The Latins in the Levant Author:William Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV THE ZENITH OF PRANKISH RULE (1214-1262) THE new Despot of Epiros had not been long on the throne, when the Latin Empire of Romania received a bl... more »ow, which was severely felt throughout continental Greece. The Emperor Henry suddenly died in 1216, perhaps poisoned by the relentless Count of Biandrate, still in the prime of life, " a second Ares" in war, a friend to the Greeks, the ablest among the Latins of Constantinople. As he left no heirs, Peter of Courtenay, the husband of his sister Jolanda, succeeded him as emperor, and from that moment the fortunes of the empire began to decline. Peter never lived to reach his capital. After receiving his crown from the hands of Pope Honorius III. in the church of S. Lorenzo, outside the walls of Rome, he crossed over to Durazzo with the intention of marching along the classic Via Egnatia, which so many a Latin commander had trod, to Salonika and the East. Albania was even then a dangerous country, and the crafty ruler of Epiros saw a splendid opportunity of destroying the emperor of his natural enemies, the Franks. The Epirote troops fell upon the unfortunate Peter in the defiles near Elbassan; the emperor and the papal legate who accompanied him were captured; and, while the latter was ultimately released, the former died in prison, perhaps by the sword.1 His death, as the historian Akropolita says, was " noGREEK EMPIRE OF SALONIKA 83 1 There is great difference of opinion among the authorities as to the death of Peter. The continuation of William of Tyre (Recueil ties Historicns des Croisades, ii., 291-3), which gives the most detailed account, says that he was treacherously captured at a banquet, and died in prison ; so, too, Dandolo (apud Muratori, xii., 340); the Chronicle of Fossa Nova (ibid., vii., 895-6) says that ...« less