Fourth Crusade Ep 2: When Crusaders attacked and burned Constantinople

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0:32Constantinople is a fabled city. It was the capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. And when the western half collapsed in 476 AD, when Rome was overrun by barbarians, the residents of Constantinople would have been very surprised to hear that this was the end of the Roman Empire. In their minds, they were the Roman Empire. Every bit as legitimate a capital as Rome itself, and far richer to boot. Constantinople is situated at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, right at the border between Europe and Asia.

1:06And it had access to very lucrative eastern trading routes. For centuries after the collapse of Rome, the emperors in this city continued to wear the imperial purple, and they kept the insignia of the Roman eagles. Constantinople was also a Christian city, as was the entire Roman Empire from the 4th century on, so well before Rome itself collapsed. And Constantinople continued being a Christian city for centuries thereafter, with dazzling gold mosaics depicting its emperors next to images

1:37of Jesus Christ and Mary. You can still see these images today on the walls of the city's grandest church, the Hyasophia. Some historians begin to refer to the city of Constantinople as Byzantium during this period, the period after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and they call the city itself Byzantium. But I'm not going to use that terminology, because the residents of Constantinople saw themselves as Romans. That is how they understood themselves, their identity, and their history.

2:07So I'll be referring to them as the Eastern Roman Empire and the city of Constantinople. Of course, the city no longer has that name today. Today, it is known as Istanbul, is 1453, when it was conquered by the Ottomans. And while that is often marked as a turning point in history, and a turning point in the identity of this city, which indeed it was, what is far less talked about is a moment 250 years before. That is the moment when the city of Constantinople, as it was still called, was attacked and devastated by a

2:45Christian army. They were the men of the Fourth Crusade. The ultimate irony is that while the men of the Fourth Crusade thought they were signing up to go to Jerusalem and take that city from the Ayyubid Muslim dynasty that controlled it, instead, they ended up at the gates of this city. This, too, was a turning point in history, with very far-reaching consequences. The men of the Fourth Crusade forced their way into the city, burning, sacking, and pillaging as they went.

3:16It's a horrifying story, and this episode is the story of how that happened. You are listening to Villains and Virgins Podcast, and this is a very special episode on the Fourth Crusade. This is part two in that story, so you can go back and get a sense of how the crusade got started in Episode 1. But if you want to get straight to the horror, this is that part of the story. And I'm recording this episode live in Istanbul, and so if the setup and the sound is a

3:51little different from what you're used to, that's because I'm currently on site in the city where all these things happened. Being on site in a city like this allows me to do a deep dive into the research, to gather the kinds of details, images, and footage that I otherwise wouldn't have access to, and share them with you. And I share even more of this kind of detail for people who support this podcast on Patreon. After all, Villains and Virgins wouldn't be possible without the incredible people who support what I do.

4:27If you'd like to have access to members-only benefits, like special monthly bonus episodes of even more history storytelling, or ad-free access to the regular episodes, or even live history conversations hosted by me, Eva Schubert, the host of Villains and Virgins podcast, then head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert and become a supporter today. We started the story of the Fourth Crusade in our last episode. And to briefly remind you of where we are, Pope Innocent III had sent out the call for the Fourth

5:01Crusade. Not because there had been anything new that had happened in the Near East, but because the Third Crusade hadn't succeeded in retaking Jerusalem, and the Pope wanted to try again. We left the men of the Fourth Crusade encamped in the city of Zara on the Adriatic coast, what is now the coast of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. So how did they end up there? Well, the people who organized the Fourth Crusade estimated that some 30,000 men would sail from Venice and embark on

5:32this mission. The problem was that only about 10,000 of the expected soldiers actually showed up. A few thousand never came to Venice at all, and simply arranged their own passage to the Near East. And that left the ones who did arrive in Venice with a very large transportation bill. They had done a contract with Venice to build the ships that would be necessary to carry the army of the Fourth Crusade into the Near East. The ships were ready. The Venetians had held up their end of the bargain.

6:04But the Crusaders needed to cough up the cash. The problem was that with only 10,000 men available, paying passage for 30,000 was going to leave them significantly in debt. There just weren't enough men to pay their share to fill out the amount of money that had been promised to the Venetians. So, after some tense negotiations, the doge of Venice, the man who was the head of the Venetian city-state, a guy called Enrico Dandolo, proposes a deal to the leaders of the Fourth Crusade.

6:35And he says, you can pay off the remaining money that you owe Venice out of the proceeds of the Crusade, out of the booty and the spoils that you're going to obtain after fighting successful battles. But in the meantime, we're going to do a little diversion and stop off at the city of Zara. Because we, in Venice, have had control of this city in the past, and we've recently lost it to the Hungarians. We want Zara back. So, you, the armies of the Fourth Crusade, are going to sail along with us

7:09to Zara, and we're going to put Zara back under Venetian control. Now, this was an incredibly unpopular move for many of the men in the Fourth Crusade. First of all, it was kind of a high-level deal that was done between a nobleman called Boniface of Montferrat, who was the de facto leader of the Fourth Crusade, and the doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo. They were trying to work out a deal that would give the Venetians and the Crusaders what both of them

7:40needed. But for the everyday rank-and-file Crusader, your standard infantryman, he wasn't privy to this deal. He thought that he was still going directly to the Near East, and so there was a good deal of discontent and downright anger when the Crusaders find themselves rolling up on the shores of Zara, and they're told that their first task is going to be to attack this city. Zara's a Christian city. It's under the control of the Hungarians, who've been Christian for some time, and the Hungarian

8:11king has even taken the Crusader cross himself. So, for many of the guys on the Crusade, this felt like a completely illegitimate target. They thought they'd signed up to fight Muslims, not Christians, and so there were significant expressions of protest from some of the clerics or churchmen that had travelled along with the Fourth Crusade, as well as some of the nobles and the everyday rank-and-file. Some of them even refused to fight, literally sat out and watched while others made war on Zara. But in the end, financial necessity being what it was, many of the Crusaders

8:46did participate in conquering Zara, and having done that, the army ends up camping out there to wait out the winter before spring arrives and campaigning season resumes. While the discontented army of the Fourth Crusade overwinters in Zara, grumbling, the plot begins to thicken. Prince Alexius of Constantinople arrives in the city of Zara with a message for the leader of the Fourth Crusade, Boniface of Montferrat. Now, Prince Alexius is very important because he's the son of a previous emperor of Constantinople. His father is currently in jail.

9:19He's been blinded. And until relatively recently, Prince Alexius was in captivity along with his father. But as we saw in our previous episode, he managed to escape and make friends with some very powerful men in Western Europe. And now he comes to Boniface of Montferrat with a proposal. He says, Bring this army of the Fourth Crusade along to Constantinople. It's on the way anyway. Make a stop at that city and put me, Prince Alexius, on the imperial throne.

9:49If you make me emperor, I will reward you richly. I will pay you a sum of 200,000 silver marks, which will wipe out that remaining debt you owe to your Venetian allies. It will also contribute to the provisioning and support of your army. Furthermore, I'll give you an extra 10,000 troops from my own imperial army who will go with you into the Near East and fight alongside you in your crusade. And just to sweeten the deal, Prince Alexius promises that as

10:21emperor, he will bring the eastern half of the Christian church into submission to the western half of the Christian church and the pope. That is a very tall list of promises. We're going to come back to this point about the eastern and western halves of the Christian church in a moment. But let's pause to ask for a moment, what did the pope think of all this? Pope Innocent III is the one who called for this Fourth Crusade.

10:51And it's obviously for his benefit that Prince Alexius is making this promise about bringing the eastern half of the Christian world into submission to the pope. So what did the pope think of where the Fourth Crusade was going and what Prince Alexius is promising? Well, first of all, the pope was horrified when he heard that the armies of the Fourth Crusade had attacked Zara because Zara was a Christian city and the Hungarian king was a crusader. So he was entitled to additional protection for that reason.

11:24So the pope was so angry about it that he actually excommunicated everybody involved, all the men in the Fourth Crusade and their Venetian allies. Now, technically speaking, some of those Venetians had taken the crusader cross themselves, but it's going to be very difficult if I call them all crusaders. So we're going to talk about the men of the Fourth Crusade, mostly French, some from the Holy Roman Empire, Western Europe. And then we're going to talk about their Venetian allies, led by the Doge and Rico Dandolo, this

11:5880-year-old, blind, incredibly shrewd statesman. And very well-seasoned Venetian sailors and soldiers who've come along with him. So, men of the Fourth Crusade and their Venetian allies. The pope excommunicates them all. He says, all of you have done something that is completely unforgivable. Then word travels back to the pope about why. And Boniface of Montferrat explains that they were compelled by financial necessity. They were indebted to the Venetians. They found themselves in an impossible situation where there wouldn't have been a

12:29crusade at all if they hadn't made some kind of deal with the Venetians to go ahead, despite being short of funds. And Zara was part of that deal. With that explanation, the pope lifts the ban of excommunication from the men of the Fourth Crusade. He doesn't lift it from the Venetians, however. So, they remain under official papal condemnation for their actions. But what does the pope think about Prince Alexius' proposal to divert the armies of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople,

13:00to make Prince Alexius the emperor, and then to bring the eastern half of the Christian church under the pope's authority? That part is a lot murkier. So, to understand what this means, we need to zoom out for a moment and talk a little bit about why there's an eastern half of the Christian world and a western half to start with. We have to jump back in time here for a moment and remember that it was in the year 380 AD that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

13:35And at that point, there was still an eastern half of the Roman Empire and a western half. They had split the Roman Empire because it was so big that administratively, it just seemed to make more sense to govern it in separate halves. As the centuries pass and the western half of the Roman Empire, which was Christian, collapses in 476, the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which is also Christian, continues for centuries later. So now we have an eastern Roman Empire, which is still intact, and western Europe, which used to be half

14:12of the Roman Empire, which has collapsed into little territories that are dominated by different barbarian tribes. Goths, Allens, Franks, Lombards, etc. The Christians on both sides of this divide still communicate with each other. And in the 600s and 700s, you have gatherings of bishops or church leaders from the west and from the east who meet together to discuss matters of church doctrine and practice. So they're still in communication. But as the centuries continue, and as the eastern half of the Roman Empire is

14:44less and less connected to what used to be the western half, differences in belief and practice begin to emerge. And some of these differences are small, like whether churchmen should wear beards or not wear beards, or the type of bread they should use in their church services. But some of these differences become more significant. By the time we get to the 1000s, the Bishop of Rome is one of about five bishops of really major metropolises, including Constantinople and Alexandria. But the Bishop of Rome is asserting a status for himself that is higher

15:20than the bishops of those other metropolises, and saying that he has authority to decide what right teaching and right practice should be for Christians. In the East, churchmen don't agree that the Bishop of Rome, or the Pope, as he's now calling himself, has some kind of special authority. They think that church councils, when bishops from the East and the West meet together, are where real decisions ought to be made. The tensions between the Pope in the West and the churchmen of the East escalate, and by

15:54the time we get to 1054, there's a bit of an explosion. The Pope in Rome sends delegates to Constantinople, and they meet the ranking churchmen of the Eastern half of the Christian world, the Patriarch Michael Serularius, and they basically insist that the Pope has authority to decide various things, and that the Patriarch of Constantinople and everybody else should do what the Pope says. The Patriarch refuses. The Pope's messengers excommunicate the Patriarch and everyone who follows him. The Patriarch returns the favor, and now we have a moment called the Great Schism.

16:30And this is the moment most historians point to when they say this is where the tensions and the differences that had been mounting over many years finally result in a complete rupture. And at this point, the Christian world is permanently divided. You have a Western half, which is known as Latin Christianity or Catholic Christianity, and they follow the teachings of the Pope. And then you have an Eastern half of Christianity, which is sometimes called Orthodox, and they don't follow

17:01the Pope. So to go back to our story now of the Fourth Crusade, what Prince Alexius is essentially saying is that 150 years or so, after this Great Schism moment, he, if he's made Emperor of Constantinople, will bring all the Eastern Orthodox Christians under the authority of the Pope in the West. This is a very big promise he's making. Prince Alexius is making this big promise, specifically directing it at the Pope. He knows that the Pope longs to have authority over the entire Christian world.

17:35And if the Pope approves this plan, it's going to go ahead. So this is good politics on Alexius' part if he wants to get a sign-off for this unscheduled diversion to Constantinople for the men of the Fourth Crusade. Now, the Pope isn't informed about Alexius' proposal at this time, but we have a letter from the Pope to Prince Alexius in November of 1202. So this is several months before Alexius shows up in Zara, which suggests that the Pope is aware of Prince

18:08Alexius' ambitions. So he must have known that this proposal was at least likely to be made. As to what he thought about this question, we'll return to it a little bit later. So Prince Alexius has made this proposal and the two men who are leading the Fourth Crusade in Zara are the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, who's in charge of the Venetian contingent, and Boniface of Montferrat. And both of them are very favorably disposed to this proposed bit of regime change that Prince Alexius is asking

18:42them to do. But the men of the Fourth Crusade themselves are not at all enthusiastic. And as rumor of the arrival of Prince Alexius and what he's proposing begins to spread out across the army camp, there are really significant rumblings of discontent. Many of these men are wondering if their leaders are even going to take them on a crusade at all. They were delayed leaving Venice. They were then sidetracked to attacking a Christian city, Zara, where they're now sitting to wait out the winter because

19:16they started so late. And instead of going directly on with the mission they've signed up for, their leadership is now talking about doing another detour to Constantinople for a totally different mission. So there's really significant discontent emerging amongst the ranks at this point. To make matters worse, the Crusaders had made a deal with the Venetians when they left Venice that basically said they would be accompanied by 50 Venetian war galleys, staffed by Venetians, for one year from their departure from Venice.

19:49Several months have already gone by sitting in Zara, waiting out the winter. And so the men in the army are beginning to wonder if we're going to do another detour, these war galleys and their one-year contract is going to be up before they're even around to help us doing the actual business of crusading. So that's a pretty significant issue. Having 50 war galleys would be a significant benefit in conducting a crusade and the odds of success somewhat decrease at losing that strategic asset.

20:22To make matters even worse, many of the regular men on crusade, men who are not nobles, not independently wealthy, are beginning to feel a strong degree of financial stress. For the ordinary farmer or merchant or cheesemaker who'd signed up and taken the cross and taken a public vow to go on crusade, many of these men are sponsored by their communities. They don't necessarily have the money just kicking around to fund themselves for a couple of years of running around

20:54in the Near East while they're not being paid. So in many cases, communities would band together and sponsor a crusader. They would supply him the money to support him for the duration of that mission. And in exchange, he was obligated to get some sort of letter or other official document from a churchman in Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem is in Muslim hands, but there are still Christian churches in operation there and Christian clergy working in those churches. So these sponsored crusaders are obligated to get some kind of certificate, just like you would if

21:30you completed a pilgrimage, from one of the clerics in Jerusalem to say, I made it. I completed my crusader vow. I did what you sponsored me to do and to bring that back to their communities. You can now begin to imagine the anxiety that some of these men are feeling when they think, are we even going on crusade at all? If I never get to Jerusalem, I'm obligated to pay back all that money that my community put together to sponsor me for two years.

22:02So to give you an analogy, imagine that a church today sponsors a member of their congregation to go on some mission to a country far away like Nicaragua or El Salvador or something like this and say, put together all the money that that missionary is going to need to fund their travel expenses and their resettlement and their life for a year or two. If you never make it to the country you're supposed to go to and you never actually do any of the work that your community or your church has sponsored you to do, you're

22:38in some trouble. Would you want to pay back that size of a loan two years of supporting yourself? Because you wouldn't be able to go back to your community and live there without paying the money back. So now you can begin to imagine the anxiety that many of the ordinary men are starting to feel as they're worrying that they may never actually get to Jerusalem at all and what are the financial and social implications of that going to be? Despite the grumblings of many of the men in the army, the nobles, the council

23:13who were leading this mission, headed by Boniface of Montferrat and the Doge of Venice, decided that Prince Alexius' proposal made good strategic sense. After all, it took care of their financial problems in terms of debt to the Venetians and adding 10,000 men to their army would essentially double their numbers. So from a military point of view, you could see the argument that this would significantly increase their chances of success in the Near East. So they make a deal. They look at Prince Alexius and they say, we accept your offer.

23:47We're going to solemnly pledge that we'll undertake this mission and we're taking this army to Constantinople to make you the next emperor. Despite this official agreement amongst the nobles, there were still some men in the Fourth Crusade who decided at this point that they'd had enough and they simply packed their bags and deserted. Some of them went home. Some of them tried to arrange their own passage to the Near East. So there's already a shedding of men from the ranks in response to a lack of faith in the leadership.

24:21But it's not as significant as it's about to become. The men of the Fourth Crusade board their Venetian-made ships and they turn their fleet in the direction of Constantinople. Prince Alexius has promised them that the people of the city will welcome them with open arms. That the citizens of Constantinople will greet his arrival as a liberator. That they're all going to be freed from the tyranny of his uncle the usurper who's currently the Emperor of Constantinople. Now this is an aspect of our story that can get a little bit confusing because there are a

24:57number of Alexiuses here. There's Prince Alexius who I'm going to call the Younger Alexius and then there's the Older Alexius his uncle who's currently Emperor Alexius III. So the former Emperor was Prince Alexius' father Isaac who's now blind and in prison. He was put there by Prince Alexius' uncle the Older Alexius Alexius III and now Prince Alexius Alexius the Younger is going to try to kick his uncle out and put the Imperial Crown on his own head. As the fleet is heading toward Constantinople they stop off at the island of Corfu in May 1203.

25:33Now Corfu is part of the Eastern Roman Empire so it's under the authority of the current Emperor the Older Alexius Alexius III. Initially the people of Corfu are welcoming. After all every single Crusader army so far the First, Second and Third has always stopped off near Constantinople as their gateway to the Near East so it wasn't unusual that another Crusading army would be coming through and they're welcomed. But once the residents of Corfu realize that this army carries Prince Alexius and that Prince Alexius wants to

26:07make himself Emperor the mood shifts quite violently and the people of Corfu are no longer welcoming. In fact they become very angry and they even attack the Crusaders. Now instead of just sailing away after realizing that they weren't wanted the men of the Fourth Crusade decide they're going to attack the island of Corfu and revenge themselves on the people who were attacking their ships. At this point the tension and the fractures that have been forming in the army of the Fourth Crusade really

26:39break wide open and a good number of men nearly half the army decide they've had enough. They're tired of being allegedly on Crusade but doing really uncrusader-like things. Instead of attacking Muslims in the Near East they're fighting with yet more Christians in Christian territory. So they say enough is enough. If Prince Alexius is going to be welcomed as a liberator how come the people on the island of Corfu are angry enough to fight with us? So these dissenters nearly half the army separate from the main body of the army camp.

27:14They make their own camp and they say we're not participating in any of this anymore. We're going to stay right here the rest of you can take your Venetian ships and do what you want we're going to arrange our own passage to Syria and do the best we can with our crusading plans because we don't want to have any part of any more of this. This is a crisis moment. The Doge of Venice Boniface of Montferrat and some of the other nobles who are

27:47still with the main army know that they can't continue having lost half their forces. And so Boniface of Montferrat puts together a delegation. He includes the Doge he goes he has the highest ranking nobles that are still of his party to come along and he brings a number of churchmen or clerics that are on his side of this debate. And they go into the separatist camp or the dissenter camp and they say please don't divide our army. Please don't abandon the cause.

28:18Have faith. We're all going to go on this crusade. This Constantinople thing is just a little sidestep that's going to make us much stronger and much more capable of achieving our strategic goals. But all of those goals are in jeopardy if we divide our forces. You're not going to succeed. We won't succeed. We have the same ultimate plan. This is just a slightly longer detour to get there. These attempts at persuasion were intense. Some of the sources report tears being shed by some of the men in

28:52Boniface of Montferrat's party as they're entreating their dissenting brethren on the other side to stay with the army. Eventually, the dissenters are persuaded. They're swayed by the idea that this stop in Constantinople really will contribute to a greater chance of success for the crusade and moreover, it will reunite the eastern and western halves of the Christian world. Isn't that a noble goal? A goal that we could not achieve in any other way. So they say, fine, we'll rejoin the army, we'll all go together to Constantinople, but we, the dissenters, don't want

29:27to be in Constantinople for more than a month. That's all we're going to take, and after that, we expect to be given boats and to go straight on to the Near East, even if the rest of you aren't ready to join us. And so, with that deal made, this crisis is averted. The army is reunited, and once again, they're into their ships heading for Constantinople. The crusader fleet is heading east on the Mediterranean. They take a left through the Dardanelles Strait and they pass

29:59Gallipoli, the site of a major battle in World War I, and they finally cross the Sea of Marmara and end up outside the city of Constantinople. Now, the city is incredibly well fortified. You can't just roll up and enter the city itself. So, the crusaders make landfall about a mile outside Constantinople itself, and they send out foraging parties because this is what happens when you're moving an army long distances. You can't carry all the food you need with you. So, at regular intervals, you need to send armed parties with soldiers out to gather edible things from the landscape.

30:36So, that's what they're doing. The foraging party sent out by the army of the Fourth Crusade encounters a group of imperial soldiers that have been sent to keep an eye on them by old Alexius, the emperor in the city itself. He's heard that there's this army coming through and it would be wise for him to keep an eye on exactly where they are and what they're doing. So, there's a scuffle as the foraging party of the Fourth Crusade encounters the Greek imperial troops and the imperial

31:09troops scatter. They go back into the city to report what they've seen and it's not long after that that the emperor sends an official messenger to the Fourth Crusade army camp. The messenger demands to know the army's intentions. He says, if you're planning to pass through the emperor's lands on your way to the Near East as all the other crusader armies before you have done, then the emperor will provision you, he will give you food, he'll send you on your way.

31:40But if you're here for any other purpose, the emperor promises to destroy you all. So Boniface of Montferrat and the other nobles of the Fourth Crusade answer with defiance. They say, we don't recognize the authority of this emperor, Alexius III, old Alexius. He's a traitor and a usurper, someone who has stolen the imperial throne dishonestly and we demand that he vacate the imperial throne immediately and submit to the authority of his nephew, Prince Alexius, young Alexius, who's traveling with us.

32:10So, at this point, hostilities have officially been declared. Of course, the crusaders knew that old Alexius was going to be against them. That was no surprise. They didn't really expect that he would just abandon his throne and hand it over to young Alexius. But they really believed that the people of the city would have a different view. And this is a very important moment that indicates this is what the Fourth Crusaders actually thought. It's the proposal of the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo.

32:41And he says, we should make Prince Alexius visible to the people of Constantinople because once they see him, perhaps they'll rise up unanimously and overthrow their unjust emperor. And then they'll fling the gates of the city open to us and everything will be easy from there. So, they actually send ten ships and in a couple of them they put very prominently Prince Alexius along with Boniface of Montferrat, who's one of the leaders, and the Doge himself. And they sail this ship very close to the walls of the city and they're calling up to the people

33:18on the walls and in the towers, look, it's Prince Alexius, your future emperor. And they're expecting shouts of jubilation and welcome. What do you think happened? Well, it wasn't a warm welcome. When the people of Constantinople saw and understood what these men in the Venetian ships were saying, they responded by hurling abuse and insults and objects at the men in these ships. Apparently, this regime change thing wasn't going to be as easy as they thought. At this point, it becomes clear that the Crusaders have to get to grips with doing something that they didn't

33:55think would be necessary. And that was going to be taking the city of Constantinople by force. Remember, this wasn't on the agenda. Prince Alexius had told them that they'd be welcomed with open arms as liberators, but clearly that's not going to happen. So in order to get the money that they've been promised and the troops and the other things that Prince Alexius says he's going to give them, they have to put him on the throne. And to do that, they're going to have to attack the city of Constantinople.

34:29This is a daunting prospect. Constantinople isn't just any city. It is the city in the East. It has been so heavily fortified with walls that are some 30 feet high and sometimes two or three walls thick that they've very effectively deterred many other would-be conquerors, including the Huns. So the men of the Fourth Crusade are going to attempt to do something that many other armies have failed at and they're aware of the magnitude of the task. To understand why Constantinople is so difficult to attack, it's necessary to have a bit of a sense of the

35:07geography. So Constantinople is located on the western side of the Bosphorus and the Bosphorus is a strait of water that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora eventually all the way through to the Mediterranean. Constantinople is essentially a large triangle with water on two sides. On one side is the Sea of Marmora. This is the side where the Crusader ships initially approached and the walls of the city on this side facing that sea are incredibly daunting.

35:38The second part of a triangle is also water. It is a long inlet called the Golden Horn and it comes in forming a harbour behind the city. It was also protected by a very large chain designed to keep enemy ships out of the harbour that is the Golden Horn. And the third side of the triangle is the land side connecting the city of Constantinople to the rest of the continent of Europe. This land side of the city was defended by double and sometimes triple walls.

36:11Landing boats on the Sea of Marmora side wasn't very practical because landing on that beach would essentially have you under attack from those sea-facing walls the entire time. And attacking on the landward corner was also daunting because the walls there were at their thickest. So the most vulnerable part the best part of the wall to attack was the one facing the Golden Horn. But to do that you had to get into the Golden Horn. The entrance to this harbour is defended by an enormous iron chain which stretches across the mouth of the Golden

36:48Horn and is prevented from sinking by being supported by various floats along its length. The crusaders decide that getting into the Golden Horn is the most viable route of attack. But they have to get through that chain first. They take a Venetian war galley a ship with a reinforced metal prow and they get it going at top speed so they get the wind behind the sails and very likely you also had Venetian sailors rowing as hard as they possibly could.

37:19So this ship is moving at the fastest speed that it's capable of moving and then they sail that ship with its iron prow right into the chain hoping that the sheer force of the impact will snap the chain and they succeed. So although of course this is contested and this ship is being attacked by the defenders of the city they do manage to break the chain and that means that the entire crusader fleet has entered the

37:49Golden Horn and it now has access to the walls of the city from that side of the triangle. Now the emperor Old Alexius was not particularly popular but when the residents of Constantinople saw that they were going to be under attack by a foreign army all of them were ready to fight. This is not only the Greek population but even the foreign expat population which included quite a number of Italians and if you thought that some other Italians would be reluctant to fight against the Venetians you would be very

38:25wrong because at this point in history Italy as a nation doesn't exist. There's just a collection of little city-states and Venice which happens to be the one that is supporting this attack on Constantinople is much hated by certain other city-states in what is now Italy particularly Genoa and Pisa because they are rivals for Venice's maritime trading empire and so there are quite a number of Genoese and Pisan merchants who are resident in Constantinople and they are more than ready to rush to the barricades and defend the city against

39:00the Venetians whom they despise. Now of course the emperor also had his own special defensive troops the Varangian Guard and these were an elite unit of mercenaries known for heavy drinking and wielding double-headed battle axes. The Varangian Guard had for most of its history been staffed by Norsemen Northmen sometimes known as Vikings when they went out in their raiding ships to steal other people's stuff but when they were working for the emperor they were not Vikings they were just men from that area who were now working as Varangian Guard so you can

39:37imagine these Danes and Swedes wielding double-headed battle axes and by the time that this attack is happening by the time the armies of the 4th Crusade are showing up in 1203 the Varangian Guard also includes a good number of Anglo-Saxons or English the morning of July 17th 1203 was the beginning of the concerted assault on the walls of Constantinople itself the men of the 4th Crusade were knights and infantry and they were most comfortable fighting on

40:07land and besieging walls while standing on the ground the Venetians on the other hand were highly specialized for fighting from their ships and so what happened was that many of the men of the 4th Crusade went and attacked a section of the land side of the city walls whereas the Venetians got into their ships and focused on assaulting the sea-facing city walls inside the Golden Horn the French Crusaders on land were fighting fiercely with the Varangian

40:38Guards trying to get through a section of the city wall and they did in the end manage to get into a monastery to establish a toehold in a small part of the city but they were very much surrounded and unable to go anywhere else the Venetians meanwhile were pushing their ships as closely as they could to the sea-facing walls of the city and here they were using an ingenious method of attack something called a flying bridge

41:08essentially think of it as a ladder or a beam that is coming horizontally off of a mast and so if you can get your ship close enough to the wall you can use this flying bridge to transport men from the mast across the bridge and onto the city wall this was what the Venetians were attempting to do now of course these attacks were being hotly contested by the defenders of Constantinople who are firing projectiles hurling Greek fire throwing whatever they can find at their attackers so you can imagine Venetians dangling off these flying bridges being

41:44hit by projectiles and plunging into the sea below it was incredibly dangerous thing to attempt to get onto an enemy fortified city wall from one of these hanging bridges dangling off a mast however the Venetians managed to take 25 of the 104 towers along the wall so that means they managed to get their men into the towers to kill or scatter the men that were defending those towers and then to hold that section of the wall but in order to fortify their position and to protect themselves somewhat from counterattack they set fire to the buildings

42:20immediately next to their towers on the wall essentially attempting to establish a perimeter between them and the defenders of the city the problem with fire is that once you start it you can't control how far it goes so the Venetians do begin a fire next to the section of the wall that they've taken but very quickly that fire begins to spread into the city itself and this will be the first of several significant fires that the crusading army sets inside the city now old emperor Alexius hears that the men of the fourth crusade have managed

42:57to get into this monastery beside the landward walls of the city and so he heads out leading a much larger force to intercept these men and to surround them at the monastery and the crusaders who get word that this army is coming send a frantic message to their Venetian allies who are on the towers of the wall saying come and help us because we are going to be overwhelmed by far superior numbers and the Venetians do answer this call so they abandon the towers on the wall that they've taken and they head over to join

43:33their allies near the monastery even with the Venetian help the crusaders realize that they're going to be significantly outnumbered by old emperor Alexius's force so they arrange themselves into different sections they decide which knights are going to lead the vanguard and what their order of charge is going to be and they brace themselves for an onslaught some of the knights over eager for glory even begin leading a cavalry charge toward the emperor's forces but they stop when they realize that they're going to be out of range so we have this moment where the emperor is

44:09having a face-off with the crusaders near this monastery just outside the city walls and then he turns around and leads his men back inside the city walls behind those fortifications why did he not engage the fourth crusaders in combat at this moment the sources say that his forces were significantly larger one theory is that the emperor's whole maneuver was designed to draw the venetians off the wall to make them abandon the towers they had taken and head over to lend assistance to the rest of the army near the monastery and if that was his plan

44:45it succeeded admirably there are a number of other factors that may have influenced the emperor's decision of course many of the latin sources who were present in the army of the fourth crusade and afterwards were simply happy to chalk this up to Greek cowardice or a lack of martial spirit amongst the Greeks but this is almost a trope in the latin sources and something that we should perhaps take with a grain of salt the emperor might have been legitimately worried that many of his forces were mercenary and so their loyalty was perhaps not entirely assured

45:21furthermore he might have feared what could happen to him personally if things began to go badly in the battle ahead he would have had all too vivid a memory of the fate that befell the last emperor his own brother Isaac Angelos whom he had stolen the throne from and he'd had his brother's eyes gouged out to ensure that he would never again be a fit candidate for emperor and so it's possible that old Alexius was beginning

45:52to worry that the wheel of fate might be catching up with him and that if this battle went badly he might face a similar fate so by leading the army back into the city and deferring the battle to another day he bought himself some time and as you're about to see he used that time very well while the crusaders in their camp and the residents of Constantinople anxiously wait out the hours of the night wondering what

46:22will befall them on the inevitable battles of the day ahead Alexius decides to make his escape he grabs whatever jewels he can carry and he flees with his favorite daughter leaving behind his wife and another daughter make of that what you will old Alexius has fled the city of Constantinople leaving everyone else to their fate when morning arrives the palace officials wake up to the discovery that old Alexius has fled the emperor is gone and at

46:53this point they decide that prolonging the fighting is futile so what they do is they take the old emperor Isaac who's in prison with his eyes gouged out and they reinstate him they put imperial garments on him they put a crown on his head even though he's blind and technically that should disqualify him they decide that desperate times call for unusual measures so they put the crown on old Isaac's head and then they send a message

47:23to the men of the fourth crusade who are camped just outside the land walls and they say rejoice we've done what you wanted Isaac is back on the throne old Alexius the emperor is gone and we're happy to welcome prince Alexius who you bring with you you can send him into the imperial palace and we'll put a crown on his head as well now you can imagine the surprise for the soldiers of the fourth crusade when

47:54they hear this news and rightfully they're a little bit suspicious how can they be sure that this is true and not just some clever ruse so they send a delegation of four men two french knights and two venetians to go to the imperial palace inside the city and verify these claims and you can imagine the feeling in the pit of the stomach of these four men as they walk through rows of axe-bearing Varangian guards wondering if

48:24they're walking into their own deaths as they go into the imperial palace are they really going to find what they've been told they're going to find or are they just being baited the four crusader representatives have an audience with old blind emperor Isaac and they demand that he commit to fulfilling the promises that his son young Alexius has made to their army now old emperor Isaac has perhaps a shrewder grasp of the tax revenues of Constantinople

48:55than does his son young Alexius and he immediately realizes that the promise of 200,000 silver marks to the army of the fourth crusade and 10,000 men as well as the reunification of the eastern and western halves of the Christian world is a little bit much frankly it's impossible and so he tries to explain this to these four representatives that it's really not something he can do but they absolutely insist and eventually Isaac although he knows better

49:25is forced to agree to fulfill the promises of young Alexius even though he knows it's not possible after all what choice does he have he's only been released from prison that morning and he's got a foreign army on his doorstep so the army is now allowed into the city they escort prince Alexius into the imperial palace where he rejoins his father Isaac the very next day the men of the fourth crusade are asked to take their

49:57army camp and move it a little bit farther away from the city because their presence right next to the wall is causing a significant amount of tension nevertheless this gives them a two week interim to wander through the city and marvel at the wonders of this capital of the eastern Roman empire while they await the coronation of Prince Alexius as its new emperor that coronation happened on August the 1st 1203 and so now the mission has

50:28been accomplished Prince Alexius is now Emperor Alexius IV and everyone lived happily ever after right? well perhaps not now that young Alexius is emperor the army of the fourth crusade is waiting for him to fulfill his end of the bargain now it's at about this time that a letter from the pope arrives so this is early August 1203 and the pope is responding to a letter from the leaders of the fourth crusade in which they are repenting of the sack of Zara which as you recall the pope heavily disapproved of and

51:06so they'd sent him a letter begging for his forgiveness and then telling him that they were planning to head to Constantinople so the pope very likely wrote this letter in June of 1203 and it's arriving probably now in August medieval mail being what it was even if it had arrived in July while the crusaders were busy trying to invade Constantinople it probably would have been ignored but this is what the pope has to say about the

51:38Constantinople plan he writes to the leaders of the crusade thus quote none of you should rashly flatter yourselves that it is acceptable for you to seize or plunder Byzantine lands on the grounds that it has a lesser allegiance to the holy see meaning the pope or that emperor Alexius of Constantinople has deposed his brother Isaac even blinding him and has usurped the throne it is not for you to sit in judgment on their offenses nor have

52:09you put on the sign of the cross for the purpose of punishing this offense but in order to avenge insults to the crucifix in obedience to which you specifically bound yourselves instead give up these pointless diversions and feigned commitments cross over to save the holy land punish the wrongs committed against the cross you will take from an enemy spoils which if you dally in Byzantine territory you would perhaps have to extort from brothers otherwise since it

52:41is neither possible nor incumbent upon us to do it we cannot promise you the remission of sins unquote so the pope is using the word Byzantine to talk about essentially eastern Roman imperial territory Constantinople and he's saying what are you doing don't stop in Constantinople it's not your job to fix their imperial succession problems and the longer you stay in Constantinople the more of a burden you're going to be on your Christian brothers in that city

53:13because you're going to have to support yourselves and instead of doing so by essentially plundering your enemies those Muslims in the holy land you're going to be perhaps extorting what you need from your brothers in Constantinople from your eastern Christian brothers so there's no doubt that this letter conveys a very clear sense of disapproval and the pope even says the whole spiritual point of going on a crusade is going to be imperiled if you're hanging around in Constantinople participating in regime change and you might be wondering spiritual benefit what is he talking about well the

53:49fourth crusade like the other three crusades that preceded it was advertised to people as a way of increasing their spiritual benefit essentially if you do this act it is pleasing to God it's certainly pleasing to the pope and it's going to counterbalance some of the bad things you've done on your spiritual accounting sheet so you'll get to heaven faster if you do this it's kind of like going on a pilgrimage except with swords and what the pope is saying in this letter is if you're going off track and hanging out in Constantinople and changing emperors

54:25I can't promise you the spiritual benefit that I know you signed up to the fourth crusade to receive so hurry up and head over to the holy land already now in response to this letter the leaders of the fourth crusade feel obligated to write back to the pope and say well we did end up stopping in Constantinople but even though there was a bit of fighting at the beginning we didn't actually destroy the city they just opened the gates and let us install Prince Alexius as emperor so things have gone pretty well and we'll be

55:01heading off to the holy land very soon with extra money that we've gotten as a result of this mission Prince Alexius who's now Emperor Alexius IV also sends his own letter to the pope and explains that now that he's emperor he's soon going to make good on his promise to bring the eastern half of the Christian world under the pope's authority strangely the pope doesn't respond to these letters that are written to him in August of 1203 for six months now that's a pretty remarkable delay especially given the stakes involved you would think that Pope

55:37Innocent III would be furious at discovering that he had in fact been ignored and the armies of the fourth crusade had gone to Constantinople anyway that was the anger that he demonstrated after the sack of Zara so why was it that he took his time responding to this news that the crusade was still very much off track could it be that the pope's letter was some kind of pro forma condemnation some sort of official record that he disapproved of what the crusaders were doing after all if he was truly angry about it why wouldn't he

56:12condemn the crusaders after he discovered they'd gone to Constantinople anyway or at least impose some significant penance on them we will return to the pope and his curious behavior later but for now the crusaders have put Prince Alexius on the imperial throne they've installed a new emperor and they're now waiting for Alexius IV to keep up his end of the bargain in the meantime a number of events would stoke the tensions between the residents of Constantinople and the army of the fourth crusade into open violence first the Greeks of the eastern orthodox church were none

56:48too happy at seeing a foreign army camped outside their city and while their new emperor young Alexius has made a deal in which he promises to bring the Greek orthodox church under the authority of the pope this was a brazenly a political promise that the young emperor had made to get himself installed on the throne it took absolutely no account of the reasons why the eastern and the western halves of the Christian church had separated in the first place and you can imagine the resentment that Greek Christians felt at watching gold and silver being taken

57:24out of their churches and melted down so that their new young emperor could start paying back his debts to the foreign army on their doorstep eventually all of this local Greek resentment emerged into open violence against any Latin or foreign people in the city and there were quite a few of those in Constantinople so I'm talking now about people who'd been living in the city for a number of years not people who were part of the

57:55armies of the fourth crusade because Constantinople was such an incredible trading hub there were all kinds of expats who'd been living there for some time many of them were from places that are now in Italy like Genoa Pisa and Amalfi and these are merchants who'd set up their own living quarters they had their own neighborhoods in the city and they were much easier targets for local Greek resentment than that well-armed foreign army outside the city walls

58:25they were softer targets and so what we began to see are angry Greek mobs attacking the hospitals warehouses and residences of Latins who lived inside the city now this was a terrible move especially since many of these foreign expats particularly the Genoans and the Pisans had quite recently been fighting valiantly in defense of Constantinople against the armies of the fourth crusade and yet they now found themselves on the sharp end of mob violence so many of

58:56these expat communities immediately fled Constantinople to the nearest safe place they could think of and that was the Latin army camp of the fourth crusade outside the city walls and there are records that there were some 15,000 people that decamped from Constantinople and fled as a result of this violence now the crusader army did its own share of antagonizing the residents of Constantinople and while the army camp was outside the city wall you would have bands

59:27of armed soldiers walking through the streets of Constantinople all the time kind of like day tourists but with weapons and these guys could be quite menacing so in August 1203 a party of these soldiers saunter into Constantinople and they head down to the Muslim quarter so this is a region of the city which is inhabited by Muslim merchants who are coming in and out of the city trading wares from farther east and they have their own

59:57mosque that's set up in that quarter that they're permitted to use because they're living in the city at various points and some of these crusaders thought to themselves ah we've been waiting to fight Muslims all this time and we haven't still gotten to the near east but here's a mosque and here are some Muslims let's attack them so they decide to burn this mosque to the ground of course this band of armed men setting fire to

1:00:28a building doesn't go unopposed and local residents Muslims who live in the quarter and their Greek neighbours begin to take up arms and resist so there's fighting going on back and forth between the residents of the quarter and these soldiers and now you have the flames which are fanned by the wind and begin to spread and very soon what was intended to be setting a local mosque on fire becomes a raging inferno that spreads out of

1:00:58control far far beyond it into the city the fire blazed all the way down to the waterfront and spread to many other quarters of the city rich houses and poor houses alike went up in flames and even the hippodrome something that had been built in 324 as a chariot racing circuit in the centre of the city was scorched by this fire the fire burned so fiercely that it lasted for a week and one account even claims

1:01:29that a ship in the harbour was set alight by falling embers that were being carried out of the smoking city the church of Hagia Sophia itself the most famous church in the city was put at risk by this incredible blaze some say that this fire was one of the greatest recorded city fires in history as you can imagine this inferno did nothing to make the crusader army any more friends and any remaining foreign residents of the

1:01:59city now fled fearing for their lives the summer comes to an end with resentment still running hot in the charred embers of the city and the angry eyes of its people and tensions are running high in the crusader army camp as well because they are still waiting for young emperor Alexius to make good on everything that he's promised them by november of 1203 the impatience in the crusader camp has reached a terrible pitch they've been receiving

1:02:29small payments from young emperor Alexius but the amounts that they've gotten haven't come anywhere close to the amount that was promised which was 200,000 silver marks and Alexius keeps protesting that he's going to pay but they're going to have to wait but how much longer are they going to have to wait it's now been about a year since this army has departed from Venice and they still haven't even come close to their mission in the near

1:02:59east young emperor Alexius was also becoming aware that he was extremely unpopular because he was seen as some sort of puppet ruler or the creature of a foreign army and that if he hoped to keep the crown on his head he needed to start distancing himself from his crusader patrons and the doge of Venice so he begins to pivot and he starts taking a much haughtier attitude in his dealings with Boniface of Montferrat and the doge

1:03:29of Venice and the other nobles of the fourth crusade perhaps young emperor Alexius thought that with the imperial crown on his head and the legendary fortifications of Constantinople securely around him that he could afford to be a little bit high-handed with his former crusader friends after all they hadn't actually managed to invade the city by force they'd gotten very close they were sitting outside the walls they'd managed to get into the towers but they hadn't actually

1:03:59forced their way in the gates had been opened and they'd been invited in so perhaps the gates could be closed and they could just go away by November the patience of the crusaders has reached its limit nobody believes that the promises of young emperor Alexius are now worth anything what are they waiting around for it seems increasingly unlikely that he's ever going to make good on the promises of payment and troops finally the crusaders send a

1:04:29formal delegation to see young emperor Alexius and in the presence of the imperial court they bring the message that emperor Alexius has failed to fulfill his promises and he'd better pay up the entire remainder of the sum that is owed otherwise they're going to take by force what is owed them now this is not particularly polite this is an ultimatum and it's met with outrage and many of the courtiers begin to exclaim loudly that nobody has

1:04:59ever dared to address an emperor in such a fashion emperor Alexius himself young Alexius who's highly aware of his position vis-a-vis his own subjects feels the need to assert his own dominance and to say I've paid you enough already I will not respond to this demand and you'd better leave my territory right now for your own safety the mood in the audience chamber is so nasty that the crusader delegates begin to wonder if they're going to

1:05:30be imprisoned or even killed for being the bearers of a bad message so as quickly as they can they retreat from the imperial audience chamber and head back to their military camp outside the city walls hostilities have once again been declared now things are at a standoff imagine a motorcycle gang that's camped out on the front doorstep of your house they refuse to leave and anytime they want something they just smash a window or kick in

1:06:01a door and go open your fridge or your wallet and help themselves that's essentially the situation that the people of Constantinople are in the army supplied itself by plundering churches and wealthy buildings that were within easy reach this was unacceptable behavior and things started to escalate the Greeks begin fighting back this is not an official battle or an assault of any kind but at night sometimes they'll launch fire ships toward the crusader fleet at anchor in

1:06:33the golden horn a fire ship is exactly what it sounds like a vessel that is full of flammable material which has been set on fire and sailed toward other ships at anchor and the hope is that it makes contact sets those ships on fire and destroys your fleet so crusader scouts in the army are now up at night keeping watch against fire ships and other sneak attacks that might be coming their way tensions are also rising

1:07:05in the imperial palace because the emperor is expected to do something about this intolerable situation this motorcycle gang of an army camped outside the city gates and there are basically two emperors there's old Isaac and his son young Alexius who are both wearing the imperial crown it's an unusual situation that Constantinople has been forced into by a foreign army it's not how things are normally done but even though they have two emperors neither of them seems

1:07:37particularly capable of leading any kind of effective defense against the situation unsurprisingly there's pressure for a change of leadership many people in the imperial court want a man who can effectively lead them in the effort to expel this hated foreign army a coup is plotted by a guy named Mourtsouphilus and he's actually the brother-in-law of young Alexius so he's married to young Alexius's sister and Mourtsouphilus is not actually his name it's a nickname that refers to

1:08:08his incredibly bushy and prominent eyebrows so we're gonna call him Mr. Unibrow because his real name was Alexius Dukas and this story does not need another Alexius so Mr. Unibrow has been positioning himself as a close advisor of young emperor Alexius ever since he got the imperial crown but behind the scenes he harbors ambitions of his own and he makes himself the leader of this faction that is pushing for regime change once again Mr. Unibrow promises angry Greeks in the imperial palace that if they make

1:08:44him the next emperor he will expel these hated crusaders and so by February 1204 as there's been three months of a standoff Mr. Unibrow succeeds in having young emperor Alexius and his father old Isaac imprisoned and murdered some accounts claim that young Alexius was strangled with a bowstring and some of them even say that Mr. Unibrow pulled that cord tight himself with that done Mr. Unibrow is then crowned and he immediately makes good on his campaign promise and sends a message to the crusaders

1:09:19telling them there's a new emperor in town and you have one week to vacate imperial territory otherwise your lives are forfeit once again the leaders of the fourth crusade respond with defiance and they say we don't recognize you as the emperor you're some treasonous scum who's murdered your rightful ruler you have no authority we're not going anywhere and we're going to take what we are owed so we're now in February of 1204 and things are beginning

1:09:50to be a little bit desperate for the army of the fourth crusade they're no longer receiving any kind of provisions from the emperor obviously any provisions that they get are taken by smash and grab and increasingly that is a dangerous proposition they can't easily just pack up and leave either it's not quite spring they're still waiting for the seas to be calm enough to move on even if they were going to just leave which many of

1:10:20them don't think they should for the Venetians led by Doge Enrico Dandolo attacking Constantinople is the obvious necessary strategy a victory over this city would not only pay everybody the money that they need but would also secure Venice's status and its trading privileges so it's very much in the economic interests of the Venetians for the men of the Fourth Crusade however economic interests are not an incredibly inspirational cause many of those men aren't particularly interested in

1:10:50the economics so some other argument will be necessary to persuade them to fight for many of the crusaders to take up arms against Constantinople the intervention of churchmen was required they were on crusade after all something they thought of as a holy war they weren't supposed to be in the business of just attacking any city although the record thus far had been pretty dubious on that score but there are a large number of churchmen embedded in

1:11:21the ranks these are abbots and bishops men who lead religious communities back at home and who are traveling with this army to provide spiritual leadership and so they go up and down the ranks over the coming days preaching sermons in support of attacking Constantinople and they make a number of arguments the churchmen claim that fighting Constantinople is indeed a holy war which is a phrase that requires some interrogation all on its own but leave that aside

1:11:51this is what they said and they claim that the Greeks have risen up against their lawful ruler so they've committed a sin in the feudal system to rise up against your legitimate ruler is a terrible thing to do so they deserve punishment for this the Greeks have also departed from the true church which these men would construe as the authority of the pope the eastern church is not under the pope's authority they are deviants and that's

1:12:22also a problem finally in the name of God the churchmen promise to provide absolution which means wiping out any moral taint that might attach to you for fighting this battle in Constantinople you can think of this as a spiritual get out of jail free card the sermon said essentially that it was no sin to make war on the Greeks because the Greeks were the enemies of God now let's examine these claims for just a moment first

1:12:52of all it hadn't been all the Greeks who were responsible for murdering young Alexius and putting Mr. Unibrow on the imperial throne that was done by a palace faction and even if there was broad public support for getting rid of young emperor Alexius the fact remains that he would never have been emperor in the first place if it wasn't for the intervention of a foreign army the fourth crusade so essentially what these churchmen are saying is we marched in here and decided that young Alexius was going to be your emperor and now that

1:13:29you've gotten rid of him we're going to punish you for that for overthrowing the person that we decided should be your lawful ruler finally depicting the Greeks as enemies of God is just a cheap and meaningless label it's a way of saying we've decided we want to kill these people and so we're going to put the label on them that we normally put on people we're going to kill so that we can feel okay about it this phrase enemies of God had been used before it was the phrase that was applied to Muslims in every

1:14:07crusade prior to this one it's a way of saying we're going to make war on the enemies of God the Muslims and because they're enemies of God we can feel okay about killing them in fact better than okay we can feel righteous about it because they're not just our enemies they're God's enemies and so killing them is a way of pleasing God and the very same label had also been applied to Jewish communities in western Europe

1:14:37who had routinely been slaughtered as the armies of the first second and third crusade had rolled out of their homelands and headed toward the near east in each of these previous examples there were groups of people who decided that it was time to practice their sword work by attacking some local enemies of God Jewish communities who were their neighbors before they got into the near east and went on to attack other enemies of God the Muslims so now that you have these preachers these bishops and abbots telling the men of the crusade that Greek Christians

1:15:14are enemies of God well you can see the pattern here as the rank and file members of the army are being persuaded by these sermons the leadership of the fourth crusade and the Venetians get down to deciding how they're going to divide the spoils of the city if they're successful in taking it after all there are still outstanding debts to settle with the Venetians the leadership of the fourth crusade still owe a significant amount of money to the doge of Venice their ally and he's right there waiting to collect it so in their plan for

1:15:52attacking Constantinople they're also discussing how they're going to distribute the proceeds of this attack if they succeed in taking the city the army meanwhile got busy building their siege engines once again they're faced with attacking the formidable walls of Constantinople they hadn't actually breached them on their previous attempt they'd been let into the city unexpectedly but their army camp is outside it and once again they're dealing with the prospect of forcing their way in the people

1:16:22of Constantinople of course could clearly see what was happening they saw the siege engines under construction they knew the assault was inevitable and so they too are fortifying their walls and preparing for the battle to come and in a sickening piece of psychological intimidation their new emperor Mr. Unibrow has three Venetian prisoners taken up to the city wall so these are Venetians that have been captured from the forces of the fourth crusade in some of the earlier skirmishes and these men are taken up onto the

1:16:56wall so that they can be in full view of their comrades who are camped outside and then Mr. Unibrow orders that they be drawn with iron hooks now this is an absolutely ghastly moment at this point in history the idea of drawing someone would normally involve attaching ropes to ankles and wrists and then pulling on those ropes so that the arms and legs were forcibly pulled out of joint it was excruciating but if you were going to perform this with iron hooks attached to those points instead of ropes well I leave it to your

1:17:33imagination but after this grisly form of mutilation and torture was complete the remains of these men were then burned alive in full view of their comrades the purpose of this horror show of course was intimidation it was a way of saying see what we have done to your friends see what we are waiting to do to you it's now early April 1204 when the siege engines are complete and the Venetians and Crusaders are ready to begin their second and final assault on the city once again just as they had in their previous assault of the

1:18:10city the Venetian ships push up close against the walls of the city that face the waters of the Golden Horn and the Venetians attach their flying bridges from the masts and they have men making the desperate scramble across these swaying timbers trying to get onto the walls or the towers of the city itself and we have an eyewitness account of what this looked like from a knight called Robert of Clary who was in the fourth crusade and fought in this battle he describes what happens when one of these ships pushes up against a defensive tower

1:18:47on the wall of Constantinople he says quote a gust of wind and a surge of water drove them forward so that for an instant the end of the flying bridge of the ship banged against a tower near where the emperor watched from his hill a courageous Venetian grabbed hold of the tower clung to it with hands and feet and somehow managed to pull himself upon it he was quite alone however and the Varangians and Greeks defending it fell upon him with axes and swords and immediately made him a bloody corpse tossed by wave and wind

1:19:24the ship once more bumped the tower and a French knight followed the example of the Venetian and clambered onto its summit on his hands and knees the Varangians and Greeks also attacked him with their cruel weapons but his armor protected him enough so that he was able to struggle to his feet and draw his own sword with great force and valor he drove the defenders to a lower level of the tower gaining time for his comrades to climb upon it after him they secured the ship with stout ropes and other pilgrims crossed the flying bridge

1:20:02to the tower you'll note that Robert Clary uses the word pilgrims here to describe the crusaders which seems bizarre to us but tells you something about the mindset of these men and how they saw themselves pilgrims on a religious mission but with swords soon the crusaders were flying their own banners from this captured tower and encouraging others to imitate their success while this is happening there are other crusaders attacking the land walls of the city and the Greeks are responding by pouring things like pitch or Greek fire down upon them and hurling large stones so

1:20:39it's incredibly hazardous men dangling from flying bridges men trying to assault walls where there's pitch being poured down upon them you can imagine the incredible din the screaming the smoke the clang of metal it was absolutely cacophitous it seems that a hunger for glory and a brazen attitude in the face of danger allowed the crusaders to make inroads against a much larger defending force and as the day began to shade into evening some of them had managed to get into a corner of the city so they were now inside the wall but they were too

1:21:16afraid to fan out into the incredible network of streets which would expose them to attack on all sides so the men who'd managed to make an inroad into a small corner of the city decided they were going to set up a defensive perimeter and stay put for the night they weren't going to advance into the city any farther until they had the advantage of daylight crusaders expect that it's going to be several days if not weeks

1:21:46of intense fighting to subdue the city but as night falls and they wait anxiously for morning they are going to be surprised once again it was around midnight that night when emperor unibrow heard that some of the crusaders were now inside the city and when he gets that news he grabs his lover and her mother and he flees the city and the greek elites of the palace when they realize that their emperor has fled immediately follow

1:22:17his example so there's a massive flight of the high and mighty from the imperial palace during the course of that evening which means that when the sun comes up the Varangian guard look around and say everyone important is gone the emperor our boss is gone we're mercenaries so we're not fighting unless we're getting paid which means we're not fighting anymore in defense of this city because our employers have left so the men of the Varangian guard

1:22:48send a contingent to the crusader camp which is just inside a corner of the city and they say the emperor is gone the high and mighty have fled only the poor remain in the city and we're not fighting to defend it so it was the next morning the morning of April 13th 1204 when the Varangian guard and the clergy of Constantinople go to the crusader camp to officially surrender and what happens next is horrifying because now

1:23:19that victory is theirs it's time for everyone to get paid and the men of the fourth crusade are going to do what victorious armies usually do when they take a city by force which is sack it and so they fan out across the streets of Constantinople swords in hand and they seize anything valuable they can get their hands on and they're not just looking for shiny objects like silver and gold but they're looking for anything like

1:23:50jewelry someone might be wearing money that you might have in your purse they're grabbing ordinary citizens stripping them taking anything of value they assault people they rape women wherever they find them they go into the church of the highest Sophia itself which was one of the most lavish and stunning buildings of the time incredibly wealthy and they seize any gold silver or jewels that they find in there they removed the silver pulpit and the silver clad

1:24:20pillars they stripped the altar of its pearls and precious jewels they took dishes and cups and silver lamps and anything of value that they could find one account says that they even had a prostitute sitting at the front near the altar itself singing dirty songs while these men went through seizing anything they could find and you can imagine these bands of soldiers just marauding through the streets they grab wine or other alcohol wherever they can find

1:24:51it they're becoming drunker as they go along and progressively less inhibited they're stripping women in the street there's gang rape they're killing men women and children churches libraries and monasteries are targeted nuns are raped inside their convents it's an orgy of violence women and children lay dying in the streets people who are suspected of concealing anything of value were seized and tortured in the streets to make them reveal whatever they might have hidden this sack of

1:25:22Constantinople went on for three days it was a period of absolute terror for the inhabitants imagine the sound of doors smashing the burning smell the screaming everywhere broken objects littering the streets the absolute desolation and terrified people hiding in whatever small corner they can find hoping to escape with their lives one greek historian from the time wrote that even the saracens by which he means the muslims would have been more merciful than what the crusaders did to the city of Constantinople no less than three massive fires had raged through the city since the crusaders had

1:25:59arrived and now this sack had destroyed much of what was left the barbarians were inside the gates and they were the crusaders the leaders of the fourth crusade had given the men in the army strict instructions for what to do with all the plunder they were going to collect during this intense sacking of Constantinople after all there were bills to be paid and so while the men were free to roam around smashing and raping and looting they also had instructions to bring everything that they had seized to a couple of central gathering locations because there

1:26:35were debts to be paid to the Venetians not only did they have outstanding debts for the transport contract but the Venetians had agreed to send their 50 war galleys which had been incredibly useful on this campaign in exchange for half of any spoils taken and so there's quite a lot of money that is due to the Venetians at this point half of everything in the city just for their war galleys and then some additional money that's still owing for transport so the idea is that every man is going to bring what he's seized to these

1:27:12central collection points and then the leaders of the crusade are going to redistribute it to make sure all the debts are settled so this is a good plan but you're essentially asking a rampaging army of men grabbing whatever they can see and seize to turn into an orderly group of men who are going to hand over what they've taken and sit there and watch politely while it gets redistributed not everyone is happy to play along with this naturally there were men who wanted to withhold some of the things that they had collected so they'd bring

1:27:48some stuff to the central collection point but they'd try and pocket some of the more valuable items for themselves so there was a lot of this a lot of wealth in the city and not all of it went to the central collection points where it was supposed to go even though there were strong penalties for being caught withholding we have records that some knights were actually hung if they were found withholding spoils but of course there were a large number of people inevitably who weren't caught nevertheless even with all that the amount of wealth that

1:28:24was collected and seen was staggering once again we have an eyewitness account from the knight Robert of Clary and he says this quote never since the beginning of the world has such wealth been seen or been won not in Charlemagne's day nor even in Alexander's I do not think that in the 40 richest cities in the world you could find such treasure as we found in Constantinople the Greeks used to say that two-thirds of the world's wealth was concentrated in Constantinople and the other third scattered throughout the rest of the world unquote the Venetians got

1:29:01their half of the spoils of the city at least the half of the spoils that were collected and one incredible souvenir of this moment is a set of four bronze horse sculptures that used to be associated with the Hippodrome in the center of the city and these were taken to Venice to adorn that city where they still are to this day although they were briefly seized by Napoleon during his campaign and eventually returned but those horses were stolen from Constantinople at this moment in time with the city sacked and the bills paid by the time

1:29:38we get to May of 1204 there's a new item of business for the armies of the fourth crusade and that is to choose a new emperor for the city that they've subjected now they have to have a council meeting about this because you have the doge of Venice Enrico Dandolo who's leading the Venetian half of this force and then you have Boniface of Montferrat who's one of several significant nobles leading the fourth crusade but he's perhaps

1:30:09the first amongst equals and Boniface of Montferrat would have been the logical candidate for emperor he certainly thought he was in fact he'd already taken the measure of marrying old emperor Isaac's wife who wasn't old she was quite beautiful her name was Margaret and she was the daughter of the king of Hungary so you can see that Boniface of Montferrat is making moves that are designed to make himself seem the logical candidate to wear the imperial

1:30:40crown but the doge Enrico Dandolo will have none of it he's interested in someone who's going to be good for Venice and he considers that Boniface of Montferrat is a little bit too close with Venice's rivals the Genoese so he puts a veto on Boniface being the next emperor they settle on a compromise candidate a knight by the name of Baldwin of Flanders and he's distinguished himself in battle many times during the course of this assault

1:31:11so he is going to be the new emperor so what did the Greeks think of this Latin knight who was going to be their new emperor well the answer is nobody asked them because nobody cared this was once again going to be a regime change enforced from outside a week later on May 16th 1204 Baldwin is crowned the new emperor and as soon as he does that he turns around and rewards his friends chiefly Boniface of

1:31:41Montferrat who becomes the king of Thessalonica and some 600 other knights are then enfofed basically given little pieces of land in exchange for vows of loyalty so essentially Baldwin who's the new emperor is carving up all the imperial territory and giving it in little parcels as gifts to his Latin noble friends now what does the Pope say about this sack of Constantinople when Baldwin the newly crowned emperor writes to the Pope of the successful taking of

1:32:12the city and his own accession to the imperial throne the Pope writes back that he rejoices in the Lord he approves entirely later when the gory details of the sack of the city reach his ears he's supposedly horrified now not everyone believes that the Pope was terribly disturbed by the violence that was committed in Constantinople Greek sources have long suspected that the Pope actually supported what was going on after all he benefited directly from Baldwin wearing

1:32:43the imperial crown and the forcible reunification of the eastern and western halves of the Christian church under his own authority as the Pope this theory is supported by the fact that Pope Innocent III was quite willing to use violence against people he believed should be under his authority he was incredibly fond of the idea of holy war or crusading despite the debacle of the fourth crusade Innocent III announced another one only five years later in 1209

1:33:14and this was going to be against not some foreign enemy but local people people in southern France people who saw themselves as Christians but the Pope said they were heretics he thought that there were aspects of their teaching and practice that fell outside the range of what he defined as correct and so he was going to deploy armies against them so the Pope pitches this concept to the nobles of western Europe and he says hey you

1:33:45can get all the spiritual benefits of a crusade you can acquire moral merit for your immortal soul but you don't have to spend a lot of money and travel thousands of miles to the near east to do it you can just do a quick summer crusade head down to southern France kill some Cathars or Albigensians these are two names for the same group of people and head back home he kept this violence against the Cathars or Albigensians this summer crusade going for more than a decade Innocent was also happy to wave the banner of crusade

1:34:22over those people willing to fight the Hohenstaufen family in southern Italy the Hohenstaufens were the family that had furnished holy Roman emperors and they were a political problem for Pope Innocent III he didn't want their control to extend as far as it did into Italy and so once again he was happy to use the language of crusade and spiritual benefit to encourage people to fight a political enemy that he had he declared another crusade to protect the church in Livonia what is now Latvia and Estonia and he died preaching the fifth crusade which was none

1:35:00of the ones I've already mentioned he was extremely fond of this idea of holy war and entirely happy to deploy violence to achieve his aims so with everything we know about Innocent and his goals is it really credible to believe that he was so deeply scandalized by violence against the people of Constantinople if that violence achieved a goal that he had which was to bring the Eastern Church under his authority so was it successful not really while Baldwin was the emperor and officially the Greek churches were supposed to recognize the Pope and insert certain mentions

1:35:37of him into their liturgy in practice this was widely resented it never really took it was a reunification in name and for political purposes only so what happened to the fourth crusade well the answer is it never left Constantinople with Baldwin as the new emperor and word that he was handing out parcels of imperial territory to western knights this did nothing to strengthen the crusader states in the near east in fact it weakened them significantly because many of the knights who were currently resident in the crusader states after hearing that a Latin knight was the

1:36:15new emperor headed off to Constantinople to see if they could improve their fortunes by getting land over there so it actually led to a decrease of the number of knights defending crusader states in the near east any further plans to leave Constantinople and finish the crusade were abandoned soon after Baldwin was crowned the Pope's own representatives traveling with the army formerly absolved men in that army of their crusading vows they basically said you're no longer under any obligation to go to the near east and finish what you said you were going to do there is

1:36:52no sin attached to you staying exactly where you are and so that's what they did this period of Latin rule lasted only some 57 years before the Greeks were able to expel the Latins and reclaim Constantinople which was a city in tatters at that point with a collapsed population for the eastern Christians of Constantinople they would never forget the cruel and horrific sack of their city at the hands of crusaders this was a point that shattered the unity of the eastern Roman Empire that left its leadership spread out in many different places and even when

1:37:30the Greeks finally succeeded in retaking their city they were never the same again they were never as strong again and many historians argue that this sack of the city in 1204 this destruction of the eastern Roman Empire of parceling it out into little bits so weakened it that it never recovered and set the stage for the Ottomans to finally take the city and rename it in 1453 and that would be the ultimate irony wouldn't it that a crusade that set out in the name of Christianity should end by destroying one of its most significant cities

1:38:07and killing only other Christians there is a stone in the church of Hagia Sophia in the city of Constantinople which is now known as Istanbul and it marks the grave of Enrico Dandolo the doge of Venice he died soon after the taking of Constantinople being an elderly man in his 80s and was buried in the most significant church in the city the plaque next to it tells you that Enrico Dandolo is buried here because he died after a visit to Constantinople in 1204 this may perhaps be the understatement of the millennium thank you for joining

1:38:44me on this extra long episode I'm now going to head out and explore even more history in this remarkable city that is now called Istanbul and if you want to see some of those extra details head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert and become a supporter of Villains and Virgins podcast thank you so much for being with me I'll see you in another episode thank you you