Read an eyewitness account of the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. The preface to this remarkable account notes, "The Fourth Crusade was directed at Egypt. There were, however, a series of financial difficulties which enabled the Venetians, who had been hired as transportation providers, to divert the crusade to their own ends. First it attacked the Christian city of Zara, and then Constantinople itself. The result was the establishment of a series of Latin states in Greece and the Agean, and the permanent collapse of communion between Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The Byzantine historian Nicetas Choniates here gives an account of the sack of the city.
This account was written by Nicetas Choniates, who lived through the terrible sacking of the Christian city of Constantinople in AD 1204. Click here to read.