Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/83

 EECONSTEUCTING THE EMPIEE 49 distrusted him, but the admiral seized and carried him off to the king of Naples, where he was thrown into prison and starved to death. When the partisans of Eocafert in the Grand Company- learned of what they regarded as the treachery of the French admiral, they murdered their officers under the belief that they were parties to the capture. They elected new leaders, marched into Thessaly, and took service with the descendants of the crusading barons who had carved out territories for themselves in that province and in Greece. It is unnecessary to follow them there. It is sufficient to say that the Greek army had dogged their movements, had fought well, had defeated them in many engagements, and that what may be its end, regarded as the last struggle with the Grand Company took place in 1315. The devastation caused by the attempts from the "West Disastrous to re-establish the Latin empire culminating in the dis- from ts orders caused bv the Grand Company was such that the f ttem pts ^ . to restore empire's chances of recovering its strength were enormously empire, diminished. The fall of the city in 1204 had been followed by the destruction of the organisation in Asia Minor for resist- ing the progress of Asiatic hordes towards Europe. One may conjecture that the great statesman Innocent the Third, who had foreseen some of the evil effects which would inevitably follow from the success of Dandolo and Mont f err at, would have realised the necessity of aiding Constantinople in mak- ing such resistance. Unfortunately, Innocent's successors were less statesmanlike. Instead of seeking to strengthen the Greeks in Constantinople by condemning the wild lawlessness of the Spaniards, their dominating idea was to restore the Latin empire, so as to force the members of the Orthodox Church to enter into Union. The results of all their attempts were altogether disastrous. The empire was weakened on every side. Its component parts had always been loosely bound together. Long distances in ages of badly constructed roads had prevented the development of loyalty as a bond of union. The traditional attachment to the autocrat at Constantinople had been shaken by the E