THE WESTERN tviEDITERR'-1'\EAN KINGDOMS 1200-l:iOOIn 1267, before Conradin's threat was yet real, Charles
negotiated an agreement with the deposed Latin emperor of
Constantinople, Baldwin II de Courtenay; in return for mil-
itary aid against the Greeks, Charles would receive extensive
rights in Achaia (the Peloponnese) and the Aegean islands,
plus a marriage-alliance between his own daughter and
Baldwin's son Philip. Were Philip to die without heirs, the
imperial title would revert to the Angevin dynasty. Through-
out the 1270s there were small campaigns in the Balkans
as the armies of Emperor Michael VIII and other princes
tried to hold back the allies of the Angevins: a siege of
Durazzo in 1274; nibbling attacks on the Aegean islands
claimed by Charles or other western lords; a crushing defeat
for Charles at Berat in Albania in 1281. But Charles's plan
of a single, massive, consolidated campaign which would
take the Angevins to the walls of Constantinople was delayed
less by these manoeuvres in the Balkans and Aegean than
by papal insistence that there might be another way to deal
with the Greeks of Constantinople. Charles might indeed
seek to return a 'legitimate' and Latin Christian dynasty to
its throne in the east; but the papacy began to negotiate with
the Palaiologoi, in the hope that the Greek Church could be
brought under Latin supervision by peaceful means. Michael
Palaiologos began serious negotiations for the reunion of
the eastern and western Churches, between which the gulf
had only been growing greater since the schism of 1054.
Undoubtedly Michael saw that his prime hope of prevent-
ing an Angevin attack lay in compliance to the overlord of
Charles, the pope. In 1274, under the enthusiastic patron-
age of Pope Gregory X, the Council of Lyons accepted the
profession of faith of Michael VIII and of the Greek Church.
Gregory was full of hope now that Greeks and Latins would
combine in a crusade to resist the Turks and recover the
lost city ofjerusalem.^1 ''
For Charles, the conquest of Constantinople was only part
of a wider eastern policy whose ultimate purpose was a suc-
cessful crusade. He had his own credentials as a crusader. In
1270 he had been a leading participant in the Tunis crusade
of St Louis: indeed, he is often accused of having pressed
his brother to send the crusade to North Africa to prosecute
- Geanakoplos. Aiirhar/ HII, pp. 258-79.