Latin Empire

A state created by a crusade that never reached its target, on the ruins of the city it sacked instead. The Fourth Crusade set out for Egypt in 1202, could not pay the Venetians for its transport, and settled the debt by attacking a Christian city on the Adriatic and then by intervening in a Byzantine succession dispute. In April 1204 it stormed Constantinople and sacked it for three days - the greatest concentration of classical art and relics in Christendom was looted, melted or shipped to Venice, where the bronze horses of San Marco still stand. The crusaders installed Baldwin of Flanders as emperor and partitioned the empire, with Venice taking the harbours and islands it actually wanted. The Latin Empire held little beyond the city and was poor from the start, pawning relics and once its own palace roof. Byzantine successor states at Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond outlasted it, and Nicaea retook Constantinople in 1261 without much of a fight. The empire lasted fifty-seven years. The schism between the churches hardened permanently. Byzantium never recovered its strength. The empire lasted from 1204 to 1261 and never controlled much beyond Constantinople and Thrace. Venice took three-eighths of the partitioned empire, including Crete, which it held for four centuries. The Hagia Sophia was converted to Latin rite during the occupation. Many looted relics ended up in French and Italian churches. Pope Innocent III had forbidden the attack and excommunicated the crusaders for it, then accepted the result. A pope apologised for the sack in 2004.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history