ate sovereigns of the East culminated in the capture of
Constantinople by the Greeks (1261). The line of Latin sovereigns was
extinct. Baldwin lived the remainder of his life a royal fugitive,
soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration. He died in
1272.

From the days of the Emperor Heraclius the Byzantine Empire had been
most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary
succession. Five dynasties--the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian,
and Comnenian families--enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony
during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four
generations. The imperial house of Comnenius, though its direct line in
male descent had expired with Andronicus I. (1185), had been perpetuated
by marriage in the female line, and had survived the exile from
Constantinople, in the persons of the descendants of Theodore Lascaris.

Michael Palaeologus, who, through his mother, might claim perhaps a
prior right to the throne of the Comnenii, usurped the imperial dignity
on the recovery of Constantinople, cruelly blinded the young Emperor
John, the legitimate heir of Theodore Lascaris, and reigned until 1282.
His career of authority was notable for an attempt to unite the Greek
and Roman churches--a union which was dissolved in 1283--and his
instigation of the revolt in Sicily, which ended in the famous Sicilian
Vespers (March 30, 1282), when 8,000 French were exterminated in a
promiscuous massacre.

He saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion
and blood. From these seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men,
who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son, Andronicus the Elder
(1282-1332). Thousands of Genoese and Catalans, released from the wars
that Michael had aroused in the West, took service under his successor
against the Turks. Other mercenaries flocked to their standard, and,
under the name of the Great Company, they subverted the authority of the
emperor, defeated his troops, laid waste his territory, united
themselves with his enemies, and, finally, abandoning the banks of the
Hellespont, marched into Greece. Here they overthrew the remnant of the
Latin power, and for fourteen years (1311-1326) the Great Company was
the terror of the Grecian states.

Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignity of the house
of Arragon; and, during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens
as a government or an appanage w