ALEXIUS IV ANGELUS

died Feb. 8, 1204, Constantinople [now Istanbul, Tur.] Byzantine emperor from 1203 to 1204. Alexius was the son of Emperor Isaac II. He regained control of his rights to the Byzantine throne with the help of the Fourth Crusade but was deposed soon after by a national revolt. Imprisoned in 1195 with his father, who had also been blinded, by Alexius III, he escaped in 1201 and joined his sister and her husband, Philip of Swabia, in Germany. Promising funds, supplies, and troops to conquer Egypt, the maintenance of 500 Western knights in the Holy Land, and submission of the Byzantine church to Rome, Alexius convinced Philip of Swabia, Crusade leader Boniface of Montferrat, and their Venetian allies to divert the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople in order to reinstate Alexius and his father as coemperors; this plan was accomplished in 1203. The new emperors, however, were unable to pay their debts to the West or to unite the two churches. Heavy taxation, as well as wanton behaviour on the part of the crusaders in Constantinople, caused a national revolt led by Alexius Ducas Murtzuphlus, the son-in-law of Alexius III. Alexius Ducas, who was proclaimed emperor in January 1204, as Alexius V, had Alexius IV strangled. Isaac died in prison a few days later.