Financial, chivalric or religious? The motives of the Fourth Crusaders reconsidered

Abstract

In early January 1203, the majority of the leading barons of the Fourth Crusade concluded the Treaty of Zara with Prince Alexios, son of Isaak II, the deposed Byzantine Emperor, thereby agreeing to divert the crusade to Constantinople in order to place the young prince on the throne of Byzantium. The treaty was ratified, despite fierce general opposition and dissension within the crusade, which led hundreds to leave the crusading army either to make their own way to Palestine or to return home. In April 1204, a year after the crusading fleet sailed from Zara to the Byzantine Empire on the pretext of defending the ‘rights’ of the ‘legitimate heir’ to the throne of Constantinople, the crusaders attacked and conquered the Byzantine imperial capital for themselves. Through a new and close examination of the primary evidence, this paper reconsiders the motives of the crusader leaders for their decision to conclude the treaty and then to conquer Constantinople. Although the crusaders proclaimed a range of high-minded motives, which have been largely accepted by modern historians, the real reason for the diversion to the Byzantine capital in 1203 by the Venetians and the French, and their subsequent attack on the city in 1204 was a simpler and, in the crusaders' minds, increasingly pressing concern: the payment of outstanding debts.