Fourth Crusade - Off The Rails

After a century of ups and downs, crusading totally careened off the rails with the Fourth Crusade.

(this is part six of twelve about The Crusades as a movie series)

The crusades started with sincere intention. Of course they might be viewed as misguided by modern standards, but the early crusaders truly believed what they were doing was not just the right thing to do, it was God’s will.

The Fourth Crusade (1198-1204) was about power and wealth and doing it because you could. It marks a change for crusading in at least three ways:

First, it’s clear that many crusaders no longer took the religious aspects seriously, focusing instead on loot and profit and political power.

Second, the crusade never made it to Jerusalem. Instead, it sacked and conquered Constantinople, by far the greatest city in Europe, a Christian city since its founding 900 years earlier.

Third, there were way too many emperors named Alexius in Constantinople at that time. It might get confusing, so apologies in advance.

Shortly after he was elected, Pope Innocent III called the Fourth Crusade to recapture Jerusalem. Innocent III modeled his crusade after the First Crusade, which was led successfully by mid-tier nobles, rather than the disastrous Second Crusade and so-so Third Crusade, both of which were led by kings.

While many supported the idea of a crusade, it took a while to build some steam for people to actually show up and commit to it. The crusaders were to meet up in Venice in April 1202. The barons agreed that the plan would be to first go to Egypt, then onward to Jerusalem.

This plan made sense economically, in that there would be plenty of loot and spoils in Cairo. The plan made sense militarily, in that the crusade would have to fight the sultan of Egypt eventually anyway.

The crusaders needed to pay the Venetians to build a fleet of ships to sail to Egypt, but they didn’t have the cash. Venice agreed to construct the fleet on spec if they got 50% of whatever the crusade conquered.

To ensure this investment would pay off, Venice pushed the crusaders to help them recapture Zara, a Christian city on the Dalmatian coast. Many objected, and a few left the crusade, but they took the city anyway.

Christians fighting Christians was nothing new, but attacking a city unprovoked under a papal crusading banner was a first, and not in a good way. Innocent III excommunicated the crusaders who sacked Zara and all the Venetians.

The crusaders sailed for Constantinople, the great Christian capital of the east. Tensions between East and West had been growing for centuries, and The Crusades were originally intended to bring the two halves back together after the Great Schism of 1054. But events of the First, Second, and Third Crusades had pushed them farther apart.

The Fourth Crusade was already wobbly, and the crusaders were flat broke. How were they gonna get some loot? The leaders listened greedily to the exiled Byzantine prince Alexius Angelus, who promised huge, obviously unattainable payments in return for the crusaders’ assistance to regain the Byzantine throne from his uncle Emperor Alexius III.

The crusader army arrived outside Constantinople in June 1203, inspiring Alexius III to flee like a coward, taking much of the city treasury with him. Alexius Angelus was made Emperor Alexius IV. With no money to pay the crusaders like he promised, relations deteriorated.

Yet another Alexius seized the throne in January 1204, becoming Emperor Alexius V Mourtzouphlos, meaning the bushy-eyebrowed, a top ten contender for the greatest nickname of a medieval ruler.

On April 13, 1204, the crusaders broke through the mighty walls of Constantinople and sacked the city. The people (including priests, monks, and nuns) were assaulted and massacred; buildings were ransacked and torched; churches were robbed and desecrated.

The wealth of the city was systematically looted, house by house, church by church, and piled up in the Hippodrome to be divided up amongst the crusading forces.

Count Baldwin IX of Flanders was elected ruler, taking the title Emperor of Romania. The Byzantine Empire was divided up into small principalities that would be ruled by crusaders from the west for more than a century.

The Byzantine Empire was no more. The Fourth Crusade was over. Crusading flipped the world in its head.

The Fourth Crusade was a disgrace from start to finish, a pure money grab from the get-go.

It can happen in movie franchises too. Once there’s no reason to make the movie other than to make money, art goes out the window. Who cares what the fans want. All decisions are made with a spreadsheet, or worse, an algorithm.

Spreadsheet Dweebs never understand that the most important things can’t be fit into cell E:22, so the output is lackluster. The movie is terrible. The critics hate it. The fans hate it. The studio executives try to sweep it under the rug and forget about it.

But after a few years, natural turnover will cycle out those who experienced the disgrace of the flop, and someone comes along who believes they can be the hero that revives the once-mighty movie franchise, so you get another sequel…