In 1198, the Fourth Crusade began with difficulties. By then, the main beneficiary was the Republic of Venice which charged a lot of money for the transportation of the troops to the East. The “Serenissima” took advantage of the circumstances too to demand the crusaders to attack the Cross of Zara, a city in the coasts of Dalmatia they wanted to recover from the King of Hungary. For the first time, the crusaders fought against other Christians. Young Alexis Ange, aspirant to the throne of Constantinople, recruited the crusaders to fight his own war by promising them he would join the Eastern Church and the Latin Church and that soldiers “would be paid with the booty.” Once it was taken in 1203, Constantinople rebelled against and expelled the Latin knights in three months. The dux Dandolo and the most important western barons decided to share out the Byzantine Empire and besieged the city which fell on April 13, 1204. For three days, massacres and plundering were so shocking that even the barons themselves were moved. The Count of Flanders, Baldwin, was named emperor of a plundered city which never recovered from the massacre and would be finally taken by the Turkish in 1453.
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