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 40 DESTEUCTION OF THE &BEEK EMPIKE would allow them once more to trade with the empire, and in 1310 concluded a truce with its ruler for ten years. Philip now prepared to organise an attempt against Constantinople, and once more the pope, in 1313, weakened the position of the Latin party in Constantinople by calling upon Frederic, king of Sicily, to aid the new pretender. The king of France undertook to furnish five hundred men- at-arms, and money to pay them for a year, and called upon Louis of Burgundy to furnish another hundred. The under- taking, however, languished, and when Philip of France died, in 1314, no one, except Philip of Tarentum, seemed to have any further interest in it. He leagued himself with the king of Hungary in 1318, and two years later purchased certain rights in the principality of Achaia and what was still spoken of in the West as the kingdom of Thessalonica. But no favourable opportunity came to him, and in 1324 the doge of Venice notified the emperor that the princes of the West had no intention of attacking the imperial city. The notification turned out correct, for, until his dethronement, in 1328, Andronicus was no longer troubled with tidings of expeditions against Constantinople from Western Europe. The Meantime it is necessary to return to the invitation Sand" 1 which Andronicus had given to Kobert de Flor to come to ExpeSn This aid was intended nominally against the Turks, against but really against the expedition which Charles of Valois nopie. was preparing, with the sanction of the pope and the help of the Venetians and of all men who would respond to the pope's exhortation, to assist in restoring a Latin emperor to Constantinople. The invitation brought into the empire a band of auxiliaries from the West which, in its weakened condition, was almost as mischievous and ruinous to the empire as any expedition openly directed against its exist- ence could have been. The evil inflicted upon the empire by the band of mercenaries invited for its defence was indeed so manifold that the story deserves telling with considerable detail. As already stated, Philip, the son of Baldwin, the last