[The goal of this crusade was the total destruction of the Orthodox Christian faith and subjugation of the Orthodox city and people unto them, period. We know this because the Popes of the time confirmed this atrocity with generations of imposed puppet leaders loyal to them, and were not bothered to return stolen religious relics and riches.]
This makes the picture clearer yet, the reform movement under Christian men like Martin Luther,and so many others who were murdered by the Catholic religion, is because they left the scriptures and substituted the Pope instead of Christ Jesus as the one intercessor between God and man and have added so many false doctines to their unscriptural religion.
History is a picture of the truth and must be returned to before the next generation is destroyed by the lies and half truths they have been deceived with.
The Muslims are doing what they have always done and are moving against both Jews and Christians again.
The author also ignores the behavior of the First Crusade, which beseiged Constantinople on Holy Thursday of 1097. Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor at the time, writes of the Crusaders that they travelled in the guise of pilgrims to Jersualem, but had the intent of seizing the Imperial Throne.
Follow the money.
Alexius Angelus begged the Latins to take up his cause and right the wrong pepetrated by his evil uncle. He assured them that the people of Constantinople would welcome them, and that he would then support the Crusade financially, maintain 500 knights in the holy land and personally join the crusade with 10,000 men. And he promised that he would also bring the Greek church under the Pope - basically the crusaders were given a terrific offer.
The 4th crusade was financially bankrupt at the time, due to a miscalculation of transportation requirements with the Venetians. Angelus's offer was stunningly attractive: the crusaders saw a chance to redeem their finances by returning Angelus to his throne.
Of course the Latins and Franks didn't think an attack on Constantinople would be required. They had been assured that there would be a popular uprising against the usurper in favour of the true emperor.
But no such peaceful coup took place. From the walls the Byzantines jeered at the Crusaders who found themselves in a tight spot, deep in hostile territory, on a fool's errand. They needed the money that Angelus had offered them, if only to pay the Venetians to take them off. And they were also duty-bound to help Angelus, the victim of treachery who they had sworn to protect and to restore to his throne. So they began the attack.
The defenders were three times the numbers of the attackers, but the Crusaders and Venetians managed to gain control of Galata and some of the sea walls. However the attackers were making little impression on the heavily defended city.
However Alexius III (the usurping uncle, who had no particular title to the throne) smelt political trouble: suspecting an imminent palace coup he fled. The people of the city restored the old blind King Issac II to the throne: shortly after Angelus was crowned Alexius IV. The crusaders had won a relatively peaceful victory.
The trouble started when Alexius IV found that he did not have enough money to meet his contract with the crusaders. He opened the tombs of the emperors to take the jewellry, and siezed ecclesiastical items such as chalices and icons, to partially repay his debt.
In short order Alexius IV became very unpopular - he feared that if he paid anything further to the crusaders he would lose his throne. And if the crusaders left, he feared that he would also ... lose his throne. So he temporised - he got the crusaders to camp outside the city and held them off with promises and a few token payments.
In 1203 the crusaders began to suspect that they would never see the money Alexius IV owed them. They reminded him of the great service they had rendered him, and asked him to confirm his promises. If not, they would no longer call him friend and would do all in their power to seize the debt from his domains.
At their words Alexius remained frozen in indecision, saying nothing. Meanwhile his court erupted in anger at the crusader envoys. The envoys returned to the crusader camp with the news that Alexius had failed to fulfill his promises.
According to feudal morality the Crusaders began to raid the lands around to regain their debt, and to feed themselves.
Matters were coming to a head in Constantinople. The mob were getting tired of Alexius IV: they demanded a new emperor who would use the Imperial Army to destroy the crusaders.
However none of the Senators of Constantinople wanted the job: it would be very difficult to remove Alexius IV from the palace if he were to call upon his former friends, the Crusaders. But Alexius IV heard of the imminent uprising, and panicked, asking his trusted lieutenant Mourtzouphlus to bring the Crusader leader Boniface of Montferrat to him.
Talking to Boniface, Alexius offered to let the Crusaders occupy an imperial palace as an earnest that they would be repaid in time. But Mourtzouphlus (a veteran of several palace coups) acted first. He bribed the Varangian guard to neglect their duties for a night and whisked Alexius IV into a dungeon. The old King Issac II died rather conveniently at about the same time.
Mourtzouphlus was subsequently crowned Alexius V, and energetically did all he could to stop crusader raids on the countryside. But the troops at his disposal were of amazingly poor quality when it came to actual fighting: it seemed that no numerical superiority was enough to defeat the Franks. He negotiated with the Crusaders, who demanded that he release Alexius IV.
Realising that the Crusaders deal with Alexius IV was the moral underpinning for their attacks on Byzantium, Alexius V ordered Alexius IV to be strangled.
It was at this point that the prelates of the Crusader camp redefined an attack on Constantinople as a legitimate function of the Crusade: Mourtzouphlus was a murderer and had no right to rule Constantinople, and the people who accepted his rule were abettors to murder - so the logic ran. Of course the rank-and-file crusaders had no idea that the verdict of their bishops contradicted the commands of the Pope. The bishops' sermons contained much dehumanising rhetoric aimed at the Greeks inside the walls: this in time would yield bitter fruit.
The decisive attack, on April 12 1204, was stalemated for a long time. The defenders vastly outnumbered the attackers, and the physical defences were extremely heavy. But a small group of about 70 soldiers led by Peter of Amiens landed on a strip of groundby the harbour wall. They broke a hole through a walled-up postern gate, and saw a huge crowd of soldiers inside waiting for them.
It would clearly be suicide to enter. But one man, an armed priest named Alleumes of Clari, inisted on the honour of being the first to enter the city. No amount of pleading could dissuade him. His brother, Robert of Clari, was particularly upset and tried to prevent him from crawling through the hole by grabbing his legs. It was no use. Alleumes scrambled through the other side where he was faced by a large multitude.
With enormous confidence Alleumes drew his sword and ran towards the assembled greek troops - who scattered. The poorly trained Byzantine troops proved themselves unwilling to fight unless the danger to themselves was miniscule.
Alleumes called to his companions, who also came through the hole and stood with their backs to the wall. When Greek troops at other locations saw the flight of those stationed by the walled gate they also fled, causing a snowball effect. The crusader army entered and occupied a burnt part of the city (which had been burnt down many months earlier)
The collapse of the city's defences can be explained as follows. Basically - no-one was willing to risk themselves for Mourtzouphlus's throne. They would have been quite happy for Boniface to become the next emperor - once he had the throne he would surely restrain his army, as it was not in his interests to have his own city destroyed. At least that's the way in which all the other armed coups in the city's long history had operated.
But that's not what happened this time. Boniface had agreed with other crusaders to elect an Emperor after the city's loot had been distributed, and so looting was very much on the cards.
The sack of Constantinople ranks as one of the most profitable and shameful in history. Although the sack of a city that had resisted capture was more or less routine under the medieval moral code, the Crusaders did more than just plunder: they ruthlessly and systematically violated the holy sanctuaries, destroying or stealing all they could lay hands on, and committing notorious acts of rape. When the pope Innocent III heard of the conduct of his pilgrims he was filled with shame. He wrote to his legate:
For those who are supposed to serve Christ rather than themselves, who should have used their swords against the infidel, have bathed their swords in the blood of Christians. They have not spared religion, nor age, nor sex, and have committed adultery and fornication in public, exposing matrons and even nuns to the filthiness of their troops.
The Byzantines' deep sense of bitterness and betrayal after the sack became one of the primary legacies of 1204: another legacy IMO was the concomitant rise in Venetian power. Meanwhile back in the west the crusaders were given hero's welcomes: the outcome of the fourth crusade was popularly seen as God's vengeance upon the Greeks for their horse-trading and temporizing with the First Crusade, and the original loss of the Holy Land itself.
Not a happy moment in history. But we must be careful not to revise: the Crusaders went to Constantinople at the request of, as they saw it, the rightful King. They were keen to stick to the letter of their agreements but were messed around by indefatigable Byzantine politics. At the core of the tragedy is Alexis Angelus, who made a deal that his city didn't know about, and weren't prepared to honour, setting events in motion that left both sides feeling betrayed. If the crusaders had taken control of the city without a violent sack there would have been very little to offend our modern sensibilities. But, of course, they did sack the city. And so the east and west lungs of Christianity carry on not talking to one another.