Description

An engrossing chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire from the bestselling author of Thermopylae

At the dawn of the thirteenth century Constantinople stood as the bastion of Christianity in Eastern Europe The capital city of the Byzantine Empire it was a center of art culture and commerce that had commanded trading routes between Asia Russia and Europe for hundreds of years But in 1204 the city suffered a devastating attack that would spell the end of the Holy Roman Empire

The army of the Fourth Crusade had set out to reclaim Jerusalem but under the sway of their Venetian patrons the crusaders diverted from their path in order to lay siege to Constantinople With longstanding tensions between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches the crusaders set arms against their Christian neighbors destroying a vital alliance between Eastern and Western Rome

In The Great Betrayal historian Ernle Bradford brings to life this powerful tale of envy and greed demonstrating the farreaching consequences this siege would have across Europe for centuries to come