Perhaps it is too much to say that the Latin conquest of Constantinople benefited nobody but the Venetians. Perhaps it had some value in that it breathed life into the decaying national spirit of the Greeks. They were stirred to fresh exertions by the humiliations put upon them. They waged relentless warfare upon the Latin Empire, and finally, on the night of July 24th, 1261, taking advantage of the absence of the reigning Emperor, Baldwin II, and the Venetian fleet, a Greek force of 1,000 men led by Alexis Strategopoulos Cæsar entered the Gate of the Pegé by treachery and brought the Latin Empire to an inglorious close. The dynasty of the Palaeologoi supplanted the house of Hainault.
It was a brave effort misdirected. That is the most charitable judgment which can be pronounced on it. Had it succeeded in the genuine ambition of its leaders—that is, had they been able enough men to contrive the accomplishment of such far-reaching schemes—it might very well have achieved the lasting junction of the Eastern and Western Churches, reared a great, progressive Christian state athwart the path of Islam and redeemed once and for all the Holy Land.
But it failed to accomplish any of these objects. Venice alone turned to account the spoils which fell to her portion to check the Moslem sweep, in the Eastern Mediterranean. It failed, and as a failure it is remembered.
THE END