Bulgarian–Latin wars
| Bulgarian-Latin wars | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Cumans |
 Latin Empire
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Kaloyan Boril Ivan Asen II |
Baldwin I † Boniface of Montferrat † Henry |
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The Bulgarian–Latin wars were a series of conflicts between the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396) and the Latin Empire (1204–61). The wars affected the northern border of the Latin Empire throughout its existence.
The initial expansionist ambitions of the Latin Empire were crushed only one year after its foundation after the Battle of Adrianople in 1205, where its Emperor Baldwin I was captured and most of his knights perished. After that crucial defeat the Latin Empire had to defend itself against Bulgaria and the successor states of the Byzantine Empire, the Nicaean Empire in Asia Minor and the Despotate of Epirus in the Balkans.
As a result of the conflicts the Bulgarian Empire expanded its territory taking control of most of the Balkan Peninsula while the influence of the Latin Empire was reduced to Constantinople and a few towns and islands. With the elimination of the Patriarchate of Constantinople by the Roman Catholic Crusaders, Bulgaria became the centre of the Orthodox Christianity.
On 13 April 1204 the knights of the Fourth Crusade seized the capital of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire), Constantinople, and replaced the ancient Byzantine Empire with a new Crusader state, the Latin Empire. Their leader Count Baldwin of Flanders was crowned Emperor in the Hagia Sophia as Baldwin I. According to the Partitio Romaniae he received a quarter of the Empire and the rest was divided between the Venetians and the Crusaders. The Emperor received the lands in Asia Minor as well as Constantinople and a thin strip along the Black Sea coast and a few other towns in the Balkans. The Venetians took the most fertile part of Byzantine Thrace including Adrianople (Odrin), Rodosto, Arkadiopolis, most of the Peloponnese, parts of Epirus and Thessaly as well as many islands. Their Doge took the title quartae partis et dimidiae totius imperii Romaniae dominator or "Lord of a quarter and a half part of the whole Roman Empire". The Crusaders received the other lands of the former Byzantine Empire and created the Kingdom of Thessalonica with Boniface of Montferrat selected for King.
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