The usurpation of Michael tempted all the enemies of the Greek Empire to take arms. The Epirot despot allied himself with the Frankish lords of Greece, and their united armies, aided by auxiliaries from Italy, invaded Macedonia; moreover the Latin emperor of Constantinople stirred up the Venetians to ravage his neighbours’ borders. But in 1260 the troops of Michael won, over the allied armies of the Franks and Epirots, the last great victory that a Byzantine army was ever destined to achieve. The field of Pelagonia decided the lot of the house of Paleologus, for Michael’s enemies were so crushed that they could never afterwards make head against him. Freed from all danger from the West, Michael was now able to turn against Constantinople, and complete the reconstruction of the empire. The city was ripe for its fall, and Baldwin of Courtenay had long been awaiting his doom. The long reign of the last Latin sovereign of Constantinople is sufficiently characterized by the fact that Baldwin spent nearly half the years of his rule outside the bounds of Romania, as he wandered from court to court in the West, striving to stir up some champion who would deliver him from the inevitable destruction impending over his realm. He gained little by his tours, his greatest success being that, in 1244, he got from St. Louis a considerable sum of ready money in acknowledgment of the liberality with which he had presented the holy king with a choice selection of relics, including the rod of Moses, the jawbone of John the Baptist, and our Lord’s crown of thorns. In 1261 Baldwin was in worse straits than ever. He was stripping off the lead of his own palace roof, to sell it for a few zecchins to the Venetians, and burning the beams of his outhouses in default of money to buy fuel. His son and heir was in pawn to the Venetian banking firm of the Capelli, who had taken him as the only tangible security that could be found for a modest loan which they had advanced to the imperial exchequer. With the government in such a desperate condition there was no longer any power of resistance left in Constantinople. When the Venetian fleet, the sole remaining defence of the empire, was away at sea, the city fell before a sudden and unpremeditated attack, made by Alexius Strategopulus, commander in Thrace under the emperor Michael. Alexius, with eight hundred regular troops and a few scores of half-armed volunteers, was admitted by treachery within the walls. Before this formidable array the heirs of the Crusaders fled in base dismay, and the Empire of Romania came to an inglorious and a well-deserved end.