The Crusade That Ruined Everything

this video was sponsored by the great courses plus if you don't know what they are it's a service for instant educational lectures by top professors if you want to find out what inspired the topic for this video then stay tuned till the end to find out more the crusades have a complex legacy and opinions range from those were pretty bad to Deus vult heretic but if you have any general knowledge of middle-age warfare and politics like yours truly then you know the overall consensus on the black sheep of the bunch the Fourth Crusade it was bad the Fourth Crusade was the blunder to end all blunders why because it was a crusade against other Christians against the second capital of all of Christendom the greatest city in the world at the time Constantinople the Fourth Crusade was like the asteroid that would come in and destroy everything from this point on the city would never reach its former glory falling to the ottomans just two centuries later since Crusader history is often lumped into Europeans just going off and fighting against Muslims than coming back the specific wars themselves aren't really known to the general public mentioning the siege of Antioch wasn't something on a priority list for grade school so let's go back to the start during the Middle Ages the 11th century specifically a new fight was declared by pope urban ii against the Muslims who centuries prior had invaded former Christian lands and established caliphates this was the First Crusade a pilgrimage / war to holy sites of Christendom which united knights and kings from across Western Europe under the cross this war was pretty much a success and Crusader kingdoms were established along the Mediterranean coast however Crusades - Muslim Boogaloo saw the Turks come back in force and this crusade saw major defeats for the Christians leading to the Christians coming back during the Third Crusade which saw limited success and still traumatic failure these two wars certainly never matched the first since Jerusalem was still under Muslim rule a Fourth Crusade was needed keep in mind the span of time I just summarized in three sentences is very generalized and consisted of a hundred years by the turn of the 13th century a new pope Pope Innocent the third called for the armies of Europe to once again band together and take back the Holy Land those new crusade however would go differently instead of invading down through Anatolia into Israel like the past wars this plan was to invade through Muslim occupied Egypt a plan like that though required boats and if there is one place you would go in medieval Europe for your seafaring needs it would be Venice and so the Crusaders made a deal with Venice in return for payment of 85 thousand silver marks Venice would build a fancy new fleet for the soldiers and Knights to sail on this included the medieval equivalent of d-day boats but there was a catch the Crusaders didn't have that much money so to alleviate their debt the Venetian said that if the Crusaders captured the city of zara which was being contested between venice and hungary then the city would lessen the debt for the crusaders keep in mind the king of hungary king Emmerich was Catholic and so ii was ARA the crusading leaders agreed hiding the plot for most of their army and so the army got on their new fleet and sailed all the way to there the pope learned of the plot to capture zara and threatened to excommunicate everybody involved so the crusade was off to a great start learning that they would attack a catholic city some crusaders simply left but even with smaller numbers the attack continued the Pope outraged excommunicated everybody involved including Venice but then took this back after learning that the crusade leaders never notified the army about the Pope's previous threats so he simply excommunicated the Venetians despite all this the crusade was still on and the Crusaders were still in debt with the Venetians it's by this time we talked about Byzantine politics the Byzantine Empire had survived since the fall of Rome in the West but trouble still happened like losing most of their land to the Muslims a current situation had been going on in Constantinople and now it was about time to involve the Crusades a Byzantine prince Alexios had been thrown in prison because of an earlier coup against his father isaac ii by Alexios the third I know long names the prince promised the crusaders via a letter that if they came and helped dispose of the traitors Alexius the third and brought himself to power he'd repay them two hundred thousand marks convinced the Eastern Church to reunite with Rome somehow and aid in the new crusade so the Crusaders did just that sailed to Constantinople used their fancy new ships to attack the outer walls the city which whis stood against invasion was now under attack by fellow Christians on a holy crusade go figure Alexios the third terribly failed his own counter-attack against the Crusaders accidentally allowing a large portion of the city to be sat on fire and in this disgrace he fled the city the plot had worked and Prince Alexios along with his father Isaac came back to power the Crusaders set up fortifications outside the city and relations were pretty good for a while after the former Prince Alexios couldn't come up with the funds he promised the Crusaders grew Restless his father Isaac died and soon he was left alone to face the armies the Byzantines soon became so desperate they began melting holy relics to appease the Crusaders whose welcome was now feeling like more of an occupation another Alexios Alexios v no relation i no dislike the situation now unfolding as the Crusaders became more agitated he overthrew Prince Alexios and proceeded to build defenses knowing the Crusaders would respond and respond they did infuriated that they would not receive payment the Christian army invaded a second time and absolutely destroyed the center of Christendom the rift between the east and west exploded as the Latin Crusaders pillaged burnt and massacred an unknown but certainly large portion of the population after three days of violence the Crusaders took charge of the city themselves declaring the Latin Empire this Empire would only last a few decades but this initial destruction in occupation caused unprecedented damage the Byzantines fled and founded their own Empire the Empire of Nicaea on the outer rims of the Latins once the Byzantines did come back to power they had to attempt to rebuild well the occupation had already done too much in the following centuries the Muslim Turks continued to invade Anatolia and southern Europe but by now the Byzantines were too weak to stop these attacks after those decades of living in diaspora by 1453 the ottomans finally invaded Constantinople ending the Eastern Roman Empire that had existed for a thousand and 1/2 years and much of that was all thanks to the fourth Crusaders who when their goal for repaying a debt ended up contributing to the rise of the Ottomans in Eastern Europe and the death of the Byzantines good job guys those Crusaders that actually did end up going to the Middle East universally failed and contributed very little today the overall opinion on the fourth Crusades as a collective sigh and a lot of embarrassment this video was inspired by a lecture which was featured in an online video service called the great courses plus the lecture was history's great military blunders and the lessons they teach taught by Professor Greg Aldrete in this course he goes through numerous battle failures across history and the ramifications they caused you can access this and many other interesting courses through the great courses plus a subscription on-demand video learning service with over 7,000 video lectures taught by professors in pretty much every field and I mean every field science math history lots of history and even really specific in odd topics like photography or art these courses are hosted by institutions like National Geographic the Smithsonian and many others I know since college just started you don't want more homework but there isn't any there's no great you just watch and listen so if you want to learn about more military blunders click on this link to get one month of unlimited access to courses and videos absolutely free just visit the great courses plus.com slash knowledge the link is provided in the description below this is Kody of knowledge hub [Music]

Channel: KnowledgeHub

Views: 1,438,799

Rating: 4.9090428 out of 5

Keywords: Crusades, Deus Vult, Vatican, Christianity, Christian History, Byzantine Empire, Fourth Crusade, Muslims, Islam, The Crusades, Crusade, History of the Crusades, KnowledgeHub, AlternateHistoryHub, history, Christians and Muslims, Warhammer 40k, Heresy

Id: SpVEkH14Jrc

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 16 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/SHOTbyGUN]

I'v watched few videos like this, but now I want to see the viewpoint from opposing side... Any clues where I might find a nice ^youtube video about that?

[u/SSAANNZZ]

Thank you, I really like it!

[u/[deleted]]

DEUS VULT!