The Pope, compelled to recognise accomplished facts,
merely demanded three concessions: that the Latin faith should be established
as the official religion of the Empire; that the possessions of the Greek Church
should be handed over to the Latin clergy; and that the Crusaders should
continue their pilgrimage at the end of a year. Only the first of these points
was conceded. The Crusade of Innocent III ended, like that of Urban II, in the
creation of a string of feudal states and commercial factories. But in 1204
there was hardly the attempt to justify what had been done in the name of
religion. The Venetians behaved from first to last as commercial buccaneers; a
fickle and frivolous ambition, rather than calculating villainy, characterised
their highborn associates. Plainly, these were the only materials available
for a Crusade; the collapse of the Crusading policy was near at hand.
A few romantic careers illuminate the monotonously sordid
annals of the Latin Empire, threatened from within by the feuds of the rival
baronial houses, from without by the Bulgarians, the Greek despots of Epirus,
and the Greek Emperors of Nicaea. Henry of Flanders, the second Latin Emperor
(1205-1216), the one constructive statesman produced by the Crusade; William of
Champlitte, who overran the Morea with but a hundred knights, was hailed by the
oppressed Greeks as a liberator, and founded the Principality of Achaea
(1205-1209) only to lose it through the treachery of a lieutenant; Niccolo
Acciajuoli (+1365), the Florentine banker, who rose to be Lord of Corinth,
Count of Malta, and administrator of Achaea - these were men who on a greater
stage might have achieved durable renown. But the subject Greeks were not to be
Latinised by a handful of energetic seigneurs and merchants; one by one, as
opportunities occurred, the provinces of the Latin Empire deserted to the
allegiance of Nicaea.
