BOOK XV.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

—Volumes I and II of this work have been published by Project Gutenberg:

-Vol. I: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49104

-Vol. II: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49118

THE

HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES

BY

JOSEPH FRANCOIS MICHAUD.

_TRANSLATED BY W. ROBSON._

A New Edition,

WITH PREFACE AND SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER BY

HAMILTON W. MABIE.

_IN THREE VOLUMES._

VOL. III.

NEW YORK:

A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON,

714 BROADWAY.

CONTENTS TO VOL. III.

BOOK XV.—A.D. 1255-1270.

EIGHTH CRUSADE.

Christian cities of Palestine fortified by Louis

IX.—Quarrels among the Crusaders—Divisions

among the Saracens—Aibek, sultan of Egypt,

assassinated—Chegger-Adour, the sultana,

assassinated—The Moguls, or Tartars, capture

Bagdad—Koutouz elected sultan of Egypt—The

Moguls capture the principal cities of Syria—The

general terror inspired among the Mussulmans and

Christians—Apprehensions of Bela IV., king of

Hungary—Assassination of Koutouz—The Mamelukes of

Egypt—Bibars proclaimed sultan of Egypt—Declares

war against the Christians of Palestine—The

Mamelukes defeat and expel the Tartars from

Palestine—Constantinople recaptured by the Greeks,

and the Latins expelled—The Christians defeated by

the Mamelukes, and Palestine laid waste—Cæsarea,

Arsouf, and Sefed besieged and captured—Slaughter

of the Christians—Mohammedanism not a religion of

the sword—Charlemagne’s career—Capture of Jaffa by

the sultan of Egypt—Bohemond forms a treaty with

Bibars—Antioch captured and destroyed, and the

inhabitants slaughtered—Quarrels of the popes with the

sovereigns of Europe—Royal family of Swabia—Charles,

count of Anjou, crowned by the pope as king of

Sicily—Mainfroy—Conraddin disputes the crown of

Sicily—Louis IX. determines upon a fresh crusade to

the Holy Land—The illustrious personages who take the

cross in his support—Joinville declines to accompany

him—Abaga, khan of the Tartars, sends ambassadors to

Rome—Pope Clement IV. supports the new crusade—The

clergy oppose the levying of contributions—A council

held at Northampton for aiding the crusade—James king

of Arragon, and Edward prince of England, engage in the

crusade—Death of Clement IV.—The Crusaders arrive

at Tunis—Historical notice of Tunis—The Mohammedans

resist the Crusaders—Sickness and mortality among

the Crusaders—Death of the duke de Nevers—Illness

and fervent devotion of Louis—His death—Charles

of Anjou lands at Tunis, and takes the command of

the Crusaders—Returns to France with the bodies of

his father, wife, and brother—The virtue? and piety

of Louis IX.—Prince Edward of England arrives in

Palestine—Nazareth captured by the Crusaders—Prince

Edward returns to England—Thibault elected pope,

under the title of Gregory X.—He convokes the council

of Lyons for reviving a new crusade—Curious document

issued by Humbert de Romanis—Three pretenders to

the throne of Jerusalem—The continued victories of

Bibars—His death and character—Death of Gregory

X.—Revolt in Sicily—The Sicilian vespers—Kealaoun,

the sultan of Egypt, concludes a treaty with the

Christians of Ptolemaïs, and enters into treaties

with European princes—Fort of Margat captured

by the Mussulmans—Sieur Barthélemi becomes a

Mohammedan renegade—Tripoli captured and destroyed,

and the Christians slaughtered—Description of

Ptolemaïs—Chalil elected sultan of Egypt—The

Mussulman sect of Chages—Ptolemaïs captured

and destroyed by Chalil—Virgins of St. Clair

self-mutilated and destroyed—Death of William de

Clermont—Devoted heroism of the Templars—Capture

and destruction of Tyre, Berytus, Sidon, and all the

Christian cities along the coast of Palestine pp. 1-91.

BOOK XVI.—A.D. 1291-1396.

ATTEMPTED CRUSADES AGAINST THE TURKS.

Pope Nicholas IV. attempts to revive a fresh

crusade against the East—Sends missionaries to the

Tartars—Their contests with the Mussulmans revive

the hopes of the Christians—Argun, the Tartar

chief—Conquests of the Tartars—Cazan, the Mogul

prince, sends ambassadors to the Pope—Clement IV.

proclaims a crusade at the council of Vienna—Exploits

of the Hospitallers—Conquests and wealth of the

Templars—Accusations against them—Philip le Bel

of France takes the cross—His death—Philip le

Long—His death—Charles le Bel—His death—Raymond

Lulli preaches a fresh crusade—Philip of Valois

convokes an assembly at Paris for reviving a fresh

crusade—Renewed persecutions of the Christians

in Palestine—Brother Andrew of Antioch—Petrarch

an apostle of the holy war—Humbert II., dauphin

of Viennois, takes the cross—Hugh of Lusignan,

king of Cyprus—Political troubles of France—King

John taken prisoner at Poictiers—Engages in a

fresh crusade—Urban V. convokes a meeting at

Avignon—Peter de Lusignan, and Charles IV., emperor

of Germany, engage in the crusade—Alexandria

captured and burnt by the Crusaders—Barbary

invaded by the Christian forces—Tripoli captured

and burnt—Towns of Syria destroyed—Origin and

history of the Turks and the Ottoman empire—Their

conquests and invasion of Greece—Constantinople

menaced by the Turks—Its tottering state—The

emperors of Constantinople—Amurath, the Turkish

sultan—Bajazet—Two popes at the same time—Crusade

against the Turks determined on—Bajazet defeats

the Christian forces with great slaughter—Defeats

the Hungarians—Manuel, emperor of Constantinople,

visits France—Distracted state of Europe—History

and conquests of Tamerlane the Tartar—The Turks

defeated, and Syria overrun by the Tartars—Bajazet

raises the siege of Constantinople, and is defeated

by Tamerlane—Smyrna captured and destroyed—The

Ottomans reconquer the provinces overrun by

Tamerlane—The Greek Church submits to papal

authority—The barbarities of the Turks towards the

Christians—Pope Eugenius exhorts the Christian states

to another crusade—Cardinal Julian preaches in its

favour—Amurath enters into a treaty of peace with the

Crusaders, which being violated, they are defeated

with great slaughter—Ladislaus, king of Poland, and

Cardinal Julian, slain—Battle of Warna—Accession

of Mahomet II. to the Ottoman throne—His extensive

empire—Besieges Constantinople—Character of

Constantine Palæologus, the Greek emperor—His great

efforts in defence of his capital—Mahomet takes the

city by storm—Death of the emperor and destruction of

the Greek empire pp. 92-158.

BOOK XVII.—A.D. 1453-1481.

CRUSADES AGAINST THE TURKS.

Consternation among the Christian states at the

fall of Constantinople.—Philip, duke of Burgundy,

assembles his nobility at Lille—Curious festival

held by—Enthusiasm in favour of a crusade against

the Turks—Bishop Sylvius, John Capistran, Frederick

III. of Germany, and Pope Calixtus III. endeavour

to stir up the crusade—The Turks penetrate into

Hungary—Valour of Hunniades—They are defeated

at Belgrade—An alarming comet—Bishop Sylvius

elected Pope—Extended conquests of Mahomet II.—He

subdues Greece—The Pope convokes an assembly at

Mantua to urge on the crusade—His negociations

with Mahomet—Bosnia conquered—Pius II. engages

personally in the crusade, reaches Ancona, and

dies—Scanderberg defeats the Turks—Mahomet II.

swears to annihilate Christianity—The king of

Persia marches against the Turks, and his army

is destroyed—Cardinal Caraffa commands a fleet

of Crusaders—Satalia and Smyrna pillaged by the

Christian forces—Possessions of the Venetians and

Genoese captured by the Turks—Jacques Cœur—Cyprus

subjected to the Mussulmans—Taken possession of by

the Turks—Rhodes bravely defended by the knights

of St. John—The Turks invade Hungary and different

parts of Europe simultaneously—Defeated by Corvinus,

king of Hungary—Otranto captured by the Turks, and

afterwards abandoned—Pope Sextus IV. implores the

aid of Christian Europe against the Turks—Distracted

state of Italy—Death of Mahomet II., and divisions

in his family—Zizim disputes the Turkish empire with

Bajazet, and visits Europe—Charles VIII. of Naples,

engages in a crusade against the Turks—Alphonso II.

of Arragon—Italy invaded, and Rome possessed by the

French—Andrew Palæologus sells his claims to the

empire of the East—Death of Zizim—-Bajazet declares

war against Venice—Negotiates a treaty—Undertakes

an expedition against Portugal—Commercial ambition

of Venice—Diet at Augsburgh—Helian’s speech

against the Venetians—Council of Lateran convoked

by Julius II.—Bajazet II. dethroned, and succeeded

by Selim—Disorders of Christendom—Selim conquers

the king of Persia and the sultan of Egypt—Palestine

and all the rival powers of the East under the

domination of the Turks—Exertions of Leo X. for

reviving a crusade against them—Vida, the Italian

poet—Novagero’s eulogies on Leo X.—Cultivation

of Greek in Italy—Great preparations for the new

crusade—Eloquence of Sadoletus, and letters of Francis

I. in its favour—Sale of indulgences—Quarrels of

the Augustines and the Dominicans—Preaching of

Luther against indulgences—Soliman succeeds to the

Ottoman empire—Belgrade and Rhodes captured by the

Turks—The knights of St. John expelled from Rhodes,

and transferred to Malta—Francis I. made prisoner

at the battle of Pavia—The Hungarians defeated

by the Turks, and Louis II. slain—Clement VII.

imprisoned by Charles V.—Religious distractions of

Europe—Vienna besieged by the Turks—Hungary enters

into a treaty of peace—Policy of Henry VIII., of

Francis I., and of Charles V.—The Barbary states taken

under the protection of the Ottoman Porte—Preaching

of Luther—Heroic defence of Malta—Death of

Soliman, and accession of Selim—Capture of

Cyprus—The Turks signally defeated at the naval

battle of Lepanto—Universal rejoicings throughout

Christendom—General spread of civilization in

Europe—Brilliant age of Leo X.—The military power

of the Turks begins to decline—Defeated by Sobieski

before the walls of Vienna—Causes and history of

their decline—The Moors driven from Spain—State

of Christendom in Europe, and progress of the

Reformation—Ignatius Loyola—Pilgrimages to the Holy

Land—A spirit of resignation assumes the place of

enthusiasm for the crusades pp. 159-250.

BOOK XVIII.—A.D. 1571-1685.

Reflections on the state of Europe, on the various

classes of society, and on the progress of navigation,

industry, arts, and general knowledge during and after

the crusades pp. 251-348.

APPENDIX.

Pilgrimages—Itinerary from Bordeaux to

Jerusalem—Foulque of Anjou—William of

Malmesbury—Robert of Normandy—Charlemagne—Chronicle

of Tours—Letters of Bohemond, of Archbishop

Daimbert, and of the principal Crusaders—Council of

Naplouse—Bull of Pope Eugenius III. for the second

crusade—Letter from Saladin, detailing his capture

of Jerusalem and the battle of Tiberias—Sermon

made at Jerusalem by Mohammed Ben Zeky—Bull of

Gregory VIII. A.D. 1187—Council of Paris, held in

1188—Notes on the Greek fire—Memoir on the forest

of Saron, or the enchanted forest of Tasso—Ralph

Dicet—Ralph of Coggershall—Trick attempted by

Saladin—Imprisonment of Richard I.—Journey in

Wales by Archbishop Baldwin—Jourdain’s letter on

the “Assassins” of Syria—History of the Ismaëlians,

or “Assassins”—Treaty entered into by the leaders

of the Crusaders for the division of Constantinople

and the Greek empire—On the death of the marquis

of Montferrat—Fragment of Nicetas’s Chronicles on

the destruction of the statues of Constantinople

by the Crusaders—Jourdain’s letter on the crusade

of children in 1212—Letter of Pope Innocent III.

urging on the crusade to the Holy Land—Poetry of the

troubadours for the crusades—Funeral ceremonies of the

Prussians—Letter from Count d’Artois on the taking

of Damietta—Letter of St. Louis on his captivity and

deliverance—List of the great officers or knights who

followed St. Louis to Tunis—Instructions of St. Louis

addressed on his death-bed to Philip-le-Hardi—Edward

I., king of England, and his attempted

assassination—Opening of the troncs in France, and

expenditure of the receipts—Memoir of Leibnitz,

addressed to Louis XIV.—Capitulations between France

and the Ottoman Porte—Raynouard’s note on Hanmer’s

“Mysterium Baphometi Revelatum” pp. 349-500.

GENERAL INDEX p. 501.

HISTORY

OF

THE CRUSADES.

BOOK XV.

EIGHTH CRUSADE.

A.D. 1255-1270.

LOUIS IX., during his sojourn in Palestine, had not only employed

himself in fortifying the Christian cities; he had neglected no means

of establishing that union and harmony among the Christians themselves,

which he felt would create their only security against the attacks

of the Mussulmans: unhappily for this people, whom he would have

preserved at the peril of his life, his counsels were not long in

being forgotten, and the spirit of discord soon displaced the generous

sentiments to which his example and discourses had given a momentary

life.

It may have been observed in the course of this history, that several

maritime nations had stores, counting-houses, and considerable

commercial establishments at Ptolemaïs, which had become the capital

of Palestine. Among these nations, Genoa and Venice occupied the

first rank: each of these colonies inhabited a separate quarter, and

had different laws, besides interests, which kept them at constant

variance; the only thing they possessed in common,[1] was the Church

of St. Sabbas, in which the Venetians and the Genoese assembled

together to celebrate the ceremonies of their religion.

This common possession had often been a subject of quarrel between

them; a short time after the departure of St. Louis, discord broke

out anew, and roused all the passions that the spirit of rivalry and

jealousy could give birth to between two nations which had so long

contended for the empire of the sea and pre-eminence in commerce.

Amidst this struggle, in which the very object of the contest ought

to have recalled sentiments of peace and charity to their hearts, the

Genoese and Venetians often came to blows in the city of Ptolemaïs, and

more than once, the sanctuary, which the two parties had fortified like

a place of war, resounded with the din of their sacrilegious battles.

Discord very soon crossed the seas, and carried fresh troubles into the

West. Genoa interested the Pisans in her cause, and sought allies and

auxiliaries even among the Greeks, at that time impatient to repossess

Constantinople. Venice, in order to avenge her injuries, courted the

alliance of Manfroi, who had been excommunicated by the head of the

Church. Troops were raised, fleets were armed, and the parties attacked

each other both by land and sea; and this war, which the sovereign

pontiff was unable to quell, lasted more than twenty years, sometimes

to the advantage of the Venetians, as frequently to that of the

Genoese; but always fatal to the Christian colonies of the East.

This spirit of discord likewise extended its baneful influence to

the rival orders of St. John and the Temple; and the blood of these

courageous defenders of the Holy Land flowed in torrents in cities of

which they had undertaken the defence; the Hospitallers and Templars

pursued and attacked each other with a fury that nothing could appease

or turn aside, both orders invoking the aid of the knights that

remained in the West. Thus the noblest families of Christendom were

dragged into these sanguinary quarrels, and it was no longer asked in

Europe whether the Franks had conquered the Saracens, but if victory

had been favourable to the knights of the Temple or to those of the

Hospital.

The brave Sergines, whom Louis IX. had at his departure left at

Ptolemaïs, and the wisest of the other defenders of the Holy Land,

had neither authority enough to reëstablish tranquillity, nor troops

enough to resist the attacks of the Mussulmans. The only hope of

safety which appeared to be left to the Christians of Palestine, arose

from the divisions which also troubled the empire of the Saracens;

every day new revolutions broke out among the Mamelukes; but, by a

singular contrast, feuds, that weakened the power of the Franks, often

seemed only to increase that of their enemies. If, from the feeble

kingdom of Jerusalem, we pass into Egypt, we there behold the strange

spectacle of a government founded by revolt, and strengthening itself

amidst political tempests. The Christian colonies, since the taking of

Jerusalem, by Saladin, had no longer a common centre or a common tie;

the kings of Jerusalem, in losing their capital, lost an authority

which served at least as a war-cry, by which to rally ardent spirits

around them. Nothing was preserved of royalty but the name, nothing was

gained from republicanism but its license. As to the Mamelukes, they

were less a nation than an army, in which they at first quarrelled for

a leader, and in which they afterwards obeyed him blindly. From the

bosom of each of their revolutions sprang a military despotism, armed

with all the passions that had given birth to it, and, what must have

redoubled the alarm of the Christians, this despotism breathed nothing

but war and conquest.

We have said, in the preceding book, that Aibek, after having espoused

the sultana Chegger-Eddour, had mounted the throne of Saladin; but it

was not long before his reign was disturbed by the rivalries of the

emirs. The death of Phares-Eddin Octhaï, one of the leaders opposed

to the new sultan, disconcerted the projects of the faction, but the

jealousy of a woman did that which neither faction nor license had been

able to effect. Chegger-Eddour could not pardon Aibek for having asked

the hand of a daughter of the prince of Mossoul, and the faithless

husband was assassinated in the bath by slaves. The sultana, after

having gratified her woman’s vengeance, called in the ambition of the

emirs and the crimes of policy to her aid.[2] She sent for the emir

Saif-Eddin, to ask his advice, and to offer him her hand and empire.

Upon being introduced into the palace, Saif-Eddin found the Sultana

seated, with the bleeding body of her husband at her feet: at this

spectacle, the emir was seized with horror, and the calmness which

the sultana displayed, together with the sight of the bloody throne,

upon which she proposed to him to take his seat with her, added to his

fright; Chegger-Eddour summoned two other emirs, who could not endure

her presence, but fled away, terrified at what they saw and heard. This

scene passed during the night. At break of day, the news of it was

spread throughout Cairo, and the indignation of the people and the army

was general and active: the mother of Aibek amply revenged the death of

her son. Chegger-Eddour, in her turn, perished by the hands of slaves,

and her body, which was cast into the castle ditch, might teach all

the ambitious who were contending for the empire, that revolutions,

likewise, sometimes have their justice.

Amidst the tumult, a son of Aibek, fifteen years of age, was raised to

the throne; but the approach of a war soon caused a new revolution to

break out, and precipitated the youth from his giddy eminence: great

events were ripening in Asia, and a storm was brewing in Persia, which

was soon to burst over both Syria and Egypt.[3]

The Moguls, under the command of Oulagon, had laid siege to Bagdad,

at a moment when the city was divided into several sects, all more

earnest in their conflicts with each other than in their preparations

to repulse a formidable enemy. The caliph, as well as his people, was

sunk deep in voluptuous effeminacy, and the pride created by the vain

adulation of the Mussulmans, made him neglect true and available means

of defence. The Tartars took the city by storm, and gave it up to all

the horrors of war. The last and thirty-seventh of the successors of

Abbas, dragged away like the vilest captive, lost his life in the

midst of such tumult and disorder, that history[4] is unable to say

whether he died of despair, or whether he fell beneath the sword of his

enemies.

This violence, committed upon the head of the Mussulman religion, with

the march of the Moguls towards Syria, threw the Mamelukes into the

greatest consternation. They then deemed it necessary to displace the

son of Aibek, and elect a leader able to guide them amidst the perils

that threatened them, and their choice fell upon Koutouz, the bravest

and most able of the emirs.

Whilst Egypt was earnestly engaged in preparations to resist the

Moguls, the Christians appeared to expect their deliverance from this

war against the Mussulmans; the khan of Tartary had promised the king

of Armenia to carry his conquests as far as the banks of the Nile; and

oriental chronicles relate that the Armenian troops were united with

those of the Moguls.[5] The latter, after having crossed the Euphrates,

took possession of Aleppo, Damascus, and the principal cities of Syria.

On all sides, the Mussulmans fled before the Tartars, and the disciples

of Christ were protected by the victorious hordes; from that time the

Christians only beheld liberators in these redoubtable conquerors. In

the churches, and even upon the tomb of Christ, prayers were put up

for the triumph of the Moguls, and in the excess of their joy, the

Christians of Palestine abandoned their general practice of imploring

aid from the powers of Europe.

In the mean time Europe itself entertained a very different idea of

this war; the progress of the Moguls created the greatest terror in

all the nations of the West; they not only dreaded the Mogul arms

on account of the Christian colonies of the East; they trembled

for themselves;[6] for whilst the hordes of Oulagon were ravaging

Syria, other armies of the same nation were desolating the banks of

the Dniester and the Danube. Pope Alexander, addressing the princes,

prelates, and all the faithful, exhorted them to unite against the

barbarians. Councils were assembled in France, England, Italy, and

Germany, to deliberate upon the dangers of Christendom; the head of the

Church ordered prayers to be offered up and processions to be made,

blasphemies to be punished, and luxury to be suppressed at the table

and in dress,—measures which might be conceived proper to mitigate

the anger of Heaven, but very insufficient to stop the invasion of the

Moguls.

The hordes, however, which ravaged Hungary and Poland were dispersed,

and terror again took possession of the Christians of the East, whose

hopes had been so sanguine. Oulagon, recalled into Persia by civil

wars, left his lieutenant, Ketboga, in Syria, with directions to follow

up his conquests. The Christians were still applauding the victories

of the Moguls, when a quarrel, provoked by some German Crusaders, all

at once changed the state of things, and made enemies of those who had

been considered as auxiliaries. Some Mussulman villages which paid

tribute to the Tartars, having been pillaged, Ketboga sent to demand

a reparation of the Christians, which they refused. In the course of

the dispute raised on this subject, the nephew of the Mogul commander

was killed. From that time the Tartar leader declared open war against

the Christians, ravaged the territory of Sidon, and menaced that of

Ptolemaïs. At the aspect of their desolated plains, all the hopes of

the Christians vanished; they had had no bounds to their hopes and

their joy, they had now none to their grief or their fears. The alarm

created in them by a barbarous people, made them forget that most of

their misfortunes came from Egypt, and as they had given over all idea

of succours from the West, many of them now placed all their confidence

in the arms of the Mamelukes.

A great portion of Palestine had already been invaded by the Moguls,

when the sultan of Cairo set out on his march to meet them at the head

of his army; he remained three days in the neighbourhood of Ptolemaïs,

where he renewed a truce with the Christians. Soon after, a battle was

fought in the plain of Tiberias; Ketboga lost his life in the middle

of the conflict, and the army of the Tartars, beaten and scattered,

abandoned Syria.

To whichever side victory might have inclined, the Christians had

nothing to hope from the conqueror; the Mussulmans could not pardon

them for having sought the support of the victorious Moguls, and having

taken advantage of the desolation of Syria, to insult the disciples of

Mahomet. The churches were demolished at Damascus; the Christians were

persecuted in all the Mussulman cities, and these persecutions were the

presage of a war in which fanaticism exercised all its furies. On all

sides complaints and menaces arose against the Franks of Palestine; the

cry of _war with the Christians_ resounded through all the provinces in

the power of the Mamelukes; the animosity was so great, that the sultan

of Cairo, who had just triumphed over the Tartars, was the victim to

his fidelity in observing the last truce concluded with the Franks.

Bibars, who had killed the last sultan of the family of Saladin,

took advantage of this effervescence of the public mind to endeavour

to raise a party against Koutouz, by affecting great hatred for the

Christians, and by reproaching the sultan with a criminal moderation

towards the enemies of Islamism.

When the fermentation had been worked up to the highest point, Bibars,

having assembled his accomplices, surprised the sultan whilst hunting,

struck him several mortal blows, then, all stained as he was with the

blood of his master, he hastened to the Mameluke army, at that time

collected at Sallhie; he presented himself to the atabek or lieutenant

of the prince, announcing the death of Koutouz. Upon being asked who

killed the sultan. “It was I,” answered he. “In that case,” said the

atabek, “reign in his place.”[7] Strange words, which characterize at a

single stroke the spirit of the Mamelukes, as well as of the government

they had founded! The army proclaimed Bibars sultan of Egypt, and the

ceremonies prepared at Cairo for the reception of the conqueror of the

Tartars, served to celebrate the coronation of his murderer.

This revolution gave the Mussulmans the sovereign most to be dreaded by

the Christians. Bibars was named _the pillar of the Mussulman religion

and the father of victories_; and he was destined to merit these titles

by completing the ruin of the Franks. He had scarcely mounted the

throne before he gave the signal for war.

The Christians of Palestine being totally without means of resisting

the Mameluke forces, sent deputies to the West to solicit prompt and

efficient succour. The sovereign pontiff appeared affected by the

account of the perils of the Holy Land, and exhorted the faithful to

take the cross; but the tone of his exhortations, and the motives that

he named in his circulars, only too plainly evinced his desire to see

Europe take up arms against other enemies than the Mussulmans. “The

Saracens,” said he, “know that it will be impossible for any Christian

prince to make a long abode in the East,[8] and that the Holy Land will

never have any but transient succour from distant countries.”

Alexander IV. was much more sincere and far more eloquent in his

manifestoes against the house of Swabia; the interest he took in the

contest he was carrying on in the kingdom of Naples could not be

diverted by the undertaking of a holy war. Clement IV., who succeeded

him, made some few demonstrations of zeal to engage the European

nations to take arms against the Mussulmans; but the policy of his

predecessors had left too many germs of discord and trouble in Italy,

to allow him to give much attention to the East. On one side, Germany,

still without an emperor, though with three pretenders to the empire,

could spare no warriors for the Holy Land. England was a prey to a

civil war, in which the barons wore a white cross as their badge of

union against the king, and in which priests exhorted them to the

fight, pointing to heaven as the reward of their bravery and their

rebellion. This strange crusade precluded all thoughts of one beyond

the seas. France was the only kingdom from which the prayers of the

Christians of Palestine were not repulsed; some French knights took the

cross, and chose Eudes, count of Nevers, son of the duke of Burgundy,

as their leader; and these were all the succours Europe could afford to

send to the East.

At the same time that the afflicting news arrived from the Holy Land,

an event was announced which would have plunged the whole West in

mourning, if the conquests of the Crusaders had then excited anything

like the interest to which they had given birth in former ages. We

have frequently had occasion to deplore the rapid decline of the Latin

empire of Constantinople; for a length of time, Baldwin had had no

means for supporting the imperial dignity, or paying his scanty troop

of soldiers, but the alms of Christendom, and some loans obtained from

Venice, for which he was obliged to give his own son as a hostage,

or, more properly, a pledge. In pressing moments of want, he sold the

relics, he tore the lead from the roofs of the churches, and the timber

of public edifices was used for heating the fires of the imperial

kitchens. Towers half-demolished, ramparts without defences, palaces

smoky and deserted, houses and whole streets abandoned, such was the

spectacle presented by the queen of eastern cities.

Baldwin had concluded a truce with Michael Palæologus. The facility

with which this truce was made ought to have inspired the Latins with

some suspicion; but the deplorable state of the Franks did not prevent

them from despising their enemies or dreaming of fresh conquests.

In hopes of pillage, and forgetful of the perfidious character of

the Greeks, a Venetian fleet bore such as remained of the defenders

of Byzantium in an expedition against Daphnusia, situated at the

embouchure of the Black Sea. The Greeks of Nice, informed by some

peasants from the shores of the Bosphorus, did not hesitate to take

advantage of the opportunity fortune thus presented. These peasants

pointed out to the general of Michael Palæologus, who was about to make

war in Epirus, an opening that had been made under the ramparts of

Constantinople, close to the Golden Gate, by which more troops might

be introduced than would be necessary for the conquest of the city.

Baldwin had none with him but children, old men, women, and traders;

among the latter of whom were the Genoese newly allied to the Greeks.

When the soldiers of Michael had penetrated into the city, they were

surprised to find no enemy to contend with; whilst they preserved

their ranks, and advanced with precaution, a troop of Comans, whom the

Greek emperor had in his pay, traversed the city, sword and fire in

hand. The small, terrified crowd of the Latins fled towards the port;

whilst the Greek inhabitants hastened to meet the conqueror, shouting,

“Long life to Michael Palæologus, emperor of the Romans!” Baldwin,

awakened by these cries and the tumult that drew near to his palace,

hastened to quit a city that no longer was his. The Venetian fleet,

returning from the expedition to Daphnusia, arrived in time to receive

the fugitive emperor and all that remained of the empire of the Franks

upon the Bosphorus. Thus the Latins were deprived of that city that it

had cost them such prodigies of valour to obtain; the Greeks reëntered

it without striking a blow, seconded only by the treachery of a few

peasants and the darkness of night. Baldwin II., after having reigned

in Byzantium during thirty-seven years, resumed the mendicant course

he had practised in his youth, and wandered from one court to another,

imploring the assistance of Christians. Pope Urban received him with a

mixture of compassion and contempt. In a letter addressed to Louis IX.,

the pontiff deplored the loss of Constantinople, and groaned bitterly

over the obscured glory of the Latin Church. Urban expressed a desire

that a crusade should be undertaken for the recovery of Byzantium; but

he found men’s minds but very little disposed to undertake such an

enterprise: the clergy of both England and France refused subsidies for

an expedition which they pronounced useless. The pope was obliged to

content himself with the submission and presents of Michael Palæologus,

who, still in dread in the bosom of his new conquest, promised, in

order to appease the Holy See, to recognise the Church of Rome, and to

succour the holy places.

In the mean time the situation of the Christians of Palestine became

every day more alarming, and more worthy of the compassion of the

nations and princes of the West. The new sultan of Cairo, after having

ravaged the country of the Franks, returned a second time, with a more

formidable army than the former. The Franks, alarmed at his progress,

sent to him to sue for peace; his only reply was to give up the church

of Nazareth to the flames; the Mussulmans ravaged all the country

situated between Naïn and Mount Thabor, and then encamped within sight

of Ptolemaïs.

The most distinguished of the Christian warriors had attempted an

expedition towards Tiberias; but this gallant troop, the last resource

of the Franks, had just been defeated and dispersed by the infidels;

fifty knights had arrived in Palestine with the duke of Nevers; but

what could such a feeble reinforcement do to arrest the progress of a

victorious army.

The country was laid waste, and the inhabitants of the cities kept

themselves closely shut up behind their ramparts, in the constant

apprehension of beholding the enemy under their walls. After

threatening Ptolemaïs, Bibars threw himself upon the city of Cæsarea;

the Christians, after a spirited resistance, abandoned the place, and

retired into the castle, which was surrounded by the waters of the

sea. This fortress, which appeared inaccessible, was only able to

resist the attacks of the Mussulmans a few days.[9] The city of Arsouf

was the next object of the Mussulman leader. The inhabitants defended

themselves with almost unexampled bravery; several times the machines

of the besiegers and the heaps of wood which they raised to the level

of the walls, were consigned to the flames. After having fought at the

foot of the ramparts, the besieged and the besiegers dug out the earth

beneath the walls of the city, and sought each other, to fight in the

mines and subterranean passages; nothing could relax the ardour of the

Christians or the impatient activity of Bibars. Religious fanaticism

animated the courage of the Mamelukes; the imauns and doctors of the

law flocked to the siege of Arsouf, to be present at the triumph of

Islamism: at length the sultan planted the standard of the prophet upon

the towers of the city, and the Mussulmans were called to prayers in

the churches at once converted into mosques. The Mamelukes massacred a

great part of the inhabitants; the remainder were condemned to slavery.

Bibars distributed the captives among the leaders of his army; he then

ordered the destruction of the city, and the Christian prisoners were

compelled to demolish their own dwellings. The conquered territory

was divided and shared among the principal emirs, according to an

order of the sultan, which the Arabian chronicles have preserved as

an historical monument. This liberality towards the conquerors of the

Christians, appeared to the Mussulmans worthy of the greatest praise,

and one of the historians of Bibars exclaims, in his enthusiasm,

“That so noble an action was written in the book of God, before being

inscribed upon the book of the life of the sultan.”

Such encouragements bestowed upon the emirs, announced that Bibars

still stood in need of their valour to accomplish other designs. The

sultan returned into Egypt, to make fresh preparations and recruit

his army. During his sojourn at Cairo, he received ambassadors from

several kings of the Franks, from Alphonso, king of Arragon, the king

of Armenia, and some other princes of Palestine. All these ambassadors

demanded peace for the Christians; but their pressing solicitations

only strengthened the sultan in his project of continuing the war; the

more earnest their entreaties, the greater reason he had to believe

they had nothing else to oppose to him. He answered the envoys of the

count of Jaffa: “The time is come in which we will endure no more

injuries; when a cottage shall be taken from us, we will take a castle;

when you shall seize one of our labourers, we will consign a thousand

of your warriors to chains.”

Bibars did not delay putting his threats into execution; he returned

to Palestine, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to implore the

protection of Mahomet for his arms. His army immediately received the

signal for war, and ravaged the territory of Tripoli. If some Oriental

chronicles may be believed, the project of Bibars then was to attack

Ptolemaïs; and in so great an enterprise, he did not disdain the

assistance of treachery. The prince of Tyre, says Ibn-Ferat, united

with the Genoese, was to attack Ptolemaïs with a numerous fleet on the

sea side, whilst the Mamelukes attacked it by land. Bibars in fact

presented himself before Ptolemaïs, but his new auxiliaries no doubt

repented of the promises they had made him; and did not second his

designs. The sultan retired filled with fury, and threatened to avenge

himself upon all the Christians whom war should place in his power.

He first went to discharge his anger upon the fortress of Sefed, which

was situated in lower Galilee, fifteen leagues from Ptolemaïs. This

fortress had to defend itself against all the forces that the sultan

had gathered together for his great enterprise. When the siege had

begun, Bibars neglected no means of forcing the garrison to surrender;

he was constantly at the head of his troops, and in one conflict,

his whole army burst into a loud cry to warn him of a danger that

threatened him. To inflame the ardour of the Mamelukes, he caused

robes of honour and purses of money to be distributed on the field of

battle; the great cadi of Damascus had come to the siege to animate the

combatants by his presence; and the promises he addressed, in the name

of the prophet, to all the Mussulman soldiers, added greatly to their

warlike enthusiasm.

The Christians, however, defended themselves valiantly. This resistance

at first astonished their enemies, and soon produced discouragement;

in vain the sultan endeavoured to reanimate his soldiers, in vain he

ordered that all who fled should be beaten back with clubs, and placed

several emirs in chains for deserting their posts; neither the dread

of chastisements, nor the hopes of reward, could revive the courage of

the Mussulmans. Bibars would have been obliged to raise the siege, if

discord had not come to his assistance. He himself took great pains

to give birth to it among the Christians; in the frequent messages

sent to the garrison, perfidious promises and well-directed threats

sowed the seeds of suspicion and mistrust. At length the divisions

burst forth; some were anxious that they should surrender, others that

they should hold out to death: from that moment the Mussulmans met

with a less obstinate resistance, and renewed their own attacks with

greater ardour; whilst the Christians accused each other of treacherous

proceedings or intentions, the war-machines made the walls totter,

and the Mamelukes, after several assaults, were upon the point of

opening themselves a road into the place. At length, one Friday (we

quote an Arabian chronicle), the cadi of Damascus was praying for

the combatants, when the Franks were heard to cry from the top of

their half-dismantled towers, “O Mussulmans, spare us, spare us!” The

besieged had laid down their arms, and fought no longer—the gates were

immediately opened, and the standard of the Mussulmans floated over the

walls of Sefed.

A capitulation granted the Christians permission to retire wherever

they wished, upon condition that they should take away with them

nothing but their clothes. Bibars, when seeing them defile before him,

sought for a pretext to detain them in his power. Some were, by his

orders, arrested and accused of carrying away treasures and arms; and

the command was instantly issued to stop all. They were reproached with

having violated the treaty, and were threatened with death if they

did not embrace Islamism. They were loaded with chains and crowded

together in a mass upon a hill, where they expected nothing but death.

A commander of the Temple and two Cordeliers exhorted their companions

in misfortune to die like Christian heroes. All those warriors, whom

discord had divided, now reunited in one common evil, had only one

feeling and one thought;[10] they wept as they embraced each other,

they encouraged each other to die becomingly; they passed the night

in confessing their sins towards God, and in deploring their errors

and their differences. On the morrow, two only of these captives were

set at liberty; one was a brother Hospitaller, whom Bibars sent to

Ptolemaïs, to announce to the Christians the taking of Sefed; the

other was a Templar, who abandoned the faith of Christ, and attached

himself to the fortunes of the sultan; all the others, to the number of

six hundred, fell beneath the sword of the Mamelukes. This barbarity,

committed in the name of the Mussulman religion, appears the more

revolting, from the Franks never having given an example for it, and

that amidst the furies of war, they were never known to require the

conversion of infidels, sword in hand.[11]

It is impossible to describe the despair and consternation of the

Christians of Palestine, when they learnt the tragical end of the

defenders of Sefed. Their superstitious grief invented or blindly

received the most marvellous accounts, which the Western chroniclers

have not disdained to repeat; it was said that a celestial light shone

every night over the bodies of the Christian warriors that remained

unburied.[12] It was added that the sultan, annoyed by this prodigy,

which was every day renewed before his eyes, gave orders that the

martyrs of the Christian faith should be buried, and that around their

place of sepulture high walls should be built, in order that nobody

might witness the miracles operated in favour of the victims he had

immolated to his vengeance.

After the taking of Sefed, Bibars returned into Egypt, and the Franks

hoped for a few days of repose and safety; but the indefatigable sultan

never gave his enemies much time to rejoice at his absence. He only

remained in Egypt till he had recruited his army with fresh troops,

and soon brought back additional desolation to the states of the

Christians. In this campaign, Armenia was the point to which his anger

and the power of his arms were directed; he reproached the Armenian

monarch with forbidding Egyptian merchants to enter his dominions, and

could not pardon him for preventing his own subjects from obtaining

merchandise from Egypt. These differences were quickly settled on

the field of battle; one of the sons of the king of Armenia lost his

liberty, and the other his life: the army of Bibars returned loaded

with booty, and followed by an innumerable multitude of captives.

As, after each of his victories, the sultan presented himself before

Ptolemaïs, the capital of the Christian states, he did not fail on

his return from this last expedition, to exhibit before the walls of

this city the spoils of the people of Armenia, together with his own

machines of war; but the moment was not yet arrived in which such a

great undertaking as the capture of Ptolemaïs could be attempted. After

terrifying the inhabitants by his appearance, he suddenly departed,

for the purpose of surprising Jaffa. This city, the fortifications of

which had cost Louis IX. a considerable sum,[13] after a very slight

resistance, fell into the hands of Bibars, who caused all the walls

to be levelled with the ground. During this excursion, the sultan of

Cairo obtained possession of the castle of Carac and several other

forts, and then marched towards Tripoli. Bohemond having sent to demand

of him what the purpose of his coming was: “I am come,” replied he,

“to gather in your harvests; in my next campaign I will besiege your

capital.” Nevertheless, he concluded a truce with Tripoli, in the midst

of these hostilities; foreseeing that a treaty of peace would serve as

a veil for the project of another war, and that he should soon find an

opportunity of violating the truce with advantage.

The author of the life of Bibars, who was sent to Bohemond, count of

Tripoli and prince of Antioch, says that the sultan was in the train

of the ambassador, in the character of a herald-at-arms. His project

was to examine the fortifications and the means of defence of the city

of Tripoli. In drawing up the treaty, the Mussulman deputies only gave

Bohemond the title of count, whilst he claimed that of prince; the

discussion becoming warm, the envoys of Bibars naturally turned their

eyes towards their master, who made them a sign to yield.[14] On his

return to his army, the sultan laughed heartily with his emirs at this

adventure, saying, “The time is come in which God will curse the prince

and the count.”

By this, Bibars alluded to his project of conquering and ruining the

principality of Antioch. The Egyptian army received orders to march

towards the banks of the Orontes; and but very few days had passed away

before this same army was encamped under the walls of Antioch, badly

defended by its patriarch, and abandoned by most of its inhabitants.

Historians say very little of this siege, in which the Christians made

but a feeble resistance, and appeared more frequently as suppliants

than as warriors: their submission, their tears, their prayers,

however, made no impression upon a conqueror whose sole policy was the

destruction of the Christian cities.

As the Mussulmans entered Antioch without a capitulation, they gave

themselves up to all the excesses of license and victory. In a letter

which Bibars addressed to the count of Tripoli, the barbarous conqueror

takes a pleasure in describing the desolation of the subdued city, and

all the evils which his fury had caused the Christians to undergo.[15]

“Death,” says he, “came among the besieged from all sides and by all

roads: we killed all that thou hadst appointed to guard the city or

defend its approaches. If thou hadst seen thy knights trampled under

the feet of the horses, thy provinces given up to pillage, thy riches

distributed by measures-full, the wives of thy subjects put to public

sale; if thou hadst seen the pulpits and crosses overturned, the leaves

of the Gospel torn and cast to the winds, and the sepulchres of thy

patriarchs profaned; if thou hadst seen thy enemies, the Mussulmans,

trampling upon the tabernacle, and immolating in the sanctuary, monk,

priest, and deacon; in short, if thou hadst seen thy palaces given up

to the flames, the dead devoured by the fire of this world, the Church

of St. Paul and that of St. Peter completely and entirely destroyed,

certes, thou wouldst have cried out: _Would to Heaven that I were

become dust!_”

Bibars distributed the booty among his soldiers, the Mamelukes

reserving as their portion, the women, girls, and children. At that

time, says an Arabian chronicle, “_there was not the slave of a slave

that was not the master of a slave_.” A little boy was worth twelve

dirhems, a little girl, five dirhems. In a single day the city of

Antioch lost all its inhabitants, and a conflagration, lighted by order

of Bibars, completed the work of the barbarians. Most historians agree

in saying that seventeen thousand Christians were slaughtered, and a

hundred thousand dragged away into slavery.

When we recall to our minds the first siege of this city by the

Crusaders, and the labours and the exploits of Bohemond, Godfrey, and

Tancred, who founded the principality of Antioch, we are afflicted

at beholding the end of all that which the glory of conquerors had

produced. When, on the other side, we see a numerous population,

inclosed within ramparts, making but a feeble defence against an enemy,

and allowing themselves to be slaughtered without resistance, we cannot

help asking what can have become of the posterity of so many brave

warriors as had defended Antioch, during almost two centuries, against

all the Mussulman powers.

Complaints were made among the Christians against William, the

patriarch, whom they accused of having at least favoured the invasion

and conquest of the Mussulmans, by a weak pusillanimity. Without

offering an opinion upon the accusation, we content ourselves with

saying, that the timid prelate did not long enjoy the fruit of his

base conduct; for the Mamelukes, after having permitted him to retire

to Cosseïr, with all his treasures, dragged him from his retreat by

violence; and the faithless pastor, despoiled of his wealth, and

plunged in ignominy, underwent at last a much more cruel death than

he might have expected amidst his flock, and upon the ramparts of a

Christian city.

After the taking of Antioch, the Christians had nothing left to

arrest the progress of the Mussulmans, but the cities of Tripoli and

Ptolemaïs. Bibars was impatient to attack these last bulwarks of the

Franks; but he did not dare to put trust in his fortune, and aim the

last fatal blow at that power before which the Mussulman nations so

lately trembled. The sultan of Cairo could not forget that the dangers

of the Christians had often roused the whole West, and this thought

alone was sufficient to keep him in inaction and dread. Thus the sad

remains of the Christian colonies of the East, were still protected by

the warlike reputation of the nations of Europe, and by the remembrance

of the wonders of the early crusades.

Fame had not failed to carry the news of so many disasters across the

seas. The archbishop of Tyre, the grand masters of the Temple and

the Hospital, passed over into the West, to repeat the groans of the

Christian cities of Syria; but on their arrival, Europe seemed but

little disposed to give ear to their complaints. In vain a crusade

was preached in Germany, Poland, and the more remote countries of

the North; the inhabitants of northern Europe evinced nothing but

indifference for events that were passing at such a distance from them.

The king of Bohemia, the marquis of Brandenburg, and some other lords

that had taken the cross, seemed in no hurry to perform their oath. No

army set forward on its march; everything was reduced to preachings and

vain preparations.

The misfortunes of the Holy Land were deeply deplored in the kingdom of

France; in a _sirvente_,[16] composed on this subject, a contemporary

troubadour appears to reproach Providence with the defeats of the

Christians of Palestine, and in his poetical delirium, abandons

himself to an impious despair:—“Sadness and grief,” cried he, “have

taken possession of my soul to such a degree, that little is wanting

to bring me to instant death; for the cross is disgraced,—that cross

which we have taken in honour of him who died upon the cross. Neither

cross nor faith protects us longer, or guides us against the cruel

Turks,—whom God curse! But it appears, as far as man can judge, that

it is God’s will to support them for our destruction. And never believe

that the enemy will stop in his career after such success; on the

contrary, he has sworn and publicly announced that not a single man who

believes in Jesus Christ shall be left alive in Syria; that the temple

even of the holy Mary will be converted into a mosque. Since the son

of Mary, whom this affront ought to afflict, wills it to be so, _since

this pleases him, does it follow that it should please us likewise_?

“He is then mad who seeks a quarrel with the Saracens, when Jesus

Christ opposes them in nothing, as they have obtained victories,

and are gaining them still (which grieves me) over the Franks, the

Armenians, and the Persians. Every day we are conquered; for he

sleeps,—that God that was accustomed to be so watchful:[17] Mahomet

acts with all his power, and the fierce Bibars seconds him.”

We cannot believe that these exceedingly remarkable words expressed the

feelings of the faithful; but at a time when poets ventured to speak in

this manner, we may well suppose that men’s minds were not favourable

to a crusade. The troubadour we have quoted does not advise the making

of any war against the Saracens, and inveighs bitterly against the

pope, who sold _God and indulgences_ to arm the French against the

house of Swabia. In fact, the dissensions raised by the disputed

succession of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, then occupied the

entire attention of the Holy See, and France was not quite free from

party spirit on the occasion.

Not satisfied with launching excommunications and ecclesiastical

thunders against Frederick and his family, the sovereign pontiffs

wished to add the force of arms to the authority conferred upon them

by the Church, and the right of conquest to that which they thought

they possessed over a kingdom so near to their own capital. As they had

no experience in war, and their lieutenants were equally deficient in

capacity and courage, their armies were defeated. The court of Rome,

thus conquered in the field of battle, was compelled to acknowledge the

ascendancy of victory, and in this profane struggle lost some of that

spiritual power which alone rendered it formidable.

With the exception of Mainfroy, a natural son of Frederick, and

Conradin, his grandson, the family of Swabia was extinct. Mainfroy,

who possessed both the abilities and courage of his father, had

recently elevated the German cause in Italy, and braved both the

arms and the power of the pontiffs. The court of Rome, upon finding

it could not retain the kingdom of Sicily for itself, offered it to

any one who would undertake the conquest of it. The crown to which

Mainfroy pretended was first offered to Richard of Cornwall, and upon

his prudent refusal, to Edmund, younger son of the king of England;

but the English parliament would not grant the subsidies necessary

for so great an undertaking. It was then offered to Louis IX. for his

brother, the count of Anjou; and although the scruples of the pious

monarch for a moment checked the projects of Pope Urban, Clement IV.,

on his accession, used fresh persuasions, and Louis at length suffered

himself to be overcome by the prayers of Charles; at the same time

entertaining a secret hope that the conquest of Sicily would some day

prove instrumental to the defence of the Holy Land.

Charles, after being crowned by the pope in the church of St. John

of the Lateran, entered the kingdom of Naples at the head of a

considerable force, preceded by the fulminations of the court of

Rome. The soldiers of Charles wore a cross, and fought in the name of

the Church; priests exhorted the combatants, and promised them the

protection of Heaven. Mainfroy succumbed in this, miscalled, holy war,

and lost both his life and his crown at the battle of Cosenza.

The pope being delivered from the cares of this political crusade,

turned his attention to the holy one beyond the seas; his legates

solicited various princes, some to take the cross, others to accomplish

their vows. Clement did not neglect to press Michael Palæologus to

prove the sincerity of his promises. Charles, who was the acknowledged

vassal of the pope, and who owed his kingdom to him, received many

messages, representing the dangers of the Holy Land, and reminding him

of what he owed to Jesus Christ, who was outraged by the victories of

the Mussulmans. The new king of Sicily contented himself with sending

an embassy to the sultan of Cairo, and with commending the unfortunate

inhabitants of Palestine to the mercy of Bibars. The sultan replied to

Charles, that he did not reject his intercessions; but the Christians

were destroying themselves with their own hands; that no one among

them had the power to enforce the observance of treaties, _and that

the most contemptible of them were constantly undoing that which the

greatest had done_. Bibars, in his turn, sent ambassadors to Charles,

less for the purpose of following up any negotiations, than to obtain

information upon the state and views of Christendom.[18]

Young Conradin, who was preparing to dispute the crown of Sicily

with Charles of Anjou, in order to avail himself of every means of

supporting his claim, sent deputies to the sultan of Cairo, in the

character of king of Jerusalem, conjuring him to protect his rights

against his rival. Bibars, in his reply, pretended to endeavour to

console Conradin, but, doubtless, received with joy these proofs of the

divisions that existed among the princes of Europe.

In the state in which Europe then was, one monarch alone took serious

interest in the fate of the Christian colonies of Asia. The remembrance

of a land in which he had so long dwelt, and the hope of avenging the

honour of the French arms in Egypt,[19] once more directed the thoughts

of Louis IX. to a new crusade. He however concealed his purpose, and

this great project, says one of his historians,[20] was formed, so to

say, between God and himself. Louis consulted the pope, who hesitated

to answer him, reflecting upon the dangers that his absence might bring

upon France, and even upon Europe. The first letter of Clement[21]

aimed at diverting the French monarch from so perilous an enterprise;

but, upon being consulted again, the sovereign pontiff showed none of

the same scruples, and declared it to be his duty to encourage Louis in

his design, as he was persuaded, he said, that this design came from

God.

The purpose, however, of this negotiation remained still buried

in profound mystery. Louis, no doubt, was fearful of prematurely

announcing his designs, lest reflection might weaken the enthusiasm

of which he must stand in so much need, or that a powerful opposition

to the undertaking of a crusade might be formed in both his court and

his kingdom; he thought that, by announcing his project unexpectedly,

at the moment of its being ripe for execution, he should affect men’s

minds more forcibly, and induce them more easily to follow his example.

An assembly of the barons, nobles, and prelates of the kingdom was

solemnly convoked at Paris towards the middle of Lent. The faithful

Joinville was not forgotten in this convocation; the seneschal foresaw,

he says in his Memoirs, that Louis was about to take the cross, and

the cause of his having this presentiment was, that in a dream he had

seen the king of France clothed in a chasuble of a bright red colour,

made of Rheims serge, which signified the cross. His almoner, when

explaining this dream to him, added, that the chasuble being of Rheims

serge, denoted that the crusade would be but a trifling or small

exploit.

On the twenty-third day of March, the great parliament of the kingdom

being assembled in a hall of the Louvre, the king entered, bearing in

his hand the crown of thorns of Christ. At sight of this, the whole

assembly became aware of the monarch’s intentions. Louis, in a speech

delivered with great animation, described the misfortunes of the Holy

Land, and proclaimed that he was resolved to go and succour it; he then

exhorted all who heard him to take the cross. When he ceased to speak,

a sad but a profound silence expressed at once the surprise and grief

of the barons and prelates, with the respect that all entertained for

the will of the holy monarch.

Cardinal de St. Cecilia, the pope’s legate, spoke after him, and in a

pathetic exhortation, called upon the French warriors to take arms.

Louis received the cross from the hands of the cardinal, and his

example was followed by three of his sons. Among these princes, the

assembly was affected at beholding John, count of Nevers, who was born

at Damietta amidst the calamities of the preceding crusade. At the

same time the legate received the oath of John, count of Brittany, of

Alphonso de Brienne, count of Eu, of Marguerite, the ancient countess

of Flanders, and of a great number of prelates, nobles, and knights.

The determination of St. Louis, of which a sad presentiment had been

entertained, spread deep regret throughout his kingdom; his people

could not behold without sorrow the departure of a prince whose

presence alone preserved peace, and maintained order and justice

everywhere. The health of the king was very much weakened, and there

was great reason to fear that he would not be able to support the

dangers and fatigues of a crusade; he took his sons with him; which

circumstance added greatly to the public grief. The disasters of the

first crusade were still fresh in the memory of his subjects, and

whilst they thought of the captivity of the whole of the royal family,

they dreaded greater misfortunes in the future. Joinville does not fear

to say, “that they who had advised the king to undertake this voyage

beyond the seas, had sinned mortally.”

Notwithstanding the general regret, there were neither complaints nor

murmurs against the king; the spirit of resignation, which was one of

the virtues of the monarch, appeared to have passed into the minds of

all his subjects, and, to employ the very expressions of the pope’s

bull, “the French people saw in the devotion of their king nothing but

a noble and painful sacrifice to the cause of the Christians, to that

cause for which God had not spared his only Son.”

The greater that was the affection for the king, the greater was the

general grief; but the zeal to partake his perils more than kept pace

with these.[22] Louis alone thought of delivering the tomb of Christ

and the Christian colonies; the warlike nobility of the kingdom only

thought of following their king in an expedition which was already

looked upon as unfortunate.

Among those who took the cross after the assembly of the Louvre,

history names Thibault, king of Navarre; Henry, count of Champagne, and

his brother, the count d’Artois, son of Robert, killed at Mansourah;

the counts of Flanders, de la Marche, St. Pol, and Soissons; the

seigneurs de Montmorency, de Nemours, de Pienne, &c. The sieur de

Joinville was warmly pressed to take the cross, but he resisted all

the persuasions that could be made to him, alleging the vast injuries

sustained by his vassals during the last expedition. The good seneschal

also was not forgetful of the predictions of his almoner; he earnestly

wished to accompany the king, whom he loved sincerely; but he was not

yet recovered from the terrors he had experienced in Egypt, and no

earthly motive could induce him to revisit the land of the Saracens.

The determination of the king of France created a lively sensation

throughout Europe, and revived in men’s minds the little that remained

of the old enthusiasm for the crusades. As he was the chief of the

enterprise, most of the warriors were ambitious of fighting under

his immediate banners; the confidence entertained for his wisdom and

virtues, in some sort fortified minds that dreaded distant expeditions,

and restored hopes to the Christian nations, that they appeared to

have forgotten. The remembrance, even, of the misfortunes of the first

voyage added to the security of the future, and created a belief in

many that the triumph of the Christian armies would at length be the

reward of past labours and calamities, and the fruit of a salutary

experience.

Clement IV. wrote to the king of Armenia to console him for the evils

he had suffered by the invasion of the Mamelukes, and to announce to

him that the Christians of the East were about to receive powerful

succours. Abaga, khan of the Tartars, who was then prosecuting a war

against the Turks of Asia Minor, sent ambassadors to the court of Rome,

and to several princes of the West, proposing to attack the Mamelukes

in concert with the Franks, and drive them from Syria and Egypt. The

pope received the Mogul ambassadors with great solemnity; he told them

that an army, led by a powerful monarch, was about to embark for the

East, that the hour fatal to the Mussulmans was come, and that God

would bless his nation, and all the allies of his nation.

Louis, constantly occupied by his expedition, fixed the period of his

departure for 1270; so that three long years must pass away before the

assistance promised by the sovereign pontiff could arrive in the East.

Vessels to transport the Crusaders were demanded of the republics of

Genoa and Venice: the Venetians at first refused; but upon learning

that applications were being made to the Genoese, they sent ambassadors

to offer a fleet. After protracted negotiations, in which Venice

evinced more jealousy of the Genoese than zeal for the crusade, she

again refused to concur in the embarkation of the Christian army, being

in less dread of the anger of Louis IX. than of that of the sultan of

Cairo, who had it in his power to ruin her mercantile establishments

in the East. At length the Genoese engaged to furnish vessels for the

expedition.

But the greatest difficulty was to find the money necessary for the

preparations of the war. Up to this period, the tenths levied upon the

clergy had supplied the expenses of the crusades;[23] and an opinion

generally prevailed, that a holy war ought to be paid for by men

attached to the Church and devoted to the altars of Jesus Christ. Urban

IV., the predecessor of Clement, had already ordered throughout the

West, that a levy of a hundredth should be made upon the revenues of

the clergy; and, what might be considered a traffic in holy things, the

court of Rome permitted the distributing of indulgences, which faculty

was granted in proportion with what was given beyond the tribute

required. The French clergy had addressed several petitions to the pope

upon this subject; but these petitions always remained unnoticed.

When the late determination of Louis IX. became known, the Holy See

had recourse to the customary means, and, without the least attention

to complaints, which were not without foundation, the order was

issued to levy again a tenth during three years. Upon this the clergy

redoubled their opposition, and were much more earnest in the defence

of their own revenues than in the defence of the Holy Land. They

complained to the king, and they sent deputies to Rome, to show the

depth of the misery into which the Church of France was plunged by

the burdens imposed upon it;[24] these deputies represented to the

sovereign pontiff that the exactions of latter times became every day

more intolerable, and that the property of the clergy was no longer

sufficient to support the altars and feed the poor of Jesus Christ.

They added, that injustice and violence had formerly separated the

Greek Church from that of Rome; giving his holiness to understand,

that new rigours would not fail to produce new schisms. They further

said, that if most crusades, particularly the expedition of Louis IX.

into Egypt, had been unfortunate, it no doubt arose from the sanctuary

having been plundered, and the churches ruined for the sake of them;

as a last reason, they prognosticated much greater calamities for the

future than any that had been experienced.

Such an address necessarily inflamed the anger of the sovereign

pontiff. Clement, in his reply, warmly reproached the deputies, and

they who had sent them, with their indifference for the cause of

all Christians, and for their avarice, which made them deny their

superfluous wealth for the prosecution of a war in which so many

princes and illustrious warriors perilled their lives. He pointed to

the excommunication ready to fall upon their heads, and, what must

have much more terrified them, he threatened to deprive them of their

property and their benefices. Such was then the power of Rome, that

nothing could be possessed without its pleasure: the clergy were

obliged to submit, and pay the tenth during four years. The pope

further empowered the king to dispose of all the sums bequeathed by

will for the assistance of the Holy Land; he equally abandoned to him

the money that might be drawn from those who, having taken the cross,

were desirous of redeeming their vows; which latter means must have

produced a considerable sum, as the clergy gave the cross to everybody,

and refused dispensation to nobody.

Louis IX. neglected none of the resources that his position as king of

France placed in his hands; at this period no regular impost was known,

and, to support the splendour of their thrones, kings had nothing to

depend upon but the revenues of their domains.[25] In order to provide

for all the expenses he was obliged to incur on this occasion, the king

had recourse to the impost called the capitation-tax, which suzerain

lords, according to feudal customs, required of each of their vassals

in any extraordinary circumstances. Usage authorized him to levy this

contribution on account of the crusade, but he had also the right, on

the occasion of a ceremony, at that time very important, in which his

eldest son Philip was to be received as a knight. Thus, the impost was

demanded in the name of chivalry and in the name of religion; it was

paid without a murmur, because Louis confided the gathering of it to

men of acknowledged integrity.

When Philip received the sword of knighthood, the French, and

particularly the Parisians, expressed their love for Louis IX. and

his family by public rejoicings; all the nobility hastened from the

provinces to be present at the festivities and spectacles that were

celebrated in the capital on this occasion. Amidst the tournaments,

the exercises of the tilt-yard, and the sports in which the skill and

courage of the _preux_ and the _paladins_ were displayed, the crusade

was not forgotten. The pope’s legate pronounced a discourse, in the

isle of St. Louis, upon the misfortunes of the Holy Land; all the

people appeared to be deeply moved by the exhortations of the prelate;

a crowd of knights, and warriors of all classes, took the cross; thus

Louis IX. found in this circumstance an opportunity of raising money

for the support of his army, and of procuring recruits for the holy war.

Whilst all France was engaged in preparing for the expedition beyond

the seas, the crusade was preached in the other countries of Europe.

A council was held at Northampton, in England, in which Ottobon, the

pope’s legate, exhorted the faithful to arm themselves to save the

little that remained of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and Prince Edward

took the cross, to discharge the vow that his father Henry III. had

made when the news reached Europe of the captivity of Louis IX. in

Egypt. After the example of Edward, his brother Prince Edmund, with

the earls of Pembroke and Warwick, and many knights and barons, agreed

to take arms against the infidels. The same zeal for the deliverance

of the holy places was manifested in Scotland, where John Baliol and

several nobles enrolled themselves under the banners of the cross.

Catalonia and Castile furnished a great number of Crusaders: the king

of Portugal, and James, king of Arragon, took the cross. Dona Sancha,

one of the daughters of the Arragonese prince, had made a pilgrimage

to Jerusalem, and had died in the hospital of St. John, after devoting

many years to the service of pilgrims and the sick. James had several

times conquered the Moors; but neither his exploits against the

infidels, nor the remembrance of a daughter who had fallen a martyr

to Christian charity, could sustain his piety against the attacks of

his earthly passions, and his shameful connection with Berengaria

scandalized Christendom.

The pope, to whom he communicated his design of going to the Holy Land,

replied that Jesus Christ could not accept the services of a prince

_who crucified him every day by his sins_. The king of Arragon, by a

strange combination of opposite sentiments, would neither renounce

Berengaria nor give up his project of going to fight against the

infidels in the East. He renewed his oath in a great assembly at

Toledo, at which the ambassadors of the khan of Tartary and of the king

of Armenia were present. We read in a Spanish dissertation[26] upon the

crusades, that Alphonso the Wise, who was not able to go to the East

himself, furnished the king of Arragon with a hundred men and a hundred

thousand marvedis in gold; the order of St. James, and other orders of

knighthood, who had often accompanied the conqueror of the Moors in his

battles, supplied him also with men and money. The city of Barcelona

offered him eighty thousand Barcellonese sols, and Majorca fifty

thousand silver sols, with two equipped vessels. The fleet, composed of

thirty large ships and a great number of smaller craft, in which were

embarked eight hundred men-at-arms and two thousand foot-soldiers, set

out from Barcelona on the 4th of September, 1268. When they arrived

off Majorca, the fleet was dispersed by a tempest; one part of the

vessels gained the coasts of Asia, another took shelter in the ports of

Sardinia; the vessel the king of Arragon was on board of was cast upon

the coast of Languedoc.

The arrival at Ptolemaïs of the Arragonese Crusaders, commanded

by a natural son of James, restored some hopes to the Franks of

Palestine. An envoy from the king of Arragon, according to the Oriental

chronicles, repaired to the khan of the Tartars, to announce to him

that the Spanish monarch would soon arrive with his army. But whether

he was detained by the charms of Berengaria, or whether the tempest

that dispersed his fleet made him believe that Heaven was averse to his

pilgrimage, James did not arrive. His departure, in which he appeared

to despise the counsels of the Holy See, had been severely censured;

and his return, which was attributed to his disgraceful passion, met

with an equal share of blame. Murmurs likewise arose against the king

of Portugal, who had levied the tenths, but did not leave his kingdom.

All those who in Europe took an interest in the crusade had, at this

time, their eyes directed towards the kingdom of Naples, where Charles

of Anjou was making great preparations to accompany his brother into

the East; but this kingdom, recently conquered, was doomed again to be

the theatre of a war kindled by vengeance and ambition. There fell out

in the states of Naples and Sicily, which had so often changed masters,

that which almost always takes place after a revolution: deceived hopes

were changed into hatreds: the excesses inseparable from a conquest,

the presence of an army proud of its victories, with the too violent

government of Charles, animated the people against their new king.

Clement IV. thought it his duty to give a timely and salutary warning:

“Your kingdom,” he wrote to him, “at first exhausted by the agents

of your authority, is now torn by your enemies; thus the caterpillar

destroys what has escaped the grasshopper. The kingdom of Sicily and

Naples has not been wanting in men to desolate it; where now are they

that will defend it?” This letter of the pope announced storms ready

to break forth. Many of those who had called Charles to the throne,

regretted the house of Swabia, and directed their new hopes towards

Conradin, heir of Frederick and of Conrad. This young prince quitted

Germany with an army, and advanced towards Italy, strengthening himself

in his march with the party of the Ghibellines, and with all those whom

the domination of Charles had irritated. All Italy was in flames, and

the pope, Charles’s protector, retired to Viterbo, had no defence to

afford him, except the thunders of the Church.

Charles of Anjou, however, assembled his troops, and marched out to

meet his rival. The two armies met in the plain of St. Valentine, near

Aquila; the army of Conradin was cut to pieces, and the young prince

fell into the power of the conqueror. Posterity cannot pardon Charles

for having abused his victory even so far as to condemn and decapitate

his disarmed and vanquished enemy.[27] After this execution, Sicily

and the country of Naples were given up to all the furies of a jealous,

suspicious tyranny; for violence produces violence, and great political

crimes never come alone. It was thus that Charles got ready for the

crusade; but, on the other hand, Providence was preparing terrible

catastrophes for him: “So true it is,” says an historian, “that God as

often gives kingdoms to punish those he elevates, as to chastise those

whom he brings low.”

Whilst these bloody scenes were passing in Italy, Louis IX. was

following up the establishment of public peace and his darling object,

the crusade, at the same time. The holy monarch did not forget that the

surest manner of softening the evils of war, as well as of his absence,

was to make good laws; he therefore issued several ordinances, and each

of these ordinances was a monument of his justice. The most celebrated

of all is the Pragmatic Sanction, which Bossuet called the firmest

support of Gallican liberties. He also employed himself in elevating

that monument of legislation which illustrated his reign, and which

became a light for following ages.

The count of Poictiers, who was to accompany his brother, was in

the mean time engaged in pacifying his provinces, and established

many regulations for maintaining public order. He, above everything,

endeavoured to abolish slavery; having for a maxim, “That men are born

free, and it is always wise to bring back things to their origin.” This

good prince drew upon himself the benedictions of his people; and the

love of his vassals assured the duration of the laws he made.

We have said that Prince Edward, son of Henry III., had taken the oath

to combat the infidels. He had recently displayed a brilliant valour in

the civil war that had so long desolated England; and the deliverance

of his father and the pacification of the kingdom had been the reward

of his exploits. It was his esteem for the character of Louis IX.,

more than the spirit of devotion, that induced him to set out for the

East. The king of France, who himself exhorted him to take the cross,

lent him seventy thousand livres tournois for the preparations for his

voyage. Edward was to follow Louis as his vassal, and to conduct under

his banners the English Crusaders, united with those of Guienne. Gaston

de Béarn, to whom the French monarch advanced the sum of twenty-five

thousand livres, prepared to follow Prince Edward to the Holy Land.

The period fixed upon for the departure of the expedition was drawing

near. By order of the legate, the curés in every parish had taken the

names of the Crusaders, in order to oblige them to wear the cross

publicly, and all had notice to hold themselves in readiness to embark

in the month of May, 1270. Louis confided the administration of his

kingdom, during his absence, to Matthew, abbot of St. Denis, and to

Simon, sieur de Nesle; he wrote to all the nobles who were to follow

him into the Holy Land, to recommend them to assemble their knights

and men-at-arms. As religious enthusiasm was not sufficiently strong

to make men forget their worldly interests, many nobles who had taken

the cross entertained great fears of being ruined by the holy war,

and most of them hesitated to set out. Louis undertook to pay all the

expenses of their voyage, and to maintain them at his own cost during

the war,—a thing that had not been done in the crusades of Louis

VII. or Philip Augustus, in which the ardour of the Crusaders did not

allow them to give a thought to their fortunes, or to exercise so

much foresight. We have still a valuable monument of this epoch in a

charter, by which the king of France stipulates how much he is to pay

to a great number of barons and knights during the time the war beyond

the seas should last.

Early in the month of March, Louis repaired to the church of St. Denis,

where he received the symbols of pilgrimage, and placed his kingdom

under the protection of the apostles of France.[28] Upon the day

following this solemn ceremony, a mass for the crusade was celebrated

in the church of Notre Dame, at Paris. The monarch appeared there,

accompanied by his children and the principal nobles of his court; he

walked from the palace barefooted, carrying his scrip and staff. The

same day he went to sleep at Vincennes, and beheld, for the last time,

the spot on which he had enjoyed so much happiness in administering

justice to his people. And it was here too that he took leave of Queen

Marguerite, whom he had never before quitted,—a separation rendered so

much the more painful by the sorrowful reflection it recalled of past

events, and by melancholy presentiments for the future.

Both the people and the court were affected by the deepest regret,

and that which added to the public anxiety was the circumstance that

every one was ignorant of the point to which the expedition was to be

directed: the coast of Africa was only vaguely conjectured. The king

of Sicily had taken the cross without having the least inclination

to embark for Asia; and when the question was discussed in council,

he gave it as his opinion that Tunis should be the object of the

first attack. The kingdom of Tunis covered the seas with pirates,

who infested all the routes to Palestine; it was, besides, the ally

of Egypt, and might, if subdued, be made the readiest road to that

country. These were the ostensible reasons put forth; the true ones

were, that it was of importance to the king of Sicily that the coasts

of Africa should be brought under European subjection, and that he did

not wish to go too far from Italy. The true reason with St. Louis,

and that which, no doubt, determined him, was, that he believed it

possible to convert the king of Tunis, and thus bring a vast kingdom

under the Christian banners. The Mussulman prince, whose ambassadors

had been several times in France, had himself given birth to this idea,

by saying, that he asked nothing better than to embrace the religion

of Jesus Christ:[29] thus, that which he had said to turn aside an

invasion, was precisely the cause of the war being directed against

his territories. Louis IX. often repeated that he would consent to pass

the whole of his life in a dungeon, without seeing the sun, if, by such

a sacrifice, the conversion of the king of Tunis and his nation could

be brought about; an expression of ardent proselytism that has been

blamed with much bitterness, but which only showed an extreme desire

to see Africa delivered from barbarism, and marching with Europe in

the progress of intelligence and civilization, which are the great

blessings of Christianity.

As Louis traversed his kingdom on his way to Aigues-Mortes, where the

army of the Crusaders was to embark, he was everywhere hailed by the

benedictions of his people, and gratified by hearing their ardent

prayers for the success of his arms; the clergy and the faithful,

assembled in the churches, prayed for the king and his children, and

all that should follow him. They prayed also for foreign princes and

nobles who had taken the cross, and promised to go into the East; as if

they would, by that means, press them to hasten their departure.

Very few, however, responded to this religious appeal. The king of

Castile, who had taken the cross, had pretensions to the imperial

crown, nor could he forget the death of his brother Frederick,

immolated by Charles of Anjou. It was not only that the affairs of

the empire detained the German princes and nobles; the death of young

Conradin had so shocked and disgusted men’s minds in Germany, that no

one from that country would have consented to fight under the same

banners as the king of Sicily. So black a crime, committed amidst the

preparations for a holy war, appeared to presage great calamities. In

the height of their grief or indignation, people might fear that Heaven

would be angry with the Christians, and that its curse would fall upon

the arms of the Crusaders.

When Louis arrived at Aigues-Mortes, he found neither the Genoese fleet

nor the principal nobles who were to embark with him; the ambassadors

of Palæologus were the only persons who did not cause themselves to

be waited for; for a great dread of the crusade was entertained at

Constantinople, and this fear was more active than the enthusiasm of

the Crusaders. Louis might have asked the Greek emperor why, after

having promised to send soldiers, he had only sent ambassadors; but

Louis, who attached great importance to the conversion of the Greeks,

contented himself with removing the apprehensions of the envoys, and,

as Clement IV. died at that period, he sent them to the conclave of the

cardinals, to terminate the reunion of the two churches.

At length the unwilling Crusaders, stimulated by repeated exhortations,

and by the example of Louis, set forward on their march from all the

provinces, and directed their course towards the ports of Aigues-Mortes

and Marseilles. Louis soon welcomed the arrival of the count of

Poictiers, with a great number of his vassals; the principal nobles

brought with them the most distinguished of their knights and their

most brave and hardy soldiers; many cities likewise contributed their

supply of warriors. Each troop had its banner, and formed a separate

corps, bearing the name of a city or a province; the battalions of

Beaucaire, Carcassonne, Châlons, Perigord, &c., attracted observation

in the Christian army. These names, it is true, excited great

emulation, but they also gave rise to quarrels, which the wisdom and

firmness of Louis had great difficulty in appeasing. Crusaders arrived

from Catalonia, Castile, and several other provinces of Spain; five

hundred warriors from Friesland likewise ranged themselves with full

confidence under the standard of such a leader as Louis, saying, that

their nation had always been proud to obey the kings of France.

Before he embarked, the king wrote once more to the regents of the

kingdom, to recommend them to watch carefully over public morals,

to deliver France from corrupt judges, and to render to everybody,

particularly to the poor, prompt and perfect justice, so that He who

judges the judgments of men might have nothing to reproach him with.

Such were the last farewells that Louis took of France. The fleet

set sail on the fourth of July, 1270, and in a few days arrived in

the road of Cagliari. Here the council of the counts and barons was

assembled in the king’s vessel, to deliberate upon the plan of the

crusade. Those who advocated the conquest of Tunis, said that by that

means the passages of the Mediterranean would be opened, and the power

of the Mamelukes would be weakened; and that after that conquest the

army would go triumphantly into either Egypt or Palestine. Many of

the barons were not of this opinion; they said, if the Holy Land stood

in need of prompt assistance, they ought to afford it without delay;

whilst they were engaged on the coast of Africa, in a country with

which they were unacquainted, the Christian cities of Syria might all

fall into the hands of the Saracens; the most redoubtable enemy of the

Christians was Bibars, the terrible sultan of Cairo; it was him they

ought first to attack; it was into his states, into the bosom of his

capital, that the war should be carried, and not to a place two hundred

leagues from Egypt. They added to this, remembrances of the defeats of

the French army on the banks of the Nile,—defeats that ought to be

avenged upon the very theatre of so many disasters.

Contemporary history does not say to what extent Louis was struck

with the wisdom of these last opinions; but the expedition to Tunis

flattered his most cherished hopes. It had been proposed by the king of

Sicily, whose concurrence was necessary to the success of the crusade.

It was, therefore, decided that the Genoese fleet should direct its

course towards Africa; and two days after, on the twentieth of July, it

arrived in sight of Tunis and Carthage.

On the western coast of Africa, opposite Sicily, is a peninsula,

described by Strabo, whose circumference is three hundred and forty

stadii, or forty-two miles. This peninsula advances into the sea

between two gulfs, one of which, on the west, offers a commodious

port; the other, on the south-east, communicates, by means of a canal,

with a lake which extends three leagues into the land, and which

modern geographers term the Gullet. It was upon this spot was built

the great rival of Rome, whose site extended over the two shores of

the sea. Neither the conquests of the Romans, nor the ravages of the

Vandals, had been able to entirely destroy this once flourishing city;

but in the seventh century, after being invaded and laid waste by the

Saracens, it became nothing but a mass of ruins; a moderate-sized

village upon the port, called Marsa, a tower on the point of the

cape, a pretty strong castle on the hill of Byrsa,—these were all

the remains of that city whose power so long dominated over the

Mediterranean and the coasts of Africa and Asia.

At five leagues’ distance, towards the south-east, a little beyond

the gulf and the lake of the Gullet, arose a city, called in ancient

times Tynis or Tunissa,[30] of which Scipio made himself master before

he attacked Carthage. Tunis had thriven by the fall of other cities,

and in the thirteenth century she vied in wealth and population with

the most flourishing cities of Africa. It contained ten thousand

houses, and had three extensive suburbs; the spoils of nations and the

produce of an immense commerce had enriched it; and all that the art of

fortification could invent had been employed to defend the access to it.

The coast on which Tunis stood was the theatre of many revolutions,

of which ancient history has transmitted accounts to us; but modern

history has not, in the same manner, consecrated the revolutions of

the Saracens. We can scarcely follow the march of the barbarians who

planted the standard of Islamism upon so many ruins. All that we

positively know is, that Tunis, for a long time united to the kingdom

of Morocco, was separated from it under a warlike prince, whose third

successor was reigning in the time of St. Louis.

At the sight of the Christian fleet, the inhabitants of the coast of

Africa were seized with terror, and all who were upon the Carthage

shore took flight towards the mountains or towards Tunis. Some vessels

that were in the port were abandoned by their crews; the king ordered

Florent de Varennes, who performed the functions of admiral, to get

into a boat and reconnoitre the coast. Varennes found nobody in the

port or upon the shore; he sent word to the king that there was no time

to be lost, he must take immediate advantage of the consternation of

the enemy. But it was remembered that in the preceding expedition the

descent upon the coast of Egypt had been too precipitate; in this it

was determined to risk nothing. Inexperienced youth had presided over

the former war; now it was directed by old age and ripe manhood: it was

resolved to wait till the morrow.

The next day, at dawn, the coast appeared covered with Saracens,

among whom were many men on horseback. The Crusaders, not the less,

commenced their preparations for landing. At the approach of the

Christians, the multitude of infidels disappeared; which, according

to the account of an eye witness, was a blessing from Heaven, for the

disorder was so great, that a hundred men would have been sufficient to

stop the disembarkation of the whole army.

When the Christian army had landed, it was drawn up in order of battle

upon the shore, and, in accordance with the laws of war, Pierre de

Condé, almoner to the king, read, with a loud voice, a proclamation,

by which the conquerors took possession of the territory. This

proclamation, which Louis had drawn up himself, began by these words:

“I proclaim, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of Louis, king

of France, his sergeant,” &c.[31]

The baggage, provisions, and munitions of war were landed; a vast space

was marked out, and the Christian soldiers pitched their tents. Whilst

they were digging ditches and raising intrenchments to protect the army

from a surprise, they took possession of the tower built on the point

of the cape; and on the following day, five hundred sailors planted

the standard of the lilies upon the castle of Carthage. The village of

Marsa, which was close to the castle, fell likewise into the hands of

the Crusaders; the women and the sick were placed here, whilst the army

remained beneath their tents.

Louis still hoped for the conversion of the king of Tunis, but this

pious illusion was very quickly dissolved. The Mussulman prince sent

messengers to the king, to inform, him that he would come and meet him

at the head of a hundred thousand men, and would require baptism of him

on the field of battle; the Moorish king added, that he had caused all

the Christians in his dominions to be seized, and that every one of

them should be massacred if the Christian army presumed to insult his

capital.

The menaces and vain bravadoes of the prince of Tunis effected no

change in the plans of the crusade; the Moors, besides, inspired no

fear, and they themselves could not conceal the terror which the sight

only of the Christians created in them. Not daring to face their

enemy, their scattered bands sometimes hovered around the Christian

army, seeking to surprise any stragglers from the camp; and at others,

uniting together, they poured down towards the advanced posts, launched

a few arrows, showed their naked swords, and then depended upon the

swiftness of their horses to secure them from the pursuit of the

Christians. They not unfrequently had recourse to treachery: three

hundred of them came into the camp of the Crusaders, and said they

wished to embrace the Christian faith, and a hundred more followed

them, announcing the same intention.[32] After being received with

open arms, they waited for what they deemed a favourable opportunity,

and fell upon a body of the Christians, sword in hand; but being

overwhelmed by numbers, most of them were killed, and the rest were

allowed to escape. Three of the principals fell on their knees, and

implored the compassion of the leaders. The contempt the Franks had for

such enemies obtained their pardon, and they were driven out of the

camp.

At length the Mussulman army, emboldened by the inaction of the

Christians, presented itself several times on the plain. Nothing would

have been more easy than to attack and conquer it; but Louis had

resolved to act upon the defensive, and to await the arrival of the

king of Sicily for beginning the war,—a fatal resolution, which ruined

everything: the Sicilian monarch, who had advised this ill-starred

expedition, was destined to complete, by his delays, the evil he had

begun by his counsels.

The Mussulmans flocked from all parts of Africa to defend the cause

of Islamism against the Christians. Preparations were carried on in

Egypt to meet the invasion of the Franks, and in the month of August,

Bibars announced by messengers, that he was about to march to the

assistance of Tunis. The troops which the sultan of Cairo maintained

in the province of Barka received orders to set forward. Thus, the

Moorish army was about to become formidable; but it was not this host

of Saracens that the Crusaders had most to dread. Other dangers, other

misfortunes threatened them: the Christian army wanted water; they had

none but salted provisions; the soldiers could not endure the climate

of Africa; winds constantly prevailed, which, coming from the torrid

zone, appeared to the Europeans to be the breath of a devouring fire.

The Saracens upon the neighbouring mountains raised the sand with

certain instruments made for the purpose, and the dust was carried

by the wind in burning clouds down upon the plain upon which the

Christians were encamped. At last, dysentery, that fatal malady of

warm climates, began to commit frightful ravages among the troops; and

the plague, which appears to be born of itself upon this burning, arid

sand, spread its dire contagion through the Christian army.

They were obliged to be under arms night and day; not to defend

themselves from an enemy that always fled away from them, but to

guard against surprise. A vast number of the Crusaders sunk under

fatigue, famine, and disease. The French had soon to regret the loss

of Bouchard, count de Vendome, the count de la Marche, Gauthier

de Nemours, the lords de Montmorency, de Pienne, de Bressac, Guy

d’Aspremont, and Raoul, brother of the count de Soissons. It became

impossible to bury the dead; the ditches of the camp were filled with

carcases, thrown in heaps, which added to the corruption of the air and

to the spectacle of the general desolation.

At length Olivier de Termes, a Languedocian gentleman, coming from

Sicily, announced that King Charles was quite ready to embark with his

army. This news was received with joy, but had no power to alleviate

the evils the Crusaders were then exposed to. The heats became

excessive; the want of water, bad food, disease, which continued its

ravages, and the grief at being shut up in a camp without the power

to fight, completed the despondency that had taken possession of the

minds of leaders and soldiers. Louis endeavoured to cheer them both

by his words and his example; but he himself fell ill with dysentery.

Prince Philip, the duke de Nevers, the king of Navarre, and the legate

also felt the effects of the contagion. The duke de Nevers, surnamed

Tristan, was born at Damietta during the captivity of the king, and was

particularly the object of his father’s love. The young prince remained

in the royal tent; but as he appeared to be sinking under the effects

of the disease, it was judged best to convey him on board one of the

vessels. The monarch incessantly demanded news of his son; but all who

surrounded him preserved a melancholy silence. At length they were

obliged to inform him that the duke de Nevers was dead; the feelings

of the father prevailed over the resignation of the Christian, and he

wept bitterly. A short time afterwards, the pope’s legate died, deeply

regretted by the clergy and the soldiers of the cross, who regarded him

as their spiritual father.

In spite of his sufferings, in spite of his griefs, Louis IX. was

constantly engaged in endeavours to alleviate the situation of his

army. He gave orders as long as he had any strength left, dividing

his time between the duties of a Christian and those of a monarch.

The fever, however, increased; no longer able to attend either to his

cares for the army or to exercises of piety, he ordered the cross to be

placed before him, and stretching out his hands, he in silence implored

Him who had suffered for all men.

The whole army was in a state of mourning; the soldiers walked about in

tears, demanding of Heaven the preservation of so good a prince. Amidst

the general grief, Louis turned his thoughts towards the accomplishment

of the divine laws and the destinies of France. Philip, who was his

successor to the throne, was in his tent; he desired him to approach

his bed, and in a faltering voice gave him counsels in what manner he

should govern the kingdom of his fathers. The instructions he gave him

comprise the most noble maxims of religion and loyalty; and that which

will render them for ever worthy of the respect of posterity is, that

they had the authority of his example, and only recalled the virtues of

his own life. After having recommended Philip to respect, and cause to

be respected, religion and its ministers, and at all times, and above

all things, to fear to offend God:[33] “My dear son,” added he, “be

charitable and merciful towards the poor and all who suffer. If thou

attainest the throne, show thyself worthy, by thy conduct, of receiving

the holy unction with which the kings of France are consecrated. When

thou shalt be king, show thyself just in all things, and let nothing

turn thee aside from the path of truth and rectitude. If the widow and

orphan contend before thee with the powerful man, declare thyself of

the party of the feeble against the strong, until the truth shall be

known to thee. In affairs in which thou thyself shalt be interested,

support at first the cause of the other; for if thou dost not act in

that sort, thy counsellors will hesitate to speak against thee, which

thou oughtest not to desire. My dear son, above all things I recommend

thee to avoid war with every Christian nation; if thou art reduced by

necessity to make it, at least take care that the poor people, who are

not in the wrong, be kept safe from all harm. Give all thy efforts to

appease the divisions that may arise in thy kingdom, for nothing is so

pleasing to God as the spectacle of concord and peace. Neglect nothing

to provide good lieutenants (baillis) and provosts in thy provinces.

Give power freely to men who know how to use it, and punish all who

abuse it; for if it is thy duty to hate evil in another, much greater

reason hast thou to hate it in them who hold their authority of thee.

Be just in the levying of thy public taxes, and be wise and moderate

in the expenditure of them; beware of foolish expenses, which lead to

unjust imposts; correct with prudence all that is defective in the laws

of thy kingdom. Maintain with loyalty the rights and franchises that

thy predecessors have left, for the happier that thy subjects shall be,

the greater thou wilt be; the more irreproachable thy government shall

be, the more thy enemies will fear to attack it.”

Louis gave Philip several more counsels upon the love he owed to God,

his people, and his family; then pouring out his full heart, he uttered

nothing but the language of a parent who is about to be separated

from a son he loves tenderly. “I bestow upon thee,” said he, “all the

benedictions that a father can bestow upon a dear son. Aid me by masses

and prayers, and let me have a part in all the good actions thou shalt

perform. I beseech our Lord Jesus Christ, by his great mercy, to guard

thee from all evils, and to keep thee from doing anything contrary to

his will; and that after this mortal life we may see Him, love Him, and

praise Him together in a life everlasting.”

When we reflect that these words were pronounced on the coast of

Africa by a dying king of France, we experience a mixture of surprise

and emotion, which even the coldest and most indifferent hearts can

scarcely fail to partake of. Judge, then, of the effect they must

have produced upon the feelings of a desolate son! Philip listened

to them with respectful sorrow, and commanded them to be faithfully

transcribed, in order that he might have them before his eyes all the

days of his life.[34]

Louis then turned to his daughter, the queen of Navarre, who sat,

drowned in tears, at the foot of his bed: in a precept which he had

prepared for her, he laid before her all the duties of a queen and a

wife. Above all, he recommended her to take the greatest care of her

husband, who was then sick; and, never forgetful of even the smallest

circumstances, he advised the king of Navarre, on his return to

Champagne, to pay all his debts before he began to rebuild the convent

of the Cordeliers of Provins.

These instructions were the last words that Louis addressed to his

children; from that time they never saw him again. The ambassadors of

Michael Palæologus arriving in the camp, the king consented to receive

them. In the state in which Louis then was, it was impossible for

him to see through the false promises of the Greeks, or the alarms

and deceitful policy of their emperor; he no longer gave attention

to the things of this world. He confined himself to the expression

of his earnest wishes that the reunion of the two churches might at

length be effected, and promised the ambassadors that his son Philip

would do everything in his power to bring it about. These envoys were

Meliteniote, archdeacon of the imperial chapel, and the celebrated

Vechus, chancellor of the church of Constantinople. They were both so

much affected by the words and the virtues of St. Louis, that they

afterwards gave their most zealous endeavours to promote the reunion,

and both ended by becoming victims to the policy of the Greeks.

After this interview Louis thought of nothing but his God, and remained

alone with his confessor. His almoners recited before him the prayers

of the Church, to which he responded. He then received the Viaticum and

extreme unction. “From Sunday, at the hour of nones,” says an ocular

witness, “till Monday, at the hour of tierce, his mouth never ceased,

either day or night, to praise our Lord, and to pray for the people he

had brought to that place.” He was heard to pronounce these words of

the prophet-king: “Grant, Lord, that we may despise the prosperities

of this world, and know how to brave its adversities.” He likewise

repeated, as loudly as his feeble state would permit, this verse of

another psalm: “Oh, God! deign to sanctify thy people, and to watch

over them.” Sometimes he invoked St. Denis, whom he was accustomed to

invoke in battle, and implored him to grant his heavenly support to

this army he was about to leave without a leader. In the night between

Sunday and Monday he was heard to pronounce the word _Jerusalem_ twice,

and then he added: “We will go to Jerusalem.” His mind was constantly

occupied with the idea of the holy war. Perhaps, likewise, he saw

nothing then but the heavenly Jerusalem, the last country of the just

man.

At nine o’clock in the morning of Monday, the twenty-fifth of August,

he lost his speech; but he still looked upon all who were round him

kindly (_débonnairement_). His countenance was calm, and it was evident

that his mind was, at the same time, divided between the purest of

earthly affections and the thoughts of eternity. Feeling that death was

approaching fast, he made signs to his attendants to place him, covered

by hair-cloth, upon a bed of ashes. Between the hours of tierce and

mid-day he appeared to sleep, and lay with his eyes closed for more

than half an hour at a time. He then seemed to revive, opened his eyes,

and looking towards heaven, exclaimed: “O Lord! I shall enter into thy

house, and shall worship thee in thy holy tabernacle!” Hi died at three

o’clock in the afternoon.