History
A Greek history of the Byzantine empire from 1118 to the first years after 1204. Its chapters on the reign of Alexios V Doukas describe the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders from the side of the city’s people.
Read the text at sourcebooks.fordham.edu ↗The same extract with other sources for the Fourth Crusade (Fordham Medieval Sourcebook) ↗
Niketas Choniates wrote the history of the Byzantine emperors from 1118 down to the Latin conquest of 1204 and the years just after it. The passage cited in this wiki comes from his account of the short reign of Alexios V Doukas, whom the crusaders called Mourzuphles. Munro, who translated it, notes that the same chapters include the author’s own experiences in the captured city.
The public-domain extract covers only the sack itself: the treatment of icons, relics and the eucharist, the stripping of Hagia Sophia and the suffering of the inhabitants. It is a lament as much as a report, written by one of the defeated, and its language about the Latins is as hostile as the Conquest of Constantinople is satisfied. The letter of Pope Innocent III in Letters confirms the main charges from the Latin side.
Cited in
- April 1204, firm date