It was especially the battle of Bouviines, which determined, as we have remarked, the fall of Otho IV. and the preponderance of the party of Frederick II. Innocent thus reaped in part the fruits of the triumph of Philip Augustus. These disputes were connected with the crusade of 1202, which like that of 1095, and those of 1147 and 1189, placed in the hands of the pope the clue of all the movements of Europe. Each of these expeditions occasioned quarrels between the crusaders and the Greeks, and this misunderstanding appeared to Innocent an open for re-conquering the Eastern Church, escaped now two centuries from the domination of the court of Rome. The Greek empire, worn out by war and by faction, became the prey of the crusaders, who, being unable to retain Jerusalem, made themselves masters of Constantinople. Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was nominated Emperor of the East; after him four other Frenchmen filled successively the same throne, while, having taken refuge in Nice, the Greek emperors reigned only over some provinces. The palaces and temples of Byzantium were plundered, and the booty, collected by the French lords was estimated at a quantity of silver of two hundred thousand pounds weight. They found it convenient to indemnify themselves in Greece for the losses sustained in Palestine; the vow which they had made, to combat only infidels, no longer repressed their covetousness; the re-establishment of holy places was but a pretext for pillaging the rich ones; and already the affectation of sentiments of religion was relinquished.: “They “cast, says Fleury, the relics into unclean places, “they scattered on the ground the body and blood “of our Lord; they employed the sacred vases “for profane uses, and an insolent woman danced in “the sanctuary and seated herself in the chair of the “priest.” Innocent, who was not ignorant of these profanations and complained of them, did not approve the less of the conquest:²²⁷ “God, said he, willing to “console the church by the re−union of the schisma− “tics, has caused the empire of the haughty, supersti− “tious and disobedient Greeks to pass over to the “humble, catholic, and submissive Latins.” ²²⁷ Hist, eccles. 1. 76. n. 2.; Innoc. III, Epist 1. 8. ep. 69.