How the fuck did the Venetians justify the Fourt Crusade?

How the fuck did the Venetians justify the Fourt Crusade?

Was the Orthodoxy seen as different enough to not count as Christian? Was there any outrage from the rest of Europe? Will perfidious Venice ever pay for her crimes?

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>How the fuck did the Venetians justify the Fourt Crusade?

$$$$$$$

Money, and a usurper to the Byzantine throne. Google it. Nothing to do with religion.
Basically
>He'll pay us to do this shit instead of dragging our asses to the holy land
>shit, he won't pay is he?
>Grimbruld's crusader pocketses be empty of gold, what gives?? I came to gondstandenoble to get paid
>fug it, burn that shit and loot the place :DDD

Crashing the islamic eastern trade monopoly with no survivors

>Will perfidious Venice ever pay for her crimes?
Enrico Dandolo did nothing wrong. Venice was superior to the ERE in every way possible. That's why they won.

>How the fuck did the Venetians justify the Fourt Crusade?

Greek slaughtered thousands of Latins in Constantinople in 1182.

>Greeks don't pay debnts
>somehow this is Venice's fault

>The Fourth Crusade (1202–04) was a Western European armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III, originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, a sequence of events culminated in the Crusaders sacking the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire.
In January 1203, en route to Jerusalem, the majority of the crusader leadership entered into an agreement with the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos to divert to Constantinople and restore his deposed father as emperor. The intention of the crusaders was then to continue to the Holy Land with promised Byzantine financial and military assistance. On 23 June 1203 the main crusader fleet reached Constantinople. Smaller contingents continued to Acre.
In August 1203, following clashes outside Constantinople, Alexios Angelos was crowned co-Emperor (as Alexios IV Angelos) with crusader support. However, in January 1204, he was deposed by a popular uprising in Constantinople. The Western crusaders were no longer able to receive their promised payments, and when Alexios was murdered on 8 February 1204, the crusaders and Venetians decided on the outright conquest of Constantinople. In April 1204, they captured and brutally sacked the city, and set up a new Latin Empire as well as partitioning other Byzantine territories among themselves.
The crusaders sacked Constantinople for three days, during which many ancient Greco-Roman and medieval Byzantine works of art were stolen or ruined. Many of the civilian population of the city were killed and their property looted. Despite the threat of excommunication, the crusaders destroyed, defiled and looted the city's churches and monasteries.[50][51] It was said that the total amount looted from Constantinople was about 900,000 silver marks.

This. It was karmic justice.

>How the fuck did the Venetians justify the Fourt Crusade?
>Was the Orthodoxy seen as different enough to not count as Christian?

They didn't crusade against Constantinople, it was intended to be a detour.

Basically this is what happened:

>Crusader vanguard shows up in Venice, asks the Doge for ships for a huge army (~34,000 men)
>Dandolo agrees, but makes the crusaders promise to pay when the army arrives
>The army shows up, turns out it's 1/3rd the size they thought it was
>Doge is out of pocket and annoyed, he says the crusaders still gotta pay for the ships, he says they can pay in part by helping take the city of Zara in Croatia for Venice
>Crusaders and Venetians take Zara, Dandolo says part of the debt it paid
>Alexios IV is exiled in the HRE (his sister is the Emperors wife)
>Alexios offers the crusaders LOTS money to pay Venetian debts and 10,000 soldiers to help the crusade if they take back his throne for him
>Dandolo thinks this is a good idea, crusaders think this is a good idea
>Venetians and crusaders set off for Constantinople
>They demand the city surrenders, Alexios III, the Emperor, refuses
>Crusaders and Venetians attack, BTFO the Byzantines, Alexios III flees
>Alexios IV in charge now
>Oh shit Constantinople is not as rich as he thought it was
>Alexios IV extorts the nobles, the churches, still cant pay
>Tells Dandolo's ambassadors he can't pay
>Gets assassinated (by a Doukas, ofc)
>Everyone is mad as FUCK
>Dandolo and the crusaders get together and decide Alexios V Doukas gotta die, traitors = evil (and don't pay debts)
>1204 happens
>Crusaders loot, rape, and burn EVERYTHING they can find
>Dandolo keeps his men in line, loots some art, some nice statues, and enough money to make everything worthwhile
>City is ruined and burning, tens of thousands dead
>Crusaders pay debts at last

For details, see really interesting link: sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/villehardouin.asp

Don't forget the mass excommunication

What's even more confusing than to invade Orthodox Constantinople, is that these "crusaders" invaded Zara/Zadar, a Roman Catholic Croatian city under Hungarian control at the time, I believe. What was the reaction from the Hungarian crown to the Venetian/Crusade actions in Zadar?

>Doge
Fuck off back to plebbit.

It was an accident you fucks.

The Crusaders and the Byzantine claiment drove it to Constantinople.

Venice just wanted their money that the Crusades refused to give them. They even tried to negotiate with the Emperor (Crusaders ruined it by charging at the Emperor mid talk)

Doge is the fucking title you muppet

Finally, someone who gets it.

>No Venetians were in the city in 1182
>Only Venice's rivals were harmed
>somehow driving Venice to attack the ERE

Man, you're retarded.

...

>A few hundred Latins exist in the city (thousands is overstating it)
>Aid part of the civil war
>Local mob and winner's army kill some since >you picked sides
>most victims are Byzantines
>None of the merchants there are Venetians, as they were kicked out in 1171
>karmic justice
wew

So it was the HRE, Byzantine pretender and Crusader leaders at fault?

>What was the reaction from the Hungarian crown to the Venetian/Crusade actions in Zadar?

They were mad as fuck.

The Pope even excommunicated the entire army just for taking the city (attacking Catholics is bad enough, but doing it while on pilgrimage was unthinkable).

The leaders of the crusade didn't tell anyone though, so no one in the army knew, and the Pope later retracted the excommunication, citing that the crusaders were blackmailed by the Venetians (who stayed excommunicated, but they didn't really care).

>thousands is overstating it
"it is estimated that up to 60,000 Latins lived in Constantinople"
The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages: 950-1250. Cambridge University Press. 1986. pp. 506–508.
>None of the merchants there are Venetians, as they were kicked out in 1171
"The Venetians and the Empire remained at war [...] Relations were gradually normalized: there is evidence of a treaty in 1179"
Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 101.

Have you ever read the Chrysobulls?

Venice wasn't brought back in before 1079.

Also
>believing generalised histories instead of specialised focus studies

'• ‘Not too much trust should be placed on the figures given by contemporaries. It is difficult to believe that there were upwards of 10,000 Venetians in the Empire in 1171, let alone that there were 60,000 Latins settled in Constantinople in 1182, even allowing for a floating population of Latin merchants and mercenaries, adventures, drifters and pilgrims. The number of latins permanently resident in Constantinople should probably be reckoned in thousands, rather than tens of thousands’'
(Michael Angold, The Byzantine empire 1025-1204 a political history (London : Longman, 1984), p. 226.)

' ‘No historian, not even their own, mentions their presence then in Constantinople, nor does any chrysobull allude to injures done in 1182. During the next decades when the Venetians strove to obtain compensation for the wrongs inflicted upon them they referred always to the crime of 1171, not the massacre of 1182.’
(Charles M. Brand, Byzantium confronts the West, 1180-1204 (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 197))

>60,000 Latins
>6,000,000 Jews killed in the holocaust

>Venetians were merchants just like Jews

>massacre
>genocide
OYYYY VEEEEEEEYYYYYY

‘In the circumstances, it is not surprising that when he was threatened with invasion by the king of Sicily, the only western power prepared to ally with him was Venice, whose citizens had been unaffected by the massacre of 1182 and were only too glad to take advantage of the removal of the Pisans and Genoese.'
(Paul Magdalino, The Empire of the Kommenoi (1118-1204) in The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire
(c.500-1492), ed. by Jonathan Shepard (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 649.)

>ov vey, muh traditionalist accounts
>lets just ignore the prominent byzantist scholars and stick to the old traditional accounts!

>believing Eustathios of Thessaloniki at full value

What is source analysis for $300, Alex?

>accident

How do you accidentally sack an entire city?

You get dragged along by the situation and end up doing what you didn't plan to do.

e.g. you plan to just transport the Crusaders
But then they don't have money
But then you have a way to make the money
But then it goes horribly wrong
But then Crusaders autistically scream when you try to make a negoitation to leave with the Emperor
But then Imperial politics fucks you over
So you just give up and agree to sack the city because this entire thing has gone to hell

>the enternal sea jew only asks for compensation for 1171
>b-but they were totes there in 1182!

pathetic

Accident as in it wasn't a massive Venetian plot (which is a retarded idea. Byzantium was Venice's biggest trading partner).

>German mercenaries helped carry out most of the coup
>fault of the greeks
?

Byzantium was the biggest trade opponent

>largest market is byzantium
>granted plenty of trade concessions
>largest rival

??

Venice was literally a part of the Empire

They were juridically independent since 1084. The facto independent since 804, and you could argue 697.

>opponent
Byzantium was the italian merchant republics' little bitch. It was basically an open market there to be raped. Competition was between opposing italian merchants, the greeks were only there for the occasional violent uprising.

>fault of the greeks
>?
"Why don't we murder the employer of the army that's camping right by our wall during a truce? I'm sure they totally won't take this as the end of negotiations and a valid reason to continue the assault"
t. greek magnates

You obviously don't know anything about the crusades. Venice was a victim of circumstances

Italians mainly just controlled the goods transport. That's where the money was.

It fucked over native merchants, but the Imperial economy was based on agricultural wealth. All the Latins did was to increase the wealth by further mobilising the agricultural economy (the concessions made it cheaper and easier to use Latin traders to transport goods across the empire).

In addition, greeks made good gold becoming business partners with the Latins.

Is this supposed to be you disagreeing? Because you're not really contradicting me, unless your definition of trade is "goods production" rather than "goods distribution".

I'ts more that the Venetian/Latin control of good distribution and trade doesn't really matter to the Imperial economy.

e.g., it's not a 'oh shit they control our wealth we better suck their dicks' like 19th century economic imperialism is.

More 'Yeah, okay, you helped us out. Have some concessions, it'll help boost our economy.'

They did the same thing with the vikings in the 10th century (then repealed it when the norse naval support wasn't needed any more. Like John/Manuel did with the Latins and their expulsions)

t. Mario Tortellini
It was thuggery. Nothing more, nothing less. Money was expected, money was not delivered, the place was trashed and looted.

just some banter, calm down

Gotta laugh that for the n-th time in history the Greeks got fucked in the ass because they refused to pay their debts. Some things just never change.

>They were juridically independent since 1084
No?
Also stop talking like real life is a paradox game

Doge is the title you illiterate nigger

Can't tell if sarcastic joke or a full on retard

I'm a British Byzantist.

I just hate the 'le venetian plot' meme when the evidence shows it's more Crusaders fucking it up, Venice just being a 'ffs whatever I don't even care any more'.