Early Years and The Fourth Crusade
William was the second son of Odo I of Champlitte, viscount of Dijon and his wife, Sybille. He married first Alais, the lady of Meursault. With the consent of his wife, he donated property to the Cistercian abbey of Auberive for the soul of his younger brother, Hugh in 1196. He later married Elisabeth of Mount-Saint-Jean, but they divorced in 1199.
William and his brother, Odo II of Champlitte joined the Fourth Crusade in September 1200 at Cîteaux. William was one of the crusader leaders who signed the letter written in April 1203 by Counts Baldwin IX of Flanders, Louis I of Blois and Chartres and Hugh IV of Saint Pol to Pope Innocent III who had excommunicated the whole expedition after the occupation of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia). They begged the pope not to chastise Marques Boniface I of Montferrat, the leader of the crusade who had, in order to preserve the integrity of the expedition, withheld the publication of the papal bull of anathema.
The crusaders took Constantinople on April 13, 1204. They gave the imperial throne to Baldwin IX of Flanders who was ceremoniously crowned on May 16, 1204, but William of Champlitte joined to Boniface of Montferrat who became king of Thessalonica under the new emperor. According to the Partitio Romaniae, a treaty concluded by all the leaders of the Fourth Crusade, the Republic of Venice received title to occupy, among other territories, the whole Peloponnese (in modern Greece).
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