You Can't Go Back to Constantinople

Dear Folk,

Today on July 17, 1203, the mostly French forces of the Fourth Crusade (remember Innocent III and his crusade?) landed in Constantinople and took the city / state without any resistance. Sounded like a good idea at the time even though the Pope opposed it. Was this wrong?

You might remember that the Fourth Crusade was stalled out in Venice. The expected crowds of crusaders and their money did not appear. The Venetians told the crusaders it was time to pay up for all the victuals and boats. The only thing the crusaders had was muscle, and plenty of it. The first contract hit the crusaders did for the Venetians was to attack a Roman Catholic city, Zara, which belonged to the king of Hungary. Teach him to mess with the Venetians!

The second hit was in the nature of restoring a deposed emperor to his throne in Constantinople. Isaac Angelus had been kicked off the throne by his brother Alexius III. The lack of brotherly love was pretty evident in that Alexius III had Isaac blinded and put in prison. Fortunately for Isaac, his son (also named Alexius) had escaped and was now looking for help. Hey, the Venetians had this ready group of buff guys with broadswords. What was Alexius, the young dude, offering for help? Nothing too shabby! He offered the Venetians 200,000 silver marks, an army of 10, 000 Greeks to fight in the Middle East for a year, and 500 knights (maintained by Constantinople) to be a permanent force for the Christians in the Holy Land. Sounded really good. Sort of a win-win deal.

The crusader fleet (boats by Venice, of course) got to the Bosphorus on June 24th. Alexis III and his mercenaries who were holding the fort at Constantinople took a good look at all that armor flashing up on deck as French folk did one armed pushups and decided to leave. On July 17th. 1203 those crusaders entered the town bearing Alexius and freeing his dad. August 1st saw them both crowned Emperor. End of story, right? Happy ending, everybody go home! Not quite.

There was another tiny stipulation to the contract -- hardly worth mentioning, really. Okay, all the folks of Constantinople who had formerly been Greek Orthodox now were Roman Catholics. Just like that -- presto-chango! -- they were all now subject to Pope Innocent III. There was also that matter of 200,000 marks. New Emperor Alexius ponied up the first installment but his people wondered where anyone was going to come up with a single extra penny. Guess they were a tad miffed about the religious conversion without their permission. Hard is the lot of an emperor, I want to tell you! Somehow a bit of tussling got out of hand and a part of the city got itself burned down.

In return, the Greeks thought to help give the Venetian fleet a warm welcome by filling some boats up with all sorts of combustibles (pitch, logs, shavings, copies of the movie "Ishtar"), set the sails toward the Venetian fleet at anchor, and set fire to the ships. Some sailor, awake on the deck, saw the drifting flame weapons and alerted the rest. A brave and desperate crew of Venetians met with the Greek gifts, grappled them and rowed them out to sea. Extra rations of grog for those sailors, I'm buying.

Another revolution in January of 1204 put the other faction -- led by the son-in-law of the deposed Alexis III (the brother-blinder) - back on the throne. The crusaders saw that Constantinople politics were just too Byzantine for them and decided the heck with it. It was time to slice and dice.

The crusaders essentially took everything that was not securely fastened and most of things that were. The haul included two hunks of the True Cross (each as big as a man's thigh), the Spear of Destiny, two nails from the crucifixion, a vial of Jesus' blood, Christ's tunic, his crown of thorns, the foot of St. Cosmas, another piece of the True Cross, more Jesus' blood, "quite a bit of St. John," gold, jewels, ancient manuscripts. The whole place looked like Macy's the day before Christmas.

The "Latin Emperors of Constantinople" then began with a looting and killing. Baldwin IX was their first ruler. He got himself crowned in St. Sophia (now Hagia Sophia, a mosque) all done up regally. They renamed their Latin kingdom "Romania" which included parts of Turkey and Greece. The exiled Greeks set up housekeeping in Nicaea on the Asian mainland and waited. Somehow, all of this did not help the relations between the Orthodox church and the Roman one. I wonder if the Greeks are still angry about this?

What have we learned from all of this? It is one thing to promise the moon but quite another to deliver it? The same armed folks who put you in power can just as easily put themselves in the same spot? Converting folks to a different religion is best done with tuna hot dish, hot coffee and their permission? I think I will go back to my time in the Army and say it is always, always a good idea to post a fire watch.

As always, forward these to those friendly forces out there. Do keep my name and sig. attached.

Losing my religion,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA -- Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS - Polyphemus Theognis
TRV- Sebastian Yeats