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For Louis-Philippe's new historical galleries at Versailles Delacroix painted a characteristically independent, if not actually subversive account of The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople. Depicting the climax of the Fourth Crusade, largely a French initiative, this might have been thought a glorious theme, as well as a nod towards that latter-day crusader Napoleon. But the campaign had been fatally tarnished by the pillage it visited upon Constantinople, and Delacroix allows his victors no pleasure in their conquest. Their leader, Baldwin of Flanders, turns away from the vanquished infidel, remorseful or uncertain what to do next, and even his horse stoops as if in sorrow.
In The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, like in The Massacre of Chios, there is a meditation on the misfortunes of war, in both the conquerors on their trembling steeds tower over prostrate women.
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