Today's Lesson in World History: Greeks and Latins fight like a bunch of little girls.

Yeah.  I'm reading about the Crusades, in preparation to write a paper.  This is one of the reasons I really like history.  It reveals the little girl slap fights of the Great Emperors of the past.

Let me tell you what I mean.

So, our great emperor's name is Alexios.  He was the ruler of all the Byzantine empire.  To keep things simple, we'll just refer to the Byzantines as Greeks.

The other players are the French, English, Germans, Italians and Imperial Papacy.  To keep all of that simple, we'll just call them the Latins. 

The third group, which is really inconsequential to the current story, other than to set the scene for it, consists of Muslim warriors who had control of the Holy Land, and were the "evil" force the Christians set out to conquer in the Crusades.  We'll refer to them as Turks.

The beginning of the Crusades goes something like this.  The Greeks controlled all of Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, Syria, and a bunch of islands and stuff.  They were big and powerful.  Then the Turks showed up and started conquering their land.  Alexios was a general in the Greek army, watching the Byzantine empire crumble.  So, he took over the throne, established himself as emperor, and set to getting things back to their former glory.  As part of this, he asked the Latins for mercenaries, because asking the Turks for mercenaries hadn't turned out so well.

That was a mistake.

See, the Latins had issues.  First of all, they were extremely busy fighting each other, and the pope was looking for an outlet for their anger.  Second of all, well... the Greeks were stinking rich.  Constantinople was the single wealthiest city in the world (China doesn't count as this world, because the Western world didn't know about all it had to offer, and as we all know, if the Western world doesn't know about it, it must not exist).  Being rich means you have lots of enemies, because everybody wants to beat you up and take your stuff.  Now, technically speaking, the Latins and the Greeks were "allies" because they were both Christian.  But, after getting in a lover's spat over a technicality in the definition of the Godhead, the Greek Patriarch and the Latin Pope resolved all their differences by excommunicating each other.

Pope: "As we all know, the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and the Son."

Patriarch:  "Well, yes, almost.  There's one small word I'd like to correct in that sentence.  The Holy Spirit comes from the Father through the Son."

Pope: "Why, my dear friend, I believe you have misunderstood the doctrine.  It is, clearly, and the Son."

Patriarch: "No, I'm quite sure it is through the Son.  Perhaps you just misread it."

Pope: "According to my Vulgate, it is and the Son."

Patriarch: "Well, my Greek Vulgate, which came before your Latin Vulgate, has it through the son."

Pope: "Well, your Greek Vulgate is wrong."

Patriarch: "No, it's not.  It came first.  It's right.  You're wrong."

Pope: "Nuh uh.  You're wrong."

Patriarch: "Your mom is wrong."

Pope: *Gasp!*  "How dare you!"

Patriarch:  "No, how dare you!"

Pope: "No, you!"

Patriarch: "You!"

Pope: "Youyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyou-"

Patriarch: "YOU INFINITY!  I WIN!"

Pope: "Fine!  I excommunicate you!"

Patriarch: "You can't do that!  I excommunicate you!"

Pope: "I excommunicated you before you excommunicated me!"

And so on.

Now, returning to the story of the Crusades.

So, Emperor Alexios of the Greeks asks the Latins for mercenaries.  The Latins think, "Oh boy!  Now we can reunite our schismed churches and establish the Pope as the true ruler of all of Christendom, as it should be.  And, if we just happen to accidentally take over Constantinople while we're at it, then the Greeks would all be better off anyway, right?"

So, the Pope goes around collecting soldiers by telling people the Holy Sepulcher has been desecrated by the Infidel, and the Lord needs soldiers to fight for His cause, so anybody who goes on an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem will earn forgiveness from all their sins.  Oh, and the meeting place for this "pilgrimage" is Constantinople, where the gracious Emperor Alexius has kindly offered them passage across the strait.

So much for mercenaries to help Greece get their empire back.

But, Alexios is a little smarter than that.  When the Latins start arriving, he makes them swear an oath of fealty, meaning anything they take over becomes his property, and he'll protect them in their time of need.  Now, this oath ends up being a fiasco, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.  Right now we're still at the point where the Latins start showing up.

So, this momentous event was recorded by two people whom we are consulting today:  Anna Komnene, daughter of Emperor Alexios, and William of Tyre.  These are the two accounts I am studying in preparation for my paper, giving me both sides of this story.  Anna was Greek, Willie T was Latin. 

Begin slap fight #2.

Anna: "My noble father was sitting on his noble throne, listening to his noble people and their noble issues.  He was quite noble."

Willie T: "There was never a more treacherous people than the Greeks, and none so much as the evil Alexius Comnenas."

Anna: "That's spelled Alexios Komnenos, you retard."

Willie T: "Oh, go unwad your panties, princess."

Anna: "When the barbarians came in their hordes, hoping to take Constantinople for themselves, my father was wise.  He persuaded the Counts to swear an oath of fealty unto him.  But, when the Count Godfrey came, he had heard a false rumor that my father had shut several Counts up in prison."

Willie T: "When the Counts came to Greece, believing themselves to be safe among fellow Christians, they were betrayed, captured by a Duke, and delivered up to the emperor, so that he might do with them as he pleased.  He shut them up in prison, deprived them of food and water, and forced them to do the macarena from sun up until sun down!  Never had such noble men known such shame!  And at the hands of one professing the Christian faith!  The brave, valiant, heroic, noble, charitable, just, faithful, gracious, wonderful Count Godfrey (who also had a great tan) sent a letter to the emperor, demanding the release of these prisoners."

Anna: "The Latins overreacted."

Willie T: "When the emperor refused, we burned their cities to the ground, plundered their lands and raped their women!"

Anna: "Overreacting is normal for the Latins.  They possess an unstable, irrational nature that lends them to senseless violence when a simple, 'let's talk about this' would suffice."

Willie T: "And then, we besieged the very city of Constantinople itself!"

Anna: "The Latins then tried to attack Constantinople.  But, they had no siege equipment, so they just tried to light the gate on fire.  The guard put out the fire by peeing on it.  My father then sent my darling husband out to their camp with a group of archers, just to send a message.  They were to fire a volley of arrows in the general direction of the Latins, missing intentionally, of course."

Willie T: "An army of Greeks descended upon us, blacking out the sun with their arrows.  The deadly missiles rained down upon us, slaying many people, and hurting many others!"

Anna: "We might have accidentally hit a person or two."

Willie T: "Then we took to ransacking their countryside.  The emperor, fearing for the survival of his empire, sued for peace.  He sent his own son, John Comnenas, to us as a hostage, then welcomed us into his city, bestowing glorious gifts upon us.  He opened his treasury for us, and showered gold and marvelous gifts on us all!  Such a victory we gained over Emperor Alexius Comnenas!"

Anna: "My father sent some soldiers to go talk with the Latins.  Before they could even ask what we wanted, the Latins attacked, and a great battle ensued.  The Greeks fought bravely, and the Latins turned tail and fled.  Shortly after that, Godfrey finally thought better of his endeavors, and agreed to do the emperor's bidding, swearing his oath of fealty.  As the newest vassal of the Byzantine Empire, Godfrey and his Latin soldiers were welcomed into the city, and given the customary gifts a vassal of the Byzantine Empire receives.  And that is how my father, the Great Alexios Komnenos, defeated the unruly horde of barbarians!"

And that's the point when the historian simply scratches his head and says, "I think I'll write a book on how European society was affected by the kumquat."