[horse_doc]

Alexios didn't HAVE the money. It was an absurdly-large amount that the Imperial Treasury could not possibly have covered, and he knew it from the start.

I detest historical revisionists, and always pull for the Outremere - but the Fourth Crusade was a total long-term disaster for the West. Nothing good, and plenty bad came out of it.

[Antoninus]

Alexios didn't HAVE the money. It was an absurdly-large amount that the Imperial Treasury could not possibly have covered, and he knew it from the start.

Based on the huge amounts of wealth in the city at the time (from the both the Greek and Latin sources), I somehow doubt he couldn't have raised the money. It wouldn't have been the first time Constantinople had paid off a hostile force with an absurd amount of money. Justinian the Great did it several times himself.

I detest historical revisionists, and always pull for the Outremere - but the Fourth Crusade was a total long-term disaster for the West. Nothing good, and plenty bad came out of it.

Not completely true. If not for the treasures taken back to the West from the sack, some of the greatest relics of our ancient patrimony may have been lost to us forever when the Byzantines were overthrown by the Turks. Including, it is thought, the Shroud of Turin.

I always looked at the Fourth Crusade as the inevitable result of the fatally flawed, hubristic Byzantine foreign policy which continuously treated the Crusaders just like every other ignorant horde of barbarians that had fought in the service of the emperor.

But you're right--long term, it was a disaster for the Christian east and west and dashed any hope of reconciliation.