Latin Empire

The Latin Empire, also called the Latin Empire of Constantinople, was a feudal Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on territory captured from the Byzantine Empire. It existed from 1204, when the crusaders sacked Constantinople, until 1261, when the city was recovered by the Empire of Nicaea. The crusade had been called to recover Jerusalem, but financial and political pressures diverted it to Constantinople. After the sack, the crusaders elected Baldwin IX of Flanders as emperor and divided Byzantine lands among Latin lords and Venice. The empire claimed to replace Byzantium as the Western-recognised Roman Empire in the East, with a Catholic emperor in place of the Orthodox emperors. Its authority was immediately contested by Byzantine successor states at Nicaea, Trebizond and Epirus, and it never achieved dominance over the other Latin powers. By the 1230s Constantinople was impoverished and short of food. Michael VIII Palaiologos retook the city in 1261 and restored the Byzantine Empire, though Latin emperors continued to claim the title in exile.