Fourth Crusade Ep 2: When Crusaders attacked and burned Constantinople

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0:30Constantinople 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.

1:07And 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,

1:37with dazzling gold mosaics depicting its emperors next to images of 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.

2:12That is how they understood themselves, their identity, and their history. So 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.

2:47That is the moment when the city of Constantinople, as it was still called, was attacked and devastated by a Christian 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.

3:17The men of the Fourth Crusade forced their way into the city, burning, sacking, and pillaging as they went. It'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.

3:50And I'm recording this episode live in Istanbul, and so if the setup and the sound is a little 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.

4:22After all, Villains and Virgins wouldn't be possible without the incredible people who support what I do. If 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.

4:55And to briefly remind you of where we are, Pope Innocent III had sent out the call for the Fourth Crusade. 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?

5:26Well, the people who organized the Fourth Crusade estimated that some 30,000 men would sail from Venice and embark on this 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

5:58to 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. But 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,

6:31a guy called Enrico Dandolo, proposes a deal to the leaders of the Fourth Crusade. And 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.

7:01We want Zara back. So, you, the armies of the Fourth Crusade, are going to sail along with us to 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

7:33and the Crusaders what both of them needed. 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 king has even taken the Crusader cross himself.

8:07So, 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,

8:40many of the Crusaders did 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,

9:10Boniface 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. He'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.

9:41He 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. If 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.

10:11Furthermore, 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 emperor, 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.

10:43But 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. And 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

11:13had 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. So 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,

11:44mostly 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 80-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.

12:14Then 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 crusade 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.

12:44He 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, to 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

13:14and 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. And 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.

13:45As 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 of the Roman Empire, which has collapsed into little territories that are dominated by different barbarian tribes. Goths, Allens, Franks, Lombards, etc.

14:16The 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 less and less connected to what used to be the western half, differences in belief and practice begin to emerge.

14:49And 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 than the bishops of those other metropolises,

15:20and 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,

15:52and by the 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

16:23and everyone who follows him. The Patriarch returns the favor, and now we have a moment called the Great Schism. And 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.

16:53And then you have an Eastern half of Christianity, which is sometimes called Orthodox, and they don't follow the 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.

17:26Prince 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. And 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,

17:58but 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 Alexius' 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

18:29are 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 them 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.

19:01Many 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 they 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

19:32emerging 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. Several 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

20:02and 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. To 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

20:33of 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 in the Near East while they're not being paid. So in many cases, communities would band together and sponsor a crusader.

21:04They 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 you completed a pilgrimage,

21:34from 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. So to give you an analogy, imagine that a church

22:04today 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,

22:35you're in 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

23:06of many of the men in the army, the nobles, the council who 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

23:37in the Near East. So they make a deal. They look at Prince Alexius and they say, we accept your offer. We'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

24:08to the Near East. So there's already a shedding of men from the ranks in response to a lack of faith in the leadership. But 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.

24:39That 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 number 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'

25:09father 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. Now Corfu is part of the Eastern Roman Empire so it's under the authority of the current Emperor the Older Alexius

25:41Alexius 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 make himself

26:11Emperor 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

26:41really break 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?

27:12So these dissenters nearly half the army separate from the main body of the army camp. They 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

27:43who are still 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

28:14our army. Please don't abandon the cause. Have 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.

28:45Some of the sources report tears being shed by some of the men in Boniface 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.

29:15Isn'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 to 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.

29:45The 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 Gallipoli, 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

30:17about 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. So, 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,

30:48the 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 troops 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

31:19to 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. But 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

31:49of 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. So, at this point, hostilities have officially been declared. Of course, the crusaders knew that old Alexius was going to be against them.

32:20That 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. And he says, we should make Prince Alexius visible to the people of Constantinople because once they see him,

32:50perhaps 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,