Like the conquerors of Jerusalem after the First Crusade, the conquerors of Constantinople set up a feudal state on the ruins of the Oriental system that they had destroyed. The Emperor Baldwin was to be overlord of all the Crusading chieftains, and was moreover to have as his domains the capital, saving the Venetian quarter, the greater part of Thrace with Adrianople, and the eastern islands of the Ægean, Samothrace, Cos, Lesbos, Samos and Chios. Boniface of Montferrat was consoled for his disappointment with the title of King of Thessalonica. He was still strong enough to reject the offer of a patrimony in Asia which the Latins had still to conquer, and to profess that he held Thessalonica in his own right, independently of the Emperor of Romania. He established himself in Macedonia and Thessaly. The Venetians had the lion’s share of the plunder. They had henceforth a large slice of Constantinople with the practical monopoly of the trade of the Empire. They also were recognised as lords of most of the islands and coast lands, including the Ionian islands, Eubœa, most of the Cyclades and some of the Sporades, numerous settlements on the coasts of the Peloponnesus, and a large domain north of the Corinthian Gulf, along Acarnania, Ætolia, Epirus and Albania, where, however, they were not strong enough to penetrate far into the interior. Crete they purchased from Boniface of Montferrat. Dandolo, who assumed the title of _Despotes_, now styled himself ‘lord of a quarter and half-a-quarter’ of the Empire. The minor Frankish chiefs also received great fiefs. Louis of Blois became Duke of Nicæa and of Nicomedia: Villehardouin became Prince of Achaia: Odo of La Roche Lord of Athens, and there were counts of Thebes, dukes of Philippopolis, and marquises of Corinth. Each feudatory had still his fief to conquer as best he could, and the lords, to whom lands in Asia were assigned, never obtained effective possession of their territories. The more fortunate European barons could only enjoy their grants by calling in the help of vassal chieftains, whose immunities left them little more than a show of power outside their own domains. No feudal state was ever strong, but no feudal state was ever so weak as the Latin Empire in the East. It had to contend against all the characteristic evils of feudalism, the infinite multiplication of the sovereign power, the constant feuds of rival chieftains, the permanent jealousy of every vassal of the power of his overlord. But it had special difficulties of its own of a kind impossible to be got over. The magnates of the expedition had cleverly manipulated the division of the spoils to their own advantage, and the poorer Crusaders were bitterly discontented. A comparison of the famous history of Villehardouin with the less well known account of the Crusade by the simple Picard knight, Robert of Clari, shows how bitterly the ‘poor knights’ resented the overbearing