The fiasco of the Fourth Crusade was partly due to the Venetians

Posted in Historical articles, History, Religion, War on Tuesday, 24 July 2012

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This edited article about the Fourth Crusade originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 755 published on 3rd July 1976.

Fourth Crusade, picture, image, illustration

Crusaders looting Constantinople by Dan Escott

In the last days of 1199, Pope Innocent issued a summons to the princes and warriors of the West to undertake once again the deliverance of the Holy Land from Moslem domination. Perhaps because this was to be no less than the fourth Crusade, his appeal met with a tepid reception.

In France alone was any general excitement visible, and this was only due to the remarkable personal magnetism and preaching of Fulk of Neuilly, a priest obviously capable of stirring the emotions of the masses.

Nevertheless, a large army was eventually collected; but to avoid the disasters which had befallen previous expeditions who had travelled by land, its leaders resolved to proceed to Palestine by sea.

Ambassadors were despatched to Venice, then the most powerful of the maritime states, to negotiate the means of transport. Its doge, Enrico Dandolo, received them with cordiality and agreed to help them with their project. An agreement was concluded to the effect that for an agreed sum, Venice would furnish them with vessels for the transport of 4,500 horses and more than 30,000 men.

Venice also undertook to equip fifty galleys of her own, on the understanding that so long as the contract lasted, the spoils of the conquest were to be equally divided. As the Pope and his ecclesiastics had agreed to defray a large part of the expenses, everybody was happy with the arrangements.

The Crusaders did not begin to assemble in Venice until early in 1202, when they encamped on the island of San Nicolo. They arrived to find that the Venetians had more than fulfilled their part of the treaty. Stables had been constructed for the horses, and barracks for the soldiery. In the lagoon rode a magnificent fleet, the equal of which Christendom had never seen before.

But by then things had already begun to go wrong. Many of the Crusaders had decided they wanted to go by a different route, and a large number of them had already sailed from Marseilles and Aquila, leaving that part of the cost of the expedition not met by the pope to fall in its entirety upon those who had assembled in Venice.

Blandly, the doge told them their debt would be wiped out if they would recover for him the fortified city of Zara in Dalmatia, which had been wrested from the republic of Venice by the king of Hungary. As this lay on their route down the Adriatic, the Crusaders accepted the offer without too much hesitation.

They also accepted the doge’s suggestion that he should lead the expedition. Considering that he was old and blind, it says a lot for his powers of persuasion that no one raised any serious objection to his proposal.

The fleet which eventually sailed from Venice in the October of 1202 numbered 50 galleys and 550 other vessels, carrying in them some 40,000 Christian soldiers. Despite the enormous fortifications at Zara, this enormous armada was able to capture the city within six days.

By then the year was drawing to a close and the Christians decided to make Zara their winter headquarters. It was while they were there that they received another setback to their plans. The throne of the Eastern Empire at that time was occupied by Alexius Angelus, who had deposed his brother Isaac and deprived him of his sight before throwing him into a dungeon. Isaac’s son, who was also named Alexius, thirsting for revenge, approached the Crusaders and offered them an enormous sum of money if they would temporarily turn aside from their main purpose in order to help him regain the Imperial crown. In exchange, he undertook to equip at his own cost 10,000 men for a year’s service as a garrison in the Holy Land. In this new scheme, the Venetians saw a far more tempting prospect for national aggrandisement than in a crusade against the Moslems. After considerable pressure on their part the allied princes and barons reluctantly agreed to the proposal.

In the May of the same year the armada sailed from Zara, and after resting for three weeks at Corfu, where they were joined by the young Alexius, they sailed for the imperial city of Constantinople (now Istanbul). A mere twelve days later, the Crusaders crossed the Bosphorus, the opposite shores of which were defended by 70,000 Greeks. The knights, though clothed in full armour, leaped into the surf and waded ashore. Instead of coming forward to do battle, the emperor and his Greeks melted from the scene like snow before the sun.

On the following morning, the Crusaders decided to open up the entrance to the harbour. Crowding on all sail, the Venetian galleys bore down upon the huge chain which was stretched across the Golden Horn. Snapping it in twain, they then proceeded to attack the twenty enemy ships in the harbour which they either sank or captured. The Crusaders’ fleet now rode triumphantly at anchor in the port of Constantinople.

Taking the imperial city was to prove to be much more difficult a task. Two hundred and fifty engines of war hurled a storm of missiles against the walls. A breach in the walls was eventually made and the Crusaders streamed towards it, only to be beaten back by the Greeks, who had now regained their courage.

The Venetian galleys were more fortunate. Approaching the towers and walls that stretched along the shore, they managed to get near enough to shower the defendants with a hail of arrows and javelins.

The doge, blind and old though he was, stood upon the prow of his galley with the standard of St. Mark unfurled before him, and incited the Venetians to make the shore at the risk of incurring his displeasure. Spurred on by the bravery of this incredible old man, the Venetians ran the galley aground, and sprang out proudly bearing the banner of St. Mark before them. Its bearer was slain, but not before he had planted the banner on one of the towers. The 25 other towers were quickly occupied.

The Emperor, seeing his crown in peril, directed his men to make a sally from three gates at once. In the face of this concentrated attack, the Crusaders began to fall back until tidings of their danger was brought to Dandolo. Immediately the blind old hero left the position he had won and led his men to the rescue. The Greeks promptly retreated, while their emperor, with a treasure of ten thousand pounds in gold, fled from the city and embarked on a small fishing boat for an obscure harbour in Thrace.

Taking the city before them, the Crusaders released the blinded Isaac from his prison, and in due course he was solemnly crowned under the lofty dome of St. Sophia, and the young Alexius was anointed as his imperial colleague.

Such was the battle of Constantinople. But to complete the story we must carry it a little further and follow it to the inglorious end of the crusade that never was.

Now that the time had come for Alexius to fulfil his promise, he found that he had not sufficient resources to do so, and he had to beg the Crusaders to wait at Constantinople for a year that he might have time to find the men and money he had promised them. The Crusaders agreed, but the length of their stay brought out the mutual dislike the Greeks and Latins had for each other. The continual friction between them led to war, and in the March of 1204, the Crusaders resolved to make Constantinople their own.

Taking the city, they rampaged through the streets, marking their progress with heaps of dead and dying men in every street. The imperial tombs were violated and the costly ornaments of St. Sophia and other churches stripped and sold to pedlars. The plundering over, the conquerors then elected Baldwin, Count of Flanders, to wear the imperial crown. The doge was rewarded by being given part of the coast and the richest islands of the archipelago and the Adriatic. He died finally at the age of 98.

This precarious Latin empire, which lasted only some fifty years, occupied the attentions of many of the vigorous adventurers of the West for those years, and as a result did a great deal of harm to the Crusaders’ cause in the Holy Land. Although the whole affair had been caused largely by Venetian cupidity, the Crusaders were equally to blame; it takes two to make a bargain.

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