1204-1310

Continued from The First Crusades and a Constitution

The Fourth Crusade

Enrico Dandolo, who accepted the silly cap and umbrella of the dogeship in 1193, was 90 years old and blind. Legend has it he lost his sight in Constantinople, either in a street brawl or at the hands of the imperial torture-masters.

If he indeed held a personal grudge, he found his opportunity for revenge with the beginning of the Fourth Crusade. In 1201, an embassy under the great medieval chronicler Geoffroi de Villehardouin came to discuss the ferrying of crusaders in Venetian ships. The following spring, some 33,000 men were to be transported to the Holy Land, at the cost of about one and a third pounds of silver each.