The Latin Empire was a feudal Crusader state in the Balkans and Asia Minor which existed from 1204 to 1261, with Constantinople serving as its capital. It was founded in 1204 following the Fourth Crusade, during which French and Venetian crusaders under Baldwin of Flanders sacked the Byzantine capital of Constantinople and established a new crusader state with Baldwin as emperor. The formation of the Latin Empire fragmented the Byzantine Empire, whose remnants formed the Empire of Nicaea, the Despotate of Epirus, the Principality of Achaea, the Empire of Thessalonica, and the Empire of Trebizond. The Latin Empire was perennially at war with the Second Bulgarian Empire to the north and the Byzantine rump states to the south and east, causing it to decline. In 1261, Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus of Nicaea reconquered Constantinople, ending the Latin Empire and recreating the Byzantine Empire.
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