Next in the list of Old-Byzantine territories which Michael never recovered, we must place Greece proper, now divided between the Princes of Achaia, of the house of Villehardouin, and the Briennes, who had succeeded to the Duchy of Athens. But the Paleologi still retained a considerable slice of the Peloponnesus, and were destined to encroach ere long on their Frankish neighbours. Lastly, we must mention the islands of the Aegean, of which the large majority were held either by the Venetian government, or by Venetian adventurers, who ruled as independent lords, but subordinated their policy to that of their native state. But the territorial difference between the empire of 1204 and the empire of 1261 was only one of the causes which crippled the realm of the Paleologi. Bad though the internal government of the dominions of Alexius III. had been, there was still then some hope of recovery. The old traditions of East-Roman administrative economy, though neglected, were not lost, and might have been revived by an emperor who had a keen eye to discover ability and a ready hand to reward merit. New blood in the _personnel_ of the ministry, and a keen supervision of details by the master’s eye, would have produced an improvement in the state of the empire, though any permanent restoration of strength was probably made impossible by the deep-seated decay of society. But by the time of Michael Paleologus even amelioration had become impossible. The three able emperors who reigned at Nicaea, though they had preserved their independence against Turk and Frank, had utterly failed in restoring administrative efficiency in their provinces. John Vatatzes, himself a thrifty monarch, who could even condescend to poultry-farming to fill his modest exchequer, found that all his efforts to protect native industry could not cause the dried-up springs of prosperity to flow again. The whole fiscal and administrative machinery of government had been thrown hopelessly out of gear.