Why the Fourth Crusade Attacked Constantinople

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Real-Crusades-History/220051141405247

The Fourth Crusade ended up in Constantinople, but the reasons why are far more complex than you know.

This video is by request from one of my friend's here on youtube, eraser695. Thanks for a great request my brother!

Books cited:

The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
by Jonathan Philips

God's War
Christopher Tyerman

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Fourth Crusade
• Sack of Constantinople
• Byzantine Empire
• Crusaders
• Latin West
• Greek East
• Alexios IV Angelos
• Boniface of Montferrat
• Murzuphlus

[alektoros]

The greeks had greek fire and in the 8th century they should have tacken that to the zionist west and burnt them all. Owe I forgot they were to busy saving europe from the muslim arabs.

[RealCrusadeHistory]

@alektoros Zionist West? What are you talking about? There was no Zionism in the Middle Ages.

[Pavlos952]

@RealCrusadeHistory You're probably right in that, but how to see if one is unbiased?

[RealCrusadeHistory]

@Pavlos952 I don't care for biased historians, I go for the unbiased variety. History isn't history if it's biased.

[Pavlos952]

@RealCrusadeHistory It is also possible that an historian who is biased in favor of the Latins can very easily conclude that an historian who has said things in favor of the Byzatines is therefore biased in favor of the Byzantines. The very fact that an outwardly unbiased historian then says this, can betray his own bias. Maybe the crimes of the Latins were such that the only objective stance an historian could take is to be 'biased' in favor of the Byzantines.

[Pavlos952]

@RealCrusadeHistory If then an element of Runciman's work doesn't agree with what is later found by the aid of technology, and we therefore conclude that Runciman is horrible, and then further on look at Runciman exclusively in that frame, we might be more biased against Runciman and even against the Byzantines, than he would be biased in favor of the Byzantines.

[Pavlos952]

@RealCrusadeHistory It is indeed logical that the investigation of history, because of technological advances, is better now than it's ever been. But the higher quality of the work of Riley-Smith and Tyerman is due to these very thechnolical advances and not neccesarily to the fact that they would be inherently better historians.

[Oswulf1]

@RealCrusadeHistory I don't really argue with that.

[Pavlos952]

@RealCrusadeHistory The fact that the crusaders never intended to take Constantinople doesn't diminish their crimes. If Alexios wasn't a rejected leeader, why did he then ask the help of the Latins to get back on the throne?

[RealCrusadeHistory]

@Oswulf1 The problem here is you're viewing the events of 1204 as the cause of the Byzantine Empire's weakness, it wasn't the cause, it was the result of that weakness. Had the Byzantine state been strong 1204 would not have been possible. Byzantium really had been weak for a long time, it was just that Alexios I and his immediate successors held off that weakness for a little while longer. The idea that the Fourth Crusade was the cause of that weakness is simply absurd.