“They had taken up the Cross and sworn on it … they would pass over the lands of the Christians without shedding blood…Instead of defending [Christ’s] tomb, they …outraged the faithful who are members of Him. They used Christians worse than Arabs use Latins, for at least the arabs respect women.”
When Nicetas Choniatis, erstwhile Grand Logothete of the Byzantine Empire penned these lines in 1204, he was in exile. He penned them still unable to grasp the enormity of the crimes he had seen being committed before his very eyes. It is a crime that implicated the whole of Western Christendom, the wounds of which are still suffered today by the eastern Christians.
It is little known that the classical Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame in Amiens, largest in France, was built to contain the head of St. John the Baptist, stolen during the commission of one of the greatest crimes in history: the sack of Constantinople by the Latin West at the time of the Fourth Crusade.
Ostensibly, the Crusades were fought with several aims in mind: to free the Holy Land, to stop the spread of Islam, and as set out by Bishop of Rome Innocent III, to unify the Eastern and Western Churches, which by 1204 had been in schism for two hundred years. However, they failed in all of these: the holy places remained under Mohammedan control, Islam continued to extend its influence, and a deeper wedge was driven between the two churches. If anything, the Crusades hastened the demise of the Byzantine Empire and its ultimate fall into Moslem hands. This had devastating effects on the whole of Europe. Not only did it let the Turks into Europe; it subsequently led to the Balkan problem and the economic disparity between eastern and western Europe. And all this to a city, which for nine hundred years, safeguarded Europe from the devastation of the Avars, Bulgars, Arabs, Rus and the Turks.
Bishop Innocent III of Rome called the Fourth Crusade in 1196. Essentially, it was a French enterprise, supported by Swabians, and later, by Venetians. Because Mohammedan power had shifted from Palestine to Cairo, its objective was to take Egypt. This meant launching a maritime campaign, requiring ships and related supplies, which the French did not have. They turned to Venice, ruled by the aged, blind doge Enrico Dandolo, for assistance.
The wily Dandolo persuaded the Crusaders to move on Zara on the Illyrian coast in 1203 instead. When this attack against a Christian city outraged the church in Rome, a remarkable pretext occurred to whet the Crusader’s appetite elsewhere. The ruler of Swabia had received a letter from his brother, the deposed Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelos, who had been deposed by his brother, Alexius III. Isaac’s son. In exchange for western help to enthrone his son, Alexius the Younger, he would pay for the crusade against Egypt, supply an army of ten thousand men, dispatch 500 knight to guard the Holy Land, and also offered the submission of the Eastern Church to the west. Dandolo convinced the Crusaders that better pickings were to be had in Constantinople and it was agreed the Egyptian Crusade should be put off.
Arriving in Constantinople, the French chronicler and Crusader, Geoffrey de Villehardouin wrote that the Crusaders “when they saw those high ramparts and the strong towers with which it was completely encircled and the splendid palaces and soaring churches…there was not a man so bold he did not tremble at the sight.”
Disembarking at Chalcedon on the Asiatic shores, the Crusaders attacked and occupied the commercial centre of Galata and proceeded to attack the City from the imperial palace of Blachernae. Knowing all was lost, Alexius III fled the city. Thus, the son of blind Issac, Alexius IV was crowned emperor on 1 August 1203. He inherited a treasury hat was empty. He also inherited a population that was furious against the continued sojourn of the unruly, rude and uncivilized Crusaders. Tensions drew to a height when a gang of maurauding Crusaders set fire to the Church of St Irene, causing the greatest fire in the City , since the days of Justinian.
Furthermore, the Crusaders were feeling resentful against the Byzantines as well. The loot promised them would be used only to pay off the Venetians for their transport. They were gaining nothing materially from this, the richest City of the known world. Moreover, it was revealed that Alexius did not have the means to honour his father’s extravagant promises. It was at this juncture that the perfidious Dandolo orchestrated the crime of the millennium. He intimated to the Swabians that nothing could be expected from the Greeks, who had betrayed them and would not fulfill their promises. If the Crusaders took the city, they could establish a Latin Emperor on the throne, who would have a quarter of the city, while a half would go to Venice along with the right to appoint a Venetian patriarch to the City.