Some interesting POD's for the fourth crusade.
1
I'm not sure what you meant there : the bulk of the Fourth Crusade did went to Venice, precisely because other main harbours refused the transportation contract.
There was good reason for that : Crusaders initially accounted for far too much people (30,000 men, something comparable only to the First Crusade, or the Mongol Invasions for what matter sheer numbers) that would gather, and when their obviously inflated expectations failed to materialize, they were largely indebted to ever really manage to pay in full.
To quote Jacques Heers, "pure madness" : they couldn't hope to pay up the more or less discounted price of 94 000 marks in first place, and they were barely 2,000 men at first. The lack of men wasn't due to the crusade being scattered (because it was not), but simply because the time of nobiliar crusades was past as soon as the First Crusade ended : most of the Crusaders were French, from the north-eastern aprt of the kingdom because the rest of Western Europe was kinda at war (or recovering from), and mostly mobilisable by their own rulers.
Not that the huge disrpency wasn't more or less concious, possibly as nobles crusaders wanted to stress theys could re-edit the epic of the First Crusade and that they didn't needed the king and more importantly the emperor (see the
Crusade of Henry VI) to do so. It was still ludicrous.
Zara didn't as much surrendered than falling after three days of siege by a powerful fleet and thousands of men. You can argue that the city could have surrended peacfully ITTL, but it's not really likely to happen : the population tought the pontifical and royal protection were enough to make Crusaders (if not Venetians) think twice before storming a Christian city, and it partially worked out as several crusaders refused to continue.
But the conditions of delaying the debt were pretty clear : Zara was to be taken, and if crusader needed another motivation, Dandelo reminded them that the fleet was to be harboured somewhere during the winter and it wasn't going to be in Venice.
And taking the city wasn't about offerring them candies and hugs, as demonstrated by Venetian sacks of Constantinople, but to make a demonstration of strength to anyone that would get the wrong idea that they could meddle with the Serenissima.
The only way to save Zara and to keep Crusaders more or less unified would be to tell Venice that they wouldn't want to do so. Which, giving that the city more or less owned their asses trough loans and delayed debts...
They would still have the Balkanic road, but without being able to pay for supplies, which are necessary until Constantinople (which wasn't, at all, going to give them a warm welcome) and vital for Anatolia...
While I could see a more legitimized Alexios IV, I think the problem is not there.
Alexios IV made a lot of promises to Crusaders : namely, 200 000 silver marks, support them with all the ressources and men he would have, to pay for the Venetian fleet for a whole year, to give 10 000 men to Jerusalem, and to supply everything. I don't think it's necessary to point how it was a lot of pie-crust promises.
Once it appears that Alexios IV simply told us what they wanted to ear, and as they were already extremely suspicious of Greeks (for several reasons ranging from the Massacre of Latins, to being high on chivalric accounts of the Aeneid and Homer), it would turn as IOTL : if there's a justice, they wouldn't benefit from the favourables winds that allowed them to capture the city IOTL, and they'd recieve defeat for undergoing their half-assed, barely planned, expedition.
From what we know they didn't wanted to conquer Egypt as such or trade it against Jerusalem as it was tought during the Fifth Crusade, but advancing in a more fertile and less mountainous road than Turkey up to Palestine and make junction with the Kingdom of Jerusalem, crushing Ayyubid bases in Egypt along the way.
Now let's have the Crusade finding somehiw its way to Egypt and the shoddy plan reavealing itself in all its glory.The chances of al-Adil's Ayyubid Sultanate to suffer from a disorganized and not that impressive (numerically speaking) are reduced, to say the least. I'd expect something along the Fifth Crusade, but fizzling more or less quickly.
Not sure if that one is compatible with the others, however.
The main problem there is that, as discussed above, Ayyubid pressure would be still pretty much life-threatening for Latin States. Baldwin being leprosry-free would certainly help to withstand it more as IOTL, but you'd still have a really weakened yerosolemite kingdom, unable to really support Crusaders (the whole idea of Crusades being more to support the Latin States at least technically, that said).
1) I need to see PoDs involving Roussel De Bailleul. He sounds epic. Hell, the idea of a Normano-Turking Anatolian Highlands with a Roman lowlands is a picture of historical daftness on the lines of Thebes rise to dominance.
A failed First Crusade along the aformentioned lines could probably end up like this, IMO. How long would it last, tough...
But I admit the idea is intriguing.
2) I wonder if it would have been possible, if the 'Peoples Crusade' was a bit more, well, calm.
Ah. I should have insisted a bit more on its populist and visionary character, maybe.
While not millenarist stritcly speaking, the excitation of the "popular crusade" was certainly something : people painting or tatooing cross all over their bodies; preachers calling everyone including old men, women, childs, deafs, blinds to go; people litterally following geeses before someone told them it was better to follow the army; and generally evangelical calls to purity and cleansing.
Rather than "popular" (altough the word isn't illegit), we may consider it as "extra-institutional", "anti-establishment", or something akin to radical Anabatists were to Reformation.
I think that, in order to calm it, you'd need some serious series of injections. Or meteoric rain.
As much as it wasn't Alexios aim, if he chose to include this as part of his request to the Pope - a 'Pilgrims Path', for the Kings of Europe to benefit from - essentially a road for a Christian Hajj - through Germany, Austria, Hungary, and then Rhomanion.
Well, you already had pilgrims along the Danubian and Roman road IOTL : it's precisely the way that were used by Crusaders which were, after all, a king of armed pilgrims. It's how some lords actually knew the region, and why some could communicate with natives at first.
That said, yerosolemite pilgrimages never really involved big groups, but rather small ones led by guides and bishops, altough it was more regular with time : their importance was more issued from the news and tales they gave in their return.
It doesn't help, eventually, that with the rise of Italian maritime dominance in the XIth, the maritime road was eventually preferred to an unsafe crossing of Anatolia or Egypt.
The great pilgrimage of 1064, an armed pilgrimage coming from Germany, did passed trough Anatolia, but was harassed and extorqued so much that merely 2,000 reached Jerusalem, and eventually elected to return by sea.
You'd simply had no incitative or reason to have a maintained suppliment for pilgrims, and even if you had, its capacities would be over-stretched by the ten of thousands of the popular crusade (at best 15 000, probably more like 30,000. It was a logistical nightmare)
Now, Alexios could ask for anything, giving that Rome, and the lot of roman bishops in Europe, themselves condamned the popular crusade for its deeds without as much as a blip on the radar...
Simply said, Rome had no, absolutly none, control over these nobles, milites and poors Crusaders. (Rome already had trouble having an influence over the nobiliar Crusade)
It would require some significant knowledge of Latin Europe for Alexios furthermore, as he merely expected some armed groups, as Roussel de Bailleul or Varangian recruits, rather than the unmanagable hulking masses (not just once, but twice) that, according the Alexiad (rarely prone to undermine Alexis' prestige) "terrified him".
A minor point : Rhomaion to name the Byzantine Empire is kind of a false pedentism. It litterally means "of the Romans", and I suppose it evolved out of an edgy hyper-correction.
You may prefer Rhomania or Romania, or even Rhomais, giving these were actual historical names.