Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 173 - The 4th Crusade

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

A bunch of christian knights get hijacked to knee cap some people over boat debt. Sources: https://www.historynet.com/fourth-crusade-the-second-siege-of-constantinople/ https://www.thecollector.com/fourth-crusade-siege-constantinople-fall-of-byzantine-empire/ Hindley, Geoffrey (2003). The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. could be, there must be war. God wills it! God wills it! God wills it! God wills it! Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me today is Liam.

What's up, Liam? What's going on, man? Yeah, I appreciate it. You people won't hear it out there, but Joe and I were debating what episode to do literally until he hit the record button. So I believe in professionalism. There's a lot of, well, there's your problem seeping into this podcast.

I mean, that's the behind the scenes thing is that Nate and his people make me sound good and I don't know what I'm doing. I can write research papers. I cannot do anything else. Now, Liam, if there's one thing that we both enjoy doing, it's making fun of people or making the worst people on Earth hate us more. Yeah, they sure do, Joe.

They sure fucking do. We are going to do that again today um now if anybody remembers way back long time ago probably fucking two years ago at this point we did an episode about the people's crusade sometimes called the poppers crusade where an old idiot led a group of starving peasants onto the anatolian plain only to die horribly now the crusades are probably one of the dumber collections of wars that people still bring up as propaganda. It's kind of a modern thing.

Now, this is mostly done by white men with the body composition of a melting candle or Stephen Crowder. Which I have too, but you know, I'm not out here trying to sack Jerusalem. I'm the good kind of fat guy.

We are going to talk about one of the dumber ones. Probably, I'm going to say second place after the People's Crusade, and this is the Fourth Crusade. I think I remember you guys vaguely talking about this, at least alluding to it on an episode

of All There Is a Problem. Yeah, we talked about this in the cathedral episode i think where i was like reading about i forget what it was but learning about the the say the siege of constantinople uh basically on the air and just like people doing some uh people doing some like crusaders raping nuns and shit like yeah that happens like the sack of constantinople like learning about that live on air and just being like oh like these are some bad fucking people they're not good no as it turns out it turns out most people like gear up for religious based war not good folks um now so before we get to that uh you know the the nun raping uh we have to cover some

background stuff um a sentence i never thought i was going to say uh so you know good stuff all around folks um so between 1176 and 1187 uh muslim general and all-around baller ass leader saladin took out most of the crusader states that the previous crusades managed to prop up in the Holy Lands. If you're not aware of this dynamic, I'm not going to go that far into it. Now, the crown

jewel of these was obviously Jerusalem, which was lost in 1187, a city that thankfully has never been the place of combat or civil strife ever since. Nope, moving on. Swiftly, baby. Now, this left only tired A city that thankfully has never been the place of combat or civil strife ever since. Nope. Moving on. Nope. Swiftly, baby. Yep.

Now, this left only Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch still being held on by Crusaders, but with significantly reduced power. And with that comes reduced prestige, which obviously these guys are big, big fans of, which is why they propped up kingdoms in the middle of nowhere, full of random people they brought in from Europe. Thankfully, another thing that has never happened again. You're one of those guys, too. Like, you're just some asshole idiot inbred Habsburg prince.

And, like, your dad comes to you while you're playing with your toy soldiers and is like, guess what? You're going to be ruler of the fiefdom on. And you've just got to get on a horse with all your dudes. It's the middle of summer. And it like 1800 miles on horseback you're sweating and the horse is sweating and you're just like i just want to go home to my incest castle this is the worst summer vacation ever dad i want to be a king we have a king at home oh you're gonna be king son just uh change the scenery you're gonna you're gonna take over

my throne one day no no no not here you're an idiot you're going to antioch fuck have fun pack light have fun dying of dysentery and march over um now the third crusade was launched in response to this and made a lot of sweeping gains managing to take over bits and pieces of the former Crusader kingdoms of Jerusalem, but not the city itself. The Crusade ended with Saladin and the Crusader armies signing a treaty, giving some of the lands back. Though, like most things in the Crusade, this would be temporary and piss a lot of people off, leading to more conflict. The Crusades did, more than anything, bring some lands under Christendom. However, it exposed that Christians really fucking hated one another, it turns out. Now, this seems very obvious, probably to you, Liam, and maybe to a few people listening,

but people like to think that the Crusaders and the Muslims that they were fighting were like a united monolith of some kind and they were not um they were a gathering of people from different uh you know i'm using the term nations here though i use the term very lightly uh with different rulers different cultures different ethics and morals and all of them more importantly with their own political goals uh so the thing i could think of to base this on the most is an even worse more useless religion-based un and that's the only thing i could think of oh some dude in a white helmet just getting an arrow through the eye

i used to be a peacekeeper like you until I took an arrow in the knee. I sit here and say this one line 50 times an hour. My wife left me. No, these things aren't related. Shut up. Now, one of the things that occurred during the Third Crusade was the Byzantine Empire, which controlled the Dardanelles and the city of Constantinople, kind of sat this one out. the Dardanelles and the city of Constantinople kind of sat this one out. They even refused to give Frederick I,

the Holy Roman Emperor, passage over the Bosphorus, which is considered kind of a dick move. Now, the reason for this is because they believe that he was working with to break away Byzantine region, Serbia and Bulgaria, which

for his own means something that no other ruler of constantinople would have problems with in the future uh and you know to be fair he was but still telling the holy roman emperor empire and emperor to go fuck themselves made them look really bad to other Christians who were trying to do a crusade. And granted all of these other guys also had their own beats with Byzantium because fuck them, right?

This led King Richard of England taking the Byzantine island of Cyprus refusing to give it back and then just selling it to the Knights Templar. Nice! Oh, that's actually pretty fucking funny funny have you ever smashed and grabbed an entire island it's a first now like look it's just frederick around the door i'm not i'm not gonna defend any kings

of anywhere but like it's some big dick energy like no no no no it's mine now and i'm selling it to these fucking assholes i mean uh do you bum us out wasn't the uh belgian occupation of congo wasn't that just king leopold's like private colony for quite some time yes uh yeah and then it became belgian and congo which is still a horror show. And like, he didn't even sell it to a country. He's like, no, I'm going to give it to these fucking Knights.

Fuck you. That's why Joe, they guard the secret of the Holy grail. Again, thankfully, nothing else bad would ever happen to the island of Cyprus involving anyone ruling Constance. No.

Oh, also their Holy Roman Empire almost wheeled back around and attacked constantinople during the crusade at one point before calling off the attack at the last second because they figured they'd probably be excommunicated now this would be a fear that other people would stop caring about during the fourth crusade which is gonna be fun um now after the third crusade pope innocent the third rose to power in 1198 um now one of the tenets of his rule uh was that he wanted another crusade obviously the fourth um in order to secure even more of the lost crusader land i don't know i guess much like the fast and the furious uh

pope innocent the third could not quit while here ahead oh no i'm just imagining uh the pope uh taking some time off starring in tokyo drift i would watch that you would watch like the fiat popemobile like kicking its ass out around the corner hell yeah you'd watch that fucking move like yeah i would um now this included obviously taking jerusalem the city itself and re-establishing the kingdom like it had been once before and he posted as much in his papal bowl in august of 1198 now people weren't super happy about this at first because even though a lot of the powers that be really enjoyed crusades in order to gain more power and wealth they were pretty tired from fighting constantly uh and the pope knew how to drive this point home so he simply started insulting the british and the french by

saying the muslims were laughing at them now that's that's that's good uh that's good propaganda baby just like those guys over there think you're a bunch of pussies normally you don't have to motivate the british and french to hate muslims more i don't know this is a unique time in history but even when shit talking worked in reality any crusade was going to be kind of hard to organize as the british and french were busy fighting one another in the first hundreds year war at the time uh a war that they would occasionally hit pause on. So a grand spectacle was put on in the form of a jousting tournament the next year in 1199.

This is hosted by Count Tybalt of France. Once there, members of the church, knights, barons, kings, and all those other guys got incredibly drunk and emotional about taking the Holy Lands. Dude, you know what we should do? do bro i fucking love you man i love you bro i love you so much you know we should do

we should go take over jerusalem bro as a family bro and that's the plot of fast and furious tad oh shit that's only one movie away I think at this point. I know, it's coming buddy. Vin Diesel and The Rock just kicking open doors of Jerusalem. Like about family as a piano track plays in the background.

We should get the band back together for one more Heights and it's just them just stealing Al-Asqa Mosque now this obviously worked you know taking O's and coming together because if there's one thing that Europeans love and can bond over it's killing brown people

and after this the crusade moved on to the organization side of things which I know a lot of people are probably groaning right now. But this is one of my favorite parts of this entire episode because of how incredibly stupid it is. I know we run the gamut from modern warfare to ancient warfare on the show. So sometimes like the logistical systems can kind of blend together. So I like to shine the light on how dumb this shit used to be. I mean, it's still kind of dumb

but it was even dumber back then um now remember that like i said these are not a unified force like not everyone in europe is taking part in this and even below like certain kings they're like their individual barons and and knights and shit aren't taking but this is all voluntary uh so this meant that count tybalt and count baldwin of flanders had to meet with various local leaders and how to best put together a force and get it over to the holy land which remember is thousands of miles away oh jesus uh before we talked about in our previous episode in regards to the crusade that this was simply done the hardest way possible the army would simply march over land towards the middle East. This would take months,

drain resources, and almost always ended in people dying of horrible diseases and starvation before they even fucking got there. Uh, because it turns out in the 11 hundreds, it was not a good time to get together with tens of thousands of your friends and go camping in the woods. Once one of us has dysentery, we all have dysentery.

Let's all just shit on each other. God wills it. Now, not to mention, this required every nation along that marching route to agree to let in what amounted to be a biblical swarm of locusts onto their land so it would pick it clean and steal everything that wasn't fucking bolted down, whether it be for loot or food as they pass through this, as it turns out was not fucking popular. No, like these armies are fucking huge.

Like during the, the people's war or the people's crusade, uh, which is decidedly not a people's war or the people's crusade uh which is decidedly not a people's war actually uh like it was tens of thousands of starving peasants just like knocking on the gates of some hungarian city and they're like no fuck off we don't want you here as they like ripped up even the grass and trees outside to try to eat them. Oh, that's, Oh God. So not super popular. I guess.

Yeah. Well, like they had no food because they left before the harvest and the food they did have had some, like had like was poisoned with ergot. Uh, so it caused them to trip my, like manically and shit their pants until they died.

Ergot is also possibly, uh, what caused, what caused mass delirium for the Salem witch trials. I read that one somewhere. I believe it. You know, food sanitation not high on the list in history until about 100 years ago. No. And even then, it was pretty fucking rudimentary. Like, people still weren't washing their hands so like you know you can imagine the 1100s where someone like goes out

to the wood line fucking pops a squat shits yeah take my dick out and put it between two slices of bread uh that like walks back over to your communal rice bowl or whatever they're just like fist fucks it with their shit covered hand. They're like, Oh, thank you for that. I appreciate that. Now,

uh, more than often and more than once, uh, one of these nations would be like, no, get the fuck off my land, which would lead to a small war along the way to the real war. They had planned since the beginning.

We're still, even if everything went just right and your various soldiers did not in fact die of horrible parasites or invade a random city along the way, the army would then in best case situations still arrive, marching

through the Middle East in the middle of the fucking desert through hostile lands tired from months of walking and then have to fend off a goddamn war so that sounds like a recipe for success to me joe can't possibly fail yeah i'm actually cannot possibly fail

and now now you just like backpack through europe uh with like modern amenities back then you just wore what amounted to be kind of sandals wore uh you know homespun rags and then shuffled through the hungarian countryside dying of internal parasites that's what i did when i backpacked through europe that's that's the true experience you know anything taking a shower really soft in my day we backpack through hungary and not to mention tripping balls the

whole time because your brain is melting from ergot which would be pretty tight admittedly but if i was if i was to die i would like a way that would make me so out of my own mind i don't know i'm dying yeah exactly no exactly so of all of the if we're ranking how peasants could die in the in like the fucking dark ages it's not the worst you could just starve or i don't know someone kills a horse and puts in your water supply or something. So everybody realizes this is a very bad idea. And they came up with a new plan. They would simply contract out a bunch of boats and sail to Egypt and March from there.

Now notice I said contract, not just like deploy their own navies. That's because those really weren't a thing yet. Like, you know, a state controlled navies were a new idea. And not many people had one dude. Venice.

Ah, OK. Yeah. Like most of these guys didn't have a navy or if they did have a navy, it was way too small to transport what was going to be tens of thousands of men, thousands of horses, and all of the supplies they thought that they would need. Right. Um, like in the case of the Byzantine empire, the emperor made his brother-in-law,

the admiral of the Navy, who then uses newfound powers to literally part it out and sell it for his own personal gain. Genius. Oh, that's amazing. He did this to the point that left the Empire

with no functional navy. Like, this is a little bit of a side story, but this man literally sold entire ships to anyone with money. And he gave none of the profits back to the Empire

and instead just built a sick new palace with the money. Yo, good for him. That's tight, man. That's genius. You gotta admire that you get sometimes chutzpah, yeah. Yeah, you just gotta admire it. And even funnier is a lot of these

got sold to Venice. It was like all roads through Venice. Yeah, they're like, yeah, sure, we'll do a deal with your despotic idiot brother. Give it to us, we guess. So six knights traveled to Venice, the trade and naval powerhouse of the era. There they would arrange for passage for 4,500 knights with their mounts,

9,000 squires, and sergeants who were feudal men at arms, which are just like dudes of less than knightly rank, at arms, which are just like dudes of less than knightly rank, as well as 20,000 ordinary footmen for a grand total of 33,500 men and 4,500 horses.

So, to cut this deal, they met with the 80-year-old Doge Dandolo, the elected leader of Venice, and a man who, by all accounts, is almost entirely blind, and also had a name that made him sound like the cousin of Tom fucking Bombadil. Dad?

Doge is a title. Yes. I don't know if anybody was not aware of that, but I cannot not laugh every time I had to write it. Because obviously, like any other grown adult and professional historian when i see doge i think of the dog memes not the fucking crypto coin all right such power months navy like i just want to photoshop the dog's head on the old fucking uh got like venetian guy uh who

is also like, so I guess he's wearing sunglasses or something. I don't know. I may have just made this Doge problematic. I don't fucking know. But I like it. Now, obviously, the Doge agreed. The price for this armada would be 84,000 marks of silver. If

anybody's asking how much that is in real money, nowadays, I have no fucking idea. A lot. It's a lot of money. Now, to go one further, Doge made Venice not just a mere supply contract, not like ye olde military contractor, but a full partner

in the crusade. Oh, God. Imagine if Venice was controlled by Blackwater. Everybody would have to walk around in 5.11 pants, sunglasses and fucking have you guys heard of our tactical gondolas just drinking black rifle coffee uh i don't know uh do it all up and down the side for no fucking reason talk about talk to me about how eddie Gallagher is actually a good guy. I don't fucking know. Ah, we must go see Doge

fucking Eddie Angelo. Oh, no thanks. Every child is born in a fucking subdued American flag is tattooed directly onto their sternum for reasons that aren't entirely sure because America

doesn't exist yet so he he wanted venice to be a 100 shared partner of this crusade he didn't want to be like a side piece now in return crusade side piece we're coining all sorts of very cursed items already um now in return for a half share of all conquests, Venice would provide an escort force of 50 fully manned and armed war galleys, something that no other power in Europe could offer. The great fleet would sail in the summer of the next year, 1202. Now, just in time for all this, Tybalt died.

Convenient. Yeah, he in time for all this, Tybalt died. Convenient. Yeah, he took the easy way out. This left the organization and leadership of this entire enterprise under the Italian count named Boniface I. Oh, boy. Yeah, it does not go great. But, you know, this switch of leadership didn't slow the crusade down didn't really matter they went ahead with their plan during the late spring of 1202 the crusaders began to gather at venice but by the intended departure date they had the worst orgy i'd ever been to

oh god everybody just fucking reeks picture it picture because they all had to get to venice somehow so you know they walk nobody's a bunch of sweaty dudes that's a lot of sweaty dudes just like 2006 warp tour uh as someone who was at that warp tour i can confirm yep no thank you uh shout out to uh the detroit organizers of the warp tour who decided to put it in a blacktop parking lot. Yeah. In there. In July.

We don't know why all these people are passing out of heat exhaustion. Mystery Dawg, see ya. Why are all these teenagers on drugs dying? Oh, weird. It must be the drugs. So by the time the departure date came around around they only had 10 000 men who had actually gotten to venice everybody else is apparently like came down from their crusade drunk like i really don't want to do that so when you get drunk and make plans with your drunk friends and then

like the next day rolls around and nobody's calling anybody we're gonna get breakfast together. Yeah. Constance and Opal. So, 10,000 men is a whole of a hell lot less than 33,500 that the Crusaders told the Venetians were coming. This brought up several very large problems for everyone. Each man was supposed to pay his way on the Venetian

boats. This would cover the charter fee required by Venice in order to use their boats. But there was no central government or there wasn't like Boniface didn't have like a bag full of money for everybody to hand over all at once. Each soldier had to bring their own money to pay passage. With most of them not showing up, that meant the crusaders did not have nearly enough fucking money to pay Venice. And if that sounds bad, it actually gets much worse. Not only did they not have enough money to pay Venice,

they suddenly found themselves an incredible amount of Venetian debt. They did not even think about it first. Venice is a massive seafaring trade powerhouse, but they also didn't just have enough boats for tens of thousands of people laying around. So they had to facilitate this mission by suspending regular trade to build and retrofit their existing

fleet in order to carry it out. The Crusaders toll that they were paying was to cover that debt. Now, the Doge I'm sure completely accidentally did not in fact tell the Crusaders they were taking on debt with this mission.

They'll figure it out. Fuck them. Now the Venetians were put out. Not only did they burn through their own treasury, they went into debt, assuming the Crusaders would make up the difference until they could make a killing on war loot, which is in reality the entire purpose that anybody ever went on crusades.

The crusaders didn't have enough money to pick up the tab for the 20,000 or so people who were missing, not to mention they didn't have enough money to pay off the Venetian debt. The Venetians told the crusaders if they didn't pay up, the crusade would be shit-canned on top of expecting all of the crusading nobles to pay off the debt. Less, of course, all of the European powers taking part run afoul of arguably the richest and most powerful nation in the world at the debt. Less, of course, all of the European powers taking part run afoul of arguably the richest and most powerful nation in the world at the time. Now, this effectively killed the crusade on the spot, as well as put everyone in a very, very bad place.

But the Venetians hit the crusaders with a proposition. You play video games, right? I don't want to make 11 out of 11, 11 out of 11. I just want to go home you you've ever played like you know skyrim or like any other rpg like you know like the branching quest line when they're like i went here for one main quest line but now this asshole is giving me like 10 other ones in order to get to that one yep this is a side quest oh no venetian said we can totally make this work for you but you have to make this

work for us they would suspend the crusader debt if they invaded and took over the port of zara the port controlled by hungary who were christian how does every crusade end up fucking hungary somehow it's kind of incredible hope you guys like schisms obviously some crusaders were really fucking unhappy with this and this included the leader of the crusade boniface the first who's like fuck this i'm going home and ditched his own army which is peace he just yeah he just went home. He's like, this isn't... I have nothing to do with this anymore. This is clearly like the Doge's enterprise now.

This dude ran circles around in politics and finance by an 80-year-old blind man in the 1100s. Sorry, 1200s. That's tough. Yeah, which is like getting out-muscled by someone who's like 150 today you know what i mean yeah yeah uh but some people went along because they're like well i'm

already here i sold probably most of my shit in order to get here assuming i was gonna go sack some city yeah they probably assume they'd be living in jerusalem or you know more likely die in the desert somewhere they didn't have anywhere to go home to. The Holy War had been co-opted becoming the mob guy who just kneecaps other people for not paying their debt. Many knights saw this for what it was and went home, but the invasion of Zara went on, where it fell after a short siege.

Afterwards, a fistfight between the Frankish and Venetian factions over the distribution of loot killed 100 people. That's a hell of a fistfight. between the Frankish and Venetian factions over the distribution of loot killed 100 people. That's a hell of a fist fight. Which, admittedly, was almost as many people killed in the siege. Most of the population of Zara saw it coming and just fucking left. So it was almost a siege over an empty city.

For this, the Pope excommunicated his own crusader army in 1203. Though, he eventually undid that excommunication for any non-Venetians a few months later. It's funny how that works. The Pope just like rubbing

his temples like, what the fuck? What are these guys doing? What do you mean you sacked a Christian city? That's in the wrong direction. That's not even they're not even no south dumbass i gave you one city now the crusaders sat in zara over the winter not sure what to do next because uh the the pope undid the excommunication i believe in february so like for a couple months they're like, fuck, we can't go home.

That was until they were given an offer, again, that they couldn't refuse. The discarded son of the last deposed emperor of Byzantium had come to France to plead his case. Alexios IV said that if the crusaders ditched their plan on landing in Egypt and instead attacked Constantinople and put him on the throne, he would pay their entire debt to the Venetians as well as put the Eastern Orthodox Church under the command of the Pope, vastly expanding the Catholic Church's power. The Doge obviously thought this was a fucking great idea. Not only would this square the Crusader debt, something he still had not paid

off, but it would make Venice's main trade rival indebted to him. Not to mention the Doge hated the fucking Byzantines. And there's some apocryphal stories that they were the one that blinded him. Nobody's entirely sure. So, I mean,

this might also be payback of some kind. Sure. So, not only, this might also be like payback of some kind. Sure. So, not only fucking them over, but also making an incredible amount of money was perfect. The crusaders thought the plan was great. It would get them out of debt, and even after Zara, the Pope would have to forgive them

because they brought in the Orthodox Church. You know, of course, leaving out the fact this required you to take over Constantinople by force. Yeah right that's fine i'm sure now this brought several other problems to the front while the doge and a few other lords have been plotting to turn this entire crusade in a little more of a cash grab the hen stopped long enough to educate themselves and just how the byzantine government actually fucking worked or that more or they just didn't care, which is probably more likely. The Byzantine Empire was not an explicit dynastic role.

It was more of like a president of life with absolute power. Oh, that'd be tight. Man, do I have some countries for you? Well, sometimes it passed within families. most of the time it didn't and being the brother of an emperor didn't fucking mean anything like it didn't mean he had a claim to the title in any way yeah so when they sailed by constance noble dondolo came up with this great idea of dressing alexios as emperor. And then just having him hang out on the boat as they floated by the city to show people like,

Look, we're coming with a better emperor for you. As dumb as that really sounds. You're welcome. Yeah. Scoreboard! It didn't work. It turns out nobody gave a fuck. I can't believe my genius plan didn't work out and like

you know the doge believed that like people because i mean the alexios that's in power it's alexios is all the way down was not very popular of course um he was not very great at his job but you know the doge believed that they saw this other guy like they're gonna just have a revolution um instead they shot arrows at them uh that didn't work out yeah that should have been a hint that something was not going to work yeah but they went ahead anyway disregarding the idea of a popular uprising they settled for you know a siege how is that plan b i don't know and this like one trick ponies. When all you have is Alexioses, everything just kind of looks like a nail, I guess.

They lost even more Crusaders because they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I am not invading Constantinople. Either because of my personal ethics disagree with it or because that looks really fucking hard. Which is a good of a reason is that I think yes I mean because you know Constance Noble

legendarily hard to besiege right but you know they just kind of shrugged said fuck it and left again to besiege the city now for people unaware the city of Constance Noble is known for being incredibly hard to besiege, take over, invade, whatever.

And it was also very easy to defend, assuming you have a semi-competent guy in charge. It could only be attacked from land from the west, which were guarded by walls, had gone down in history for their strength, and a harbor, which was protected by a giant fucking chain that stops most boats from getting in. Armies much larger and better organized and maybe not ones fighting over a mob debt had tried and failed to take the city before. They decided they should tack along the Golden Horn Harbor Front,

which was guarded by a fortress known as the Tower of Galata. Probably pronouncing that wrong. When the Crusaders landed, they were immediately opposed by an army led out the gates by the Byzantine emperor himself. Well, kind of heroic, the emperor's army broke after a single charge by a unit of

French knights. Who quickly went on to take the tower without much more of a struggle. That's embarrassing. How bad do you have to be as an emperor for your own legendarily defended city's embarrassing how bad do you have to be as an emperor for your defended city tale yeah like how bad do you have to be as like an emperor like the highest

fucking ranking person for like someone to like I'm fine looking like shit in front of you and I'm running away see you there bye motherfucker I don't have to outrun the French I just have to outrun the emperor like I said the harbor was protected by chains stretching across the length I don't have to outrun the French. I just have to outrun the emperor.

Like I said, the harbor was protected by chains stretching across the length of them, which were, again, very hard to breach. The Byzantines didn't think of it as much of a threat because how secure they were. And the Venetians broke the chain and also completely obliterated the ship and killed most of the crew. He died for a noble cause or whatever. Now, this opened the way for the others behind it. And now with a foothold, the debt army attacked into the city itself it'd be a two-pronged attack attack with the venetians using their ships as siege towers with additions being built out on the fly with extra spears as like weight uh buttresses or whatever and then like random bits of whatever they could find to be platforms on top of it oh that's fucking sick and they built these over so many different

like levels that people would have to climb over that they could just like jump from the floating siege tower right onto the top of a wall to fight which i don't know how insane or ballsy you have to be to scramble up a fucking siege tower made out of extra spears on a floating like like a platform that's rocking back and forth because you're on the ocean. I am. Yeah, I'd be like, nah, man, fuck that. See ya. Yeah, I am gonna go find an opening with like the

rower guy. Yeah, I'm gonna die either way, but at least this way I'm not rocking while I'm doing it. Does anybody need any paperwork signed? Being a dead army's quartermaster does anybody need any more spears i'll go get them for you you guys have good luck with that um yeah like soldiers were jumping from the boats directly into the walls and fighting

while the french would try to attack across the ground where they felt more comfortable against a different section of the wall. Now the Venetians succeeded in doing so. And during the fighting, they managed to set some buildings on fire, which quickly spread throughout the city by strong winds. Now the French attack did not go so successfully. Their scaling ladders were pretty easy to deal with and were thrown back,

which sounds like funny fuck that these walls are tall as shit you get thrown off those ladders you are dead you're fucked enjoy your broken ass back and your broken ass everything yeah like remember falling off this ladder and breaking your leg means you might die because it is the 1200s

of dysentery though for some reason we went to cut off the broken stump of his leg and diarrhea came out brown bile yeah he's got too much of the the his yellow humors are all off we need to bleed him oh that's that's diarrhea Diarrhea of the soul. As they try to figure out what to do on the shore, the Byzantines counterattacked to rush out and fight them. Now this cut off the French,

which left the Doge who was on the front line. Remember, he's an 80 year old. He's like 200 years old. It's like that scene from Lord of the Rings. It's like, you shall not pass. But he's just like staring at the wall. Sir. Over here, Doge. Over here.

The front lane is over here. I'll get you out of here, bud. Why don't you get me some cream of oat, bud? And so this left the Doge in a bad position because they controlled over a mile of the city's wall. But if the French were cut off and surrounded and unable to secure their spot, that meant the Venetians could surround them and slowly push them out of their position. So he made the decision to abandon the secured side of the walls and rush off to help the French. But this is actually the one smart Byzantine strategy that was deployed here. Once they saw the Venetians break and come towards the French,

they simply called their attack off, went back into the city, and retook the walls the Venetians had just abandoned. So, you know, the one good move here, they managed to fuck both the Venetians and the French at the same time. Uh, you know, yield pig roast. Oh, thank you. Thank you. But temporary victory.

I wanted to fucking hear. You're welcome. You're welcome for my service. Thanks, Joe. But temporary victory was not enough. Now the Byzantine emperor almost immediately after this realized that he was not going to fucking win, uh, or that maybe,

you know, he may have won the battle, but the church was just going to send more reinforcements because they obviously support the crusades, which they didn't. There was no reinforcements coming. Um, my boy panics though.

I assume. Yeah. That night he grabbed his favorite mistress. Oh boy. Not his wife. One of his kids, though, I assume. Yeah, that night he grabbed his favorite mistress. Oh, boy. Not his wife. One of his kids, not the other four, pocketed about all of the treasuries he could and then fucked off out of the city, leaving his wife and several of his children behind. That is what a baller. Wow.

Wow. If you're the one like I know you can't get divorced because it's like 1204 or whatever but like wow that's such a dick move yeah it's that's the legendarily dick move not only did he fuck his own family over he fucked over like a million people all at the same time well deuces after this the nobles of the city said fuck we don't have an emperor and reinstated Alexios the fourth's father as emperor, despite the fact that he was old, delusional and completely blind. Hey, don't talk about my dad that way. William Anderson's a nice man. For all of those reasons, actually made it illegal for him to be emperor.

Like a law specifically against him uh it was at a certain age you could no longer okay yeah and he was several years beyond that and just like a doddering like it you know everybody says that like you know during his like his last term uh reagan was pretty much not there because he was being guided by the uh the astrologist yeah if this guy is by you know the the accounts vary but he was not in his in control of his own faculties uh like he had to like be walked over to the throne like your emperor again he was like hash browns have you guys seen 51st dates every morning he wakes up he has to be uh reminded that he's emperor of byzantium i would watch that movie i would also watch that movie actually now seeing themselves outmaneuvered here because remember the doge was like ah we got rid

of him we can go plop the alexios the fourth right there on the throne problem solved like we have our emperor he's like oh fuck they elected a different guy so but you know they they were still outside the city uh rightfully assumed that the war was still going in their favor even though they had won quite yet and they demanded that alexios the fourth be crowned co-emperor alongside his old shitty dad uh despite the fact co-emperor not being a thing that previously existed don't worry about that yeah I debate you in the battlefield of ideas with my huge

fucking army make him co-emperor like we see your point we got it you know yeah you make you make a convincing argument with the sword yeah so You make a convincing argument. As you get involved with the sword, yeah. So they agreed, and the nobles gave to the doge's demands,

and they marched into the city, Victors, and sat their chosen idiot on the throne alongside his half-dead dad. But it was not... So at this point, remember, their goal was not Constantinople. They still have a whole Jerusalem to take take over right right in case anybody forgot what the main quest line here was we couldn't blame you uh but it was too late in the season to continue their crusade

as planned towards the holy land uh now remember this is two invasions and one excommunication ago so i forgive you for losing track so they would simply have to wait until spring for the promised Byzantine money. Because remember Alexios IV said, I'll pay off your debts.

I'll do this, that, and the other thing. You'll be set for life because you made me emperor, bro. So they just had to sit there and wait until he filled his side of the deal. Small problem. The empire was bankrupt. Whoops! Because remember remember the last fleeing emperor stole like literally the entire treasury as he went um and most of the city had been burnt down by that

whole war thing and while everyone involved were technically allies now they fucking hated one another the byzantines hated the Crusaders for obvious reasons. You burnt down my city, you dick. And the Crusaders still hated each other. And they also hated the Byzantines who they believed were heretics and cowards. So Alexios IV knew that he would be

fucked. So he started literally melting down Roman and church artifacts for their gold and silver content in order to pay off the debt that he had taken. Oh, boy. But it still was not enough. Some of the things that he ordered to be melted down were like religious and church

icons. Yeah. And this might shock you. This is unpopular. This led to massive riots within the city, leading to another chunk of the city being burnt down. Then the Crusaders, who were the only functioning

military force still within the city, attempted to put these riots down, I assume with all the finesse and guile of Seattle Police Department. And they also succeeded in burning down more of the city. By 1204, Isaac II, the blind, old, deaf more of the city by 1204.

Isaac, the second, the blind old deaf, half of the emperorship died, uh, leaving the whole throne to Alexios the fourth, but not quite. Um,

because remember, uh, the Senate of, of the Byzantine empire did not elect Alexios IV. So the Crusaders assumed that, oh, okay, one of them died. That means our other guy in charge is the full emperor now. No. Instead, the Senate elected a new emperor.

Yes. Who took one look at the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople was like, yeah, I'm fucking out of here and ran. He ended up running into a Catholic church and asking for protection. The Senate then chose another man, Alexios Dukas, to be the new emperor. So he

then overthrew Alexios IV and had him strangled. That's one way of doing it. Yep. Fair enough. I believe one way of doing it. Yep. Fair enough. I believe in democracy of these hands. Do you want to fight me?

Do you want to catch these hands? The new emperor, now known as Alexios V, refused to honor the deal that his idiot predecessor had made with the crusaders, leading to a renewal of the war. The crusaders saw they had no hope of cooperating with this new emperor for obvious reasons, and they simply resolved to conquer the city and take the entire Byzantine Empire for themselves. and take the entire Byzantine Empire for themselves. Now, in this hypothetical situation, six French and six Venetian nobles were to elect a new emperor who would receive a quarter of the empire in his own name,

with the rest of it being divided amongst French and Venetian holdings. Sure. About now, there was some evidence that Pope Innocent III demanded the crusaders not attack the city again. But that letter, which would have acted as a papal order, mysteriously went missing and never made it to Constantinople, never made it to the crusaders themselves. Now, most people theorize that this was probably done by a sympathetic church official. Uh,

that was like on the crusader says like, well, order's gone. Uh, weird. How does it happen? Now, up until this point,

Alexios the fifth had been doing a much better job defending his city compared to all the other Alexios is that had been emperor this year. Right. Um, but a group of soldiers that were mostly the backbone of the entire defense were known as the Vargarian Guard. These were axe-wielding

Anglo-Saxon soldiers. And they have been doing most of the killing and most of the dying, for that matter, for him. Now, they took this opportunity to kind of go on strike. They refused to continue fighting unless they got a raise good for that man one union one big union international vargarian guard workers association um uh now when this happened the crusaders set the city on fire again

oh i don't even know what they were burning at this point. And without the Vargarian guard, it was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back. The city fell on April 13th, 1204. And yet another Alexios ran from the city, leaving the throne open. I would love to do that shit, huh?

You love to set Constantinople on fire don't we for it yeah for some reason it'd be a shame if that happened to the modern constantinople may cut that out uh leave it in

uh that's not an actionable threat it was amusing nate you baby uh now rather than just marching in and sitting another alexios on the throne the crusaders went on a 3d three day long orgy of violence ruthlessly sacking the city and despite threats of excommunication they murdered and raped nuns which the pope seemed to be fine with jesus christ yeah he was like don't don't don't you do that oh you're doing it don't you do that again oh they're doing it again

i will write you a strongly worded letter about how i feel about this like i said religious un uh like and remember he excommunicated them for a couple months for attacking a city that that was beyond the pale but like literally clergy was too far and just to be clear it was not just nuns oh yeah i mean i figured right yeah uh this this city was absolutely fucking just destroyed um, they raided churches, mosques, normal homes. Everything that wasn't already burnt several times over was stolen. The crusaders wanted money more than prizes. Remember, they have fucking debts they got to pay off. And like lugging back some like church icons, you can't deposit that to the Venetian bank account.

So instead of stealing monuments or works of art, they melted them down to their core elements. This included just a ton of religious icons. These guys who are going out of crusade, like tear that cross down and get me that fucking gold, bitch. Jesus. Yeah. Crusaders, not great people.

Yeah, who'd have thought? I was going to make a joke and then you ruined it with the nun fact. Do you want to hear the joke? I want to hear the joke now, yeah. You can't just leave me hanging like that. Relentlessly sacking? Ask me about my sex life. Oh, god damn it.

Now, the juxtaposition to this is actually kind of funny because while the Crusaders were melting, they were effectively me in high school ripping copper out of walls and shit to sell for money. Oh, yeah, I got you. While the Venetians were carting away entire statues and monuments to be brought back home. I love the idea of like you like waiting into like Midtown Detroit and just like knocking over a statue of being like, Joey's gonna have 40s this weekend.

40s for everybody. Just kicking over the spirit of a Detroit statue to drag home and put my front lawn. Like nothing was fucking spared here. They like they like broke into dead Emperor's tombs, like stole everything was out of them, and then

left their skeletons in the middle of the road. Which is the only kind of looting I'm fine with, actually. I'm fine with looting the tombs of emperors. Fuck them. And they're emperors! They're being buried with more riches than I will ever see in my entire

life. Loot the shit out of them. This podcast is not condoned grave robbering. Sometimes. Consensual grave robbing? I don't know. Now, you can actually still see some of these looted treasures. If you, for some reason, find yourself in

Venice, or you are a listener who happens to be in Venice, you will see four giant statues made out of bronze at St. Mark's Basilica. Those were originally part of a monument in Constantinople that was stolen and drugged back to the city after

the sacking. Though at one point in 1797, Napoleon looted those same horses from Venice and brought them to Paris. They were then re-looted and brought back to Venice. That's terrific. Now, roughly, the total amount

looted here was around 900,000 silver marks, which was split up, but most of this went back to the Venetians. And if you remember, their debt was like 80,000. So, like, they made a fucking killing here. Now, byzantine empire at this

point was effectively destroyed they were cut down to little more than nothing uh most of its territories were divided amongst crusaders and when the smoke cleared they crowned baldwin of flanders the first emperor of the new latin empire good for him man the the doge had been offered that position at first but turned it down probably after man. The Doge had been offered that position at first, but turned it down, probably after being told how much shit had been stolen and realizing whoever took this mess over would have to govern it. So he went back

to Venice. Now, Byzantium would be restored, you know, famously in 1282, but it would never regain its previous power. And hilariously enough, this historical sacking of the crown of Christendom all sparked because of a group of

assholes couldn't pay off their debts directly led to the future Ottoman conquest ending in the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the collapse of mainstream or powerful Christendom in the east. Which means of all of the things we've ever talked about,

this might just go down the greatest cell phones in all of history. Oh, yeah. You managed to collapse your own society. Congratulations, because you got drunk with your friends and you just had to make plans the next day. And just a reminder, this started as an invade like as a planned invasion of jerusalem which never occurred i love that they got

there they got to constance noble like burnt themselves like i'm kind of tired from all that looting and uh and and nun rape i guess uh i guess i'm just gonna go home yeah let's just go see you guys catch you on the flip side like burning torches behind you yeah it turns out the see you guys catch you on the flip side like burning torches behind

you yeah it turns out the the the true crusade is the friends we made along the way and the cities we set on fire that doesn't flow so well yeah who gives a shit so liam yes we do it we do a segment on this show uh called questions from the legion uh i guess this is the drop for that if you would like to ask us a question religion donate to the show uh you can ask us through patreon through our discord which is normally where i get them from if you don't send them to me on patreon. Or you could contract a ship in Venice, sail to Constance. No, don't do that. Don't do that.

Today's question from the Legion is, which world leader would you want to go to dinner with? And what would you talk about? Give me a... I'm going to set a ground rule here you cannot invite someone to dinner just so you can physically assault them give me trudeau uh because like the guy is just this perfect representation of like smug canadian white dickheads that like i need like and i know his dad was prime minister and therefore he believes his birthright but like trudeau is one of those people i just want to be like why do you think you're anything more than a mediocre white dude like who told you he did his best to not be a

mediocre white man by covering himself in blackface that's true that's a good point and i do want to fight just Justin Trudeau open the border pussy open the border catch these hands 2021 I so I unfortunately said at ground rules you can't invite them to dinner solely to fight them which cuts

takes out your guy I imagine a lot of them mostly all of them takes out Erdogan and imagine. A lot of them. Mostly all of them. It certainly takes out Erdogan. And Aliyev. I got nothing left. I can't even have dinner with the Armenian prime minister because I kind of want to fight him, too. I'd be interested in meeting Xi Jinping. I would not.

I don't know. I want to meet all these fucking weirdos. I would. Oh, man, I got nothing here. I have actually met joe biden so i haven't i have never met a head of state uh while they're ahead of state anyway uh hillary clinton once told me she was once told my mother i was the cutest baby she'd ever seen is that what oh never mind i'm not finishing that yes yeah she was a liar then and she's a liar now i was a cute baby i just wasn't that cute i am gonna say emmanuel macron i was all i i've had macron uh next now he falls under

99 of the um the same problems that trudeau has, in my opinion, where he is very French and all the problems that come with that. But he was also the only world leader who stood up for Armenia during the 2020 war. So I guess I got to... You do not, in fact, have to hand a tanny head of state, but at least I'd give him a high five for that. Because if he didn't say anything else, it would be illegal.

People are just like, I can't believe he won. And I'm just like I can't believe he won I'm just like he wasn't LePad that's all he was running on that's the whole fucking thing and I mean he he covers the baseline French racism of hating Muslims without being an outright Nazi which is all some people want

so Liam thank you for joining us here today everyone thank you for joining us here today uh everyone thank you for uh coming over and listening to um wait why am i thank you for having me this is my show joe i always think uh like i think nick i don't know 150 fucking times and he was my co-host so um i always like to thank you thank you for appearing on my show uh now also plug your other show oh yeah go listen to well there's your problem yeah it's a show about engineering disasters and some other stuff with slides to record it with slides and everybody thank you again for supporting the show you make everything new possible and until next time don't do crusades don't do crusades don't don't especially don't find yourself indebted to an 80 year old blind man