The Sack of Constantinople and Its Long Aftermath

Diverted a second time, the crusade was drawn into a dispute over the Byzantine throne when the deposed emperor's son, Alexios Angelos, offered the crusaders a large payment and Byzantine support for the crusade if they restored his father. The crusaders sailed to Constantinople and installed Alexios and his father as co-emperors in 1203, but the promised payment never materialized in full, and the new regime collapsed within months. Rather than withdraw, the crusader army and the Venetian fleet stormed the city on 12 and 13 April 1204.

The sack that followed lasted several days and included widespread looting of the city's churches, palaces and relic collections, a considerable quantity of which was carried back to Western Europe. The crusaders installed a Latin emperor over what became the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and divided much of the remaining Byzantine territory among themselves and Venice, while Byzantine successor states held out at Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. Constantinople was recovered for Byzantine rule in 1261, but the empire never regained its former extent or wealth. Coming a century and a half after the East-West Schism of 1054, the sack of a Christian capital by a crusade called in the name of Christian unity hardened the estrangement between the Latin and Byzantine churches into something the centuries since have not fully undone.