uniform ill-luck. If, after the fight of life is over, no single
valiant blow can be remembered, the record is a sorry one indeed.
Baldwin's difficulties were, it must be owned, very great: they were
so great that for a considerable portion of the four-and-twenty years
during which he wore the Roman purple his crown was left him by
sufferance, and his manner of reigning was to travel about Europe
begging for money. The Pope proclaimed a crusade for him, but it was
extremely difficult to awaken general enthusiasm for a Courtenay in
danger of being overthrown by a Lascaris; and the other point, the
submission of Constantinople to Rome in things ecclesiastical, could
not be said to touch the popular sentiment at all. The Pope, however,
supplemented his exhortation by bestowing upon the indigent Emperor a
treasure of indulgences, which he no doubt sold at their marketable
value, whatever that was. One fears that it was not much. From England
he obtained, after an open insult at Dover, a small contribution
toward the maintenance of his empire. Louis IX of France would have
rendered him substantial assistance, but for the more pressing claims
of the Holy Land and his project for delivering the holy places by a
new method. His brother-in-law, Frederick II, excommunicated by the
Church, was not likely to manifest any enthusiasm for an
ecclesiastical cause; and those allies from whom he might have
expected substantial aid, the Venetians, were at war with the Genoese;
the Prince of Achaia was in captivity, and the feeble son of Boniface,
King of Thessalonica--the sons of all these sturdy crusaders were
feeble, like the Syrian _pullani_, sons of Godfrey's heroes--had been
deposed. Yet money and men must be raised, or the city must be
abandoned. A wise man would have handed over the empire to any who
dared defend it. Baldwin was not a wise man. He proceeded to sell the
remaining lands of Courtenay and the marquisate of Namur, and by this
and other expedients managed to return with an army of thirty thousand