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Coat of arms of the Latin Empire of Constantinople.

Henry (c. 1174 – 1216), was the second emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople.

He was a younger son of Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut (later Baldwin VIII, count of Flanders), and Margaret I of Flanders, sister of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders.

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. An ambush was laid for him by Emperor Alexius V at Philia, but his army routed the Greeks and sent them fleeing.

When his elder 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 August 20, 1205.

Henry was a wise ruler, whose reign was largely passed in successful struggles with Kaloyan, Tsar of Bulgaria, and with his rival, Theodore I Lascaris, emperor of Nicaea. Henry appears to have been brave but not cruel, and tolerant but not weak; possessing "the superior courage to oppose, in a superstitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy." The emperor died, poisoned, it is said, by his Bulgarian wife Maria, on June 11, 1216. He had previously been married (in 1204) to Agnes of Montferrat, daughter of Boniface of Montferrat, the Crusade leader, but she had died (probably in childbirth) before her father's death in 1207.

Some contemporary historians say that Henry made a peace with Bulgarians after the death of Tsar Kaloyan. Years later Pope Innocent III ordered that he should contract a marriage with the Kaloyan's only child — his daughter Maria. Isabelle, Henry's only daughter by his first wife Agnes, had died in childbirth with his mother, and this second marriage also left no heirs.

• Queller, Donald. The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople (Middle Ages), 1999
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.