The actions of the Crusaders, therefore, accelerated the collapse of Christendom in the east, and in the long run helped facilitate the later Ottoman conquests of southeastern Europe.

He attempted to pacify the city, but riots between anti-Crusader Greeks and pro-Crusader Latins broke out later that month and lasted until November, during which time most of the populace began to turn against him.

[11] In March 1204, the Crusader and Venetian leadership decided on the outright conquest of Constantinople in order to settle debts, and drew up a formal agreement to divide the Byzantine Empire between them.

[citation needed] The Crusaders looted, pillaged, and vandalized Constantinople for three days, during which many ancient and medieval Roman and Greek works were either seized or destroyed.

The famous bronze horses from the Hippodrome were sent back to adorn the façade of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, where they remain to this day.

Works of considerable artistic value were destroyed for their material value, including the precious bronze statue of Hercules, created by the legendary Lysippos, court sculptor of Alexander the Great.

Boniface was not elected as the new emperor, although the citizens seemed to consider him as such; the Venetians thought he had too many connections with the former empire because of his brother, Renier of Montferrat, who had been married to Maria Comnena, daughter and for a time heir-apparent of Manuel I.

[22] The contemporary Byzantine historian and eyewitness Nicetas Choniates closed his account of the fall of the city with the following description of a column of aristocratic refugees, including the Patriarch, making their way to Selymbria: The peasants and common riff-raff jeered at those of us from Byzantium and were thick-headed enough to call our miserable poverty and nakedness equality...Many were only too happy to accept this outrage, saying "Blessed be the Lord that we have grown rich", and buying up for next to nothing the property that their fellow-countrymen were forced to offer for sale, for they had not yet had much to do with the beef-eating Latins and they did not know that they served a wine as pure and unmixed as unadulterated bile, nor that they would treat the Byzantines with utter contempt.

The sack weakened the Byzantine Empire, which allowed neighbouring groups such as the Sultanate of Rum, and later the Ottoman Turks, to gain influence (see the Byzantine–Ottoman wars).

In 2001, he wrote to Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens, saying, "It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith.

"[23] In 2004, while Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, was visiting the Vatican, John Paul II asked, "How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust?

"The spirit of reconciliation is stronger than hatred," he said during a liturgy attended by Roman Catholic Archbishop Philippe Barbarin of Lyon, France.