His incapacity is proved, if by nothing else, by his singular and uniform ill-luck. If, after the fight of life is over, no single valiant blow can be remembered, the record is a sorry one indeed. Baldwin's difficulties were, it must be owned, very great: they were so great that for a considerable portion of the four-and-twenty years during which he wore the Roman purple his crown was left him by sufferance, and his manner of reigning was to travel about Europe begging for money. The Pope proclaimed a crusade for him, but it was extremely difficult to awaken general enthusiasm for a Courtenay in danger of being overthrown by a Lascaris; and the other point, the submission of Constantinople to Rome in things ecclesiastical, could not be said to touch the popular sentiment at all. The Pope, however, supplemented his exhortation by bestowing upon the indigent Emperor a treasure of indulgences, which he no doubt sold at their marketable value, whatever that was. One fears that it was not much. From England he obtained, after an open insult at Dover, a small contribution toward the maintenance of his empire. Louis IX of France would have rendered him substantial assistance, but for the more pressing claims of the Holy Land and his project for delivering the holy places by a new method. His brother-in-law, Frederick II, excommunicated by the Church, was not likely to manifest any enthusiasm for an ecclesiastical cause; and those allies from whom he might have expected substantial aid, the Venetians, were at war with the Genoese; the Prince of Achaia was in captivity, and the feeble son of Boniface, King of Thessalonica--the sons of all these sturdy crusaders were feeble, like the Syrian _pullani_, sons of Godfrey's heroes--had been deposed. Yet money and men must be raised, or the city must be abandoned. A wise man would have handed over the empire to any who dared defend it. Baldwin was not a wise man. He proceeded to sell the remaining lands of Courtenay and the marquisate of Namur, and by this and other expedients managed to return with an army of thirty thousand men. What would not Baldwin I, or Henry his uncle, or John de Brienne his father-in-law have been able to effect with an army of thirty thousand soldiers of the West? But Baldwin the Incapable did next to nothing.