introduction: fragmented romania

The Latin conquest of Constantinople on 13 April 1204 heralded a new era in the history of the Byzantine lands, known in the Christian west as Romania. It dealt a severe blow to the military might, political organisation and prestige of the empire, furthering and hastening its disintegration – begun some twenty-five years earlier – and leading to its dismemberment. In March 1204, about a month before the fall of Constantinople, the leaders of the crusader armies and the commander of the Venetian army and fleet, Doge Enrico Dandolo, reached agreement on five major issues: electing a Latin emperor, the empire’s political regime and military organisation, partitioning the lands of Romania (the partitio Romaniae) and, finally, electing a Latin patriarch of Constantinople and other ecclesiastical matters.

On 9 May 1204 Count Baldwin of Flanders was elected emperor, gaining a quarter of the empire and two imperial palaces in Constantinople. From his domain the new emperor Baldwin I (1204–5) granted many fiefs to crusader knights and mounted sergeants. He also assigned to Venice its share of three-eighths of Constantinople, land outside the City and various revenues. At this stage only Constantinople was in Latin hands. The difficulties encountered by the Latins in the conquest of the Byzantine empire, which was never completed, and the individual expeditions undertaken by various Latin knights and commoners, as well as by the Venetian state, prevented systematic implementation of the partition plan. Instead, the extensive territories occupied by the Latins in the European part of Romania and many islands in the Aegean became a mosaic of political entities, many of them small.