Soon after becoming Alexos IV, however, it proved that the newly-made emperor could not pay up. So...
The crusaders’ only concern was to extract every penny of the money due to them. When, after mid-November 1203, Alexios IV began to cool in his attitude towards the crusaders and made only token payments to them, the crusading leaders, according to Villehardouin, ‘often sent to him [Alexios IV] and asked him for the payment of the moneys due, as he had covenanted’. Similarly, Robert of Clari records that the crusading leaders twice ‘asked the emperor for their payment’. In early December, after the flow of funds had ceased altogether, the barons finally decided to send envoys to Alexios to ask him to honour their contract, otherwise the crusaders ‘would seek their due by any means they could’. One of the emissaries sent to the imperial palace was Villehardouin. According to his first-hand account, upon admission to the audience chamber, the crusader envoys demanded that the emperor fulfil his commitments to the crusaders. If he failed to do so, the crusaders would ‘strive to obtain their due by all the means they could’. The rank- and-file crusaders were not ignorant of this ultimatum. Robert of Clari records that ‘all the counts and leaders of the army gathered and went to the emperor’s palace and demanded their money at once … [I]f he did not pay them, they would seize so much of his property that they would be paid’.He did not pay, and a little capitalist "creative destruction" followed.
Dude, Imperial Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries.
ReplyDeleteDid not Edward III default on his debts to the, *scratches head after busy weekend on the honey-do list* Lombards maybe? in the 14th century or thereabouts?
ReplyDeleteThe news of Italian quakes in the last 24 hours popped that one to the fore of synaptic discordance... BTW, best wishes to the Italians. Of all the folks I visited in the Med way back when, I recall the Italians most fondly.
History? Nahhh. We don't need no stinkin' history...
The little matter of looting Constantinople is also considered by many in the Orthodox Church to the the true start of the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. "Filiosque" and leavened or unleavened aside, sacking the seat of the Patriarch was too much.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
Sovereign defaults are extremely common in history. The Spanish have defaulted on their foreign debt something like 12 or 13 times.
ReplyDeleteThe US is extremely unusual in that we don't have a long history of serial defaults. But then we don't have a long history of anything :p
This is fascinating. I'd heard about the sack of Constantinople many times in the past, but no one explained (and to be fair, I never asked) why. It was always presented in the context of "the Crusades were bad, and the Crusaders were just after plunder. After all, they sacked Constantinople, and it wasn't even a Muslim city!"
ReplyDeleteIt REALLY puts a completely different spin on things when you know WHY they sacked it.