The Fourth Crusade Sacks Christian Constantinople
An army meant for Jerusalem instead burns, loots, and dismembers the greatest city in Christendom
Quick facts
- Location
- Constantinople
- Key instigator
- Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice
- Population at time
- Approximately 400,000
- Outcome
- Byzantine Empire divided; Latin Empire of Constantinople established (1204-1261)
What happened
Unable to pay the Venetians for its ships, the Fourth Crusade first diverted to sack the Christian city of Zara on the Dalmatian coast in November 1202, earning the crusaders excommunication. It then turned toward Constantinople at the urging of Doge Enrico Dandolo, ostensibly to install the exiled claimant Alexios IV Angelos on the Byzantine throne. When Alexios failed to deliver the money and support he had promised and was murdered by a usurper, the crusaders attacked the city directly. On 12 April 1204 they broke through Constantinople's sea walls, and a slaughter of the city's roughly 400,000 inhabitants followed: citizens were raped and killed, buildings burned, and churches desecrated over three days of looting in which artworks were destroyed, precious goods melted down, and religious relics carried back to Europe. The Partitio Romaniae treaty then divided the Byzantine Empire between Venice and its allies, with Count Baldwin of Flanders crowned the first Latin Emperor of Constantinople in the Hagia Sophia.
Why it matters
The sack devastated the wealthiest and most artistically significant city in the Christian world and permanently poisoned relations between the Latin West and Orthodox East. Though a Byzantine successor state recaptured the city in 1261, the empire never recovered its former wealth or reach, leaving it fatally weakened when the Ottoman Turks arrived two centuries later.
How we know
The Fourth Crusade's diversion from Jerusalem to Constantinople is documented by participant chroniclers including Geoffrey of Villehardouin, and is summarized in detail in the World History Encyclopedia's account of the campaign's political maneuvering and the sack itself.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. 1204: The Sack of Constantinople · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Fourth Crusade · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Byzantine Empire → · The sack of Constantinople is the single most catastrophic event in Byzantine history, examined in full in the Byzantine Empire timeline