Of the nine or ten leaders who put themselves at the head of provincial risings three were destined to carve out kingdoms for themselves. Of these the most important was Theodore Lascaris, the last officer who had attempted to strike a blow against the Franks when Constantinople fell.(30) He might claim some shadow of hereditary right to the imperial crown as he had married the daughter of the imbecile Alexius III., but his true title was his well-approved courage and energy. The wrecks of the old Byzantine army rallied around him, the cities of Bithynia opened their gates, and when the Latins crossed into Asia to divide up the land into baronies and knights fees, they found Theodore waiting to receive them with the sword. His defence of the strong town of Prusa, which successfully repelled Henry of Flanders, put a limit to the extension of the Frank Empire; beyond a few castles on the Bithynian coast they made no conquests. Having thus checked the invaders, Theodore had himself solemnly crowned at Nicaea, and assumed imperial state [1206]. [Illustration] Finial From A Byzantine MS. (_From "L’Art Byzantin." Par C. Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._) Having beaten off the Latins, Theodore had to cope with another who aspired like himself to pose as the rightful heir to the imperial throne. Alexius Comnenus, a grandson of the wicked emperor Andronicus I., had betaken himself to the Eastern frontiers of the empire when Constantinople fell, and obtained possession of Trebizond and the long slip of coast-land at the south-east corner of the Black Sea, from the mouth of the Phasis to Sinope. He aspired to conquer the whole of Byzantine Asia, and sent his brother David Comnenus to attack Bithynia. But Theodore defended his newly won realm with success; Comnenus gained no territory from him, and was constrained to content himself with the narrow bounds of his Pontic realm, where his descendants reigned in obscurity for three hundred years as emperors of Trebizond. A greater danger beset the empire of Nicaea when the warlike sultan of the Seljouks came down from his plateau to ravage its borders. But the valour of Theodore Lascaris triumphed over this enemy also. In the battle of Antioch-on-Maeander he slew Sultan Kaikhosru with his own hand in single combat, and the Turks were beaten back with such slaughter that they left the empire alone for a generation.