The screams were omnipresent. The streets were stained with blood and a mixture of the smell of burning and quiet sounds spread throughout the imperial city. The “barbarians”, as the Byzantine historian Nicetas Choniates will define them, roamed freely; the city was his. That fateful day of April 13, 1204 Nicetas was forced to run to the house of a Venetian friend, which is why he was saved from looting. Later he did not hesitate to spill rivers of ink on the event; Constantinople had been taken, ends the Fourth Crusade.
But what is advanced is only the point before the end of the article, which will deal with the Crusade, between 1202 and 1204, the result of debts, plots, ambitious leaders, upstarts and desire for power. Directed against the Greeks in the holy war, without a doubt, less Christian than ever before, this being a very difficult mark to overcome. But, starting at the beginning, we have to know a little more in depth where that great city once called “Constantinople”.
The Roman Empire
The greatness of times past in the imperial capital, Constantinople, was not visualized as far away as might be believed. Certainly there was not the abundance of times of Emperor Justinian I The big onenor the power of Basil II times The Killer of Bulgarians, but with Alejo I or Juan II Komnenos the empire returned to face its adversities. The economy was thriving, their army was the best in Christendom and they were recognized by all, including the Muslim enemy, as the greatest christian power:
“The Lord of Constantinople, proud despot, Goliath of infidelity, sovereign of an Empire that has lasted for many years, head of Christendom, which everywhere recognizes his supremacy and bends under his yoke”
Saladin (two gardensII, p.169)
They were close to recovering the lost Anatolia, Roman only half a century ago, but the fronts were many and the enemies even more so. Although the foreigners were not the most dangerous, and it was those closest to him who caused his fall, which, if it wants to be well understood, must be accompanied by the beginning of his adventures.
These began half a millennium ago, when his western brother finally fell to so many attacks in 476, afflicted with ailments both internal and external. Prompt attempts were made to recover lost ground. It can be seen in the reign of Justinian I the big one, who managed to recover Africa, Italy and part of Hispania, although at an economic cost and in Pyrrhic lives. Bad luck accompanied the empire at the hands of Justinian’s Plague, ending up destroying this ancestor of the Black Death large areas of the Empire. Many were the problems then, added to economic malaise and human bloodletting, such as the Lombard invasion of Italy, the Avar threat on the Danube and, worst of all, its eastern Sassanid neighbor.
From the year 602 to 628, the Roman Empire waged a war with its eastern rival that would eventually completely and utterly wear down both contenders. Their armies were decimated, their tax collection capacity diminished and their borders unprotected while they thought of ways to put an end to internal dissension. He then attacked the newly created Muslim Caliphate, soon seizing Byzantine eastern and African provinces while gobbling up his old Sassanian enemy. Even with the incredible initial push, managed to defend Anatolia and the rest of the provinces through the themas system, thus leading the Empire to wage a war against the Muslims that would later end his life. (Payne, 1959, p.119)
At the end of the 10th century and the beginning of the 11th century, the greatest representatives of the Macedonian dynasty in Constantinople, John I and Basil II, achieved the greatest imperial expansion since the time of Justinian. They strengthened the army, reformed the state, and made their enemies pale. But in less than fifty years his successors from other dynasties lost any progress they had made. With the emperor Nicéforo III Botaniates the Empire was cracking after continuous usurpations and incapable emperors. It was in 1081 when the Komnenos dynasty rose triumphant with Alejo I, whose work was not insignificant.
Venice and the West
But it is in the West where our next protagonist was conceived, the Serenissima Republic of San Marcos, Venice. The city was founded around the year 421, without much certainty on the date, but with a clear reason. The continuous barbarian invasions and raids ended up pushing the populations of the Veneto to flee, temporarily, to these islands that the savages could not access. Little by little the population settled down; things were chaotic enough on land to move. (Norwich, 2018, p.29)
On the mainland the old barbarian dynasties were content with their new domains. The Franks were in Gaul and Germany, while the Visigoths in Hispania with their internal brawls. At the beginning of the 6th century from Constantinople the Renovatio Imperii, taking for himself Vandal Africa, Ostrogothic Italy and a good part of the Hispanic coast. Venice, although governed autonomously by its 12 tribunes, bowed before the emperor as a good Roman subject. Theirs was a cordial relationship for centuries like a vassal with great autonomy and a lord who required favors from time to time. The Venetian fleet of the time, although coming from islands without much else apart from modest wooden houses, was the most powerful in the Adriatic, essential in any operation on site. (Norwich, 2018, p.36)
With the passage of time, the relationship between the emperor and the now more independent Venetian doge would deteriorate. The Byzantine Iconoclasm of the 8th century did nothing but greatly diminish his influence on the peninsula, with so many disgruntled subjects preferring the Lombard upstart to renouncing his daily creed. But a climax of their separation was in 841, when Venice sent up to 60 Byzantine galleys with 200 men each to Crotone, where the Muslims were advancing at imperial expense. The defeat was scandalous, the Venetian chronicles narrating the escape of the Greek admiral, probably an excuse invented a posteriori to justify the defeat. Relationships were never the same. In parallel, the Venetian treaties with other powers such as the Frankish Empire followed one another, granting them reiterated privileges commercial and diplomatic. (Norwich, 2018, p.66)
The relationship with its former metropolis remained the same de jure, maintaining ties based on treaties and prerogatives. But no help would be disinterested. In the time of Alexios I Komnenos, as his daughter Ana related in The Alexiad , the Venetian vassal sent his navy to protect the Empire from the Norman threat. And he conveniently mentions the enormous commercial privileges given in exchange, such as the denial of all kinds of taxes or customs to his merchants, transfer of anchorages, etc. By now Venice stood as a city greatly enriched by trade; pragmatic and interested in aid, very diplomatic although with a strong fleet that she did not hesitate to use. But a new wave of religiosity was sweeping Europe. We entered the second millennium after Christ, millenarianism and Christian fervor gave free rein to papal claims. (Comnena, translation of Roland, 2016, p.253)
Meanwhile, the ecumenical fights do not stop. In 1054 the bitter Catholic-Orthodox rivalry reached its zenith, product of the Latin adoption of certain rites questioned by his sister. Pope Leo IX and Ecumenical Patriarch Michael Cerularius they excommunicated each other. The consequences, in the long run, will be catastrophic.
The Komnenos and the Crusades
During the 11th century the Roman Anatolian frontier was defended by the Akritai, border lords in charge of their protection with great autonomy and land, becoming problematic due to their concentration of power. They were facing the ghazis Muslims, whose task was not defensive, but offensive. They were made up of Turkish volunteers who dedicated themselves to raids in Christian territory, with a Byzantine predilection. They were the seed of the fall of the Empire. (Runciman, 2006, p.72)
Around the year 1071 the Seljuk and Roman armies clashed in Manzikert. Ironically neither wanted such a battle. Sultan Alp Arslan believed he was being attacked by Roman Emperor Diogenes IV, whom he believed to be an ally of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. While Romano believed himself to be equally attacked. Finally Romano was forcefully defeated; strategic failures added to massive defections of political enemies and western mercenaries ended up ruining the battle, with the emperor captured. In principle, the only thing owed by him, after his release, were certain tributes and the surrender of some square. Alp Arslan was to continue his war to the south. But not so the allies thought of him.
The ghazis Turks, milling around the imperial frontiers, attacked mercilessly. Constantinople was again involved in internal crises, with the emperor dethroned, new usurpers and complete chaos. The akritai they were shattered and defenses battered by battle and outside harassment. These religious fanatics poured into the most important square in all the Empire, Anatolian. Most of the population lived in it, higher taxes were collected, more soldiers were obtained and more grain was gathered. The Empire had to content itself with keeping the coast. (Runciman, 2006, p.78)
But before the ascension of Alejo in 1081 such things began to change. But now the problem to deal with was the Normans. These were led by Roberto Guiscard, who not only expelled the Byzantines from the last Italian strongholds, but also invaded the Empire itself together with his son Bohemond of Tarentum. Only after not a few defeats and with an uncompromising resistance Alexios I Komnenos managed to expel them. Multiplying the fronts when attacking the Pechenegs, Turkic tribes from the north of the Black Sea, being finally defeated.
Such successes could not have been completed without great sacrifices. At the beginning of the reign of Alejo the army was in a deplorable state, counting almost exclusively on foreign mercenaries. After reforms, driven mainly by necessity, the army, largely nourished by descendants of former soldiers, began to grow and regain its former prestige.
With the Balkans stabilized and any potential opposition neutralized, at least for the time being, Alexius looked to Anatolia, where he still had some strongholds from which to reconquer, but his armies were needed to protect the frontier. He then looked west to the papacy, which in early 1095 he asked, taking advantage of a relatively friendly relationship, to supply troops to confront the Turks. What the court in Constantinople could not imagine was the call to arms in a “Holy war” that the pope would propagate from the Council of…