Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/195

 THE CRUSADES, AND THE EAST 183 while the European peninsula was divided among the so-called crusaders j Venice which had provided the ships receiving the lion's share. The conquerors dealt as much destruction in Con- stantinople as if they had been led by an Alaric or an Attila. The crusaders received papal commendation and blessing, and set up Baldwin, Count of Flanders, as a new emperor, the Venetian doge having declined the office. To this new empire we must apply the common term ' Latin ' or ' Frank,' the name by which all the western Europeans without discrimination were known to the Moslems. It was the mission of this Latin king- dom to overturn whatever was established in the Greek world, and to reconstruct the east on western models. In Asia Minor, however, the Greek line maintained itself and Greek provinces developed, notably at Trebizond on the Black Sea, which later became independent dominions. The story of the Latin Empire is what the Latin Empire deserved. Bulgaria sought to revive its own dominion, and struck fierce blows against the new empire. The Latins at Con. empire had hardly struggled through half a century stantinople, of existence, when the Greeks once more got 12041261 - possession of Constantinople, and the Latin dominion came to an end. But the old power of the empire was irrecoverably lost, although 200 years were to pass before it fell finally to the Ottoman power. Europe on the east of the German Empire and north of the Byzantine Empire was occupied almost entirely by Slavonic peoples of varying types and varying degrees of civilisation or uncivilisation, except where the Mongol Magyars had thrust in a wedge in Hungary, leaving the Bulgarians behind them on the Danube, and behind them sundry tribes which are generally called Turkish — the Cumans and Pechenegs — who have taken no permanent place in history. On the north of Hungary lay Poland, and on the east of Poland lay those various duchies and kingdoms which pass by the name of the Russian Empire. These two Slavonic states were cut off from the Baltic almost entirely by more barbaric Slavonic tribes, among whom are numbered the Prussians. It is curious that the non-German Prussian people should have given