Just at this moment the rightful Emperor of the East had been dethroned by his brother, who had usurped his power. The Crusaders, even from the time of the first Crusade, never thought that they met with fair treatment from the Eastern Emperor, for whom they fought. Perhaps they were glad enough now to take up the cause of the rightful but deposed Emperor. Venice, moreover, had her own private cause of offence with Constantinople. The result was that the Crusade was turned aside from its first object, which was Cairo, in Egypt, and was directed against Constantinople. Constantinople fell to their attack in 1204. Baldwin, Count of Flanders, a Norman by race and one of the leaders of the Crusade, was appointed Emperor {168} of the East, and Venice, for her share, was given the nominal sovereignty over some of the islands in the Mediterranean, thus further increasing her power. Frederick II., the grandson of Barbarossa, had come to the imperial throne with claims to an empire scarcely less than that of Charlemagne himself. For besides being Emperor, and thus King of Germany, he still had that claim on the Kingdom of Italy which the emperors had not renounced, even if they could not enforce it. His mother had been heiress of the Norman Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, on which also, therefore, he had a valid claim. Rome lay between these two territories. Moreover, this Frederick was in the succession of the rulers of Burgundy, that great province of which the King of France was nominally the overlord. The less important island Kingdom of Sardinia was his also, and by his marriage he gained the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as it was still called, though it meant only the strip of western coast of Syria and Palestine which the Turk had left to the Christian. Probably Frederick II.'s power, extensive as it was, was quite unwieldy. Probably his authority over parts of this great extent would not have been very readily obeyed, nor very easily enforced. However that be, he really, as I have said, effected nothing against the Lombard League, which was revived, in spite of the feuds between the cities. The League, as before, had the power of the Pope on its side. [Sidenote: Ascendancy of the Church]