The Wayward Crusaders
On June 24,
1202--the date agreed upon a year earlier--Venice had a magnificent
fleet ready for the Crusaders of the Fourth
Crusade. No Christian man had ever seen a richer or finer collection
of vessels, reported one observer. If 4,500 French
and German knights had arrived at Venice as promised by the Crusaders,
or if those who did arrive had been able to pay 84,000 marks as agreed,
perhaps the course of history would have been dramatically different.
In fact, however, about 1,500 knights gathered with only 50,000 marks
available among them.
The
Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo proposed a
solution that would solve two problems for Venice at one time: Venice
would defer the balance owed by the Crusaders for transportation and
supplies if--while enroute to Egypt--the Crusaders would assist the
Venetians in recapturing Zara, a city on the Dalmatian coast just
across the Adriatic. Zara had recently rebelled from Venetian rule
and cast its lot with the Kingdom of Hungary. The anomoly of Crusaders
attacking a Christian city was overlooked by most of the assembled
Crusaders in light of the financial shortfall they faced (though not
by the Pope, who excommunicated all of the participants).
In a last minute
surprise, Doge Dandolo, at least 85 years old and functionally blind,
announced that he had decided to become a crusader himself. On November
8, 1202, he embarked at the head of a fleet of 480 ships. Zara fell
within a week in the face of such a powerful force, freeing the crusaders
to proceed on their original mission to Egypt after wintering in Zara.
New events were under way, however, leading under Dandolo's guiding
hand to a new destination in the Spring: Constantinople,
the capital of Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire.
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