Fourth Crusade
| Fourth Crusade | |
 Conquest of Constantinople | |
| General Information | |
|---|---|
| Date | 1202-1204 |
| Location | Holy Land |
| Casus belli | failure of the Third Crusade |
| Issue | foundation of the Latin Empire |
| Belligerents | |
 Holy Roman Empire  Republic of Venice  Kingdom of France |  Eastern Roman Empire  Kingdom of Hungary |
| Commanders | |
Peter of Capua , legate  Boniface of Montferrat Enrico Dandolo | Alexis III Ange Alexis V Mourzuphles |
| Orient Crusades ( I st , Second , Third , Fourth, Fifth , Sixth , 1239 , VII , VIII , IX ). | |
| Battles | |
| Zara - Constantinople (1203) and (1204) | |
change  | |
The Fourth Crusade is a military campaign which was launched in Venice in 1202. It had been closed at the origin in order to recover the holy places, but the crusade was diverted by the Venetians and leads to taking Constantinople by the crusaders and the founding of the Latin Empire of the East in 1204.
Summary |
Call to Crusade
In 1198 , six years after the previous , Pope Innocent III called for a new crusade , the call was ignored by the Lords EU. Indeed, after the failure of previous crusades, Europe was reluctant to hire another military campaign in the Holy Land. While Germanic struggled against the papal power, the England and France were at war.
Nevertheless, through the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly , the formation of a crusading army was finally decided at a tournament taking place Ecry Crusaders' debt to the Venetians During the summer of 1202 , the Crusader army met in Venice, although much smaller than expected. The Venetians were led by the old (and possibly blind) Doge of Venice , Enrico Dandolo. The latter refused to let the ships leave port without the Crusaders have paid the full amount, which was 85,000 ducats of money. The Crusaders were unable to pay only 51,000, and even had to get there by being reduced to extreme poverty. The Venetians relegated the Crusaders on the Lido to decide on follow-up to events. Finally, Dandolo agreed to defer the debt in exchange for the powerful army would take over the port of Zara , a former Venetian possession in Dalmatia , on behalf of Venice. Dandolo made a great noise of his allegiance to the crusade during a ceremony held at the Basilica San Marco in Venice. This done, he led the fleet of crusaders against the port city of Hungary. They arrived the night of November 11 and planned to spend the winter as Dandolo had not allowed to leave Venice in the summer . But the Hungarian king Emeric himself was Catholic and had also agreed to join the crusade. Many crusaders were opposed to this fratricidal attack and some returned home, including a division commanded by Simon de Montfort IV. The citizens of Zara hung banners bearing crosses in their windows to show they were also Catholics. The Crusaders laid siege to the city anyway and took it. The Venetians and the crusaders were immediately excommunicated for this act by Pope Innocent III. Boniface, who led the crusade, however, had left the fleet before its departure from Venice and visited his cousin Philip of Swabia. The reasons for this visit are debatable: perhaps he understood the Venetian plans and tried to avoid excommunication. Maybe he wanted rather meet Alexis Angel IV , brother of Philip and son of the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelus , a refugee from Philip after the usurpation of the throne by his uncle Alexis III Ange. Isaac II had indeed been dispossessed in 1195 by his own brother and was kept prisoner in the jails of Constantinople, where he had been blinded. Alexius Boniface to this proposition: the payment of the debt against the Crusaders in Venice assistance to recover the throne of Byzantium. He also promised the help of Byzantine troops for the conquest of Egypt. Boniface Maybe he remembered as his own brother, Conrad of Montferrat , who had married a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos , lavishly equipped of course, but had to leave the Empire to 1190 , following a few scandals. Boniface and Alexis joined together so the fleet crossed Corfu , the Crusaders had rallied after the capture of Zara. The Venetians were thrilled with the idea of Alexis, because they were in open conflict with their former overlords Byzantines since 1182 , when their business conduct and religious Constantinople had triggered riots which cost the lives of many Western merchants, much of which was the Venetians. The Crusaders were not all willing to fight against other Christians, but were persuaded by the clergy Catholic Byzantines that the Orthodox were as bad as Muslims (outraged at the looting of the Crusaders, the Byzantines had negotiated a truce with Saladin during the Third Crusade , and had not done enough, according to the crusaders, to help the Second Crusade): they should be punished for their warmth . Alexius IV was, in turn, convinced of being welcomed as a liberator, but unfortunately for him, the citizens of Constantinople preferred a good manager to a usurper emperor supported by foreigners. The Crusaders and the Venetians decided to place him on the throne by force of arms and an assault by sea took place on 17 July 1203. Alexis III panicked before the army of the Crusaders and fled, leaving his family in the city. The people of Constantinople had to grudgingly accept Alexius IV, who was crowned emperor. His father, Isaac II was released from jails and installed co-emperor. Constantinople then contained the most precious treasures of art and literature accumulated by ancient Greek and Latin. But the Crusaders did not see much good in this prodigious amount of knowledge bequeathed by the greatest thinkers of antiquity. What was not gold and silver was broken or thrown into the sea All the marbles of Lysippus, Phidias Praxiteles were destroyed important works of Demosthenes , Diodorus , Polybius , etc.., lost forever . The short stay of the crusaders in Constantinople had no other result than the loss of the most precious treasures of ancient Greek and Latin. The Crusaders were opposed to the throne of Isaac II: they had never seen, he was not part of the market, and had previously negotiated with Saladin. However, the Byzantine citizens did not want Alexis as the sole sovereign, because they do not trust him, and he intended to tap into the public treasury to pay its debts to the Crusaders. In addition, Isaac II realized that his brother had emptied the coffers of Byzantium by leaving the throne, forcing Alexius IV to reconsider the terms of the contract he had proposed to the Crusaders. In this tense climate, the citizens of Byzantium endured very bad behavior "Latins" in their city. For their part they were shocked to find in a Christian town of synagogues , and mosques, storefront, and also Jews and Muslims walking freely and sometimes arms, like the Christians. Side manners and ideas too, the differences were not well received on both sides: the Byzantines, the Crusaders were "dirty, smelly and brutal," while the Crusaders were the Byzantines' effeminate and schismatics "(Question of the Filioque and political interpretation of the status of primus inter pares of the pope) . Fights were constantly breaking out, there were dead and Alexis was forced to ask its allies "Latin" to break camp and moved across the Golden Horn (the estuary that divides Constantinople two). The fighting did not cease as long, and even worsened: the crusaders during an attack on a synagogue, a district of Constantinople was burned . Following these incidents, a conspiracy against Alexius IV is tied and the leader of the opposition, Alexis Doukas , took power and had himself crowned Emperor Alexius V. Alexios IV was strangled and her father Isaac II also died within days, possibly infarction. The Crusaders and Venetians, enraged by the murder of their patron, attacked the town again in 1204. Alexis V, which had a larger army but less driven, sent its troops outside the walls for an assault on the Crusaders. Surprised, they were panicked and the army of Alexius V, thinking they would withdraw from the empire, turned around and went into the city. But the Crusaders regrouped. Against the advice of Pope Innocent III, the knights attacked by land while the ship broke the heavy chain that blocked access to the Golden Horn, before launching an assault by sea port, less heavily fortified. The Venetians came to destroy the ramparts on this side, but had to pay a heavy price in lives for Rus , who were the imperial guard Alexis V, but were overwhelmed. Alexis fled at night . The Venetians then walked along the Golden Horn and dug holes in the walls on the west side, which allowed the Knights to enter the enclosure. The Crusaders captured the northwestern part of the city around the palace Blachernae and used it as a base to lead the assault against the rest of the city. They preserved their lives by creating a wall of fire that spread into a fire even more terrible than the first. The Crusaders were finally victorious and began looting the city for three days, during which many works of art were stolen or destroyed . The horses of San Marco that adorn the Basilica San Marco and the lions who guard the entrance to the Arsenal in Venice (one of them bears an inscription Varangian) are two of the many testimonies of the sack of Constantinople. Item no less important to the medieval mind, the crusaders appropriated a large number of relics, as the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople had concentrated most of the relics of the Christian East. The Crusaders were now regarded by the Byzantine citizens as enemies and occupiers, and resentment between Orthodox and Catholics would continue until today. Westerners had no cure, considering the "schismatic Greeks" as "heretics" as despicable as Muslims . Venetians and Crusaders lords shared the bulk of the Byzantine Empire by a treaty between the two parties and this was the birth of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Boniface was not elected emperor, although many cross it as such, the Venetians felt too close to the former empire because of his brother's wedding, and preferred to install the franc Baldwin VI of Hainaut (Baudouin IX of Flanders ) on the throne. Boniface founded the kingdom of Thessalonica , a vassal state of the new Latin Empire. The Venetian Marco Sanudo founded the Duchy of Naxos in the Aegean , with the endorsement of the Republic which constituted a vast colonial empire consisting of most of the islands and ports along the waterway between Venice and Constantinople. While the Byzantine Empire had not been conquered by the Crusaders. Byzantine imperial families founded in the territories remained under their control their own States: the Empire of Nicaea led by Theodore I. Lascaris , the despotate Epirus dynasty led by Angel , and the Empire of Trebizond headed by the dynasty of Comnenus. The Fourth Crusade had completely overlooked the power of the papacy was at the origin. The pope subsequently lost much of its political power in favor of European monarchs in general and of the Holy Roman Emperor in particular. The Republic of Venice , however, is considerably strengthened and made the most of the Fourth Crusade, at the expense of the Byzantine Empire, which economically, never recovered, even if it could (with difficulty) to eat (partially) from 1261 to 1453 , but by going into debt vis--vis the genoa. Some modern historians believe that without the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople, the Turks would probably never have landed in Europe . Anyway, following the Crusades will be conducted by secular monarchs, and Venice itself eventually suffer from the Turkish expansion, which will deprive it of its possessions and gradually lead to economic decline. 
Misuse of the Crusade to Constantinople
Civil War between Byzantines and Latins
Second attack against Constantinople
Split of the Byzantine Empire and the weakening of the papacy
Notes
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