Holy Land and his project for delivering the holy places by a new method.  His brother-in-law, Frederick II, excommunicated by the Church, was not likely to manifest any enthusiasm for an ecclesiastical cause; and those allies from whom he might have expected substantial aid, the Venetians, were at war with the Genoese; the Prince of Achaia was in captivity, and the feeble son of Boniface, King of Thessalonica—­the sons of all these sturdy crusaders were feeble, like the Syrian pullani, sons of Godfrey’s heroes—­had been deposed.  Yet money and men must be raised, or the city must be abandoned.  A wise man would have handed over the empire to any who dared defend it.  Baldwin was not a wise man.  He proceeded to sell the remaining lands of Courtenay and the marquisate of Namur, and by this and other expedients managed to return with an army of thirty thousand men.  What would not Baldwin I, or Henry his uncle, or John de Brienne his father-in-law have been able to effect with an army of thirty thousand soldiers of the West?  But Baldwin the Incapable did next to nothing.

By this time the strip of country remaining to the Emperor was only that immediately surrounding the city.  All the rest was in the hands of Greek or of Bulgarian.  When these were at war, the city was safe; when these were united, the city was every moment in danger of falling.  Baldwin used his new recruits in gaining possession of the country for a distance of three days’ journey round his capital—­about sixty miles in all—­which was something.  But how was the position to be maintained or to be improved?  There were no revenues in that bankrupt city, from whose port the trade had passed away, and which had lost the command of the narrow seas.  What was the condition of the citizens we know not.  That of the imperial household was such that the Emperor’s servants were fain to demolish empty houses for fuel, and to strip churches of the lead upon their roofs to supply the daily wants of his family.  He sent his son Philip to Venice as security for a debt; he borrowed at enormous interest of the merchants of Italy; and when all else failed, and the money which he had raised at such ruinous sacrifices had melted away, and his soldiers were clamoring for pay, he remembered the holy relics yet remaining to the city, in spite of the cartloads carried off during the great sack of 1204, and resolved to raise more money upon them.

There was, first of all, the Crown of Thorns.  This had been already pledged in Venice for the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty-four pieces of gold to the Venetians.  As the money was spent and the relic could not be redeemed within the time, the Venetians were preparing to seize it.  They would have been within their right.  But Baldwin conceived an idea, so clever that it must have been suggested by a Greek, which, if successfully carried out, would result in the attainment of much more money by its means.  He would give it to Louis