Baldwin, who had been with Louis IX…
1250 CE
Baldwin, who had been with Louis IX at Damietta, had been happy to be able to get money from the French king in exchange for relics.
The extremity of his financial straits had reduced him soon afterwards to handing over his only son, Philip, to Venetian merchants as a pledge for loans of money.
The Latin Empire, progressively weakened by feudal divisions and internal power rivalries, by 1250 controls only a small strip of land surrounding Constantinople on each side of the Bosporus.