Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/457

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIEE 435 at the general council of Lyons, when Frederic the Second was excommunicated and deposed, his Oriental colleague was en- throned on the right hand of the pope. But how often was the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial beggar humbled with scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his own eyes and those of the nations ! In his first visit to England he was stopt at Dover by a severe reprimand that he should presume, without leave, to enter an independent kingdom. After some delay, Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue his journey, was entertained with cold civility, and thankfully departed with a present of seven hundred marks. ^'^ From the avarice of Rome he could only obtain the proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure of indulgences : a coin whose currency was depreciated by too frequent and indiscriminate abuse. His birth and mis- fortunes recommended him to the generosity of his cousin, Lewis the Ninth ; but the martial zeal of the saint was diverted from Constantinople to Egypt and Palestine ; and the public and private poverty of Baldwin was alleviated, for a moment, by the alienation of the marquisate of Namur and the lordship of Courtenay, the last remains of his inheritance.^-' By such shameful or ruinous expedients he once more returned to Ro- mania, with an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers [a.d. 1239] were doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. His first dispatches to France and England announced his victories and his hopes ; he had reduced the country round the capital to the distance of three days' journey ; and, if he succeeded against an important though nameless city (most probably Chiorli),*^" [a.d. 1240] the frontier would be safe and the passage accessible. But these expectations (if Baldwin was sincere) quickly vanished like a dream ; the troops and treasures of France melted away in his unskilful hands ; and the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a dishonourable alliance with the Turks and Comans. To secure the former, he consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving sultan of Cogni ; to please the latter, ^■^ Matthew Paris relates the two visits of Baldwin II. to the English court, p. 396, 637 ; his return to Greece armata manu, p. 407, his letters of his nomen formidabile, &c., p. 481 (a passage which had escaped Ducange), his expulsion, p. 850. ''^ Louis IX. disapproved and stopped the alienation of Courtenay (Ducange, 1. iv. c. 23). It is now annexed to the royal demesne, but granted for a term [engage) to the family of Boulanvilliers. Courtenay, in the election of Nemours in the Isle de France, is a town of 900 inhabitants, with the remains of a castle (Melanges tir^s d'une grande Bibliotheque, tom. xiv. p. 74-77). 8«[Tzurulos.]