During the First Crusades, the knights stopped in the Byzantine metropolis. First, they were supposed to help fight the Muslim enemies of Ostrom, but the alleged friends increasingly caused problems for the Emperor of Byzantium ...
Coups had a long tradition in Constantinople. In the years 1025-1081 alone, no fewer than 13 emperors tried to found their own dynasties and were killed. On April 4, 1081, it was time again: Alexios Komnenos toppled Emperor Nikephoros III. and sat himself on the throne of the Byzantine Empire. The 33-year-old noble took on a huge legacy. At the turn of the millennium, Byzantium had been at the height of its power, occupying Crete, Cyprus, and eastern Asia Minor as far as the Euphrates. Even Bulgaria and Armenia were part of an empire that saw itself as the legitimate heir to the Roman Empire.
Alexios I, however, had no time to rest on his laurels, because foreign policy was the situation increasingly complicated. Bulgarians and the Turkish Seljuk Turks were hard on the Byzantines, and even the Normans had extended their hands to the territories. With Rome, Constantinople was in a theological dispute over the supremacy of the pope over the Patriarch of Constantinople Opel.
When in 1090 the Turkish Seljuk Turks and an army were at the gates of Constantinople, it was clear to Alexios that Byzantium needed the military support of the enemy more than ever. Although it had managed to ward off the attack, but in the long run, the kingdom was lost. With a heavy heart sent Alexios envoys to Rome to ask Pope Urban II oziell for support in the fight against the Seljuk Turks. The pope was a thoroughly diplomatic and recognized in the request a unique opportunity: When West and East were approaching again, a reunification of the Church came under Roman supremacy within reach. Urban did not hesitate long and called on 27 November 1095 at the Synod of Clermont in France, the Christians to crusade against the Muslims on. As a reward, the participants should be punished with the sins. The echo exceeded all expectations. "Deus lo volt" (God wants it), rang it enthusiastically through the cities of Europe. Not only Knights, whom Urban II had mainly addressed, set off. Also, an unmanageable amount of adventurers and impoverished peasants set out to secure their secular and heavenly future through the crusade. As they passed the cities of Worms, Speyer and Trier on their way to the Holy Land, these masses settled there to sweep up to the hitherto violent Jewish pogroms. Arriving in Constantinople, the adventurers crossed the Bosporus - and were defeated in 1096 by the Seljuk Turks.