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 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.

It began with violence and injustice: it ended as it began. There were six Latin Emperors, of whom the first was a gallant soldier; the second, a sovereign of admirable qualities, and an able administrator; the third, a plain French knight, who was murdered on his way to assume the purple buskins; the fourth, a weak and pusillanimous creature; the fifth, a stout old warrior; and the last a monarch of whom nothing good can be said and nothing evil, except that which was said of Boabdil, called El Chico, that he was unlucky; and bad luck is another name for incapacity. As the Latins never had the slightest right or title to these possessions in the East, so the Western powers were never impelled to assist them, and their downfall was merely a matter of time. In the interests of civilisation their occupation of the city seems to have been unfortunate; they learned nothing for themselves, they taught nothing; neither East nor West profited. They destroyed the old institutions, so that the ancient Roman Empire was broken up by their conquest; they inflicted irreparable losses on learning and art; and perhaps the only good result of their conquest was that for the moment at least it de-