The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) ran aground when it was seduced into a web of Byzantine politics, which the Westerners never fully understood. Crusades - Crusades - The Fourth Crusade and the Latin empire of Constantinople: Pope Innocent III was the first pope since Urban II to be both eager and able to make the Crusade a major papal concern. It is important to remember that the numbering of crusades is a historical convention introduced long after the crusades themselves. Constantinople before the Fourth Crusade arrived Since the division of the Roman Empire and the creation of Constantinople under the Emperor Constantine – first Christian ruler of Rome – “The City”, as it was known, had remained the wealthiest and most glittering urban centre throughout the so-called Dark Ages and the early Middle Ages. 1054 is overblown in my opinion: what really soured relations between East and West was the way the Latins dealt with the Greek clergy of the East once they actually got there (first with the first Crusade that got them into the holy land and then with the sack of Constantinople that got them into the heart of Orthodoxy). As the video below demonstrates quoting many historians, the sack of the city was self inflicted. In 1198 he called a new Crusade through legates and encyclical letters. The Crusaders sacking of Constantinople in 1204 AD. The Crusaders were meant to go through Egypt and into Israel, but alas man plans and God laughs. We got an email that said: Also, during the Crusades- many Orthodox Christian Churches were pillaged and destroyed in the area and many holy relics and ancient items stolen or destroyed (among them the Holy Napkin) by the Catholics, who had mostly forgotten the Orthodox. Probably before the Crusaders’ sacking of the city. The Fourth Crusade was corrupted from its purpose early on. They had made a detour to Constantinople to support an imperial claimant who promised great rewards and support for the Holy Land. Sack of Constantinople, (April 1204).The diversion of the Fourth Crusade from the Holy Land to attack, capture, and pillage the Byzantine city of Constantinople divided and dissipated the efforts of the Christians to maintain the war against the Muslims. Alexius the IV, who had an agreement with the Crusaders to fund the… It is widely regarded as a shocking betrayal of principles out of greed. Nothing could be further from the truth. In 1204 CE the unthinkable happened and Constantinople, after nine centuries of withstanding all comers, was brutally sacked.Even more startling was the fact that the perpetrators were not any of the traditional enemies of the Byzantine Empire: the armies of Islam, the Bulgars, Hungarians, or Serbs, but the western Christian army of the Fourth Crusade. The 2nd Crusade followed with the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the slow decline of the Byzantines once more. A common misconception is that Constantinople was sacked by the Crusaders simply for economic reasons and to gain power. We would have probably recorded its fall in 1454… You really need to go much further back to save Istanbul. The 3rd Crusade did seesome success against the Muslims but their efforts we're nothing but futile as in the 4th Crusade, Constantinople was sacked and occupied by the Crusader States with the help from the Venetians. 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