friends upon the walls.  Alexius, at dead of night, brought his army close to the city.  At midnight, against a certain stipulated spot the scaling-ladders were placed, where there were none but traitors to receive the men; at the same time, the passage was traversed, and Alexius found himself within the walls of the city.[52] They broke open the Gate of the Fountain; they admitted the Greek men-at-arms and the Coman auxiliaries before the alarm was given; and by daylight the Greeks had complete command of the land wall, and were storming the imperial palace.  There was one chance left for Baldwin.  He might have betaken himself to the Venetians, and held their quarter until the unlucky expedition to Daphnusia returned, when they might have expelled the Greeks, or made at least an honorable capitulation.  But Baldwin was not the man to fight a lost or losing battle.  He hastily fled to the port, embarked on board a vessel, and set sail for Euboea.  In the deserted palace the Greek soldiers found sceptre, crown, and sword, the imperial insignia, and carried them in mockery through the streets.

While Baldwin was flying from the palace to the port, behind him and around him was the tramp of the rude Coman barbarians, proclaiming that the city was taken.  The houses, hastily thrown open as the first streaks of the summer day lit up the sky, resounded with the acclamations of those, yesterday his own subjects, who welcomed the new-comers with cries of “Long live Michael the Emperor of the Romans!” The house of Courtenay had played its last card and lost the game.  Pity that it was thrown away by so poor a player.

It matters little about the end of Baldwin.  He got safely to Euboea, thence to Rome, and lived twelve or thirteen years longer in obscurity.  When he died, his only son, Philip, assumed the empty title of emperor of Constantinople, which, Gibbon says, “too bulky and sonorous for a private name, modestly expired in silence and oblivion.”  It took, however, a long time to expire.  Two hundred and fifty years later one of its last holders was the inheritor of so many shadowy claims that his very name in history is blurred by them.  Rene of Anjou gave himself, among other titles, that of emperor of Constantinople.

Constantinople was taken, and the Latin Empire destroyed at a blow.  There were, however, still remaining the Venetian merchants, who had the command of the port, and who might, by holding out until the return of the ships from Daphnusia, undo all.  Alexius set fire to their houses, but was careful to leave their communications with the vessels unmolested.  They had therefore nothing left but to secure the safety of their wives, families, and movable property, which they did by embarking them on board the ships.  And when the Daphnusian expedition returned, they found, to their surprise, that the Greeks held the whole city except a small portion near the port, and had manned the walls.  A hasty truce was arranged; the merchants loaded every ship with their families and their property; the Latin fleet sailed down the Dardanelles, and the Latin Empire in the East was at an end.