ANST - FW: Musing on July 17th -- You Can't Go Back to Constantinople

Mon Jul 17 21:41:44 PDT 2000

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From: Ellsworth Weaver [mailto:astroweaver at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2000 21:23
To: 2thpix at surfari.net
Subject: Musing on July 17th -- You Can't Go Back to Constantinople

Dear Folk,

Today on July 17, 1203, the mostly French forces of the Fourth
Crusade
(remember Innocent III and his crusade?) landed in Constantinople and
took the city / state without any resistance. Sounded like a good
idea
at the time even though the Pope opposed it. Was this wrong?

You might remember that the Fourth Crusade was stalled out in Venice.
The expected crowds of crusaders and their money did not appear. The
Venetians told the crusaders it was time to pay up for all the
victuals
and boats. The only thing the crusaders had was muscle, and plenty of
it. The first contract hit the crusaders did for the Venetians was to
attack a Roman Catholic city, Zara, which belonged to the king of
Hungary. Teach him to mess with the Venetians!

The second hit was in the nature of restoring a deposed emperor to
his
throne in Constantinople. Isaac Angelus had been kicked off the
throne
by his brother Alexius III. The lack of brotherly love was pretty
evident in that Alexius III had Isaac blinded and put in prison.
Fortunately for Isaac, his son (also named Alexius) had escaped and
was
now looking for help. Hey, the Venetians had this ready group of buff
guys with broadswords. What was Alexius, the young dude, offering for
help? Nothing too shabby! He offered the Venetians 200,000 silver
marks,  an army of 10, 000 Greeks to fight in the Middle East for a
year, and 500 knights (maintained by Constantinople) to be a
permanent
force for the Christians in the Holy Land. Sounded really good. Sort
of
a win-win deal.

The crusader fleet (boats by Venice, of course) got to the Bosphorus
on
June 24th. Alexis III and his mercenaries who were holding the fort
at
Constantinople took a good look at all that armor flashing up on deck
as French folk did one armed pushups and decided to leave. On July
17th. 1203 those crusaders entered the town bearing Alexius and
freeing
his dad. August 1st saw them both crowned Emperor. End of story,
right?
Happy ending, everybody go home! Not quite.

There was another tiny stipulation to the contract -- hardly worth
mentioning, really. Okay, all the folks of Constantinople who had
formerly been Greek Orthodox now were Roman Catholics. Just like that
- -- presto-chango! -- they were all now subject to Pope Innocent III.
There was also that matter of 200,000 marks. New Emperor Alexius
ponied
up the first installment but his people wondered where anyone was
going
to come up with a single extra penny. Guess they were a tad miffed
about the religious conversion without their permission. Hard is the
lot of an emperor, I want to tell you! Somehow a bit of tussling got
out of hand and a part of the city got itself burned down.

In return, the Greeks thought to help give the Venetian fleet a warm
welcome by filling some boats up with all sorts of combustibles
(pitch,
logs, shavings, copies of the movie "Ishtar"), set the sails toward
the
Venetian fleet at anchor, and set fire to the ships. Some sailor,
awake
on the deck, saw the drifting flame weapons and alerted the rest. A
brave and desperate crew of Venetians met with the Greek gifts,
grappled them and rowed them out to sea. Extra rations of grog for
those sailors, I’m buying.

Another revolution in January of 1204 put the other faction -- led by
the son-in-law of the deposed Alexis III (the brother-blinder) – back
on the throne. The crusaders saw that Constantinople politics were
just
too Byzantine for them and decided the heck with it. It was time to
slice and dice.

The crusaders essentially took everything that was not securely
fastened and most of things that were. The haul included two hunks of
the True Cross (each as big as a man’s thigh), the Spear of Destiny,
two nails from the crucifixion, a vial of Jesus’ blood, Christ’s
tunic,
his crown of thorns, the foot of St. Cosmas, another piece of the
True
Cross, more Jesus’ blood, "quite a bit of St. John," gold, jewels,
ancient manuscripts. The whole place looked like Macy’s the day
before
Christmas.

The "Latin Emperors of Constantinople" then began with a looting and
killing. Baldwin IX was their first ruler. He got himself crowned in
St. Sophia (now Hagia Sophia, a mosque) all done up regally. They
renamed their Latin kingdom "Romania"  which included parts of Turkey
and Greece. The exiled Greeks set up housekeeping in Nicaea on the
Asian mainland and waited. Somehow, all of this did not help the
relations between the Orthodox church and the Roman one. I wonder if
the Greeks are still angry about this?

What have we learned from all of this? It is one thing to promise the
moon but quite another to deliver it? The same armed folks who put
you
in power can just as easily put themselves in the same spot?
Converting
folks to a different religion is best done with tuna hot dish, hot
coffee and their permission? I think I will go back to my time in the
Army and say it is always, always a good idea to post a fire watch.

As always, forward these to those friendly forces out there. Do keep
my
name and sig. attached.

Losing my religion,
J.  Ellsworth Weaver

SCA -- Sir Balthazar of Endor
(http://www.surfari.net/~2thpix/sca/tarnmist.html)
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
(http://www.ancientsites.com/users/THEOGNIS_POLYPHEMUS)
TRV– Sebastian Yeats
(http://www.thereadersvine.com/users/YEATS_SEBASTIAN)

=====
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