The 1204 Crusader Sack of Constantinople
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One of the defining events of the Middle Ages took place in Constantinople on April 12, 1204. Soldiers of the Fourth Crusade, under orders of the Doge of the Republic of Venice, breached the walls and sacked one of the greatest cities on earth. The sack wasn't just an orgy of violence and destruction, which it was, it also set in motion events that caused irreparable divisions between the Eastern and Western Christian worlds and ultimately the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

Learn more about the 1204 sack of Constantinople and how it changed the course of Europe on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by NerdWallet. When it comes to general knowledge and history, you know I've got you covered. But who do you turn to when you need smart financial decisions? If your answer is NerdWallet, then you're absolutely right. And if it's not, let me change your mind.

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I've covered parts of the story in episodes on Venice, Constantinople, the Crusades, and the fall of Constantinople. To understand what happened and why, it's necessary to understand all of the events that were happening during this period. One of the first major events leading up to the sack was the Great Schism. About 150 years earlier, in the year 1054, the Eastern and Western Christian churches formally split.

Pope Leo IX and the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I mutually excommunicated each other over differences regarding the power of the Bishop of Rome. And I'm oversimplifying things, which will require another episode to fully explain, but what were once two different traditions of the same faith became wholly separate religions. In 1182, an event known as the Massacre of the Latins took place in Constantinople.

Tensions had been building for years due to economic and religious rivalry between the native Byzantine Greeks and the Catholics, who were called Latins, who held significant trading power in the city. A violent uprising took place, which led to the slaughter of thousands of Catholics. Women, children, and the infirmed were not spared, and many of those who did survive were enslaved. The massacre deepened the animosity which had already existed between the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe.

Another major event of this period was the launch of the Crusades. The first crusade was launched in the year 1096 in an attempt to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims. They were successful, but they lost Jerusalem again in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, where the Islamic leader Saladin decisively defeated the crusader forces.

In Constantinople itself, the empire was undergoing a succession crisis. The legitimate emperor, Isaac II, had been overthrown and blinded by his brother, Alexios III. Finally, there was the Republic of Venice. Venice had become a powerful maritime republic, which had commercial interests in the eastern Mediterranean. The Venetians were keen on maintaining and expanding their trade dominance, particularly in Byzantine territories.

The elected leader of Venice, known as the Doge, which was a position that was held for life, was Enrico Dandolo. Enrico Dandolo is a fascinating character and was unlike almost any leader in world history for one simple reason. He came to power at the age of 85. And this was during an era when very few people ever made it to the age of 85.

And not only did he come to power at the age of 85, but he managed to rule Venice until he was 97. During that time, he became one of the shrewdest leaders in the history of the Venetian Republic. So all of these things were in play when the events of this episode transpired. And it all began with Pope Innocent III.

In response to the loss of Jerusalem, in 1202, Innocent did what several of his immediate predecessors had done and called for a crusade to reclaim Jerusalem. This crusade is known to historians as the Fourth Crusade. As with past crusades, they needed to raise an army and then transport that army to the Middle East to attack Jerusalem. They contracted with the Venetians to build a navy to transport the army across the Mediterranean.

The problem was the Crusaders didn't have enough money to pay Venice. Enrico Dandolo saw an opportunity and suggested to the leaders of the Crusade that they could pay him by helping to capture the city of Zadar, located on the Adriatic Sea in what is today Croatia. Given its location on the Dalmatian coast, this would be a very valuable city for Venice to control. However, there was another problem. The Crusades were supposed to be about liberating the Holy Land,

Zadar was not just a Christian city, but a Catholic city under the control of Hungary. In 1202, the Crusaders attacked Zadar, attacking the city, causing the surviving populace to flee into the countryside. The Pope then excommunicated the Crusaders and the Venetians who took part in the attack on the city. The excommunication of the Crusaders was eventually lifted because it would be odd to have a bunch of excommunicated Crusaders liberating Jerusalem in the name of the Church.

Around this same time, Alexios IV, Isaac II's son, sought Western help to reclaim the throne. He promised the Venetians and the Crusaders money and military assistance. But perhaps most tantalizing, Alexios offered a religious union between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches if they helped him overthrow his uncle and restore his father to power.

So, fresh off their sack of Zadar, the Crusaders were diverted once again to another Christian city, Constantinople. In July of 1203, the Crusaders arrived to remove the usurper Alexios III. If you remember back to my episode on Constantinople, what the city was famous for was its walls. The city was located on a peninsula, and the side of the city which faced land was defended with an enormous triple wall.

These walls and incredible fortifications had protected the city since its founding, so attacking the city would be no easy feat. On July 5th, the Crusaders arrived and set up camp across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. On the 17th, they began their assault by sea against the walls that surrounded the city on the shore. They didn't breach the walls, but they did set fire to some parts of the city.

The usurper Alexios III tried to rally the support of the people in the city and its soldiers, but quickly found himself facing a popular uprising. On July 18th, he fled the city with his daughter, effectually giving up the throne. Isaac II, who had been imprisoned and blinded by Alexios III, was then restored as emperor alongside his son, Alexios IV, who had made the promises of rewards to the Crusaders and Venetians for their support.

Alexios IV then welcomed the Crusaders into the city to help him protect his and his father's rule. The presence of these Latin Crusaders in the city did not sit well with the local Orthodox majority. The Crusaders weren't happy either because Alexios IV was having trouble meeting the financial promises that he had made to the Crusaders to help him take back the throne. Tensions between the locals and the Crusaders continued throughout 1203 as the Crusaders waited for their payment.

In July 1204, things came to a head. There was a popular uprising against Alexios IV and his father, Isaac II, and there was a movement to replace them with the imperial chamberlain, a man by the name of Alexios Dukas. Alexio Dukas captured Alexios IV and Isaac II and proclaimed himself Alexios V.

Isaac II soon died in captivity from causes that are not clear, and a few weeks after that, Alexios IV was most probably strangled to death while he was imprisoned. This left the crusaders with no means of recovering their payment. Frustrated, and perhaps driven by opportunism and Venetian ambitions, the crusaders, who were now encamped outside of the city, turned on Constantinople.

On April 12, 1204, the Crusaders breached the city's defenses on its seawall, not the city's large land wall. Several dozen Crusaders managed to get over the wall, broke a hole in the wall that allowed the rest of the Crusaders to pour in from ships. Over the next three days, the Crusaders looted, burned, and destroyed much of Constantinople. Churches, including the Hagia Sophia, were desecrated. Priceless relics were stolen, many of which were taken to Venice and other European cities.

As you might remember from the very first episode of this podcast, the Byzantine Empire was actually a name given to it after the fact. It was, in reality, a continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire. The city had many old and valuable relics and pieces of art which had come to Constantinople during Rome's heyday. Many of the items were taken not because of their artistic or historic value, but rather just for their base precious metals.

Some items were looted and taken to Venice, the most notable of which were the Horses of St. Mark. The Horses of St. Mark are four ancient bronze statues of horses that originally adorned the Hippodrome of Constantinople. They were transported to Venice where they were placed on the facade of St. Mark's Basilica in Piazza San Marco, becoming symbols of Venetian power and wealth. Today, the originals are preserved inside the basilica to protect them from damage while replicas stand outside.

One of the greatest works of art that was lost was a large bronze statue of Hercules supposedly created by Lysippos, a sculptor who worked for Alexander the Great 1,500 years earlier. An estimated 2,000 people were killed during the sack. As bad as the sack of the city was, and it was bad, things got worse. Alexios V fled the city before the sack, was captured, and brought back for trial.

He was found guilty of treason against Alexios IV and executed that December. His replacement wasn't another Byzantine Emperor. Instead, the entire imperial system was replaced with one known as the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The Venetians and Crusaders crowned Baldwin I of Flanders as the first Latin Emperor. Most of the Byzantine Empire was then partitioned amongst Western European powers.

The empire had already been substantially reduced in size by the Islamic Caliphate over the previous centuries, and here I'll refer you to the episode on the Battle of Yarmouk. By the time of the sack, it had mostly been reduced to the area around what is today Turkey. After the sack, it was reduced even further with the establishment of several Byzantine successor states, most notably the Empire of Nicaea, the Despotate of Epirus, and the Empire of Trebizond.

The partitioning of the Byzantine Empire, aka what was left of the Roman Empire, had huge repercussions. It never recovered from the partitioning that occurred in the wake of the sack of 1204. The Latin Empire only lasted about 50 years. In 1261, under the Palaeologos Dynasty, Constantinople returned to Byzantine, aka Greek Orthodox control. The Palaeologos Dynasty was to be the last in Byzantine history.

The reduced empire made it vulnerable to future invasions, most notably by the Ottoman Turks who would eventually capture Constantinople for a final time in 1453. And one can only wonder how the Byzantine Empire would have withstood attacks from the Ottomans almost 200 years later if it had been larger and had more resources. The other rather obvious result that stemmed from the sack was that it deepened the schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The violence inflicted on the most important city in Eastern Christianity by Western Crusaders fueled centuries of resentment between the two branches of Christianity. The Byzantine Empire viewed the Latin West with suspicion and bitterness, and this event is often cited as one of the reasons why the Byzantines were reluctant to seek help from the West in their later struggles against the Ottomans, and was a contributing factor for why Constantinople finally fell.

Venice was the big winner. They greatly benefited from the Fourth Crusade, securing dominance over key Byzantine territories and trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean. The sack of Constantinople began Venice's golden age as a commercial and maritime power. The 1204 sack of Constantinople was a turning point in medieval history. It derailed the original goals of the Fourth Crusade, permanently weakened the Byzantine Empire, and deepened the rift between Eastern and Western Christianity.

Its ramifications echoed for centuries, ultimately contributing to the fall of Byzantium and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiefer.

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