Enrico Dandolo
Doge of Venice who contracted to carry the Fourth Crusade, took the cross himself though old and blind, and led the Venetians in the capture of Zara and of Constantinople, where he died in 1205.
Dandolo was doge of Venice when the French crusaders came to hire a fleet, and he set the terms: a fixed price for transport and, for fifty Venetian galleys, half of whatever was conquered (Villehardouin, Conquest of Constantinople pp. 6–7). When the army could not pay, he proposed the attack on Zara, and then took the cross himself in St Mark’s. Villehardouin, who was there, calls him an old man who “saw naught”, having lost his sight through a wound in the head (Villehardouin, Conquest of Constantinople pp. 16–17).
He sailed with the fleet to Constantinople. The twelve electors who chose Baldwin of Flanders as emperor after the city fell met in the palace where he was lodged (Villehardouin, Conquest of Constantinople pp. 67–68). He died there in 1205, before Pentecost, and was buried in Hagia Sophia (Villehardouin, Conquest of Constantinople p. 102). See the Fourth Crusade Sacks Constantinople.
In the timeline
- April 1204, firm dateThe Fourth Crusade Sacks Constantinople
A crusading army, carried by a Venetian fleet it cannot pay for, turns on Constantinople, storms it and plunders its churches. Pope Innocent III condemns the sack, but a Latin emperor is installed and the conquest stands.