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 432 THE DECLINE AND FALL her engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted into rage ; he assembled his friends, forced the palace gates, threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly cut off the nose and lips of the wife or concubine of the emperor. Instead of punishing the offender, the barons avowed and applauded the savage deed,^*^ which, as a prince and as a man, it was impossible that Robert should forgive. He escaped from the guilty city to implore the justice or compassion of the pope ; the emperor was coolly exhorted to return to his station ; before he could obey, he sunk under the weight of grief, shame, and impotent resent- ment.'*'' Baldwin n. It was Only in the age of chivalry that valour could ascend Brienne, Em from a private station to the thrones of Jerusalem and Constanti- ffUntiuiopie°° nople. The titular kingdom of Jerusalem had devolved to Mary, the daughter of Isabella, and Conrad of Montferrat, and the grand-daughter of Almeric or Amaury. She was given to John of Brienne, of a noble family in Champagne, by the public voice, and the judgment of Philip Augustus, who named him as the J most worthy champion of the Holy Land.*^ In the fifth crusade, * he led an hundred thousand Latins to the conquest of Egypt ; by him the siege of Damietta was achieved ; and the subsequent failure Mas justly ascribed to the pride and avai-ice of the legate. After the marriage of his daughter with Frederic the Second,*^ he was provoked by the emperor's ingratitude to accept the command of the army of the church ; and, though advanced in life, and despoiled of royalty, the sword and spirit of John of Brienne were still ready for the service of Christendom. In the seven years of his brother's reign Baldwin of Courtenay had not emerged from a state of childhood, and the barons of Romania felt the strong necessity of placing the sceptre in the hands of man and a hei'o. The veteran king of Jerusalem might havel ^'Marinus Sanutus (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, 1. ii. p. 4, c. 18, p. 73) is so muct delighted with this bloody deed that he has transcribed it in his margin as a bonural exemplum. Yet he acknowledges the damsel for the lawful wife of Robert. •*" See the reign of Robert in Ducange (Hist, de C. P. 1. iii. c. 1-12). [Finlay thinks that Robert should have " seized the culprit immediately, and hung him i his armour before the palace gates, with his shield round his neck " (iv. p. 114).] ^'Rex igitur Francise, deliberatione habita, respondit nuntiis, se daturum homi-J nem Syrias partibus aptum, in armis probum [pieux), in bellis securum, in agendi^ providum, Johannem comitem Brennensem. Sanut. Secret. Fidelium, 1. iii. p. xi.' c. 4, p. 205. Matthew Paris, p. 159. ■*^ Giannone (Istoria Civile, torn. ii. 1. xvi. p. 380-385) discusses the marriage ofl Frederic II. with the daughter of John of Brienne, and the double union of th^ crowns of Naples and Jerusalem.