WI: 4th Crusade Never Reaches Constantinople

Anaxagoras

Banned
Suppose, after the sacking of Zara in late 1202, the forces of the Fourth Crusade had broken up and returned home rather than made the decision to go to Constantinople to install Alexios IV on the Byzantine throne. This very nearly happened, as there was tremendous opposition to the move towards Constantinople within the Crusader ranks. Had the Crusade fallen apart in late 1202 or early 1203, what would have been the consequences?
 
Relativly limited for the larger part of western Christianity : probably less Byzantine/Hellenic material that were carried there, but on the other hand it could have been transmitted slowly but peacefully.

You won't have Sainte-Chapelle, but I think it would be the most noticeable consquence except for southern France and Venice.

Papacy may be less encline to call a crusade against Trencavel and Raimondins without the precedent of Constantinople, that made legit de facto (and it wasn't accepted easily) to fight other Christians.
That said, Cathars weren't considered as such and their protectors risked the same : it's just that the crusade may have been delayed and happening quite differently.

As the crusaders get excommunicated for having taken Zara, on other Christians, Simon de Monfort and his peers could try either to redeem themselves by going against Cathars, or being prevented doing so.

A situation comparable to IOTL is most probable, but depending on the PoD, could be more or less modified.

The Fourth Crusade being remembered as a failure both military (having taken a Catholic town of Adriatic) and ideologically (not even left Adriatic), would make the concept being really looked down, as well its participants.

Regarding Venice , its territorial takeover of most of Egea isn't going to happen as OTL. While it wouldn't butterfly away the republic's maritime dominance, it could delay its growing importance in Romania at the benefit of Genoa.
 
Alexius III Angelos remains Emperor in Constantinople and the coherence of the Empire continues to crumble. The Bulgarians advance in the Balkans and the Seljuks probably make gains in Minor Asia. He dies as IOTL in ~1211 and what happens next depends on the succession. Of course, he could be overthrown before he dies as IOTL he faced many rebellions and the diminishing state of the army and the state structures will do him no favours in a civil war. What is very likely is that the Laskarids won't become a ruling dynasty, unless and until they manage to get key positions in the army as Constantine Laskaris did.
 
Venice may very well go bankrupt, or at the very least suffer a huge blow to both finance and prestige (which is bound to lead to a vicious circle of loosing other vassals ala Zara, which again diminishes wealth and prestige etc etc). They had halted trading for an entire year, had a great deal of the population man a large number of newly constructed galleys etc. Places like Genoa and others are bound to smell blood in the water when it comes to Venitian holdings.

What happens to the ERE (and its balance of power with the Bulgarians and Turks) really depends on which emperor comes to power. What's certain though is that

1. Constantinople is going to remain a city of half a million people, with a cultural heritage going back to the days of Constantine and an intact and productive hinterland
2. Thanks to still having an intact capital, the ERE is going to remain a highly (by the standards of the time) centralized state
3. Latin occupation of most of the Aegean is severely delayed or even butterflied altogether
4. Turkish penetration into the Balkans (in the unlikely event that it even happens) will be both delayed and reduced


Also, from wiki:
The conquest of the empire by the Crusaders in 1204, and the subsequent division of the Byzantine territories affected the agrarian economy as it did other aspects of economic organization, and economic life. These territories split among small Greek and Latin states, lost much of the cohesion they may have had: the Byzantine state could not function as a unifying force, and, in the thirteenth century, there was very little to replace it.[83] The thirteenth century is the last period, during which one may speak of significant land clearance, that is, the act of bringing previously uncultivated land into cultivation. But the progressive impoverishment of the peasantry, entailed the decline of a certain aggregate demand, and resulted in a concentration of resources in the hands of large landowners, who must have had considerable surpluses.[84]
The demographic expansion came to an end in the course of the fourteenth century, during which a deterioration of the status of paroikoi, an erosion of the economic function of village by the role of the large estates, and a precipitous demographic decline in Macedonia is established by modern research.[85] The upper levels of the aristocracy lost their fortunes, and eventually there was a concentration of property on the hands of the larger, and more privileged monasteries, at least in Macedonia. The monasteries did not show great versatility or innovative spirit, and the rural economy had to wait, for its recovery, until the effects of epidemics had been reversed, security had been established, and communications restored: that is, until the firm establishment of the Ottomans in the Balkans.[84]
 
Venice may very well go bankrupt, or at the very least suffer a huge blow to both finance and prestige (which is bound to lead to a vicious circle of loosing other vassals ala Zara, which again diminishes wealth and prestige etc etc). They had halted trading for an entire year, had a great deal of the population man a large number of newly constructed galleys etc. Places like Genoa and others are bound to smell blood in the water when it comes to Venitian holdings.

What happens to the ERE (and its balance of power with the Bulgarians and Turks) really depends on which emperor comes to power. What's certain though is that

1. Constantinople is going to remain a city of half a million people, with a cultural heritage going back to the days of Constantine and an intact and productive hinterland
2. Thanks to still having an intact capital, the ERE is going to remain a highly (by the standards of the time) centralized state
3. Latin occupation of most of the Aegean is severely delayed or even butterflied altogether
4. Turkish penetration into the Balkans (in the unlikely event that it even happens) will be both delayed and reduced

Probably far smaller than 500K. Perhaps 200K at most by the end of the 12th C. Maybe as small as 100K. Still by far the largest city in Europe.

The political maneuverings of Boniface and Alexios IV Angelos seem to be the most critical area, which if butterflied, would probably have prevented an advance on Constantinople. Alexios had all but signed over the Empire if the the Crusade would march on Constantinople and topple the reigning emperor in his favor.

Another critical moment was the massacre of all "Latins" in Constantinople in 1182 which earned tremendous hatred of the Empire in parts of the West ---especially Venice. Butterfly this event by channeling resentment in the Empire of Venetian and Genoan trading privileges in the Empire, to something less draconian than complete massacre, and you remove a strong motivation for revenge. As it was, this event precipitated plans by the Normans of Sicily, Barbarossa and Henry VI at various times to attack the City even earlier than the IV Crusade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
 
Without the 4th Crusade, Byzantium would almost certainly survive, as neither the Turks nor the Bulgarians have the power reserves and the constancy of power necessary to defeat it. Alexios III may have been a rather incompetent ruler, but in Theodore Laskaris he had a more than capable successor. The major problem are the various separatist tendencies that proliferated in the two decades before 1204, with men like Leo Sgouros or the Gabalades in Rhodes. Waiting until the time Alexios III died in OTL, it might indeed be too late.
 
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