Lesson video

Hello everyone.

In the year 1204, the largest grandest most spectacular Christian city in the world was on fire.

Attacked not once, but twice.

Constantinople was now being plundered by an army that rampaged through the streets and caused destruction wherever it turned.

Treasures were stolen, churches and cathedrals were spoiled.

Thousands were killed, including women and children, even nuns were attacked.

So much was taken that animals were moved in to load up on goods to carry back out.

Everyone got their share.

One church contained the treasury, the official stockpile of gold and wealth that belonged to the emperor.

The old man who stood guard was threatened with death until he handed over the keys.

But this attack on the heart of Christianity did not launch a crusade, it was the end of one.

The attackers here were not Muslims who Christians had battled with before.

No, Constantinople, the biggest Christian city in the world was attacked by Christian Crusaders and it would never fully recover.

Hi everyone, welcome back to our lessons on the Crusades, and this is the sixth and final lesson in this unit, with me, Mr. Wallace.

Now over the last few lessons we've looked at different reasons why people went and crusaded.

And most of the time we've been talking about Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

But if we think back to lesson one, we started really with the City of Constantinople and the threat that they faced from the Seljuk Turks.

We're going to end with Constantinople as well.

And the attack that I just described in the Fourth Crusade, which was an attack by other Christians on the biggest Christian city in the world.

Now, everything we've gone through in this unit, it would be understandably surprising if you heard that the city was attacked by other Christians.

I mean, surely Christians are on the same side.

Today we're going to go through this crusade and think about why did it happen? What led to this attack on Constantinople, and what does it tell us about the crusades and why people went on them? And we'll sum up the whole unit at the end.

Now, before we start, make sure you've got what you need to begin.

So you have a pen, paper, something to write on, and as always a hassle free quiet environment, if possible.

And once we're ready to start, we'll get going.

Ready to go? Perfect, let's start.

All right then, to begin with though, we're going to stay on this painting.

And this is a painting of the capture of Constantinople.

And if you look carefully at it, we can see some of the examples of the chaos that was happening when the Christians sacked and took the city.

So it would be useful if you were to pause here and look really closely at this painting.

We'll highlight some things in a moment, but look very closely at this painting.

Where can you see destruction? Where can you see plunder, people stealing and taking things? Pause the video for a moment, and then we'll come back and see what it is you've spotted.

Okay, so let's have a look at what's in this painting.

So first of all the thing that our eyes I think are most clearly drawn to is this old man here, holding his arm out as if he's trying to like push away or to stop, to ask them to stop, these Crusaders on horseback.

He's asking for mercy almost to protect this individual here.

It's not the only situation where you can see someone suffering.

At the side you can see this Christian attacking another man.

At the bottom you can see treasures emptied, like treasure boxes, gold on the floor.

To the side you can see someone almost stripped half naked, caring for someone else, or just checking to see whether they're alive, cradling them perhaps in grief.

And at the side you could see someone still fighting.

And if you look behind, you can see the smoke and the carnage in the rest of the city.

This wasn't just any small attack.

This was devastating to Constantinople.

So let's just have a quick reminder then of why Constantinople is important.

There are six statements here, which ones, which statements about Constantinople are true? Three of them are true, three of them are not true.

I want you to pause the video.

You're going to note down which ones are true, and for the ones which aren't, they apply to a different city, what cities are they? So if a statement doesn't apply to Constantinople, where does it apply to? Okay, so pause the video again and just make sure you identify which ones are true for Constantinople and which ones are for somewhere else.

Okay, so let's check through the answers here.

Now, the ones that are true, we know it's an Orthodox Christian city.

We'll talk more about what we mean by Orthodox in a moment, but we know it's Christian.

It was the largest Christian city in the world, and it was part of the Byzantine empire.

If you think back to our previous lessons, we know that it's helping the Byzantine empire, which is why these crusades even began to begin with.

The other three statements refer to other places that we've studied.

The Holy Lance was found in Antioch, two siege towers were used in Jerusalem, and Richard I, we did this in our last lesson, massacred nearly 3,000 prisoners in Acre.

So I showed you this map at the very start of the unit.

And it just shows everywhere in Europe that is Christian.

Now Orthodox Christians, Greek Christians live in the areas that are purple and whilst they follow the same religion, there are some differences.

And for example, they don't have the Pope as head of their church.

And Constantinople is about here.

I'll show you on another map more closely in the moment.

Everywhere in this lime green colour, they're also Christian, but they are Latin Christians and they do follow the Pope.

So whilst they're broadly on the same side, it's not like they don't have differences.

And this split by now has been growing wider for the last 100 or 50 years or so, since the mid 11th century.

And there are lessons on Oak under the title, "How powerful was the Pope," which really explains why the Christian world broke in two.

Now Constantinople is, and nowadays Constantinople is known as Istanbul.

Constantinople back then was famed for this building in particular, the Hagia Sophia, the most remarkable building in Europe.

It was a cathedral at the time.

It was bigger than any building in Western Europe, in Rome or in Paris or in London.

It date back to when the Romans were really in charge.

It is a remarkable building and it's not the only one in Constantinople that was stunning to the Christian world.

The architecture, these enormous domes, the art that was inside these buildings.

This was one of the most glorious, remarkable places in Europe.

And when Christians went there, they often felt overwhelmed by feeling like they were in the heart of the Christian world.

So it really is incredible that other Christians would consider attacking this place, because it is so central to what it means to be a Christian.

Now, if we need to understand why the Fourth Crusade happened, we need to meet this guy here.

So, Pope Innocent III.

A new Pope, and he had a slightly different approach then previous Popes.

Whilst they all present themselves and they're all thought of as the representative of God, this Pope in particular believed that he was more powerful than other monarchs in Europe.

If you've done a little bit of work on King John for example, you would know that John runs into some problems with this Pope, and the Pope places a what's called an interdict on England, which effectively excluded all of England from Christianity.

So he tries to use his power to place himself above monarchs.

He wants to expand his power.

He wants to make the church more powerful.

And one of the things he did was expanded crusades.

Under him crusades stopped just being about going to fight the Holy Land to take back Jerusalem.

And they started being about fighting basically anyone that the church saw as threatening to its power or undermining their teachings.

Anyone that was in their way when it comes to trying to have spiritual influence over Europe.

This Pope, Pope Innocent III saw crusades as a reasonable valid way of trying to take them all.

So here is a map of Europe.

You can see the Pope is based here in Rome, here is Constantinople, and here is Jerusalem.

This is the city that is usually the target of crusades.

The first and third crusade was supposed to go there.

But this Pope based in Rome begins to use crusades to go for other groups that either threatened his power or undermine the teachings, so go against their teachings.

So for example, he launches crusades in Spain against Islamic forces that are in Spain.

He launches them in Southern France against people that he sees as heretics.

So people he thinks are going against church teachings.

He launches them in Southern Italy, against people that threatened his power.

So crusades begin to get a little bit different under his leadership and he calls for a fourth, big crusade.

So we know that the Third Crusade ended and that's when Richard I tried to take Jerusalem, but he wasn't quite able to do so.

And a few years later, the test Pope calls for a Fourth Crusade.

And again, the aim is to take back Jerusalem.

Now, usually the way you would get there is overland.

You'd march through Europe, through Constantinople, and into Jerusalem.

But this crusade they decided to go a different way.

They thought it would be better to avoid this empire, which they weren't on the best of terms with, to avoid the Byzantines.

They thought, "Well, we'll go via the sea.

We'll sail to the Holy Land." Now, if you need to sail to the Holy Land and you want to take your thousands of soldiers, then you're going to need a lot of boats.

And if you want boats in the Middle Ages, the best place to go to is Venice.

Many people, many of you watching and listening might be familiar with Venice.

It's still a very, very famous Italian city.

It's an incredible place.

It's somewhere that if you ever get the chance, you should visit, it's a wonderful place to visit.

And back then, Venice was a very important city state, which was well known for making ships.

So, the Crusaders, the leaders of this Fourth Crusade go to Venice because they see them.

They're the seafaring experts.

They're the ship builders.

Now this picture here, this is more modern than when we're talking about.

This crusade is in the early 13th Century, so the early 1200s, this picture is from the 1700s.

So these buildings wouldn't have existed at the time.

But looking back at this one here, this is from the time and we can see it's already known for its boats.

Venice is a city full of canals.

It is built on several islands and they had real expertise.

They knew how to make really, really big, complex, well made ships.

They were the ones you wanted to go to if you needed to sail to the Holy Land.

So the Crusaders went to Venice and they made a deal.

The Venetians, which is what people from Venice are called, would make enough ships to carry 35,000 knights and foot soldiers.

Okay, huge, huge number of people.

They make enough ships to carry them.

And they would make special types of ships as well, They'd make ships where the side would lower down and allow the knights to ride off on their horses, straight onto the beach.

They would also provide nine months worth of food to help them get to the Holy Land and get set up when they were there.

This would be a year's work for the entire city.

So everyone who had other jobs, other businesses, they would down tools and stop what they were doing.

The whole city would get involved in this, this was a huge commitment.

And as payment they would get 88,000 marks.

Now that is a way of referring to the currency at the time, just as a frame of reference as to how much that actually is.

That's about twice the income of the whole of England at this point.

This is a huge, huge sum of money, okay? And that's what it costs to have enough boats to take 35,000 knights and soldiers to the Holy Land.

Crusading leaders make a deal.

They go away, they start recruiting soldiers.

They start encouraging people to join their crusade.

12 months go by.

How many soldiers turn up in Venice to start the Fourth Crusade? 12,000, so they've got a problem.

All of a sudden they have nowhere near enough money to pay for these ships, and the city of Venice isn't going to allow them to leave until they have their payment.

This would be a disaster for them.

They've stopped work for a year.

If they would not getting their payment, this could ruin the livelihoods of thousands of people.

They demand their payment and the Crusaders don't have enough money.

So this is where things begin to go wrong.

And I'll be honest, this was a bad idea to begin with, okay? 35,000 nights, just by comparison the largest army that had previously gone to the Holy Land was from the emperor of Germany, and that was about 15,000 people, okay? Whilst lots of people have signed up, often people fall away on route.

They fight in battles.

They abandon and go home.

Imagining that you could take 35,000 people there, that was unrealistic.

And so it's no surprise that they did not have enough people in the end, but still they'd made a deal and they needed the money.

So quick check on what we know so far.

I'm going to do what I usually do and give you five seconds to answer these.

So which Pope called for the new crusade? Urban II, Richard I, or Innocent III.

You got five, four, three, two, one.

Absolutely right, Innocent III.

Richard wasn't a Pope and Urban was the one who called for the First Crusade.

How did they plan to get to the Holy Land? Come on, we've just done this, you should know this straightaway.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Absolutely right, it's by boat, it's not on horseback and it's not on foot.

And which city did they make an agreement with to build ships? Five, four, three, two, one.

Absolutely right, it's Venice.

Now this is the situation they've landed themselves in.

And what I'm going to ask you to do in a moment is, pause the video and figure out what happened next.

How did we go from a situation where we have a crusading army who needs money to pay for its ships to an enormous attack on another Christian city? So what you're going to do is pause the video in a second, go and read the information and answer these questions, and we'll understand what the big picture is here.

So pause your video, move forward.

And when you're ready, come back and we'll check through the answers.

All right, let's go.

All right, that's great, well done.

Now, having read that you should have a better understanding now of how we get from A to B.

How do we get from Venice to Constantinople? How do we get with Christians attacking other Christians? So, what city built ships for the Fourth Crusade? The answer here is a Venice.

Let's make sure, as I always say, let's make sure we're doing these in proper detail.

Let's make sure we're doing them in proper full sentences.

So a good answer, and it doesn't have to be word for word the same, but a good answer would be something like, The Crusaders made an agreement with Venice to build ships for the journey to the Holy Land.

Which empire did Alexius want to rule? The acceptable answer here was the Byzantine empire.

And a good answer would say something like, Alexius wanted to rule the Byzantine empire as he had lost his throne to a rival.

So this is where we see the Crusaders get drawn to Constantinople.

They need money, and along comes this want to be emperor.

Someone who should have been emperor, but someone has taken his throne, asking them to help him take it back.

What did Alexius offer to the Crusaders in return for their help? A simple, straightforward answer would be money and support.

More detailed answer would say, Alexius offered a large sum of money to the Crusaders in return for their support in helping him become emperor.

He also offered the military support and offered to give the Pope control over the church.

So you can see why the Crusaders thought this was a good deal.

They got enough money to pay off Venice.

Venice was happy because they no longer have this problem.

And the Pope's happy because he has more control, more power, because he has control over the Orthodox church.

So this seems like a win-win for everybody.

Alexius gets help, the Crusaders get help.

Why was Alexius overthrown by Mourtzouphlous? Now this name here, Mourtzouphlous, just as a side note, it means monobrow.

Why was Alexius overthrown by Mourtzouphlous? The acceptable answer here, because he had become unpopular.

The good answer, a more detailed answer, Alexius was overthrown by Mourtzouphlous because he had become unpopular as he was paying the Crusaders so much money.

The people of Constantinople were tired of paying them so much money, which included religious relics, which were melted down.

So the Crusaders helped Alexius become emperor.

They then demanded all the money he had promised them, which was probably too much.

And the people of Constantinople were not happy.

They didn't like this person that the Crusaders had helped become emperor because he was giving away all their wealth.

He was melting down their relics and giving them to the Crusaders.

So this other guy comes along and overthrows him.

So the Crusaders are now in a complete bind.

They're in a problem.

They're now in Constantinople, the person they supported has been kicked out.

He's been overthrown, they've not got the money they were promised.

They've not got enough to pay back the Venetians.

So what do they do? We know here, and this is our story from the start of the lesson.

What did the Crusaders do to the city of Constantinople? They sacked the city, and to sack a city means to attack it, but also to plunder it, to take everything you can from it.

The Crusaders sacked Constantinople.

This meant that they attacked it and then spent three days plundering the city, taking gold and other valuables.

They were also brutal to the people.

Many were outraged as they were Christians attacking other Christians.

So this is how we ended up with the biggest Christian city in the world being attacked by its own Crusaders.

Because of a series of problems that got more and more out of control and Crusaders that needed to pay back money to the people of Venice.

And they start doing things which no one else would seriously consider in any other point in their lives.

How could they consider attacking a Christian city? But when they see the valuables and they see the gold and they know what they need for the people of Venice, and all of a sudden it becomes appealing to take back their city after Mourtzouphlous overthrows their ally.

This is where we get then to this picture.

Christian warriors attacking other Christians, taking their valuables, attacking women and children, burning the city, all because they had lost what really the point of the crusade was.

They'd lost sight of what they were motivated by.

This was less about fighting for God.

This was not about going to Jerusalem and taking it back.

This was about settling a debt and making themselves wealthier and more powerful in the process.

So over the period of the Crusades the whole point of crusading seems to have been lost, seems to have gone out of the window.

Here's the Hagia Sophia.

In this place the Crusaders, many of them got drunk.

They was behaving like in the words of people, they're behaving like animals.

They were spoiling these cathedrals and churches.

They were behaving as if they had absolutely no respect for what was such an important Christian setting.

And they plundered it so much.

Some of which, some of these things have never actually been given back.

So you can see here, this is a cathedral in Venice and these four bronze horses were stolen from Constantinople in this crusade.

They were brought back to Venice, placed on what's called Saint Mark's Basilica, and they're still there 800 years later.

So in the long scope of history, this is very much in the past, but we can still see evidence of it today.

And Constantinople never really recovered from this.

It was under the control of these Crusaders for about 70 years.

And even when the Byzantine empire got it back under control, they were so weakened by it that they didn't hold onto it for very long.

This attack on Constantinople was devastating.

Now this historian Steven Runciman calls it.

He says, "There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade." So this is a historian from today, looking back and calling this a crime against humanity because we see what has really happened here.

That it's not about, as I said, those crusading principles, it's not about defending Christians.

This became about attacking Christians.

It's not about cleaning your sins and going to heaven by fighting for God.

It's about making yourself wealthier and more powerful.

Now, to begin with, this is what the Pope said about them.

"The miracle that has come to pass." So when he first heard about it, he thought this was a miracle that he has control over this Christian city again.

This seems like a great, great day for the Catholic church.

But then he began to hear what had actually happened in Constantinople and how The Crusaders behaved.

And he said this to one of the nobles, "You turned away from your vow, preferring earthly wealth to celestial treasures, preferring earthly wealth, preferring gold and relics to celestial treasures." By celestial treasures he means the promise of heaven, of spiritual rewards, of being at God's side in heaven and being removed of sin, that these Crusaders forgot that.

And they preferred earthly wealth to the afterlife.

So the Pope was initially supportive and then he became rather confused about it.

And this seemed to cause him a lot of pain in the long run, wondering why these Christians had behaved the way they did.

So how can we explain the sack of Constantinople then? If we're saying there are different reasons why the Christians did this.

And I want to see if you can try and come up with three, how do we explain why Christian Crusaders attacked a Christian setting? I want you to pause the video here and it may be worth doing it like a diagram like this, or try to bullet point three reasons in your book or on your piece of paper.

But I want you to try and write three reasons if you can.

So the sack of Constantinople, what led to it? Pause the video here and try and come up with three reasons.

Okay, so how did we do? Let's see if your three reasons are the same as mine.

Don't worry if they're not, it's absolutely fine to have other reasons I've not thought off.

Now, first and foremost, it's the desperate need to pay Venice.

If they didn't owe so much money, they may not have even ended up in Constantinople.

They would have been able to use those ships to go to the Holy Land.

But there are other reasons why they did it as well.

One of the reasons was to increase the power of the church.

They saw here a chance for the Pope to become more powerful, for the Latin Catholic Christians to become more powerful than the Greek Orthodox Christians.

So there's a split in Christianity here, which helps explain a part of it.

And their ally had been removed.

If you remember, they went there to put Alexius on the throne, but he'd been removed by emperor Mourtzouphlous, emperor monobrow.

So the person they were supporting had been removed.

And so many of them thought, "Well, it's reasonable of us then to get rid of the guy who removed him." So different reasons fed into this attack on Constantinople.

But how then does this fit into our main question? This has been the question we've looked at for all of these lessons.

Why did Europeans join the Crusades? And broadly we've come up with three reasons, religion, power, and prestige, to be prestigious or honourable.

Now, can you try and think of one reason, one way that the Fourth Crusade meets each of these reasons, how was the Fourth Crusade a religious thing? How did it, was it encouraged by religion? How were the events of the Fourth Crusade encouraged by wanting power? And how were the events of the Fourth Crusade encouraged by wanting prestige? This is a bit trickier.

So I'm going to give you a little bit more time.

Pause the video here and think, "How can we apply the Fourth Crusade to religion, power and prestige?" Pause the video here.

Okay, that's great, this is a tough question.

You know, we're really trying to think in different ways here, how we can categorise the Fourth Crusade in different ways.

So let's start with religion.

These are the ones that I've come up with and you might have other ones as well, share them with your teacher.

I'm sure they're absolutely great.

But here's what I've come up with.

The aim of the Fourth Crusade was Jerusalem.

Even if most of them didn't make it.

So it was launched for religious reasons, even if the events weren't that religious.

And when many found out about the attack on Constantinople, many left, they refused to attack Christians.

So those ones were very clearly motivated by religion because they didn't want to attack other Christians.

Now, how can we say it's about power? Well, part of the Fourth Crusade was about increasing the church's power because it gave them control over the Greek Orthodox church, which was based in Constantinople.

So the events of the Fourth Crusade were a little bit about power.

The Pope certainly wanted to increase his power.

And how can we say it's about prestige? Well, wealth equals status.

In the Middle Ages, in the Mediaeval Period, if you were wealthier, you were more prestigious because you could give more money to your knights.

You could donate more to charity, to church.

You could found churches and monasteries.

If you were a wealthy noble, you were seen as prestigious.

So the chance of all these nobles to take wealth from Constantinople, that could have seen their status rise in society, unless people actually found out how they got that wealth of course.

They'd probably try to keep that bit of a secret.

So you can see that the Fourth Crusade does link to our question.

It does explain why some Europeans joined the crusades.

But I think what we do know by this point is, the crusading has changed and it doesn't quite fit the same reasons from the First Crusade just over a 100 years earlier.

So now I want to think big picture, and this is going to finish our unit off.

This is the piece of writing, the piece of work that brings it all together.

Here's our three reasons, religion, power and prestige.

I want you to think about all of this, going back to the first lesson with emperor, the emperor of the Byzantine empire, asking for help to Pope Urban to the First Crusade to Richard in the Third Crusade.

Bring it all together, bring all of that knowledge from the back of your brain to the front.

And try and give me two reasons that religion was the main kind of cause of Europeans joining the Crusade.

That power caused Europeans to join the Crusades and that prestige caused them to join the Crusades.

Now, there will be more than two reasons for some of these.

And in fact for one or two of them, you'll probably come up with several reasons.

But if we want to have a detailed argument, we want to make sure we include all three categories and we don't want to kind of overdo one of them and give an imbalanced argument.

So let's just start with two.

Now at this point, so our last pause, pause the video, try and come up with two reasons.

We'll see if your two reasons for each one are the same as my two reasons.

And then we'll finish off the unit.

Pause the video here.

All right, that's really good.

There is so much to bring here.

These six lessons have introduced loads of knowledge and I'm sure it's all on your page right now.

There's load to get down.

So let's talk about religion first.

Two key reasons why religion was important in the Crusades.

First of all, there was the promise of having your sins forgiven, okay? To go to heaven, that motivated so many knights and soldiers.

And to take Jerusalem back and have it in Christian hands.

Now of course there are other religious reasons, but I think these two, to me these two are really important ones.

Now what about power? One reason is to increase the power of the church.

We've just talked about that today in the lesson on the Fourth Crusade to have a more powerful church.

And two, the power of individual leaders.

'Cause they got to rule Crusader kingdoms. So Bohemond, who ruled in Antioch for example, or Godfrey who ruled in Jerusalem.

They increased their own power by ruling the lands that were taken.

So you could say that power is a reason that Europeans join the Crusade.

And prestige, so some people joined for personal glory and honour, because they wanted to be seen to defend Christians.

I spoke last lesson that I think Richard I is a good example of this.

For example, he wanted to, he paid his soldiers more than other Kings.

He wanted to be seen as more generous.

He was a brave warrior, and proved that several times.

He wanted to be known as a brave Crusader.

And you've got the point that I just made about wealth and prestige and status, that nobles wanted more money because that meant that they had a better kind of standing in society.

So you've got three categories, each with multiple pieces of evidence and you might have different ones, it's absolutely fine.

You might have loads in one of them, that's also absolutely fine.

With this then, here is a piece of writing, which would be an amazing way of showing what you know about this unit and I'm sure I would love to see it and I'm sure your teachers would love to see it as well.

So why did Europeans joined the crusades? Based on all the things that you just wrote down, here are some sentence starters.

So for example, one reason that Europeans joined the crusades was because of religion.

An example of this would be and so on and so on.

Furthermore, give me more reasons.

Down here, that slightly more tricky stuff is comparing these reasons.

Evidence would suggest that something is more significant than something else and why.

So is religion more important than power? Or is power more important than prestige, et cetera? Beginning to compare these reasons really shows a great understanding of how important they were, which ones were more significant than others.

And down the right here you can see a series of words which would really help you.

Make sure you've got the great vocabulary to really show you understand the unit.

Now this piece of work will finish off this unit, and I would love to see it.

So you've made it to the end, and this is fantastic.

This unit is completed and you are now experts on why Europeans joined the crusades.

And for that piece of work, I want to see it.

So if you've got through it, I would love to see your essays and see how you've interpreted the Crusades, which reasons you think are more important.

So if you would like to, share your work on, ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tag Oak National, #LearnwithOak.

I would love to see it.

I'd like to see how much you know and how well you've done on this unit.

Well done for going through these.

This is complex, it's tricky.

If you've gone through it, you really are smarter now.

You know your stuff on a little bit of mediaeval history, I just want to say, well done.

So keep working with us here at Oak National and I look forward to maybe seeing you in another unit.

Have a great rest of your day.