The Crusades were religiously motivated wars in the name of Christianity. The intent of the Fourth Crusade was to conquer Jerusalem from the Muslims. As anyone can see, Jerusalem has been a religiously contested land, fought over for almost a thousand years. The Crusaders were meant to go through Egypt and into Israel, but alas man plans and God laughs.
On this day, April 12th, in 1202, Constantinople is sacked by the Fourth Crusade. One of the most famous Christian conversions in all of history was Constantine and his entire city of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which begs to question, if Constantinople was already controlled by Christians, for what reason did the Forth Crusade have to sack the city?
The Crusaders were supposed to be transported by a massive Venetian fleet to Egypt, but alas there was no money. Instead, Constantinople was chosen. In 1064, there had been a division in Catholicism known as the Great Schism; this separated the church into Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox. The Venetians, who were Catholic, desired for Easter Orthodox Constantinople to fall. The Crusaders’ rationalization was that they would conquer the city and return the control to the real Christianity, to Rome.