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Synopsis
How the spirit from which the crusades originated had
changed in the course of little over a century, became sadly apparent when Innocent III. preached the fourth crusade
(1203). A number of the most distinguished noblemen- Thibaut of Champagne,
Simon of Montfort, Baldwin of Flanders, etc. - assembled at Venice with about
twenty thousand combatants. But Venice demanded eighty-five thousand marks
silver for the transfer of the crusaders to the Holy Land; and, as they were
unable to pay this sum in cash, they went first to Dalmatia, where they
conquered Zare for Venice, and then to Constantinople, which they also
conquered (April 12, 1201), and where they established a Latin Empire under
Baldwin of Flanders. To the Holy Land they never went. The Pope felt shocked,
and summoned a new crusade. He was answered by the children. In France arose a movement in 1212 which
even the government was not able to suppress. Thousands of children, boys and
girls, often of the tenderest age, took the cross, and rushed in feverish
enthusiasm towards the Holy Land. Some swarms reached Italy; and there they
melted away, by hunger and disease, in the waves, and in the slave-mar-kets.
Two regular armies were organized in 1217 by Andrew II. of Hungary, and Count
William of Holland. But, Andrew having left the enterprise with the best part
of his troops, the rest of the armies went, not to the Holy Land, but on a
robber-expedition to Egypt, where most of them perished in the Nile floods.
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Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 1. Toronto, New York & London: Funk &
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