HENRY (c. 1Ii4–I216), emperor of Romania, or Constan tinople, was a younger son of Baldwin, count of Flanders and Hainaut (d. 1195) . Having joined the Fourth Crusade about 1201, he distinguished himself at the siege of Constantinople in 1204 and elsewhere, and soon became prominent among the princes of the new Latin empire of Constantinople. When his brother, the emperor Baldwin I., was captured at the battle of Adrianople in April 1205, Henry was chosen regent of the empire, succeeding to the throne when the news of Baldwin's death arrived. He was crowned on Aug. 20, Henry was a wise ruler, whose reign was largely passed in successful struggles with the Bul garians and with his rival, Theodore Lascaris I., emperor of Nicaea. Henry appears to have been brave but not cruel, and tolerant but not weak; possessing "the superior courage to op pose, in a superstitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy." He died, poisoned, it is said, by his Greek wife, on June II, 1216.
See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. vi. (ed. J. B. Bury, 1898) .