Enrico Dandolo's Fourth Crusade: Zara, the Aquila and 900,000 Marks

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Pope Innocent III called the Fourth Crusade to retake Jerusalem, held by the Ayyubids since Saladin's capture in 1187, by striking first at Egypt. That required ships from Venice, whose blind doge Enrico Dandolo, then in his early 90s, contracted to carry 33,500 men for 85,000 silver marks, building 50 war galleys and 450 transports and suspending Venetian trade for a year. By May 1202 only about 12,000 crusaders arrived and they raised just 35,000 marks. Dandolo deferred the debt in return for an attack on Zara, a rebellious Catholic port under King Emeric of Hungary. Simon de Montfort refused to take part, Zara fell in November 1202 despite crosses hung on its walls, and the pope excommunicated the army.

The exiled prince Alexios IV then offered 200,000 marks, 10,000 troops and the submission of the Orthodox Church if the crusaders restored his deposed and blinded father, Isaac II. In July 1203 the Venetian ship Aquila broke the chain across the Golden Horn, Alexios III fled with the treasury, and the new co-emperor found nothing to pay with. He melted sacred icons, riots and fires followed, and Mourtzouphlos seized power and had him strangled. On April 12, 1204, the crusaders stormed the city and sacked it for three days.

• Venetian ships carried flying bridges hung from their masts to drop onto the sea walls.
• Fires set during the sieges left about 20,000 and then about 100,000 people homeless.
• Crusaders smashed the silver iconostasis of the Hagia Sophia and seated a prostitute on the patriarch's throne.
• About 900,000 silver marks were taken, with an estimated 500,000 hoarded by individual knights and barons.
• The Greeks retook the city in 1261, and in 2001 Pope John Paul II apologized to the Greek Orthodox Church.