On November 10, 1202, despite letters from Pope Innocent III (a much more popular pope than Guilty III) forbidding it and threatening excommunication, Catholic crusaders on the Fourth Crusade began a siege of the Catholic city of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia).
Digging Deeper
Whereas the First Crusade successfully restored Jerusalem to Christian rule and laid the basis for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, subsequent crusades were far less productive for the crusaders. Jerusalem was lost after the failed Second Crusade. Nor would it be regained during the Third Crusade, even with the participation of Europe’s three most powerful (and badass nicknamed!) monarchs: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (“red beard”), French King Philip Augustus “the God-given”, and English King Richard “the Lionheart”.
The Fourth Crusade occurred over 100 years after the First Crusade and by then times had changed considerably. At least the first three crusades went for the Holy Land and were about undoing the wrong (as perceived by Christians) done in 637 when Muslims captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. The Fourth Crusade, by contrast ultimately did not even go to the Holy Land, but instead resulted in the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the partition of the remnants of the Byzantine Empire among the leading crusaders.
