fourth crusade

Certain Issues and Remarks about the Fourth Crusade
Introduction:
In light of the three preceding crusades, the fourth expedition was organized for succeeding in what the second and the third failed. Guided by the same religious fever, it ironically ended up with the conquest of Christian territories and the death of Christian fidels. If we believe the historians, the fourth crusade even became imperialistic. (Stated by Jean Dufournet in his book about the writers of the fourth crusade Dufournet 1969;52) Apart from the dogmatic belief it was a fierce devotion to more obscure causes, it was also the confrontation of two Christian peoples once united under the wings of Rome.
This crusade determines definitively a medieval conflict between the East and the West, between oriental Christianity and occidental Christianity. It shows at the same time that the papacy, at the peak of its power, witnessed for the first time its lack of power: Innocent III, the strongest pope of the middle ages, had completely lost control of the crusade. (Dufournet 1969;52)
In his preface to the chronicle of Edmond Faral, Jean Dufournet observes in the spirit of the crusaders that “the enterprise was not unjust: it was attested by the constant protection of God and the absolution of the Pope”. ((Dufournet 1969;52)
Even if Villehardouin underlines several times the necessity and the legitimacy of the crusade over Constantinople, he conforms to the interests of justice, of the papacy and of the crusades, and his writings remain incomplete in the description of the factors that involved them to the conquest of the Greek capital. His chronicles are an ultimate example of the loyalty of a knight towards his masters.
Among the specialists of the fourth crusade, there is a general agreement upon the fact that Villehardouin pretends to show that only a chain of circumstances led the leaders of the expedition to take a series of decisions, which were all the most favorable in the ruling of the crusades, and which as a result led to the paradoxical conquest of a Christian Empire. (Pauphilet 1952; 559)
The heart of the historical debates about the fourth crusade have, since the 19th century been the question on the honesty of the marshal of Champagne. ( Heer 1970; 258) The crusades would not have taken place without the encouragement of smart and powerful men who made it work to their profit. Among these men, we must name the Doge Dandolo, the Pope Innocent III and the Marquis of Monferrat, successor of Thibaut de Champagne at the head of the crusade recommended by G. de Villehardouin.
In 1875 the Comte Riant noted two antagonistic lines of opinions among the observers who judged the fourth crusade: the official line and the line of the discontents. (Riant 1875; 22-34) The official line sees in the events of 1204 a glorious but unexpected adventure, something like the realization of brilliant dreams. Riant stated that it was the least important mission to conquer Jerusalem, and suggested that the real objective of the expedition was “the consolidation of the new oriental Latin empire” and that “we must seek for the signs of it in the circularly letters of the army leaders, and especially in the chronicles of Villehardouin”.
In the line of the discontents, Riant grouped knights like Roberts de Clari who did not hide his suspicion about the chiefs of the crusade who, according to him obeyed to the inspirations of hatred against the Byzantine Empire. In the chronicle of Clari, (Clari 1868; i) one finds Gunther of Pairis who himself doubts about “the legitimacy of the crusade” looking at himself as a passive instrument of the divine anger. (Riant 1879)
At the same time, as underlined by Alfred Andrea, Gunther expresses himself zealously while he describes the behavior of Abbot Martin at Constantinople. (Gunther of Pairis; 85)
He doesn’t hesitate to use plenty of excuses whenever he thinks it is good to use them, practically at almost every turn, and he extols Martin’s monastic virtues and endeavors to show that he was always scrupulous in confronting to the highest standards his vocation. Gunther takes special pains to portray his Abbott as “obedient, humble, shy and abstemious, and with no worldly possessions or pleasures” (Gunther of Pairis; 85) The doubtful acquisition of certain relics by the Abbott Martin while Constantinople was invaded by the Franks was indirectly denounced by Villehardouin (Gunther of Pairis; 85)
It is over this antagonist structure that the critiques of the modern historians are founded, either partisans of the chronicle of Villehardouin, satisfied by the official narration of the fourth crusade, or the skeptical questioning of the authenticity yet the sincerity of the chronicle writer, ranking themselves behind Robert de Clari. The latter ones opposed to the theory of accident as defined by Riant, arguing that “Villehardouin only saw the public events of war negotiations; he neither knew nor penetrated the secret aim which was held by the counsil of the Republic. (Gunther of Pairis; 86)
In fact, in order to gain more insight on these debates, we should observe the crusade more closely as a whole. The fourth crusade was initially an attempt to capture Palestine. It never made its way there, since it was sidetracked into attacking and sacking Constantinople and also, since the number of participants and the money they could gather was falling short on meeting the huge financial needs of such a great expedition.
The history of the fourth crusade is an intricate set of events. The most fundamental details are pertinent here as the relationships of the crusaders in their French-speaking homelands as well as in Constantinople and the events of the crusade itself are extremely important to the nature of the resulting history. The reasons for the expedition are obvious. On one side we have the pilgrimage and even martyrdom besides the need to “capture” Jerusalem, on the other, military victory and booty. The story of the failed crusade is well-known; however there are some blank points that are not clarified by most of the general history books. Generally it has been stated that the Venetians mislead the crusade by their pecuniary greed and the whole burden of the failure is saddled on the Venetia Republic. (Runciman 1953; 114)
On the other hand, the trick played by the Byzantine Alexius is generally underestimated. Actually some claimers of the Byzantine throne made agreements with their enemies the “Latin” Christians, which ultimately led to the capture of their capital Constantinople. The capture of Constantinople and its environs by the crusaders changed the allure of the Byzantine Empire completely. It was stripped of its wealth and put into political chaos; the crusaders’ rule over the peninsula of Morea lasted very long.
How did the call to crusades, issued by Pope Innocent III in 1198 (CMH VI; 13-14)
in the hopes of re-conquering Muslim-controlled Jerusalem, lead instead to the 1204 conquest of Constantinople and much of Greece by Latin armies? Innocent's call to the cross was not widely taken up until in November, 1199, when a group of predominantly Champenois nobles, led by Theobald III, Count of Champagne, and his kinsmen Louis, Count of Blois, pledged the crusade at a jousting tournament at Ecry-sur-Aisne, a suitably profane venue to ensure the endeavor would probably fail. Despite having the crusade sanctified before God and man, the crusaders did fail and spectacularly so (CMH VI; 13-14) the force and its leaders became embroiled in one mess after another. A treaty was signed with the Venetian Doge, Enrico Dandolo, in April, 1201 for the transport by sea of the crusading force, whose ranks had swelled to include Champenois and Burgundians, but also Flemish, Lombardian and other French-speaking participants. ((Madden 1993; 166-185)
They were to sail to Egypt, which, once taken, would be the gateway to Jerusalem. Theobald died in May 1201, and a baronial parliament met at Soissons in June to choose a new leader. Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, a highly respected vassal of Philip of Swabia, King of Germany, was elected. In addition to his powerful liege loyalties, Boniface was also related by marriage to the Hohenstaufen and French royal families. In the late summer of 1201, Boniface proclaimed the cross at Soissons Cathedral and was acclaimed leader of the crusade at the chapter general of the Cistercians' primary and greatest monastery, Citeaux. The crusaders gathered at Venice in the summer of 1202 for departure and found that their numbers were far lower than had been expected. There were different groups who came to the Crusade apart from the Venetians and these did not come together in Venice and did not follow the official leadership. They had a variety of motives. (Haris 2003; 259)
Walter of Brienne and his followers had the support of the Pope and they were behind their personal plans when the army joined at Venice. But they were too late when the army sailed and could never join the Crusade. (Queller 1974; 42)
On the other hand there were those who sailed from Apulia, Marseille or other ports instead of Venice. In many cases those who did so did it because of its convenience. For example the French crusaders set sail at Marseilles in order not to walk to Venice. Those who embarked on the ships from Apulia thought that the prices would be more favorable in Apulia than in Venice.
However, those who had had to come to Venice did not show up and their betrayal to their rendezvous coasted heavily to the crusader army, because it reduced their number and caused some others to hesitate and turn back. This caused the crusaders not to fulfill the enormous transport agreement they had made with the Venetians.
Among the historians there is a common belief that Venetians were betraying the Crusader army. Among the several reasons found by the historians, we can mention that the Venetians were interested in the financial gains they would gather from the Crusades, that the Egyptian target was against the Venetian benefits so they hampered the plan, that the Venetians were interested in the conquest of Constantinople because it meant to secure a monopolistic position in the Mediterranean trade. (Queller 1974; 42)
A widely believed opinion which can be read in the writings of the historians claims that the aim of the northern knights and kings was only sublime religiosity and martyrdom, while that of the Venetians was only materialistic. This seems to be an exaggerated belief, since it is known that the crusaders were not only interested in martyrdom but also in the richness of the East as their plunder of the relics and all riches of Constantinople can prove that they were not there for religious reasons. On the other hand, we cannot deny that the Venetians were interested in the fourth crusade because of financial interests, but they should not be reproached as being solely a mercantile state. After all, it is generally economic motives, not religious or moral ones that trigger the states to wars. The Venetian republic had also invested considerable resources in the crusade, which shows that they were expecting a lot from the crusaders. For example, in the early 1120’s, a Venetian armada fought against the Fatimid navy at the battle of Ascalon and gave support to the conquest of Tyre. During the third crusade, Venice sent a large fleet to the Holy Land in 1188 although nothing is heard of the further actions of this fleet. In 1198 Venice responded positively to a papal legate sent to gain support for a new crusade. The Venetians agreed to ensure the transportation of the armies and joined the army themselves. Since they invested so much to this expedition, both in terms of money, ships and manpower, the Venetians’ anger when their host could not pay the fee was understandable. (Madden 1999; 27)
While some of those who decided to come to the crusade could not meet their brothers-of-arms, it became more and more apparent that the crusade was ill-planned and there were more and more financial problems. This caused more and more people to take ships elsewhere or to give up the crusade due to the lack of finances.
The schisms in ideological grounds started to appear, too, because there was rumor that the objective of the crusade was not Jerusalem but Egypt. An assault upon the Nile Delta and then using it as a stepping stone towards the Holy lands would sound at first reasonable but most of the crusaders were taking the Holy Land issue very seriously and wanted to go there directly instead of waiting for their commanders’ strategical games to realize. Some wanted to receive a certification of their pilgrimage while others feared that the money given to them as the cost of the journey would not be enough and more would be needed.
The crusaders landed to Zara in late fall and winter of 1202-3. (Madden 1999; 22)
The official leaders thought that the attacks to Zara and Constantinople were necessary steps towards Jerusalem. Villehardouin charged certain people of quitting the crusade but against his charges, men such as Simon de Monfort, Enguerrand of Boves, the abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay and the Abbot of Pairis quitted the army because they thought they would jeopardize their souls if they remained in it. However, those who did not sail together with the Crusader army had little success, as Villehardouin rightly points out not many of them arrived at Accra, and those who arrived there found out that there was truce with the Muslims and engaged themselves in small skirmishes with the locals. However, they contributed nothing to the conquest of Jerusalem. (Andrea 1997; 23)
This left them very heavily in debt to the Venetians for boats and supplies that were no longer needed, with no sources of funds for repayment. In order to free themselves from the debt, the crusaders agreed to aid Venice in its maritime wars by helping her capture Zara, on the opposite side of the Adriatic coast. This incident took place in November, 1202, against the Pope's express order, and at a further cost to their numbers, as many now left the crusading party disappointed in the diversion from their stated goals. Before leaving Venice, the Crusaders further negotiated to help Alexios IV, the son of the deposed Byzantine Emperor Isaac Angelos, to regain his throne in Constantinople in return for Alexios's financing their onward trip to Jerusalem. Alexios IV was the brother-in-law of Philip of Swabia, Boniface's liege lord, easing the Crusaders' agreement to the plot. Acting in support of the deposed Isaac II’s son prince Alexius, the French and Venetian crusaders attacked Constantinople in july 1203, causing Alexius III to fly. Isaac II was hastily brought back to the throne and prince Alexius was welcomed to the city and crowned as co-emperor. Isaac II was forced to ratify his son’s agreement with the crusaders so he consented to pay them two hundred thousand silver marks, accepted papal supremacy over the Byzantine church, and send troops to Palestine. Isaac II was aged and already blind, so he had virtually no power over the empire, on the other hand his son was reckless and depended only on the force of his comrades, the crusaders. (Madden 1999; 7)
The two emperors were first eager to do whatever possible in order to rid their empire of the crusaders. Isaac gave them all the money he could find, seized the land and property of the aristocrats but couldn’t fulfill half of the debt he owed to the crusades. Then they turned towards the churches and melted down whatever precious thing they found in order to pay the crusaders. Alexius and the patriarch sent letters of submission to the pope in 25 August 1203. So the two emperors literally betrayed their own country in order to gain the power with the help of their proven enemies. (Stephenson 2005; 279)
As the crusaders began to lose patience, Alexios was himself overthrown and murdered. The Latins were ordered to leave the area of the city by the new Byzantine authority. Angry, low on food and funds, and thus unable either to move on to Jerusalem or to return west, the Franks instead laid siege to the city. They captured Constantinople in April 1204 and in May, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was crowned leader of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in Haghia Sophia. Jerusalem was forgotten.(Stephenson 2005; 279/80)
From here the armies moved on through what is now Greece, pushing the Byzantine leadership into three diminutive territories, the Despotate of Epirus, in northwestern Greece as well as two others in Asia Minor. Boniface of Montferrat ruled a new Kingdom of Thessalonica, in the north of mainland Greece; the Venetians took the Ionian Islands, the Adriatic coast and Crete; and the Champenois and Burgundians, under Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the powerful Marshall of Champagne and son of a prominent first crusader, headed the Principality of the Morea in the Peloponnesus. The western knights extended their area of control over the whole peninsula, with the exception of Coron and Modon, which were under Venetian rule. Although major changes happened in its boundaries, the Frank principality of Morea remained in existence for more than two centuries, eventually disappearing in 1432.
In the first period of the history of the Principality, ties between East and West remained very close, as did the kinship, and social and religious relationships between people who emigrated. This is seen in both the secular and the ecclesiastical contexts. Several powerful local landholders of the region had already grown quite independent of the Byzantine capital prior to the 1204 conquest. There was thus a local Greek elite that was ready to be acculturated into the Franks' society in order to benefit from close association with their new colonizing overlords. There are several cases of Greeks who changed rites to practice Latin Christianity.
Yet what of the polemics we have that are railing against the Latins and the destruction of Constantinople by the invading army? To be sure, the forces of Boniface and the other collected leaders of the Western conquerors devastated the capital city and also parts of the outlying territories on their march through Greece and Western Anatolia. The account of Niketas Choniates provides ample evidence of this as do the statements of the crusaders themselves, though to a lesser extent. But two factors must be borne in mind when using these sources. The first one, of course, is that these authors were entirely biased in favor of the Byzantine government and presented the most orthodox view possible of the conquest, both in the religious as well as in the political sense. The documents need to be read with this in mind and, if not corroborated by other historical sources, the accounts should therein be taken with a grain of salt. However, even Choniates grudgingly signals that there was cooperation between the Latins and some Greeks: (Choniates 1994; 321-323)
“Their former lords [the former Greek lords of Moreote territories] were content to submit in disgrace and revilement without feeling any pricking of heart or quitting themselves like men for their own sake and that of their children; ... There were those who were consumed by burning ambition against the interest of their own country, servile men corrupted by wantonness and other senseless actions who took possession of precipitous fortifications and fortresses and well-walled cities. There they established wretched tyrannies, and, whereas their duty was to take up arms against the Latins, they set their faces against one another and surprisingly made peace with the Latins”
Choniates' indignation at his fellow Greeks' collaboration with the Latins does not negate the evidence he provides that some powerful archons did participate in the Franks' political and economic hierarchy.
Second, it must be acknowledged that these texts mostly reflect the attitude of the highest ranks of the Byzantine political and social hierarchy toward the conquest. Michael Angold, in the most recent history of the Fourth Crusade, points out that the Fourth Crusade hit hardest at the Byzantine elites, based in Constantinople. This was the sacred city of the empire, where its power and pride resided and the basis for its corporate identity. (Angold 2003; 221)








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