Robert dying childless, the crown descended to his brother, Baldwin, the infant son of Yolande, born during his father’s captivity. The impossibility of an empire in the throes of dissolution being governed by a child of seven years, compelled the barons of the realm to invite John of Brienne, the old King of Jerusalem, to bring his wisdom and experience to their aid; but the seeds of disintegration had too long been sown. Notwithstanding a two-fold victory against the invader, on the death of the veteran in 1237, the Latin supremacy in the East well nigh vanished. The youthful Baldwin de Courtenay, during the life of John of Brienne, visited many European courts in the vain hope of obtaining aid, military or pecuniary, for the defence of his forlorn dominions, and in the subsequent five and twenty years of his reign these visits were more than once repeated, each time with less result, and though, in fruitless efforts to raise men and money, he alienated his own patrimony of Namur and Courtenay, although in desperation he sold the sacred treasures of his capital—the Crown of Thorns and other relics reputed equally holy—yet his utmost efforts could in no wise avert the doom which threatened the Empire, but only availed to postpone for a while the final catastrophe. At last the determination of Michael Palæologus brought the struggle to an end. Constantinople was invested and taken by the Greeks, the last remnant of Latin sway, in the person of the Emperor Baldwin and his family, taking refuge on board the Venetian fleet, which lay anchored in the Bosphorous. With Baldwin and his son Philip, titular Emperor of Constantinople, ended the elder branch of the Courtenay family, for the latter left one daughter only, who married Charles of Valois, a prince aptly described as “son of a King, brother of a King, uncle to a King, and father to a King, but yet himself no King.” The elevation of three of its members to the Imperial throne undoubtedly conferred great honour on the House of Courtenay, but the after results most adversely affected the surviving members. While other families connected with the French monarchy increased in wealth and influence, the severe struggles made by three generations to maintain their Imperial dignity so impoverished the ancestral domains that the successive holders, though undeniably of Royal descent and near relationship to the reigning dynasty, were not esteemed, and could not obtain recognition of their claims to be considered as Princes of the Blood Royal. It is true, however, that much doubt exists as to whether in the early days of the French nobility, kinship with the King implied any superiority of rank over others nobly born.