| Notes |
- Constable of Flanders.
"As constable of Flanders, Gilles accompanied Baudouin VI-IX, Graaf van Henegouwen to the Fourth Crusade. However he chose a separate route, crossing France and Italy. Arriving in Piacenza, he found Baudouin's messengers who pressed him to join Baudouin in Venice. However Gilles preferred to embark at Brindisi and go directly to the Holy Land. The crusader and chronicler Geoffroi I de Villehardouin describes Gilles' decision as a defection; it was poorly received by Baudouin and especially by Enrico Dandolo, the doge of Venice, who used it to refuse credit to the Crusaders and demanded of them that they pay the Venetian fleet in kind by capturing the Byzantine city of Zara. The defection of the Constable of Flanders was one of the first steps down the road that eventually led to the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, and to Baudouin becoming emperor of Constantinople that year. Gilles was killed in 1204 by the Turkomans in a battle at Riblah on the Orontes as he was going to the aid of Boemund IV, prince of Antioch, probably against Leo I, king of Armenia." [Leo van de Pas]
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
- 1204
Siblings