The deposed emperor Baldwin II of Courtenay,…
1267 CE
The deposed emperor Baldwin II of Courtenay, who, having fled Constantinople through Greece to Italy and France, is especially active at this time.
He persuades Charles d'Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily, to pension him and sign a treaty for the reconquest of the empire.
Under the Treaty of Viterbo signed on May 27, 1267, Baldwin gifts the Principality of Achaea to Charles
The brother of the French king Louis IX, Charles is the West's ablest diplomat.
Charles in 1266 had advanced into southern Italy at papal invitation expelled the last representatives of the imperial House of Hohenstaufen, Manfred and Conradin, and inherited their titles.
Having at once fixed his gaze across the Balkans onto Constantinople, he, in the words of one chronicler, “aspired to the monarchy of the world, hoping thereby to recreate the great empire of Julius Caesar by joining East and West.”
He begins organizing a coalition of all parties interested in reestablishing the Latin empire, posing as the pope's champion to lead a crusade against the schismatic Greeks.
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