Quote:
Originally Posted by Little.Egret
[B]Charles River Editors
The Fourth Crusade: The History of the Crusade that Resulted in the Sack of Constantinople
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All very controversial even today.
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Very perceptive about the fact that the subjects of all of the books have in common the fact that they are controversial even today.
I'll share a few things that might whet the appetite of Mobilereaders for the book about the Fourth Crusade. I'm not going to share my feelings--though I have very strong ones--about the wisdom, rightness, etc. of the Crusades in aggregate, but I will about this particular Crusade.
Controversial is right! The Fourth Crusade is not only famous, but also infamous.
The participants set out from Europe to go to the Holy Land, as they and others did in the previous three Crusades, to conquer territory from the Muslims. Instead, they attacked Constantinople (formerly Byzantium), which was populated with people that they considered fellow (though apostate, being of the Orthodox Church, instead of the Roman Catholic Church as they were) Christians!
Not only did they attack and conquer the city, but once in the city they went about murdering, raping, and pillaging the people, and desecrating and stealing from Orthodox churches. How wrong this was! And how stupid of them, since this was detrimental to what they had set out to accomplish! Because of this detour from their plans, the Crusaders were so distracted and, I suppose, spent of their energy, that only a relative handful of them actually made it to the Holy Land.
Historians credit the Fourth Crusade with hastening the decline of the Byzantine (Eastern) empire. Ironically, the Byzantine empire had been holding back the forces of Islam. Instead of handing defeat to Muslims, the Fourth Crusade actually
aided Muslims. Byzantium finally fell to the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) about two and a half centuries later.
Ironically, too, this Crusade sapped the enthusiasm of Europe for subsequent Crusades.