ABSTRACT
At the close of the twelfth century Christianity seemed to be on the back foot. Neither the Third Crusade nor the German Crusade of 1196-97 had managed to reclaim Jerusalem while the Christian kings of Spain had been thrashed at the Battle of Alarcos in central-southern Iberia. Simon de Montfort, a noble from the Ile de France, was one to join the crusade at Ecry and within a couple of months Count Baldwin of Flanders also committed himself to the expedition. The nucleus of the Fourth Crusade came from the nobility of northern France. The Prince Alexios had exploited over a century of tension between Byzantines and crusaders to nurture the notion that the prince and his Western allies planned to enslave the Greeks and subjugate them to the pope. The Greeks were furious and all westerners living in Constantinople, including several thousand traders, had to flee to the crusaders' camp over the Golden Horn at Galata.
