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.

We have spoken of the profound grief which prevailed among the Crusaders when Louis fell sick. There was not a leader or a soldier that did not forget his own ills in his anxiety for the king. At every hour of the day and night these faithful warriors crowded round the monarch’s tent, and when they beheld the sad and apprehensive air of all who came out of it, they turned away, with their eyes cast to the earth, and their souls filled with the most gloomy thoughts. In the camp, the soldiers scarcely durst ask each other a question, for they heard none but sorrowful tidings. At length, when the event that all had dreaded was announced to the army, the French warriors abandoned themselves to despair; they saw in the death of Louis a signal for all sorts of calamities, and anxiously inquired of each other what leader was to conduct them back to their homes. With the general groans and tears were mingled many bitter reproaches against those who had advised this fatal expedition, particularly the king of Sicily, whom all accused of being the cause of the disasters of the war.

On the very day of the king’s death Charles of Anjou and his army landed near Carthage; trumpets and other warlike music resounded along the shore, but a profound and melancholy silence was preserved in the camp of the Crusaders, and not a man went forth to meet the Sicilians, whom they had looked for with so much impatience. Sad forebodings rushed into the mind of Charles; he galloped forward, and flying to the tent of the king, found his royal brother dead, and stretched upon his bed of ashes. The features of Louis were scarcely altered, his death had been so calm. Charles prostrated himself at his feet, watering them with his tears, and calling him sometimes his brother, sometimes his lord. He remained a long time in this attitude, without seeing any of those who surrounded him, continuing to address Louis as if he had been still living, and reproaching himself, in accents of despair, with not having heard, with not having received, the last words of the most affectionate of brothers and best of kings.

The mortal remains of Louis were deposited in two funereal urns. The entrails of the holy monarch were granted to Charles of Anjou, who sent them to the abbey of Montréal, where these precious relics, for a length of time, attracted the devotion and respect of the faithful. The bones and the heart of Louis remained in the hands of Philip. This young prince was desirous of sending them to France, but the leaders and soldiers would not consent to be separated from all that was left to them of their beloved monarch. The presence of this sacred deposit amongst the Crusaders appeared to them a safeguard against new misfortunes, and the most sure means of drawing down the protection of Heaven upon the Christian army.

Philip was still sick, and his malady created great anxiety. The army considered him the worthy successor of Louis, and the affection that had been felt for the father descended to the son; he received, amidst the public grief, the homage and oaths of the leaders, barons, and nobles. His first care was to confirm the regency, and all that his father had established in France before his departure. Geoffrey de Beaulieu, William de Chartres, and John de Mons, confessors and almoners to the king, were directed to carry these orders of Philip’s into the West. Among the letters which these ecclesiastics took with them into France, history has preserved that which was addressed to the clergy and to all people of worth in the kingdom.[35] After having described their labours, the perils and the death of Louis IX., the young prince implored God to grant that he might follow the steps of so good a father, might accomplish his sacred commands, and put in practice all his counsels. Philip concluded his letter, which was read aloud in all churches, by supplicating the ecclesiastics and the faithful “to put up to the King of Kings their prayers and their offerings for that prince, with whose zeal for religion, and tender solicitude for the kingdom of France, which he loved as the apple of his eye, they were so well acquainted.”

The death of Louis had greatly raised the confidence of the Saracens. The mourning and grief which they observed in the Christian army were, by them, mistaken for discouragement, and they flattered themselves they should obtain a triumph over their enemies; but these hopes were speedily dispelled. The king of Sicily took the command of the Christian army during the sickness of Philip, and resumed the war. The troops he had brought with him were eager for fight, and all the French seemed anxious to seek a distraction from their grief in the field of battle. The disease which had desolated their army appeared to have suspended its ravages, and the soldiers, a long time imprisoned in their camp, felt their strength revive at the sight of the perils of war. Several conflicts took place around the lake of the Gullet, of which the Christians wished to get possession, to facilitate their approach to Tunis. The Moors, who, but a few days before, threatened to exterminate or make slaves of all the Crusaders, were not able to sustain the shock of their enemies; the cross-bowmen alone were frequently sufficient to disperse their numberless multitude. Horrible howlings, with the noise of kettle-drums and other instruments, announced their approach; clouds of dust descending from the neighbouring heights announced their retreat, and screened their flight. In two encounters they were overtaken, and left a great many of their host stretched upon the plain. Another time their camp was carried, and given up to pillage. The sovereign of Tunis could not reckon upon his army for the defence of his states, and he himself set them no example of bravery, for he remained constantly shut up in his subterranean grottoes, to avoid at the same time the burning rays of the sun and the perils of fight. Pressed by his fears, he at length could see no hopes of safety but in peace, and he resolved to purchase it, even at the cost of all his treasures. His ambassadors came repeatedly to the Christian army with directions to make proposals, and, above all, to endeavour to seduce the king of Sicily by brilliant promises.[36]

When the report of these negotiations was spread through the camp of the Crusaders, it gave birth to very different opinions. The soldiers, to whom the plunder of Tunis had been promised, wished to continue the war; some of the leaders, to whom other hopes had been given, did not evince the same ardour as the soldiers. By the death of Louis IX. and the apostolic legate, the crusade had lost both its principal motive and that moral force which had animated everything. The spirit of the Crusaders, which nobody directed, worked upon by a thousand various passions, floated in uncertainty, and this uncertainty was likely, in the end, to keep the army in a state of inaction, and bring about the abandonment of the war. Philip was desirous of returning to France, whither the affairs of his kingdom peremptorily called him. Most of the barons and French nobles began to sigh for their country. At length it was agreed that the pacific proposals of the king of Tunis should be deliberated upon.

In the council, those to whom no promise had been held out, and who were not so impatient as the others to quit the coast of Africa, were of opinion that they ought to prosecute the war. “It was for the conquest of Tunis that Louis IX. had embarked at Carthage, and that the Christian army had undergone so many evils. How could they pay higher honour to the memory of Louis and so many Frenchmen, like him, martyrs to their zeal and their faith, than by carrying on and completing their work? All Christendom knew that the Crusaders threatened Tunis, that the Moors fled at the sight of them, and that the city was ready to open its gates. What would Christendom say on learning that the Crusaders had fled before the vanquished, and robbed themselves of their own victory?”

Those who were of opinion that the peace should be concluded, answered, that the question was not only to enter Tunis, but to conquer the country, which could only be done by exterminating the population. “Besides, a prolonged siege would very much weaken the Christian army. Winter was approaching, in which they could procure no provisions, and in which continual rains would, perhaps, cause more diseases than excessive heat had done. The taking of Tunis was not the principal object of the crusade; it was necessary to make peace upon advantageous conditions, to obtain means to carry the war afterwards where circumstances might require.” The leaders who spoke thus were themselves the same that had promoted the expedition against Tunis: the king of Sicily was at their head; they no longer urged the necessity for clearing the Mediterranean of pirates who infested the route of pilgrims; they said no more about depriving the sultan of Egypt of his most powerful ally. The reasons they gave for putting an end to the war were precisely the same as they had given for commencing it. Their opinion, however, prevailed; not because others were convinced by what they heard, but, as it often happens in the most important deliberations, the majority decide rather from motives they do not avow, than from those they appear to support.[37]

On the thirty-first of October a truce of ten years was concluded between the king of Tunis and the leaders of the Christian army. All the prisoners were to be given up on both sides, and Christians who had been previously captives were to be set at liberty. The sovereign of Tunis engaged not to require of the Franks any of the dues imposed in his kingdom upon foreign commerce. The treaty granted all Christians liberty to reside in the states of Tunis, to build churches there, and even to preach their faith there. The Mussulman prince was bound to pay to the king of Sicily an annual tribute of forty thousand crowns, and two hundred and ten thousand ounces of gold to the leader of the Christian army for the expenses of the war.

It was, doubtless, the last condition that decided the question: the two hundred and ten thousand ounces of gold exceeded the sum that Louis IX. had paid in Egypt for the ransom of his army; but a part of it only was received at first. Who could assure the payment of the rest when the Christian army had quitted the coast of Africa? The king of Sicily alone could derive any advantage from this treaty, so disgraceful to the French arms; he had not only found means of making a Mussulman prince pay the tribute of forty thousand gold crowns, which he owed the Pope as vassal of the Holy See; but the peace which they had concluded, in some sort, placed at his disposal an army capable of undertaking much greater conquests than that of Tunis. Thus, complaints immediately arose reproaching the king of Sicily with having, at his pleasure, changed the aim of the crusade, in order to make the Christian army subservient to his ambition.

A few days after the signing of the truce, Prince Edward arrived off the coast of Carthage, with the English and Scotch Crusaders. Having sailed from Aigues-Mortes, he directed his course towards Palestine, and came to take orders from the king of France. The French and Sicilians were prodigal in their expressions of sincere friendship for the English. Edward was received with great honours, but when he learned they had made peace, he retired into his tent, and refused to be present at any of the councils of the Christian army.

The Crusaders became impatient to quit an arid and murderous land, which recalled to them nothing but misfortunes, without the least mixture of glory. The Christian army embarked on the eighteenth of November for Sicily; and, as if Heaven had decreed that this expedition should be nothing but a series of misfortunes, a frightful tempest assailed the fleet just as it was about to enter the port of Trapani. Eighteen large ships and four thousand Crusaders were submerged, and perished in the waves. Most of the leaders and soldiers lost their arms, equipments, and horses. If one historian is to be believed, the money received from the king of Tunis was lost in this shipwreck.

After so great a misfortune, the king of Sicily neglected no means of succouring the Crusaders. We may believe in the generous sentiments which he expressed upon the occasion; but there is little doubt that, with his feelings a hope was mixed of deriving something favourable to his projects from this deplorable circumstance. When all the leaders were arrived, several councils were held to ascertain what remained to be done. As every one deplored his own losses, Charles proposed a sure means of repairing them, which was the conquest of Greece. This was the plan he had arranged; in the first place, all the Crusaders should pass the winter in Sicily; in the spring, the count of Poictiers should set out for Palestine with a part of the army, the rest was to follow Charles to Epirus, and from thence to Byzantium. This project had something adventurous and chivalric in it, very likely to seduce the French barons and nobles; but letters to the young king arrived from France, in which the regents represented in strong colours the grief and alarms of his people. Philip declared that he could not stay in Sicily, but should immediately return to his own dominions. This determination destroyed all Charles’s hopes; the French lords would not abandon their young monarch, and the princes and all the leaders of the Christian army laid aside the cross. An Italian chronicle reports that Charles, in his vexation, confiscated to his own profit all the vessels and all the effects which, after the late shipwreck, were thrown upon the coasts of Sicily. He had profited by the misfortunes of the army before Tunis, and he now enriched himself with the spoils of his companions in arms. This act of injustice and violence completed the dislike that most of the Crusaders had conceived for him; this was particularly the case with the Genoese, to whom the fleet belonged in which the Christian army had embarked.

It was, however, decided that they should resume the crusade four years later. The two kings, the princes, and the most influential leaders, engaged themselves by oath to embark for Syria with their troops in the month of July of the fourth year;—a vain promise, that not one of them was destined to keep, and which they only made then to excuse in their own eyes the inconsistency of their conduct in this war. Edward, who had announced his resolution of passing the winter in Sicily, and setting out for Palestine in the spring, was the only one that did not break his promises.

The French warriors abandoned all thoughts of the crusade; but they were yet far from seeing the closing of that abyss of miseries which it had opened beneath their feet. The king of Navarre died shortly after landing at Trapani, and his wife Isabella was so deeply affected by his death, that she immediately followed him to the tomb. Philip set out on his return to France in the month of January, and the young queen, who had accompanied him, became another victim of the crusade. In crossing Calabria, whilst fording a river near Cosenza, her horse fell, and she being pregnant, this fall caused her death. Thus Philip pursued his journey, bearing with him the bodies of his father, his brother, and his wife. He learnt on his march that the count and countess of Poictiers, returning to Languedoc, had both died in Tuscany from the effects of the contagious malady of the coast of Africa. Passing by Viterbo, Philip witnessed the tragical end of one of the most illustrious of his companions in arms; Henry d’Allemagne was attacked by the sons of the earl of Leicester, pursued into a church, and massacred at the foot of the altar. Thus, great crimes were joined with great calamities, to add to the cruel remembrances that this crusade was destined to leave behind it.

Philip, after crossing Mount Cenis, returned to Paris through Burgundy and Champagne. What days of mourning for France! At the departure of Louis IX. for the East, the whole nation had been impressed by the most melancholy presentiments; and, alas! all these presentiments were but too fully realized!

It was not the flag of victory, but a funeral pall that preceded the French warriors in their march. Funereal urns, the wreck of an army but lately so flourishing, a young sick prince, who had only escaped by a miracle the death that had swept away his family—this was all that came back from the crusade! The people came from all parts to meet the melancholy train; they surrounded the young king, they strove to approach the remains of St. Louis, and it was made evident, by their pious propriety and their religious sadness, that the sentiments which led them there were not such as generally precipitate the multitude upon the steps of the masters of the earth.

On the arrival of Philip in his capital, the bones and the heart of St. Louis were conveyed to the church of Notre Dame, where ecclesiastics sang the hymns of the service of the dead during the whole night. On the following day the funeral of the royal martyr was celebrated in the church of St. Denis. In the midst of an immense assemblage of all classes of the people, deeply affected by what they saw, the young monarch advanced, bearing on his shoulders the mortal remains of his father. He stopped several times on his way, and crosses, which were placed at every station, recalled, up to the last century, this beautiful picture of filial piety.

Louis IX. was deposited near his grandfather Philip Augustus, and his father Louis VIII. Although he had forbidden his tomb to be ornamented, it was covered with plates of silver, which were afterwards carried away by the English. At a later period a more terrible revolution broke into his tomb and scattered his ashes; but this revolution has not been able to destroy his memory.

No, posterity will never cease to praise that passion for justice which filled the whole life of Louis IX., that ardour in search of truth, so rare even among the greatest kings; that love of peace, to which he sacrificed even the glory he had acquired in arms; that solicitude for the good of all; that tender consideration for poverty; that profound respect for the rights of misfortune and for the lives of men:—virtues which astonished the middle ages, and which our own times still perceive in the descendants of so good a prince.[38]

The ascendancy which his virtue and piety gave him he only employed in defending his people against everything that was unjust. This ascendancy, which he preserved over his age, gave to his laws an empire, which laws, whatever they may be, rarely obtain but with time. A few years after his reign, provinces demanded to be united to the crown, under the sole hope and the sole condition of enjoying the wise ordinances of the king, who loved justice. Such were the conquests of St. Louis. It is well known, that after his victories over the English he restored Guienne to them, in spite of the advice of his barons, who considered this act of generosity to be contrary to the interests of the kingdom. Perhaps it only belongs to elevated minds like his to know how much wisdom there is in the counsels of moderation! An illustrious writer of the last age has said, when speaking of Louis IX., that great moderate men are rare, and it is doubtless on that account that the world does not understand them.

In the position in which France at that time was placed, a vulgar genius would have fomented divisions; whereas Louis only sought to appease them; and it was this spirit of conciliation which rendered him the arbitrator of kings and nations, and gave him more strength and power than could have been procured by the combinations of the wisest policy. Among the contemporaries of St. Louis persons were not wanting who blamed his moderation, and many who pride themselves upon being skilful politicians blame him even now. Strange skill, which tends to create a belief that morality is foreign to the happiness of nations, and which cannot afford to the leaders of empires the same virtues that God has bestowed upon man for the preservation of society!

The more we admire the reign of Louis IX. the greater is our astonishment at his having twice interrupted the course of its blessings, and quitted a people he rendered happy by his presence. But, whilst beholding the passions which agitate the present generation, who will dare to raise his voice for the purpose of accusing past ages! If at the moment in which I write this history all Europe is moved by the rumour of a general rising against the Mussulmans, now masters of Byzantium;—if the most ardent disciples of the modern school of philosophy are putting up vows for the triumph of the Gospel over the Koran, for the deliverance of the Greeks, and the resurrection of Athens and Lacedæmon, how can we believe that in the middle ages princes and Christian nations would not be affected by the horrible state of slavery of Jerusalem, and all those holy regions from which the light first broke upon Christendom? Consistently with the character which Louis IX. displayed in all the circumstances of his life, how could he remain indifferent to the calamities of the Christian colonies, which were principally peopled by Frenchmen, and which were considered as another France,—the France of the east? We must not forget, likewise, that the great aim of his policy was to unite the nations of the east and west by the ties of Christianity; and that this aim, if he had succeeded in it, would have been greatly to the advantage of humanity. Ambition itself has been sometimes pardoned for projects much more chimerical, and wars much more unfortunate.[39]

However it may be, we can venture to say that the captivity and death of St. Louis in distant regions did not at all lessen the respect in which his name and his virtues were held in Europe. Perhaps even such extraordinary misfortunes, suffered in the name of religion and of all that was then reverenced, added something to the splendour of the monarchy; for the times we have seen were then far distant in which the misfortunes of kings have only served to despoil royalty of that which makes it respected among men. The death of Louis IX. was a great subject of grief for the French; but with the regret which his loss created, there was mingled, for the whole people, the thoughts of the happy future which Louis had prepared, and for pious minds the hope of having a guardian and a support in heaven. Very shortly the death of a king of France was celebrated as a fresh triumph for religion,—as a fresh glory for his country; and the anniversary of the day on which he expired became thereafter one of the solemn festivals of the Christian Church and of the French monarchy.

A beautiful spectacle was that canonical inquiry in which the common father of the faithful interrogated the contemporaries of Louis IX. upon the virtues of his life and the benefits of his reign! Frenchmen of all classes came forward to attest, upon the Gospel, that the monarch whose death they lamented was worthy of all the rewards of heaven. Among them were many of his old companions in arms, who had shared his chains in Egypt, and beheld him dying on his bed of ashes before Tunis. The whole of Europe confirmed their religious testimony, and repeated these words of the head of the Church:—“House of France, rejoice at having given to the world so great a prince; rejoice, people of France, at having had so good a king!”[40]

The death of Louis IX., as we have already said, had suddenly suspended all enterprises beyond the seas. Edward only, accompanied by the count of Brittany, his brother Edmund, and three hundred knights, had gone into Syria at the head of a small army of five hundred Crusaders from Friesland. All these Crusaders together only formed a body of a thousand or twelve hundred combatants; and this was all that reached Asia of those numberless armies that had been raised in the West for the deliverance of the Holy Land. So feeble a reinforcement was not calculated to inspire confidence or restore security to the Christians of Palestine, not yet recovered from their consternation at hearing of the retreat of the Crusaders from before Tunis, and their return into Europe.

Most of the princes and Christian states of Syria, in the fear of being invaded, had concluded treaties with the sultan of Cairo; many must have hesitated at engaging in a war from which the slender succours from Europe could allow them no hopes of great advantages, and in which likewise they had to dread being abandoned by the Crusaders, ever eager to return to the West. Nevertheless, the Templars and the Hospitallers, who never missed an opportunity of fighting with the Saracens, united themselves with Prince Edward, whose fame had preceded him into the East. Bibars, who was then ravaging the territories of Ptolemaïs, drew his forces off from a city which he had filled with alarm, and appeared for a moment to have abandoned the execution of his projects.

The little army of the Christians, composed of from six to seven thousand men, advanced upon the Mussulman territories, directing its course towards Phœnicia, in order to re-establish the communication that had been interrupted between the Christian cities. In this expedition the Crusaders had much to suffer from excessive heat; many died from indulging in fruits and honey, which the country produced in abundance. They marched afterwards towards the city of Nazareth, upon the walls of which they planted the standard of Christ. The soldiers of the cross could not remember without indignation that Bibars had completely destroyed the church of this city, consecrated to the Virgin. Nazareth was given up to pillage, and all the Mussulmans found in the city expiated by being put to the sword, the burning and destruction of one of the most beautiful monuments raised by the Christians in Syria.

After this victory, for which we cannot praise the Crusaders, the Christian army had to combat the Mussulman troops, who were impatient to avenge the excesses committed at Nazareth. Whether he had learnt to respect the superiority of his enemies, or whether he had cause to complain of the warriors of Palestine, Edward returned within the walls of Ptolemaïs, and sought for no more contests. The frequent excursions of the Saracens could not provoke him to take up arms; but whilst he remained thus safe from the perils of war, he was on the point of perishing by the hand of a Mussulman whom he had taken into his service. Some of the chronicles of the time tell us that the emir of Jaffa armed the hand of the assassin; others say that the blow was directed by the sect of the Ismaëlians, who still subsisted, notwithstanding the war declared against them by both the Tartars and the Mamelukes.

After having thus run the danger of losing his life, Edward, cured of his wounds, only thought of concluding a truce with Bibars; and being recalled into England by the prayers of Henry III., whose successor he was, he quitted the East without having done anything important for the cause he had sworn to defend. Thus all the results of this crusade, which had so much alarmed the Mussulmans, were reduced, on one side, to the massacre of the unarmed population of Nazareth, and on the other, to the vain conquest of the ruins of Carthage. Another result of this war, and the only one it had for Europe, was to entirely discourage the Christian warriors, and make them forget the East. After Edward, no prince from the West ever crossed the seas to combat with the infidels in Asia, and the crusade in which he took a part so little glorious, was the last of those which had for object the deliverance or recovery of the Holy Land.

Among the circumstances that produced the failure of this crusade, history must not forget the protracted vacancy of the papal throne, during which no voice was raised to animate the Crusaders, in which there was no authority powerful enough, particularly after the death of St. Louis, to direct their enterprise. After a lapse of two years, however, the conclave chose a successor of St. Peter; and, fortunately for the eastern Christians, the suffrages fell upon Thibault, archdeacon of Liege, who had followed the Frisons into Asia, and whom the intelligence of his elevation found still in Palestine. The Christians of Syria had reason to hope that the new pontiff, for so long a time a witness of their perils and their miseries, would not fail to employ all his power to succour them. Thibault gave them an assurance of it before he quitted Ptolemaïs, and in a discourse which he addressed to the assembled people, he took for his text this verse of the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may I myself be forgotten among men!”

The patriarch of Jerusalem, and the grand masters of the Temple and the Hospital accompanied Gregory X. into the West. On his return, the pontiff applied himself at once to the re-establishment of peace in Italy and Germany. He engaged the princes, particularly the king of France, to unite their efforts in assisting the Holy Land. Philip contented himself with sending a few troops into the East, and with advancing thirty-six thousand silver marks to the Pope, for which sum he held as security all the possessions of the Templars in his kingdom. Pisa, Genoa, and Marseilles furnished several galleys, and five hundred warriors were embarked for Ptolemaïs, at the expense of the sovereign pontiff.

This assistance was far from answering the hopes or the wants of the Christian colonies. Gregory resolved to interest all Christendom in his project, and for that purpose convoked a council at Lyons, in 1274. This council was much more numerous and more solemn than that which Innocent IV. had assembled thirty years before in the same city. At this were present the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople, more than a thousand bishops and archbishops, the envoys of the emperors of the East and of the West, those of the kings of France and Cyprus, and of all the princes of Europe and beyond the seas. In this numerous assembly, no persons attracted so much attention as the Tartar princes and ambassadors, sent by the powerful head of the Moguls, to form an alliance with the Christians against the Mussulmans; several of these Tartar princes received baptism from the hands of the Pope, and Christians who were witnesses of this ceremony saw in it an assured pledge of the Divine promises.

All admired the power of God who had chosen the instruments of his designs from remote and little known regions; the crowd of the faithful looked upon the supreme head of the hordes of Tartary as another Cyrus, whom Providence had charged with the destruction of Babylon and the deliverance of Jerusalem. At the last sitting, the Council of Lyons decreed that a new crusade should be undertaken, and that during ten years a tenth should be levied upon all ecclesiastical property. Palæologus, who at length submitted to the Latin church, promised to send troops for the deliverance of the heritage of Christ; the Pope recognized Rodolph of Hapsbourg as emperor of the West, upon condition that he would go into Palestine at the head of an army.

But notwithstanding the grand spectacle of such a council, the decisions and the exhortations of the Pope and the prelates could not arouse the enthusiasm of the faithful, which was no longer anything, to borrow an expression from Scripture, “but the smoking remains of a burnt cloth.” Gregory X. had succeeded in re-establishing peace among the Italian republics, and in terminating all the discords of Germany relative to the succession to the empire: no war interfered with the crusade; but the minds of both princes and nations had taken a fresh direction. We still possess a written document of this period, which, doubtless, obtained the approbation if not the encouragement of the pope, and which appears to us well calculated to throw a light upon the spirit of the age, and show us what was then the general opinion of expeditions to the East. In this document, which will be considered whimsical, at least in its form, the author, Humbert de Romanis, endeavours to revive the zeal of Christians for the holy war, and, while deploring the indifference of his contemporaries, he points out eight obstacles to the effects of his preaching: 1st. A sinful habit; 2nd. The dread of fatigue; 3rd. Repugnance to quit their native country; 4th. An excessive love of family; 5th. The evil discourses of men; 6th. A weakness of mind that creates a belief that every thing is impossible; 7th. Bad examples; 8th. A faith without warmth. To all these motives for indifference the author might have added other reasons drawn from the policy and the new interests of Europe; but without allowing himself to be stopped by so many obstacles, the intrepid defender of the crusades, proceeding always by enumerations and categories, hastens to denote seven powerful passions, which, according to him, ought to cause the partisans of the holy to triumph; these reasons were: 1st. Zeal for the glory of God; 2nd. Zeal for the Christian faith; 3rd. Brotherly charity; 4th. Devotional respect for the Holy Land; 5th. The war commenced by the Mussulmans; 6th. The example of the first Crusaders; 7th. The blessings of the Church. After these enumerations, Humbert de Romanis repeats the objections that were made in his time against undertaking crusades. Some said that wars, of whatever kind they might be, only served to promote the shedding of blood, and that there were quite enough of those that could not be avoided, and of those that people were obliged to make in self-defence; others said that it was tempting God to quit a land in which his will had caused us to be born, and in which his goodness heaped blessings upon us, to go into a country which God had given to other nations, and in which we were constantly abandoned by him to all the miseries of exile. It was further said, that it was not permissible to invade the territories of the Saracens, that there was no more reason for pursuing the Mussulmans than the Jews, that the wars made against them would never effect their conversion, and in short, that this war did not appear to be agreeable to God, since he permitted so many misfortunes to overwhelm the Crusaders.

Humbert de Romanis, in his book, answers all these and many other objections; but these objections themselves were founded upon the spirit of the age, which could not be changed by reasoning. He in vain repeated that the Holy Land originally belonged to the Christians, and that they had the right to endeavour to reconquer it; that the vine of the Lord ought to be defended by the sword against those who wished to root it up; that if they extirpated the brambles from a barren soil, they were much more strongly bound to drive from a holy land a rude and barbarous nation. He in vain repeated what had been so often said before, that the misfortunes of the crusades did not happen because those crusades were displeasing to God, but because it was God’s will to punish the Crusaders, and try their constancy and faith. All this display of ecclesiastical erudition and argumentation persuaded nobody; not because people were more enlightened than they had been some years before, but because they entertained other thoughts: similar discourses would have succeeded admirably in the preceding century, when addressed to dominant passions; but they produced no effect when addressed to indifference.

This European indifference was fatal to the Christian colonies of the East; it gave them up without defence to the mercy of an enemy who every day became more powerful, and whose fanaticism was inflamed by victory. On the other hand, fresh symptoms of decay, and new signs of approaching ruin, were observable in the confederation of the Franks of Syria. All those petty principalities, all those cities scattered along the Syrian coasts were shared among them; and all the passions which the spirit of rivalry gives birth to became the auxiliaries of the Saracens. Every one of these petty states, in a constant state of fear, eagerly purchased a few days of peace, or a few months of existence, by treaties with Bibars, treaties in which the common honour and interests of the Christians were almost always sacrificed. The sultan of Cairo did not disdain to conclude a treaty of alliance with a single city, or even with a town; and nothing is more curious than to see figuring in these acts of policy, on the one side the sovereign of Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and twenty other provinces; and on the other a little city like Sidon[41] or Tortosa, with its fields, its orchards, and its mills: a deplorable contrast, which must have made the Christians feel the extent of their humiliation, and proved to them all they had to fear. In all these treaties it was the Mussulman policy to promote division among the Franks, and to hold them in a state of dependence,[42] never considering them as allies, but as vassals, farmers or tributaries.

Such was the peace enjoyed by the Christian states in Syria; and a further matter to be deplored was, that there were then three pretenders to the kingdom of Jerusalem:—the king of Cyprus, the king of Sicily, and Mary of Antioch, who was descended from the fourth daughter of Isabella, the wife of Amaury. Parties disputed, and even fought for a kingdom half destroyed; or rather they contended for the disgrace of ruining it entirely, and giving it up, rent by discord, to the domination of the Saracens.

Bibars, in the meanwhile, steadily pursued the course of his conquests; every day fame spread abroad an account of some fresh triumph; at one time he re-entered Cairo, dragging in his train a king of Nubia, whom he had just conquered; at another, he returned from Armenia, whence he brought thirty thousand horses and ten thousand children of both sexes. These accounts spread terror among the Christian cities, a terror that was very little mitigated by their treaties with the sultan of Egypt; no one could tell what might be the next conquest Bibars contemplated, and every city was trembling lest it should be the next object of his ambition or his fury, when the death of this fierce conqueror afforded the Christians a few moments of security and joy.

The end of Bibars is related after various manners; we will follow the account of the historian Ibn-Ferat, with whose expressions even we shall sometimes make free. Bibars was about to set out for Damascus, to fight the Tartars in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates; but before his departure he demanded an extraordinary impost. The imaun Mohyeddin Almoury addressed remonstrances to him on the subject; but the sultan replied: “Oh! my master, I will abolish this tax when I shall have conquered our enemies.” When Bibars had triumphed over the Tartars, he wrote in the following terms to the chief of the divan at Damascus: “We will not dismount from our horse until thou hast levied an impost of two hundred thousand dirhems upon Damascus, one of three hundred thousand upon its territories, one of three hundred thousand upon its towns, and one of ten hundred thousand dirhems upon the southern provinces.” Thus the joy created by the victory of Bibars was changed into sadness, and the people prayed for the death of the sultan. Complaints were carried to the cheick Mohyeddin, a pious and respected man;[43] and scarcely was the levy of the tribute begun when Bibars was razed from the roll of the living—he died poisoned.

The Arabian historians place Bibars among the great princes of the dynasty of the Baharite Mamelukes. He was originally sold as a slave, and although he only lived among soldiers, a penetrating sagacity of mind supplied the place of education. When afterwards, he had become familiar with war, and had been cast among the factions of the army, he had acquired all the knowledge that was necessary to enable him to reign over the Mamelukes. The quality which was of most service to him in the career of his ambition was his incredible activity; during the seventeen years of his reign, he did not allow himself one day of repose; he was present, almost at the same time, in Syria, in Egypt, and upon the banks of the Euphrates: the chronicles relate that he was frequently perambulating the streets of Damascus, whilst his courtiers were awaiting the moment of his waking at the gates of the palace of Cairo. As two sultans of Egypt had perished beneath his hands, and as he had arrived at empire by means of violent revolutions, that which he most dreaded was the influence of his own example; all those whose ambition he feared, or whose fidelity he doubted, were immediately sacrificed. The most simple communications between man and man were sufficient to alarm his fierce and suspicious temper; if oriental historians may be credited, during the reign of Bibars, friends shunned each other in the streets, and no man durst enter into the house of another. When it was important to him to conceal his designs, to cast a veil over his proceedings, or himself to avoid the public eye, woe to him who should divine his thought, pronounce his name, or salute him on his way. Severe with his soldiers, a flatterer with his emirs, entertaining no repugnance for artifice, preferring violence, sporting with treaties and oaths, practising a dissimulation that nobody could penetrate, possessed by an avarice that made him pitiless in the levying of tributes; having never retreated before an enemy, before an obstacle, or before a crime, his genius and character seemed made for the government, which he had in some sort founded, a monstrous government, which sustained itself by vices and excesses, and which could not possibly have subsisted in conjunction with moderation and virtue.

His enemies and his subjects trembled equally before him; they trembled still around that litter which transported his remains from Damascus to Cairo. But so many excesses, so many violences, so many triumphs, which only ministered to his personal ambition, were not able to fix the crown in his family; his two sons only ascended the throne to descend from it again. Kelaoun, the bravest of the emirs, soon usurped the sovereign power; a uniform line of succession to the throne was not at all likely to be preserved in an army constantly exposed to sedition. Every Mameluke believed himself born for empire, and in this republic of slaves it appeared permissible for every one to dream of tyranny. A thing almost incredible,—that which appeared most calculated to ruin this band of turbulent soldiery, was precisely that which saved it; weakness or incapacity could never support itself long upon the throne, and amidst the tumult of factions, it almost always happened that the most brave and the most able was chosen to direct the government, and lead in war.

Bibars had commenced the ruin of the Christians; Kelaoun was destined to complete it. In the West, Gregory in vain prosecuted the preparations, or rather the preachings of the crusade; he several times renewed his intreaties to Rodolph of Hapsburg, but Rodolph had an empire to preserve; it was useless for the pope to threaten to deprive him of his crown; the new emperor saw much less danger for him in the anger of the sovereign pontiff than in an expedition which would lead him so far from his states. At length Gregory died, without having been able to fulfil the promises he had made to the Christians of the East. Palestine received, from time to time, some succours from Europe; but these succours, scarcely ever arriving seasonably, appeared less likely to increase than to compromise its safety. The king of Sicily, who had caused himself to be proclaimed king of Jerusalem, sent some soldiers and a governor to Ptolemaïs; he was preparing to make a formidable expedition into Syria,[44] and his ambition, perhaps, might, in this circumstance, have been serviceable to the cause of the Christians, if a revolution had not suddenly put an end to his projects.

The discontent of the people in his states, particularly in Sicily, continually increased. The people had been burdened with a heavy tax for the last crusade, and the publication of a new one was received with many murmurs; the enemies of Charles saw nothing in the assumption of the cross but a signal for violence and brigandage; it is under this sacred banner, they said, that he is accustomed to shed innocent blood: they further remembered that the conquest of Naples had been made under the standard of the cross. At length the signal of revolt being given, eight thousand Frenchmen were immolated to the manes of Conradin, and the Sicilian vespers completed the destruction of all Charles’s Eastern projects.

Kelaoun from that time had it in his power to attack the Christians; but busied in establishing his authority among the Mamelukes, and in repulsing the Tartars, who had advanced towards the Euphrates, he consented to conclude a truce with the Franks of Ptolemaïs. It may plainly be perceived by this treaty, which the Arabian authors have preserved, what were the designs of the sultans of Cairo, and the extent of the ascendancy they assumed over their feeble enemies.[45] The Christians engaged, in the event of any prince of the Franks making an expedition into Asia, to warn the infidels of the coming of Christian armies from the West. This was at the same time signing a dishonourable condition, and renouncing all hopes of a crusade.

The armies of the West, besides, were fighting for other interests than those of the Holy Land, and there was no reason to believe they would be seen in Asia for a length of time. Most of the princes of Europe at that time never bestowed a thought upon the Mussulmans or their victories; such princes or states as had any interests to guard in the East,[46] not only allied themselves without scruple with the sultan of Egypt, but promised by treaties, and swore upon the Gospel, to declare themselves the enemies of all the Christian powers that should attack the states of their Mussulman ally.

Thus all these treaties, dictated sometimes by ambition and avarice, and sometimes by fear, raised every day a new barrier between the Christians of the East and those of the West. Besides, these treaties were no checks upon the sultan of Cairo, who always found some pretext for breaking them, when war presented more advantages than peace. It was thus with the fortress of Margat, situated upon the river Eleuctera, in the neighbourhood of Tripoli. The Hospitallers who guarded this castle were accused of making incursions upon the lands of the Mussulmans; and this accusation, which was not perhaps without foundation, was soon followed by the siege of the place. The towers and ramparts for a long time resisted the shock of the machines of war; the garrison repulsed every attack; but whilst they were fighting upon the walls, and at the foot of the walls, miners were digging away the earth from beneath them. At length the fortress, undermined on all sides, was ready to fall to pieces at the first signal. The Hospitallers made an honourable capitulation, and Margat opened its gates to the Mussulman army.

Upon the seacoast, between Margat and Tortosa, stood another castle, to which a Frank nobleman had retired, whom some of the Arabian chroniclers call the sieur de Telima, and others, the sieur Barthélemi. This Frank lord never ceased ravaging the lands of his neighbourhood, and every day returned home to his fortress loaded with the spoils of the Saracens. Kelaoun was desirous of attacking the castle of the sieur Barthélemi, but thinking it impregnable, he wrote to the count of Tripoli,—“It is thou who hast built, or hast allowed to be built, this castle; evil be to thee, evil be to thy capital, evil be to thy people, if it be not promptly demolished.”[47] The count of Tripoli was the more alarmed at these menaces, from the Mussulman troops being, at the moment he received the letter, in his territories: he offered the seigneur Barthélemi considerable lands in exchange for his castle; he made him the most brilliant promises and offers, but all in vain. At length the son of Barthélemi interfered in the negotiation, and set out to implore the compassion of the sultan of Cairo. The enraged old man flew after his son, overtook him in the city of Ptolemaïs, and poniarded him before the assembled people. This parricide disgusted all the Christians; and Barthélemi was at last abandoned by his own soldiers, who held his crime in great horror. The castle, which was left unprotected, was shortly after demolished. From that time the sieur Barthélemi became the most inveterate enemy of the Christians; and, retired among the infidels, was constantly employed in associating them with his vengeance, and in urging the destruction of the Christian cities.