A personal and private outrage of the grossest kind, offered to the unfortunate Emperor by an obscure knight, drove him in rage and despair from the city.  He sought refuge in Italy, but was recalled by his barons, and was on his way back to Constantinople when he was seized with some malady which killed him.  It is a miserable record of a weak and miserable life.  On his death, his brother Baldwin being still a boy, the barons looked about them for a stronger hand to rule the tottering State.  They found the man they wanted in gallant old John de Brienne, the last of those who raised themselves from simple knightly rank to a royal palace.

Gauthier de Brienne was King of Sicily and Duke of Apulia.  John himself, one of the last specimens of the great crusading heroes, was titular King of Jerusalem, having married Constance, daughter of Isabelle and granddaughter of Amaury.

Philip Augustus himself selected John de Brienne as the most worthy knight to become the husband of Constance and the King of Jerusalem.  He was now an old man of more than seventy years.  His daughter, Yolande, was married to Frederick II, who had assumed the title of King of Jerusalem, but old as he was he was still of commanding stature and martial bearing.  His arm had lost none of its strength, nor his brain any of its vigor.  He accepted the crown on the understanding that the young Baldwin, then eleven years of age, should join him as emperor on coming of age.  Great things were expected from so stout a soldier.  Yet for two years nothing was done.  Then the Emperor was roused into action.

It was understood at Constantinople that Vatatces, the successor of Theodore Lascaris, was on the point of concluding an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Agan, King of the Bulgarians and successor of John.  The alliance could have but one meaning, the destruction of the Latin empire.

It must be remembered that the vast Roman Empire of the East was shrunken in its dimensions to the city of Constantinople and that narrow strip of territory commanded by her walls, her scanty armies, and her diminished fleets.  Of territory, indeed, the Latin empire had none in the sense of land producing revenue.  What it held was held with the drawn sword in the hand ready for use.  The kingdom of Thessalonica was gone; and though the dukedoms, marquisates, and countships of Achaia, Athens, Sparta, and other independent petty states were still held by the emperors or their sons, they were like the outlying provinces of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem—­Edessa, Tripoli, and the rest—­a source of weakness rather than of strength.  Little help, if any, could be looked for from them.