Second (and most successful) Latin emperor of Constantinople (1206-1216).
Sometimes referred to as Henry of Flanders or Henry of Hainaut, he was probably born at Valenciennes around 1178, the third son of Baldwin V, count of Hainaut, and Margaret, countess of Flanders.
Henry took the cross in 1200 and followed his brother Count Baldwin IX of Flanders (VI of Hainaut) on the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204). He is mentioned only rarely in the early stages of the crusade. Once the crusaders had arrived at Constantinople (mod. Istanbul, Turkey), he was put in charge of the second squadron and accompanied his brother, who commanded the vanguard when the crusading army confronted the army of Alexius III Angelos outside the walls of the city (17 July 1203). In 1204 Henry led a successful foraging raid against the Greek city of Philea. On the way back to Constantinople, he defeated an ambush prepared by Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlos, capturing a holy icon of the virgin that Alexios V had brought to assure himself of victory.
After the election of Baldwin as Latin emperor (May 1204), Henry was one of the leaders in the conquest of Greek lands, participating in the occupation of Thrace and then crossing the Dardanelles to capture Adramyttum (mod. Edremit, Turkey). There he was supported by the local Armenians, who followed him with their families across the straits when Henry was recalled in haste by Baldwin in the face of a Greek rebellion in Thrace. As the Armenians were unable to keep up with him, he left them between Gallipoli (mod. Gelibolu, Turkey) and Rodosto (mod. Tekirdag, Turkey), where they were massacred by the Greeks. Henry was too late to bring any aid to his brother, who was captured by the Bulgarians at Adrianople (mod. Edirne, Turkey), but he encountered the survivors under the command of Geoffrey of Villehardouin at Rodosto.
Henry was recognized as regent of the empire while there remained any hope of the survival of Baldwin and fought to hold his brother’s empire together. In July 1205 he unsuccessfully laid siege to Adrianople and Demotika, and in October he renewed the treaty of partition with the Venetians. A new Bulgarian invasion (January 1206) forced the Greeks to appeal to Henry, who advanced to Adrianople and then pursued the retreating Bulgarians far into their own territory.
With the confirmation of the death of Baldwin in 1206, Henry was chosen as the second Latin emperor and crowned on 20 August 1206. A new invasion by Kalojan was driven off and 20,000 prisoners were rescued as the new emperor ravaged the lands of Kalojan. Two squadrons were then sent across the straits to occupy Cyzicus (near mod. Erdek, Turkey) and Nikomedia (mod. Izmit, Turkey), and a reconciliation with Boniface of Montferrat was sealed by the marriage of Henry with Agnes of Montferrat (4 February 1207). Each attempt to attack Kalojan was thwarted by the need to rescue the Franks in Asia Minor, so that to secure his rear, Henry negotiated a two-year truce with Theodore I Laskaris, the Greek emperor of Nicaea. He then reoccupied Thrace and raided deep into Bulgaria. He had a last meeting with Boniface to coordinate their policy and to tell him that Agnes was pregnant, but before they could combine forces, Boniface was killed in a skirmish (4 September 1207). Henry then had to rescue his Greek ally, David Komnenos, ruler of Paphlag-onia, from the attacks of Theodore Laskaris before facing one of the greatest crises of his reign, the revolt of the Lombards of Thessalonica against the regency of Boniface’s widow, Margaret (Mary) of Hungary, for her infant son Demetrius. During the bitter winter of 1206-1207, Henry outmaneu-vered the plotters and in a brilliant campaign smashed the resistance of the Lombards further south so that Thessaly came under his control.
In May 1209 Henry held an assembly at Ravennika at which Geoffrey I of Villehardouin (nephew of the marshal of Champagne) and Otho of La Roche did homage for the Morea and Athens, respectively. Lombard resistance was finally crushed at the siege of Thebes, and in June 1209 the emperor entered Athens and subsequently made sure of the loyalty of the Italians in Negroponte. Another parliament at Ravennika in May 1210 regularized the position of the church in the kingdom of Thessalonica.
The year 1211, however, was the year of the four enemies. From the west, Thessalonica was attacked by Michael Kom-nenos Doukas, the ruler of Epiros, in alliance with Henry’s former ally, the Vlach prince Strez. No sooner had Henry driven them back and invaded their lands than he was recalled to Constantinople by the threat of an attack by Theodore I Laskaris. His army was threatened on the march through Thrace by Boril of Bulgaria. Having disposed of these enemies, Henry carried the war to Theodore by crossing the straits and defeating him in a battle near the river Luparchos. He then recaptured Adramyttum and advanced south to the frontier with the Saljuq sultanate of Rum. The outcome of these campaigns was a peace with Nicaea that left the Franks in possession of the southern coast of the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara. Boril of Bulgaria sought peace, offering his daughter as a bride to the now widowed emperor. With some reluctance, Henry married the Bulgarian princess and together with his son-in-law advanced to Nis against the Serbs with whom Strez had sought shelter. A disagreement between the allies meant that Henry had to withdraw. A second expedition against Nis, this time in conjunction with the king of Hungary, also had to withdraw when the king made a separate peace with the Serbs. Henry died suddenly on 11 June 1216. Although there were some rumors that his Bulgarian empress had poisoned him, there is no evidence that his death was due to anything other than marsh fever.
Henry was by far the most successful of the Latin emperors of Constantinople. He was an energetic and talented soldier who defeated both internal and external enemies. He was a shrewd diplomat and made great efforts to conciliate and protect the Greeks who rallied to him. He healed the breach within the ranks of the crusaders by his alliance with Boniface of Montferrat and after the death of the latter showed himself to be the active protector of Boniface’s widow. He won over all but the most embittered of the Lombard rebels and pursued a successful policy of establishing client states, such as Thessalonica (governed by Maria) and the principalities of his brother Eustace, the Vlach and Bulgarian chieftains Strez and Slav, David Komnenos in Paphlagonia, and Geoffrey I of Villehardouin in the Morea.
He worked closely with the Venetians under their podesta, Marino Zeno.
The first part of his reign is fully documented by the chroniclers Villehardouin and Henry of Valenciennes, but after 1211 there are no detailed contemporary sources that survive. He was succeeded by Peter of Courtenay, the husband of his sister Yolande. Peter died en route to his new domains, and thereafter Yolande ruled until her death in 1219, to be succeeded by her son Robert of Courtenay.
-Peter S. Noble
Bibliography
Longnon, Jean, Les Compagnons de Villehardouin (Geneve: Droz, 1978).
Van Tricht, Filip, “La politique etrangere de l’empire de Constantinople de 1210 a 1216,” Le Moyen Age 107 (2001), 219-238, 409-438.
-, “De jongelingenjaren van een keizer van
Konstantinopel: Hendrik van Vlaanderen en Henegouwen (1177-1202),” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 111 (1998), 187-219.
-, “La gloire de l’empire: L’idee imperiale de Henri de
Flandre-Hainaut, deuxieme empereur latin de Constantinople (1206-1216), Byzantion 70 (2000), 211-241.
Verlinden, Charles, Les Empereurs belges de Constantinople (Bruxelles: Charles Dessart, 1945).
Wolff, Robert Lee, “The Latin Empire of Constantinople, 1204-1261,” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth M. Setton et al., 2d ed., 6 vols. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969-1989), 2:153-203.
World History
