Baldwin I of Flanders
Baldwin of Flanders was elected the first Latin emperor of Constantinople in May 1204 and was a prisoner in Bulgaria within a year. He was Count of Flanders and Hainaut, took the cross in 1200 at about twenty-eight, and was one of the senior nobles of the Fourth Crusade, which never reached Egypt or the Holy Land. The crusade was diverted first to Zara, a Christian city taken for Venice, and then to Constantinople in support of a Byzantine claimant who could not pay what he had promised, and in April 1204 it sacked the largest city in Christendom over three days. The partition treaty agreed in advance gave a quarter of the empire to the emperor and the rest divided between Venice and the crusaders, and an electoral committee of six Venetians and six Franks chose Baldwin over Boniface of Montferrat, largely because the Venetians preferred the weaker candidate. He was crowned in Hagia Sophia in a ceremony assembled out of Byzantine forms. The empire he was given existed only where its armies stood. Greek successor states formed at Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond within months, and the Latin barons quarrelled over their fiefs immediately. The Greek population of Thrace then appealed to Kaloyan of Bulgaria, whose offer of alliance Baldwin had rejected in insulting terms. Baldwin was captured at Adrianople in April 1205 by Bulgarian and Cuman forces after his knights charged a feigned retreat. He died in captivity at Tarnovo, and how was never established. His brother Henry succeeded him and was a far better ruler of the thing. The Latin empire lasted fifty-seven years, was poor and permanently besieged, and was recovered by the Greeks of Nicaea in 1261 while its garrison was away.
- Lived: 1172 CE – 1205 CE
- Nationality: Flemish
- Roles: emperor, crusader, count
