The fourth crusade is the crusade where the crusaders sacked Constantinople and end up occupying it for half a century. It’s a very low point in relations with the Greek Church and only added fuel to the fire of the Humbert vs. Cerularius episode in 1054. I’ve been reading primary sources on this crusade and it turns out there is another blunder that the crusaders made.
To give an overview of the crusade, the crusaders overestimated the amount of ships they needed in Venice. They were in debt due to this so they needed money. An exiled Byzantine prince named Alexius said that if they installed him as the emperor of the Byzantine Empire, he’d pay them out of the treasury a total of 200,000 marks. He also made a good number of other promises. The Crusaders reach Constantinople, the usurper emperor flees and Alexius is installed as Emperor Alexius IV.
Alexius only pays part of the money that he had promised. The fact that he gave the crusaders any money at all angered the people of Constantinople. The people of the city found a champion in a man named Murtzuphlus who killed Alexius, became the emperor and told the crusaders to leave and that they weren’t getting any more money. The crusaders, infuriated by the situation sacked the city.
In Robert of Clari’s primary account entitled the The Conquest of Constantinople, there is another interesting detail. Once Alexius IV is installed by the crusaders, an exiled Turkish Prince from Konya appears. He’s marvelled at the success of the crusaders and asks them to install him as the Sultan over his empire since like Alexius he had been robbed of his empire. He promises to give them money and that he’ll receive baptism and convert his empire to Christianity; although the account doesn’t mention what Turkish empire, it is obviously the Sultanate of Rum which was the empire headquartered in Konya. The crusaders thought about it but refused.
I think this is another black mark on the fourth crusade. The original opponent of the crusades were the Turkish Muslims of the Sultanate of Rum. The two famous battles of Nicaea and Dorylaeum in the first crusade were against the Sultanate of Rum. The Sultanate of Rum was a breakaway state from the Seljuk Empire that had conquered Anatolia in the 1070s. Obviously this wouldn’t have converted all of the Turks as the Seljuk empire was still out there but it would have been a starting point.
Ultimately the fourth crusade attacked two Christian cities, Zara and Constantinople. It missed an opportunity to convert the Muslims of Anatolia and ultimately hindered the crusades. It hindered the crusades because Crusader controlled Constantinople was very unstable and always needed supplies; supplies which should have gone to the holy land to reinforce the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other crusader states. A very black eye for the crusades.
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