Isaac died in the midst of the turmoil, and the young Empress Maria lost her crown almost as soon as she had received it. We shall see presently that she found consolation among the Crusaders, but it is necessary first to follow the adventurous fortune of Euphrosyne and her daughter. The young Alexis, distracted and feeble as ever, proposed to leave the city and join the Westerners in their camp without the walls. As he prepared for flight there came to him a fiery and ambitious young officer who felt that the time was opportune for laying his own hand on the sacred crown. Alexis Ducas Murtzuphlus--his last name, or nickname, was due to the fact that he had a peculiar connexion of the bushy eyebrows which stood out over his crafty eyes--was one of the party in the city who, to the applause of the crowd, urged direct war upon the Latins, and his popularity emboldened him to remove Alexis and ally himself with Euphrosyne. By a liberal outlay of money he secured the Varangian guards, and he then approached Alexis and whispered to him that his leaning to the Latins had exasperated the citizens. When Alexis trembled, the adventurer offered to lodge him in a secure retreat until the rage of the people should have calmed. It is hardly necessary to add that the young Emperor was conducted to one of the dungeons of the palace, where his egregious folly was presently ended with a bowstring. Euphrosyne and her daughter were now delivered from their confinement and restored to the palace, and, as Murtzuphlus had the characteristic looseness of his age in regard to conjugal matters--he had already discarded two wives--he soon sought and obtained the affection of Eudocia. The contemporary courtier and writer Nicetas says that Eudocia was merely his mistress, but others say that he married Eudocia and it is difficult, as the sequel will show, to determine the point. Probably he did, after a time, marry Euphrosyne’s daughter, and he then set to work to defend the city against the Crusaders. The issue is one of the great pages of history, but its details do not concern us. On 9th April the Latins moved their formidable rams and catapults and towers against the walls, and the Venetians drew up their vessels along the Golden Horn. Three days later, after a furious assault, amid showers of mighty stones and the blaze of burning houses, the heroes of the cross burst into the city and began that historic ravage which puts them for all time far below the moral level of the Turks they had set out to combat.