WHAT HAPPENED AFTER
No Roman ever imagined this could have happened to one of their emperors. There were conflicting reports about what happened to the body of Valens. Some said he was burned alive. In any event, the body was never found, a humbling end for any man, let alone the leader of a superempire. The Romans found themselves suffering their worst defeat since Cannae at the hands of the Carthaginians seven hundred years earlier. The legacy of sacrificing everything to victory, established over the centuries by Roman leaders such as the general who had died spurring on his legions to victory in the climactic battle of the third Samnite War in 291 BC, which solidified Roman control over central Italy and put the Romans firmly on the path to empire, had vanished. And to the Goths no less.
Valens’s successor, Theodosius, a general appointed by Gratian as the new eastern emperor, gamely attacked the Goths but wasn’t able to defeat them. He was forced to make peace with them on their terms: they had pierced the empire and were there to stay. The Roman Empire was on its last legs — the defeat at Adrianople was overwhelming; the empire was mortally wounded. In 410 Rome was sacked by the Gothic king Alaric, who had been a boy among the refugees crossing the Danube back in 376.
By the end of the fifth century the empire was no more. Valens was committed to the black hole of history, on equal footing with the many others who had succumbed to Roman power. Such are the rewards of mercy when trying to run a superempire.
TWO.
THE FOURTH CRUSADE: 1198
Great debt, like great faith, or heat shimmering on desert sands, can distort reality. Debt can take hold of a person’s mind, twisting logic and converting no into yes, wrong into right.
At the dawn of the thirteenth century, religious fervor once again swept through the Christian population of Europe. Rallied by the pope and French nobles, crusaders set out for the fourth time in a century to capture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Islamic infidels. Off they marched with the purest of intentions, untainted by the necessity of killing Muslims to achieve their holy goal.
This time out, however, the road to eternal salvation de-toured through Venice. The crusaders, eager to avoid the dusty overland route through Constantinople, hired a navy from the Venetians to sail them to the Holy Land. The emerging maritime power was controlled by the doge, a wily, money-loving, deal-making ruler, who had been elected for life by the aristocracy of the city. The doge’s sole mission in life was to enrich his beloved city-state. But the crusader army, lacking in gold-laden recruits from the finest families in Europe, quickly piled up a massive debt that the doge refused to forgive — not even for the greater glory of recapturing Jerusalem. His solution for relieving the crusaders of their unfortunate financial burden was to make a series of deals in which the crusaders first attacked a Christian city and then went on to sack, rape, and pillage the biggest, richest, most Christian city in Europe: Constantinople. The doge received his payment in full, but the holy warriors never set foot in the Holy Land.
THE PLAYERS
Prince Alexius — a footloose, wandering prince, the son of the deposed Byzantine emperor, bounced around Europe looking for a spare army to put him atop the throne of the Byzantines.
Skinny — Young and naïve, he nonetheless managed to get himself in the right place at the right time to convince an entire army of desperate crusaders to do his bidding.
Props — Escaped the dungeon that his uncle threw him into, then traipsed around Europe to plead his case for a return to Constantinople.
Pros — Never reneged on his promises, until he did.
Cons — Described by a contemporary as womanish and witless.
Doge Enrico Dandolo — leader of Venice who wasn’t afraid of sacking and pillaging to recover his debts.
Skinny — To spread his own influence he ordered that Venetian coins bear his face on one side and on the other a likeness of the second most important person in his world, Jesus.
Props — Kept his focus on one thing, a successful crusade. Maybe two things… making money for Venice.
Pros — Was over ninety years old and blind but still rode into battle to lead the Fourth Crusade.
Cons — Led them everywhere but their destination.
THE GENERAL SITUATION
Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem! The small city has the fortune — or is it the misfortune — of being situated at the heart of three major religions. The Jews housed the Temple of Solomon and the Ten Commandments there. Then it became the site of Jesus’s Crucifixion. And a few centuries later it was the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven.
Being wanted by three groups of people has turned the city into a battleground for much of its history. Fueled with religious fervor following Muhammad’s death in AD 632, Arab armies thundered out of the Arabian Peninsula and captured large swaths of the known world, including Jerusalem. Over the next few hundred years they controlled the Holy City while freely allowing European Christians to make pilgrimages to the cherished site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Jews had been scattered by the Romans, and the few left in town apparently posed no threat to anyone or anything.
This peaceful coexistence was shattered in the eleventh century when Turks from Central Asia stormed into the Middle East and grabbed large chunks of territory from the reeling Byzantine Empire (made up of the remnants of the eastern part of the Roman Empire). The Byzantines were based in the glorious city of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), which served as a barrier between the Arabs in the Middle East and the Western Europeans, thus allowing the Europeans to focus much of their medieval energy on killing one another.
The Turks also conquered Jerusalem from the Arabs in 1071. Instead of continuing the Arab policy of allowing the Christians free passage, the Turks ambushed the travelers, throwing them into slavery. The Christians had lost access to their beloved Jerusalem. The Turks had blundered onto the third rail of the nascent international monotheistic scrum over the city.
Tapping into this anger in 1095, an angry Pope Urban II declared that the Christian world must capture Jerusalem, thus creating the First Crusade. The pope declared the Crusade was not only necessary but actually requested by God. He coined a catchy slogan for the venture, “God Wills It,” and even came up with a logo, a cross sewn onto the shoulders of the crusaders’ clothes. To motivate his troops the pope offered every crusader absolution of their sins, in essence a go-di-rectly-to-heaven ticket upon death. In the Middle Ages, where vast realms of knowledge remained untouched by the geniuses of the age and the average human’s life was a constant dodging of an apparently vengeful God, this was a Big One. Eternal happiness, as in forever, was like money in the bank.
In 1097 the crusaders set out, an army of knights on horseback, soldiers on foot, and a vast train of workers to schlep heavy items for thousands of miles. Despite hunger, thirst, disease, and a six-week siege, it worked. Jerusalem fell on July 15, 1099. To celebrate the conquest of the land of the King of Peace, the conquerors raped and killed everyone left alive in the city. Mission accomplished.
The crusaders divided their conquered territory into four regions, fought like caged animals over who would control them, and waged a never-ending series of wars against the Muslims. The crusaders were bolstered by a steady flow of Christians looking for new opportunities and European royals seeking fortune and adventure away from their already royalty-saturated homelands. A Second Crusade poured in yet more troops. Despite a persistent manpower shortage, the Christians hung on to Jerusalem, the jewel of the Holy Land, ruled over by kings, including some children and even a leper or two. It wasn’t enough. Various Islamic peoples united under a fearless leader, Saladin, a great Christian killer. His victories culminated in 1187 with the capture of Jerusalem. Mission unaccomplished. A Third Crusade led by the king of England, Richard the Lionhearted, tangled with Saladin but came up short. Richard returned home to vent his frustration on the more beatable French.