The Crusades, the Genoese and the Latin East - DSpace at ...

organisers. The interesting consequence of the learning experience can be seen in the ways the
contract was changed by the time of Fifth Crusade. Venice agreed then with King Andrew of
Hungary and Duke Leopold VI of Austria to charge the crusaders per ship used and not per
knight.
Calculations of the provision required for the crusade had been through interesting
changes as well. The estimation at the time of the Third Crusade was that the crusaders should
take a food supply for up to eight months. The experience of famine in the Latin East in 1190
probably led to the increased of the supplies to last for a year when the Fourth Crusade was
arranged.
120 Interestingly, at the time of the Fifth Crusade the regulation of supplies seems to have
been reduced again. James of Vitry mentioned in a letter that he carried with him provisions for
only three months. He sailed, however, from Genoa in October, and he explains that his supplies
were less likely to get spoiled `quad tali tempore (tempore hieniali) victualia in navi non facile
corrumpuntur nec aqua sicut estivo tempore in navi putrescit. '121 This is evidence of change also
in technology and the quality of ships at the time. The crusaders who departed from Venice in the
late spring must have carried more supplies. Nonetheless, shortly after their arrival in the
kingdom of Jerusalem they are known to have suffered from `severe food shortages due to a
drought during the previous two years. ' 122 Another problem in the shipping of the crusaders was
the shortage in the number of ships awaiting the crusaders in Venice on the eve of the Fifth
Crusade in 1217. It must have been a result of the miscalculation and overestimation of the
number of crusaders who embarked on the Fourth Crusade. The leaders of the Austrian and
Hungarian contingents, therefore, overreacted in there cautious estimation of the attendance of
their troops in the Fifth Crusade.
The Third Crusade contributed to the shape of the following crusades not just at the
preparation level. It turned almost into a pattern to delay departures, to arrive late in the western
Mediterranean and eventually to spend winter in one of this region's seaport towns. James Powell
noticed how the crusaders from Austria and Hungary delayed their embarkation from the fall of
1217 to the late spring of 1218. This delay `was not a matter of chance, but was premised on the
leader's knowledge of the general state of preparations for the crusade. '123 This probably explains
the role Messina had played in many crusades.
The transformation of the crusading movement into completely nautical crusades resulted
in the exclusion of the experience because the crusades became very expensive. During the
120
Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade, p. 11.
121
James Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221 (Philadelphia, 1986), p. 124; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres
de la Cinquieme Croisade, ed. Robert B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1998), Epistola 1, pp. 32,34.
122
James Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, p. 130.
123
James Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, p. 123.
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