, nonetheless accepted for a time that the western armies would be their guests.
 
A truce extended for several months; the westerners were granted free access to Constantinople itself to admire the priceless wonders of the world’s most beautiful city. The military battle had been finished, so everyone thought, but there was much diplomatic work to do. What, precisely, was the legal status of Constantinople? Was it now a Roman Catholic city of the Latin rite? How would the Crusaders be compensated? Militarily, who would be in charge? [This was a major question because the contract between the Crusade and the Venetians was soon to expire.]. But in addition to that, most of his subjects grew to hate Alexis for tainting their city with “uncouth westerners.” The atmosphere was turning ugly. Matters grew worse when a massive fire destroyed much of the city. For the Crusaders, they were caught in an unfortunate bind. They had not yet paid the Venetians the completion of the 94,000 ducats, and the Venetians threatened to sail off and abandon them—a frightening situation. Alexis had not yet paid the Crusaders for rescuing his family and restoring the throne, and he had little cash to do so.
 
AN UGLY END
 
In April 1204, the political hostilities within Constantinople itself, coupled with growing rage against the westerners, led the Byzantines to a military assault upon the Crusade encampment outside of Constantinople. What followed was a brief but intense siege of the city by Crusaders. Unfortunately, the next episode is the one most remembered, “The Sack of Constantinople.” Despite the best efforts of Crusade leaders to counsel restraint, the pent-up anger of a weary [and probably hungry] army resulted in the ravishing of a massive city and the wholesale slaughter of Eastern Christians.
 
How bad was it? In 2001 a major Greek news service covering the visit of Pope John Paul II to Greece wrote this:  
 
The apology of Pope John Paul II addressed significant historical scars that go back to the Fourth Crusade when Western Christian crusaders destroyed Constantinople, the heart of Eastern Christianity and the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. This tragedy sparked a deep psychological and dogmatic schism between the Eastern and Western churches, making reunification an unattainable dream for generations to come.
 
The Fourth Crusade returned home with its trove of riches. It never attempted a trip to Jerusalem. It never made a single Muslim convert. It divided Christianity to this day. In 1493 Constantinople fell permanently to the Ottoman Empire.