Constantinople captured by the Crusaders and Venetians
Belligerents
Crusaders Republic of Venice
Byzantine Empire
Commanders and leaders
Boniface I Enrico Dandolo
Alexios V Doukas
Strength
22,000[1]: 269 60 war galleys and 150 transports[1]: 106
15,000[2] 20 war galleys[1]: 159
Casualties and losses
Unknown
Unknown
Civilians killed by Crusaders: ~2,000[3]
v
t
e
Fourth Crusade
Zara
1st Constantinople
2nd Constantinople
Olive Grove of Kountouras
v
t
e
Crusades
Ideology and institutions
Crusading movement
In the Holy Land (1095–1291)
First
1101
Norwegian
Venetian
1129
Second
Third
1197
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Barons'
Seventh
1267
Catalan
Eighth
Lord Edward's
Fall of Outremer
Later Crusades (1291–1717)
Crusades after Acre, 1291–1399
Aragonese
Smyrniote
Alexandrian
Savoyard
Barbary
1390
1398
1399
Nicopolis
Varna
Holy Leagues
1332
1495
1511
1526
1535
1538
1571
1594
1684
1717
Northern (1147–1410)
Kalmar
Wendish
Swedish
1150
1249
1293
Livonian
Prussian
Lithuanian
Russian
Against heretics (1209–1485)
Albigensian
Drenther
Stedinger
Bosnian
Bohemian
Despenser's
Hussite
Popular (1096–1320)
People's (1096)
Children's
Shepherds' (1251)
Crusade of the Poor
Shepherds' (1320)
Reconquista (722–1492)
v
t
e
Byzantine–Frankish conflicts of the Frankokratia
Fourth Crusade
Constantinople (1203)
Constantinople (1204)
Epirote–Latin wars
Campaigns of Michael I Komnenos Doukas and Theodore Komnenos Doukas
Nicaean–Latin wars
Adramyttion
Rhyndacus
Poimanenon
Constantinople (1235)
Constantinople (1241)
Pelagonia
Constantinople & Galata (1260)
Constantinople (1261)
Conflicts in the Morea
Grove of Kountouras
Prinitza
Makryplagi
Saint George
Gardiki
Echinades
Campaigns of Constantine XI
Angevin–Byzantine conflict
Neopatras
Demetrias
Licario's campaigns
Berat
Wars with the Venetians, Catalans, and others
Genoese occupation of Rhodes
Settepozzi
Apros
Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes
Byzantine–Genoese War
The sack of Constantinople occurred in April 1204 and marked the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Crusader armies captured, looted, and destroyed parts of Constantinople, then the capital of the Byzantine Empire. After the capture of the city, the Latin Empire (known to the Byzantines as the Frankokratia or the Latin occupation)[4] was established and Baldwin of Flanders was crowned Emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople in the Hagia Sophia.
After the city's sacking, most of the Byzantine Empire's territories were divided up among the Crusaders. Byzantine aristocrats also established a number of small independent splinter states—one of them being the Empire of Nicaea, which would eventually recapture Constantinople in 1261 and proclaim the reinstatement of the Empire. However, the restored Empire never managed to reclaim its former territorial or economic strength, and eventually fell to the rising Ottoman Empire in the 1453 Siege of Constantinople.
The Byzantine Empire was left much poorer, smaller, and ultimately less able to defend itself against the Seljuk and Ottoman conquests that followed; the actions of the Crusaders thus directly accelerated the collapse of Christendom in the east, and in the long run helped facilitate the later Ottoman conquests of Southeastern Europe.
The sack of Constantinople is a major turning point in medieval history. The Crusaders' decision to attack the world's largest Christian city was unprecedented and immediately controversial. Reports of Crusader looting and brutality scandalized and horrified the Orthodox world; relations between the Catholic and Orthodox churches were catastrophically wounded for many centuries afterwards, and would not be substantially repaired until modern times.
^ abcCite error: The named reference Phillips-2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^S. Blondal, The Varangians of Byzantium, 164
^Donald M. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 143.
^Jacobi, David (1999), "The Latin empire of Constantinople and the Frankish states in Greece", in Abulafia, David (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume V: c. 1198–c. 1300, Cambridge University Press, pp. 525–542, ISBN 0-521-36289-X
and 24 Related for: Sack of Constantinople information
The sackofConstantinople occurred in April 1204 and marked the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Crusader armies captured, looted, and destroyed parts...
before: the SackofConstantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The crusaders established an unstable Latin state in and around Constantinople while the...
However, a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army's 1202 siege of Zara and the 1204 sackofConstantinople, rather than the...
when Constantinople was occupied by Western European and Venetian armed forces during the Fourth Crusade, a military event known as the Sackof Constantinople...
Constantinople would remain the largest and wealthiest city in Europe until the 13th century. The empire was dissolved in 1204, following the sackof...
restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1261. Enrico Dandolo, the doge of Venice who led the Fourth Crusade and the 1204 SackofConstantinople, was buried...
Sophia was built by Justinian I following the Nika riots. Constantinople never recovered from its sack during the Fourth Crusade and even though the Byzantine...
and the SackofConstantinople, 144. J. Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the SackofConstantinople, 155. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle...
instead defeated, as in the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem, the sackofConstantinople, the Battle of Mühldorf, and the French Revolution. In the modern...
West led to the SackofConstantinople by the forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and the dismemberment of the empire. Although a number of small Byzantine...
emperor from February to April 1204, just prior to the sackofConstantinople by the participants of the Fourth Crusade. His family name was Doukas, but...
lifted by reaching mutual agreements. Four of these sieges took place during civil wars. The SackofConstantinople that took place in 1204 during the Fourth...
city of Jerusalem, but a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army sacking the city ofConstantinople, the capital of the...
members of the family formed the ruling dynasty of the Empire of Nicaea, a Byzantine rump state that existed from the 1204 sackofConstantinople by the...
The Great Palace ofConstantinople (Greek: Μέγα Παλάτιον, Méga Palátion; Latin: Palatium Magnum), also known as the Sacred Palace (Greek: Ἱερὸν Παλάτιον...
the Crusaders capturing Constantinople; Alexios and David began their march on Trebizond before news of the SackofConstantinople on 13 April 1204 could...
one of the worst Byzantine emperors for calling upon the Fourth Crusade to help him gain power, which ultimately led to the sackofConstantinople. The...
organized the Fourth Crusade of 1202–1204, which ended in the sackofConstantinople. Although the attack on Constantinople went against his explicit orders...
Empire of Nicaea, and the Despotate of Epirus. A third one, the Empire of Trebizond was created a few weeks before the sackofConstantinople by Alexios...
archbishop of Novgorod, Anthony, stated that it was in the church of St Michael in the Boukoleon Palace, among other precious relics. After the sackof Constantinople...
when Constantinople was sacked and the Empire dissolved and divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople...
Crusaders' SackofConstantinople in 1204. To the Patriarch ofConstantinople he said "Some memories are especially painful, and some events of the distant...