Fragmentation of the Byzantine Empire by 1203
Vložit
- čas přidán 27. 05. 2024
- This video should gives an overview of the dire situation the empire was in before the Fourth Crusade ever arrived in Constantinople. The Eastern Roman Empire was in a state of unrelenting decline and was breaking apart by the time the Fourth Crusade arrived at Constantinople in 1203. Foreign conquest and break away states were often a result of the total failure of the imperial government to deal with the issues the provinces had, be they abuses by local magnates or foreign incursions. Many local magnets started to rule in their own right to deal with the issues that the Angeloi dynasty did not.
Special thanks to Mr Gene Lee for producing the map 'Fragmentation of the Empire by 1203'.
Primary Sources:
Niketas Choniates, O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates, Translated by H. J. Magoulias, (1984).
Shaw, M. R. B. (1963) Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, Penguin.
Robert of Clari, Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade, in: Three Old French Chronicles of the Crusade, Translated by Edward N. Stone (1939).
Gunther of Pairis, The Capture of Constantinople: The Historia Constantinopolitana of Gunther of
Pairis, edited and Translated by Alfred, J. Andrea, (1997).
Scholarship
Angold, M. (1997) The Byzantine Empire, 1025-1204 A Political History - Second Edition, Edinburgh.
Brand, C. M. (1968) Byzantium Confronts the West 1180-1204, Harvard.
Treadgold, W. (1997) A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford.
Email
easternromanhistory@gmail.com
Discord
/ discord
If you would like to support Eastern Roman History, I have a Patreon:
/ easternromanhistory
Music Credit:
'Emnity' and 'Rivers' by Ed Lima and Steve Maitland from Empire Earth by Stainless Steel Studios.
'Ambient Themes' by Jason Graves from Rise and Fall: Civilisations at War by Stainless Steel Studios and Midway Games.
'Vendetta' and 'Notice of Death' by Masaharu Iwata and Hitoshi Sakimoto from Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together by Quest and Suare Enix.
'The Capture' by Steven Rippy from Age of Empires by Ensemble Studios.
All images used are for educational purposes, if I have used a piece of art and you would like me to credit you, please contact me and I shall do so.
The Fourth crusade simply was a train that derailed at every turn.
They were Europe's first hooligans.
@@eduardogutierrez4698Not the first, but a big group of them.
If Manuel Komnenos could watch what happened from the grave, he would have probably died all over again seeing how quickly the empire unraveled after his death.
Manuel - *Rolling over in his grave repeatedly*
Alexander of Makedon - "Looks like it's his first time"
I guess all this rebellions and chaos is one of the reasons "byzantine" as a word has survived as meaning unmanagable/extremely complex chaos.
So basically, even if the 4th crusade was repulsed, they may have fragmented anyways? Or the Laskarids would have to pull an Aurelian to keep it together
Correct, minus the hypothetical scenario. During Isaak IIs reign there would be several attempted usurpers. It also follows the rebellions of the Serbians and Bulgarians. Only a good emporer like Manual couldve kept it together, hence why the empire rapidly fell apart after his death. It's more of a testament of the first Komnenian emporers' skill than the desperate situation the empire was really in.
@@trevorcontreras7617 "minus the hypothetical scenario"
If you knew how many capable emperors would have taken the throne (speciall during the reign of the Angeloi), you know that this hypothesis is more than true.
Well it's the Roman Empire this happened multiple times every since it's foundation. Although Andronikos and Angeloi ultimately was dooming it.
If only they had another Aurelian...
If they had another Aurelian he would have been betrayed anyway. At that time anyone from a general to a family member could try to revolt against you.
I have a crusades exam soon, and one topic they love to catch students out on is the Byzantines... Thanks for these.
If you have any questions you would to ask me, please do and I will try and answer them as best I can. Good luck.
@@EasternRomanHistory Hmm... May I ask (not sure if you have answered this elsewhere) whether you think the decline of the Byzantines/in their relations with Outremer, meant that after Hattin in 1187, most of Outremer would fall, or whether the loss of support from the west after the second crusade was more important for the fall of Jerusalem. Some views i have seen say the Byzantines were vital, others seem to not look at the Byzantine role much. Thanks for these videos, very interesting. Will certainly continue to watch after my exams!
@@trn0m961 As far as I am aware the Byzantines were manily invovled with the Kingdom of Jerusalem with Manuel I. The fall of outremer seems more to do with the aweful decision and leadership of Guy de :Lusignon and the battle of Hattin which lost most of the kingdom. One must remember that after Manuel the Byzantine had little to do with the Crusader states in the 13th century. The west continued to aid outremer with , third crusade, which recovered the coast. the failure of the fourth, fifth and seventh cruasde in not destroying egpyt meant the crusaders were always outnumbered and after Hattin could never permanently move inland again. Hope that helps.
@@trn0m961 what country are you from
@@EasternRomanHistory IMO, should the Emperor, his Royal Family, the Nobles (and eventually the people) embrace Catholicism and make a treaty together with the Crusaders to fight the turks/arabs, Constantinople would have stayed till WWI and probably longer. Unfortunately, the Eastern Orthodox Church always favored to deal with the arabs/islam rather than the Pope/Catholic kingdoms of Europe.
Very good video , appreciate the frequent use of maps to contextualize the given information
No problem, if everyone is confused about where you are talking about they are hardly going to be invested in the what.
TBH, Eastern Rome fascinates me more. Perhaps it deserves more limelight..
It was a thousand year decline with a century or two of strong recovery but even in decline, the Romans were the center of their world.
This is like Game of Thrones but shit actually happened!
Great video. Saddening. Yes. Infuriating. Yes.
Great video.
Thank you very much.
Oh, I should have put Trebizond in there that was important, now that I know the video, I think I could have done more with the map.
If you like to make an updated version then I shall use that one from now on if you wish.
Nah, what I had in mind are just minor fixes, nothing drastic not worth a complete upload
Alexios iii taking out his brother really ruined it for the Romans. Once Bulgeria was in line Isaac II could have focused on each rebel one at a time until order was restored. Croatia and Serbia would have been lost but more could have been kept and there would be no reason for the fourth crusade to go to Constantinople.
I would agree. Considering that Isaac II basically had the Vlachs beaten by the time he was deposed he may well have been able to keep things on an even keel. he was not a great emperor and certainly had his blunders but some leadership was better than the lack there of that Alexios III provided. However, wheather Isaac would have been able to deal with the persisting internal issues that were taking place (he may very well have been deposed by someone else anyway. The coup of John the Fat is a good example,) but like Constantine IX or Andronikos II, even with their poor decisions and lack-lustre leadership the empire still survived their reigns and was, able to recover.
Wonder what would have happened in an alternate reality where Alexios Branas succeeded in overthrowing Isaac. He was a capable general, though who knows how well he would have governed.
Little surprise the Latins found it relatively easy to prevail in the Southern Balkans and Greece once Constantinople fell, considering the loss of faith in the clearly incompetent central administration. The Empire's worse enemy from the beginning to it's end always tended to be it's self.
If i did a top 10 enemies of Byzantium, themselves would probably be number 1
@@EasternRomanHistory That's actually an excellent idea for a video. 👍🏻 You'll have no shortage of enemies to choose from.
So basically because the government couldnt support or would not support areas outside of Constantinople because of internal strife led to the downfall.
That among many other reasons. Politicing court factions, a repacious administration, fiscal dislocation, military failure, poor foreign policy decisions and a strong of short lived or useless emperors for twenty years strait also had a hand in it.
Pata Pata Pata Pon
@@EasternRomanHistory Sounds like the US in 2021.
@@EasternRomanHistory you think this all goes back to the original Roman Empire Dynasty? The fact that they never really made the succession cast in stone? I mean every other Dynasty would have Civil Wars and such, but Rome just had so many claimants, and it spread to the Byzantine era, and made all sorts of people feel like they all had a shot to be Emperor, which really just degraded the power base,. But it was very shocking, they didn't unite and start to build power once they saw the true rise of the Ottomans. Is there a lack of information about how the Ottomans treated captured non-muslims? That their own kids were being slaves? That the Ottomans had a very real shot of conquering not only constantinople, but other parts of europe? Or was it just pure greed? Or was it a mixture of greed, and people who had a sort of misunderstanding of the values and thoughts of their opponents? Or could it have also have been that they underestimated the ottomans? Or overestimated themselves? Or was it sort of similar to Modern west, where we think everyone else thinks like we do, and that even if we weaken our own military, that everyone else won't hop on the opportunity to conquer the west in a blink of an eye... for either revenge or personal gain? A sort of you see yourself above everyone else and cannot see the danger on the horizon?
@@claudeyaz legislating dynastic rules sounds good.............on paper!
As the empires expanded, revolts multiplied, necessitating the presence of a centralized authority, the emperor.
Who has to respect these rules? Maybe for PR or good post-hoc treatment by historians, but they certainly don't guarantee a political advantage from the get-go. Sometimes it is better if a rebel overthrows a dynasty that has turned corrupt.
Without anybody observing these rules, it's just disposable ink and besides it is human nature to perpetuate one's own lineage. Emperors like Hadrian and Trajan were childless, hence they didn't have any dynastic ambitions for posterity but had to carefully pick the best one they could find, which was harder than it seemed.
Instead of imposing universal rules of succession, the power of the aristocracy (civil and military) should be moderated.
This video explains why no imperial armies marched to aid Constantinople when it was under siege from the Fourth Crusade.
Thank for your great content, seems like I've found my favourite channel
Press F for Constantinople.
I sincerely thank you for your unbasied (if that's even possible), and objective recounting of these most unfortunate events.
For some reason it's extremely rare to come across material that explains all the facts and possible reasons that led to the deviation of the fourth crusade, and even harder to come across materials that doesn't systematically portray the roman byzantines as helpless victims.
More often than not the sack of Constantinople is portrayed as almost happening in a vacuum, for the sole reason it was on the way of the crusaders, letting out crucial facts as to why such a powerful city could fall so easily into the grasp of a disbanded crusading force...
Thank you. While the event itself was tragic and a disaster for the Byzantine Empire, both sides were to blame for the disintegration of the circumstances and one could seriously doubt whether such a thing would have happened had it taken place under Manuel I.
The shock of the event has reverberated through history as a betrayal of the Orthodox east by the Catholic west.
My job is not to just bleat out legendarium but to examine the sources and present an objective analysis of the events as they occurred.
Finnally the truth about the 4th Crusade. Thanks for debunking the myths and lies :) This was a very educative video.
Its less the truth about the forth crusade (except the first bit) and more what was happening in Constantinople in the meantime.
@@EasternRomanHistory Sorry, it was a bad way to convey what I ment by it: a lot of people say that if the4th Crusade didn't happen like it did the Byzantines would still exist. While that probably wouldn't be the case.
Why does this have 2802 views? Why not 28020? Better yet, 2,802,000?
@Emperor Basil the Bulgar Slayer 29,500,000. Empire's population in 541. hehe
5:59 they did not reach the coastline before 1203.
How did the Latins end up with Macedonia and western Thrace if they didnt claim it in the original partition?
Well the partition was what was to be handed out almost immediately after the sack happened. It must be remembered that most of these areas in the partition was not controlled by the Latins anyway. The King of Thessalonika and Emperor of Constantinople moved out and conquered it basically.
@@EasternRomanHistory oh ok that makes sense. Kind of seems like they should of known creating a bunch of duchies and rump king titles would condemn the area to consistent war and make the less likely to be able to defend themselves against the remaining Roman states. I would think the Venetians would see this potential instability as a direct threat to their trade empire.
It's not Leo Kamerateos in the map, but Leo Chamaretos
You used the soundtrack from Tactics Ogre for PS1😜
Tactics Ogre soundtrack?
What's the bibliography for this one? I kinda want it, because sometimes writing the names I hear is a bit difficult.
Only dude I've read was Warren Treadgold.
Glad you liked it. For this video I used:
Niketas Choniates' History.
Geoffrey Villehardouin's The Conquest of Constantinople
Robert De Clari's The Conquest of Constantinople.
Michael Angold's The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204 (second edition).
Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society.
Charles Brand's Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180-1204 (by far the most detailed book)
Jonaphan Harris' Byzantium and the Crusades
I hope that helps.
@@EasternRomanHistory Robert De Clari's stuff has been great so far!
Even if it's a bit more pro-Latin than I'd like, lel. But given who's writing...
@@EasternRomanHistory You mentioned something by a Judith Herr.. something?
@@widowmaker4976 Professor Judith Herrin, from her 'Realities of Byzantine Provincial Government: Hellas and Peloponnesos, 1180-1205.'
@@widowmaker4976
Robert de Clari was a simple soldier without any idea about politics. He describes events without knowing the political causes but reveals numerous precious details an historian would not even have mentioned. He describes the holy sudarium exposed on Fridays in a little church , with candel light behind the shroud ,magnifying the figure of the Christ. He also indicates that the İcon of the Holy Mother of God the Emperors took with them when they commanded a military expedition was given to the french abbey of Citeaux.This icon emperor Basileios İİ hold with his left hand was the cause of the cardiac arrest of Bardas Phokas ,an ennemy of Basileios he attacked in a single duel : as Bardas saw the Holy İcon he fell from horse, fulgurated from the remorse of having tried to kill the Emperor who stood under the Protection of Mary .
Is here where man come to cry?
Eastern Roman History, do you consider Constantine Laskaris as an emperor? Or do you think it was Yhoeodre I the emperor or sumply no one untill 1205?
I do not consider Constantine Laskaris an emperor. He was offered the throne but flatly refused the honour he was never crowned or recognised any tangible way other than he led the final resistance in Constantinople in 1204. The issue was also never brought up again and accepted Theodore as emperor instead. Technically, Alexios III was still emperor until 1211 with the battle of Antioch on the Meander. Although once Theodore had become emperor in 1205 most people saw him as the rightful emperor.
@@EasternRomanHistory Thank you for your answer, i do have another quesiton, a bit unrealted thought, but i do wonder, was Romanos II a "Porphyrogenetos"?
4:16 Partitio Romaniae 1204
The Partitio Romaniae was the plan of the Crusaders to divide the empire between them.
Everything would have been great if they just kept the komnenoi on the throne
After watching this I’m surprised the Byzantines didn’t fall sooner.
It helps give context to why the Fourth Crusade, which was quite depleted from desertions by the time they arrived, was able to both capture Constantinople and then conquer most of Greece and Bithynia.
wow. i mean WOW! it's not like similar stuff did not happen before. but this time, powerful enemies were there to capitalize. still... other than Isaac II Angelos( who did show some promise)... the rest of the family were total tools. why did Alexios III usurp the throne at THAT moment, before Isaac could hopefully defeat the bulgarians? looks to me that many wanted the title and robes of the emperor, but did not show any capability to do the emperor's job. because if they thought that job was to indulge oneself in everything and let others do the work... nope. historically... not many such emperors lived for very long.
The sack of Constantinople was basically the original Greek debt crisis but with far, far worse results
2.35 video time/nothing in history is chance/all is under divine control
Then how come the Ottomans built a very successful empire by adopting Byzantine bureaucracy which wasn't working greatly for the Byzantines themselves.
It is less a case of the administration being weak and more the weakness of the people in charge. For Alexios III corruption was rampant and condoned poor behaviour. Even an effective administrator like Niketas Choniates was powerless to save the empire when he was put in charge. Once the weak and untrustworthy emperor and his sycophants had been expelled and the highly competent and attentive Theodore I rose to power, the Nicaean Empire was a well run and expansionist state that managed to rebuild the empire from the threshold of destruction. Even the Ottoman system that had led them to greatness in the late middle Ages had become so moribund that it was reformed at the end of the eighteenth century restoring the Ottoman Empire somewhat.
@@EasternRomanHistory glad it somewhat answers my question. Any kingdom/empire that's able to continue a legacy for a thousand year inspite of a large unstable borders is quite admirable.
If isacc stood in power the damage would have not reach this point if nicea othertrhow him after 4 crusade the empire my had a good chance to stay ok
Wow talk about when the shit hits the fan.
It really just all went to shit after Manuel...
I enjoy your videos and i love your work but i dont belive the Byzantine Empire would have been fragmented more then what thr franks and venetians did,after the latin occupation the Empire could not wake up anymore from decline....
The video demonstrates that the end had already come for Eastern Rome. Provincialization also killed Western Rome.
Andronikos Komnenos alas if only you died earlier that old man was a disaster. Yes it is true the regency for Alexius II was not so popular but seriously Andronikos was too old he should have retired and chilled in Paphaloginia or Antioch or Georgia what not and maybe continue going on crazy adventures in the mideast then bother to return to Constantinople, but no he had to come back had to take over had to piss off the west had to alienate everybody had to go senile and ultimately lose everything. For all their faults, the Angelii were a symptom of the underlying problem and that problem was that the Komnenian system was ultimately only a bandage on a gaping wound, and Manuel should have done something about it rather than continue Alexius Komnenos and to a lesser extent John Komnenos policies of giving out land to powerful landholders and tying everything to family/clan ties. Thus the true cause for the collapse of Byzantium was Manuel Komnenos, his wasteful spending, idiotic adventures to Italy, crazy invasion of Egypt when he should have focused on the turks even if he did lose at Myriokephlon given later on the byzanriens won anyway and tried to restablish the old institions that for all their problems worked, but unfortunately he was an megalomaniac who squandered the surplus left to him by John Komnenos. Dont get me wrong his dealings with Hungary were brilliant and his humbling of the crusader states too was good, but unfortunately he should have directed his energies instead at regaining Anatolia and stabilizing the empire. Yes the angelii get a lot of hate deservedly so, but that doesnt mean Manuel's mistakes should be overlooked.
P
Could see this happening in the US with the ridiculous politicking in DC. Its disgusting. Wheres our help?