But the joy and confidence of the returning throng were doomed to be speedily overcast. The end was merely postponed for a month or two. The Empire had, in its most solemn crisis, received a worthless and despicable pair of rulers, and the Latins pressed for their pound of flesh. Isaac, blind, gouty and weak-minded, spent his days among monks and astrologers, who, while they devoured the choicest dishes that the palace could afford, assured him that he had entered upon a long and glorious reign, that his gout would quickly disappear, and that his eyes would be miraculously restored to their arid sockets. The younger Alexis drank and gambled with the experienced knights of the fourth Crusade. When the leaders of the Crusade pressed for the payment of their reward, all the wealth of Euphrosyne and her relatives was confiscated--Alexis had left little to seize--the jewels and plate of the palaces were pledged, even the precious reliquaries of the churches and monasteries and the great silver lamps of St Sophia were appropriated; yet the jaws of the West still stood wide open, and the Latin troops lingered and demanded food and drink. The fugitive Alexis had, in the meantime, raised an army in Thrace, and the citizens of Constantinople were embittered and disaffected. In August a quarrel with some of Baldwin’s soldiers had led to a conflagration which, it being the height of summer, had burned for two days and destroyed nearly half the city. The clergy and people met in the cathedral to appoint a new Emperor, but, though some undistinguished officer afterwards accepted the title from the mob, no serious aspirant dare take the crown in face of the hostile Latins.
Isaac died in the midst of the turmoil, and the young Empress Maria lost her crown almost as soon as she had received it. We shall see presently that she found consolation among the Crusaders, but it is necessary first to follow the adventurous fortune of Euphrosyne and her daughter. The young Alexis, distracted and feeble as ever, proposed to leave the city and join the Westerners in their camp without the walls. As he prepared for flight there came to him a fiery and ambitious young officer who felt that the time was opportune for laying his own hand on the sacred crown. Alexis Ducas Murtzuphlus--his last name, or nickname, was due to the fact that he had a peculiar connexion of the bushy eyebrows which stood out over his crafty eyes--was one of the party in the city who, to the applause of the crowd, urged direct war upon the Latins, and his popularity emboldened him to remove Alexis and ally himself with Euphrosyne. By a liberal outlay of money he secured the Varangian guards, and he then approached Alexis and whispered to him that his leaning to the Latins had exasperated the citizens. When Alexis trembled, the adventurer offered to lodge him in a secure retreat until the rage of the people should have calmed. It is hardly necessary to add that the young Emperor was conducted to one of the dungeons of the palace, where his egregious folly was presently ended with a bowstring.