The thirty years succeeding the Second Crusade were a period of fair but somewhat stationary prosperity for the Latin East. The long minority of Baldwin III. (1143–1163) was a great calamity in itself, but his mother, Millicent, was a capable regent, and Baldwin, when he grew up, proved a vigorous warrior both against the Egyptians and Noureddin, while his affability, generosity, and bright ready wit made him the most popular of all his line. By his marriage with Theodora, daughter of the Emperor Manuel, Baldwin III. did something to promote active co-operation between the Greeks and the Latins against Islam, and his death in 1163 was a great loss to the Latin kingdom. [Sidenote: The Kingdom of Jerusalem between the Second and the Third Crusades.] Amalric I., his brother (1163–1174), also married a Byzantine wife, and even visited Constantinople. But with all his policy he failed to unite effectively the Christian forces, or to check seriously the growth of the power of Noureddin, and with his death the decline of the kingdom rapidly set in. His son and successor, Baldwin IV. (1174–1185), began to reign as a boy of twelve, and as he grew up proved a hopeless leper. On his death another child, Baldwin V. (1185–1186), his sister Sibyl’s son by her first husband, succeeded, but he died the next year. The crown was now disputed between Guy of Lusignan, Sibyl’s second husband, and Raymond, Count of Tripoli, who had acted as regent for the leper king. In the short but sharp civil war that followed, the last hopes of the kingdom perished. A state ruled in turn by a leper, a child, and an intriguing woman was in no fit state to carry on a perpetual struggle for existence, and the disorders of the royal house were only typical of the disorganisation of the realm. There was always a corrupt element among the Crusaders. A momentary religious enthusiasm could not change the nature of the criminals and desperadoes, who had sought a refuge in the East from the errors they had committed in the West. But even the descendants of the warrior saints lamentably degenerated under the fierce sun of Syria, and the luxury and moral corruption of Oriental life. The best and bravest perished in the ceaseless wars against the infidel, and the crusading lordships were constantly diminishing in numbers, and too often a single heiress, an imbecile or a minor, represented a great aggregation of fiefs, formerly owned by many warriors able to make head personally against the Turks. Things were almost worse with the Franks in the towns, whose frequent intermarriage with native women led to a mixed race called ‘Pullani,’ with Eastern habits and ways of thought. Under these circumstances the military orders became indispensable. Their castles were always commanded by grown men accustomed to affairs, and from their numerous commanderies throughout Christendom came a succession of warriors, whose strength had not been sapped by an almost tropical climate.