The Fourth Crusade — The Wrong Ending

CHAPTER 8 · 1202–1204 · The Crusades, 1095–1291

The plan was Egypt — the target Richard had identified. But the crusade’s leaders, bargaining in Venice in 1201, ordered a fleet big enough for an army twice the size of the one that showed up, and could not pay for it. That debt handed the entire expedition to the doge, and from there the arrow bends. To work off what they owed, the crusaders agreed to storm Zara for Venice in 1202 — a Catholic Christian city — and were excommunicated for it. The first wrong turn made the next ones easier.

The turn: The pretender’s bargain, 1203.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.