4964 AM · 1204 CE · world history
The Fourth Crusade
Instead of Egypt, the crusaders take Constantinople and divide the empire among themselves.
A campaign fitted out against Egypt gets stuck in debt to Venice: first the army works it off by taking a Christian city on the Adriatic, then turns aside to Constantinople to intervene in a dispute over the throne. In April 1204 the walls are stormed and the city is plundered for three days: relics carried off, bronzes melted down, the horses of the hippodrome shipped to Venice. In the empire's place arise a Latin Empire and several Greek states in exile; Constantinople will be recovered in 1261, but impoverished and never the same. After this, the split between western and eastern Christendom is no longer a quarrel of theologians.