Volume 3 / Book 15 — BOOK XV. (continued 2)

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.

His pitiless hatred had but too many opportunities of being satisfied. The sultan of Cairo pursued the war against the Christians, and everything seemed to favour his enterprizes. He had for a long time entertained the project of gaining possession of Laodicea, whose port rivalled that of Alexandria; but the citadel of that city, surrounded by the waters of the sea, was inaccessible; an earthquake, which shook the towers of the fortress, facilitated his conquest of it. The castle of Carac and some other forts, built on the coast of Phœnicia, fell into the hands of the Mussulmans. After having thus laid open all the avenues to Tripoli, the sultan turned the whole of his attention to the siege of that city. Neither the faith of treaties, nor the recent submissions of Bohemond, were able to retard for a moment the fall of a flourishing city: no Christian city, no prince of Palestine offered the least assistance to Tripoli. Such indeed was the spirit of division that always reigned among the Franks, that the Templars, in conjunction with the seigneur de Giblet, had entertained the project of introducing some Christian soldiers into Bohemond’s city, and taking it by surprise. They were not able, it is true, to execute their design; but what evils must not these odious jealousies, these black treacheries, have brought upon the feeble remains of the Christian colonies!

A formidable army appeared before the walls of Tripoli, and a great number of machines were erected against the ramparts: after a siege of thirty-five days, the Mussulmans penetrated into the city, fire and sword in hand. Seven thousand Christians fell under the arms of the conqueror; the women and children were dragged away into slavery, and the terrified crowd vainly sought an asylum from the blood-thirsty Mamelukes in the island of St. Nicholas. Aboulfeda relates, that having occasion to go to that island, a few days after the taking of Tripoli, he found it covered with dead bodies. Some of the inhabitants having succeeded in getting on board ships, fled away from their desolate country; but the sea drove them back again upon the shore, where they were massacred by the Mussulmans. Not only the population of Tripoli was almost exterminated, but the sultan gave orders that the city should be burnt and demolished. The port of Tripoli attracted a great part of the commerce of the Mediterranean; the city contained more than four thousand silk-looms; its palaces were admired, its towers and its fortifications appeared impregnable. So many sources of prosperity, all that could cause peace to nourish or serve for defence in war, all perished under the flame, the axe, and the hammer! The principal aim of the Mussulman policy in this war, was to destroy all that the Christians had done; to leave no traces of their power upon the coasts of Syria; nothing which could afterwards attract thither the princes and warriors of the West, nothing that could yield them the means of maintaining themselves there if ever they should be tempted again to unfurl their standards in the East.

Ptolemaïs, which remained neuter in this cruel war, learnt the fall and destruction of a Christian city from some fugitives, who, having escaped the sword of the Mussulmans, came to intreat an asylum within its walls. From this sad intelligence, it might easily predict the misfortunes that awaited it. Ptolemaïs was then the capital of the Christian colonies, and the most considerable city of Syria. Most of the Franks, upon being driven from the other cities of Palestine, had taken refuge there, bringing with them all their portable wealth. In its port anchored all the warlike fleets that came from the West, with the richest trading vessels from most countries of the world. The city had not less increased in extent than population; it was constructed of square-cut stones; all the walls of the houses rose to an equal height, and a platform or terrace surmounted most of the buildings.[48] The interior of the principal houses was ornamented with paintings, and they received light by the means of glass windows, which was at that time an extraordinary luxury. In the public places, coverings of silk or transparent stuffs screened the inhabitants from the ardours of the sun. Between the two ramparts which bounded the city on the east, were built castles and palaces, the residences of the great; the artizans and traders occupied the interior of the city. Among the princes and nobles who had mansions in Ptolemaïs, were the king of Jerusalem, his brothers and his family, the princes of Galilee and Antioch, the lieutenants of France and Sicily, the duke of Cæsarea, the counts of Tripoli and Jaffa, the lords of Barouth, Tyre, Tiberias, Ibelin, Arsaph, &c. We read in an old chronicle that all these magnates were accustomed to walk in the public places, wearing crowns of gold like kings, whilst the vestments of their numerous trains glittered with gold and precious stones. Every day was passed in festivity, spectacles or tournaments; whilst the port was a mart of exchange for the treasures of the East and the West, exhibiting at all times an animated picture of commerce and industry.

Contemporary history deplores with severity the corruption of morals that prevailed in Ptolemaïs, the crowds of strangers bringing with them the vices of all countries. Effeminacy and luxury pervaded every class, the clergy themselves being unable to escape the general contagion: the inhabitants of Ptolemaïs were esteemed the most voluptuous and dissolute of all the nations of Syria. Ptolemaïs was not only the richest city of Syria, it was further supposed to be the best fortified. St. Louis, during his abode in Palestine, had neglected nothing to repair and increase its fortifications. On the land side, a double wall surrounded the city, commanded at distances by lofty battlemented towers; and a wide and deep ditch prevented access to the ramparts. Towards the sea, the city was defended by a fortress built at the entrance of the port, by the castle of the temple on the south, and by the tower called the King’s Tower, on the east.

Ptolemaïs appears then to have possessed much better means of defence than at the period at which it stood out for three years against all the forces of Europe. No power could have subdued it if it had been inhabited by true citizens, and not by foreigners, pilgrims, and traders, at all times ready to transport themselves and their wealth from one place to another. The persons who represented the king of Naples, the lieutenants of the king of Cyprus, the French, the English, the pope’s legate, the patriarch of Jerusalem, the prince of Antioch, the three military orders, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans, the Armenians, the Tartars, had all and each their separate quarter, their jurisdiction, their tribunals, their magistrates—all independent of each other, and all enjoying the right of sovereignty. All these quarters were as so many different cities, opposed to each other by customs, by language, by manners, and above all, by rivalries and jealousies. It was impossible to preserve order in a city in which so many sovereigns made laws, which had no uniform government, and in which the crime pursued in one part, was protected in another. Thus all the passions were without a check, and often gave birth to sanguinary and disgraceful scenes: in addition to the quarrels that took their rise in the country, there was not a feud in Europe, particularly in Italy, that was not felt in Ptolemaïs. The discords of the Guelphs and the Ghibelines were here carried on with warmth, and the rivalries of Venice and Genoa had caused torrents of blood to flow. Each nation had fortifications in the quarter it inhabited, against the others; and the churches even were fortified. At the entrance to each division was a fortress, with gates and iron chains; it was plainly to be perceived that all these means of defence had been employed less for the purpose of stopping the progress of an enemy, than as a barrier against neighbours and rivals.

The leaders of all the quarters and the principal inhabitants of the city sometimes assembled; but they seldom, agreed, and were at all times mistrustful of each other: these assemblies never laid down any settled plan of conduct, never established any wholesome fixed rule, and, above all, never showed the least foresight.

The city at the same time demanded succours from the West, and solicited a truce with the Saracens. When a treaty was concluded, no one had sufficient power to secure its observance; on the contrary, every one had it in his power to violate it, and thus bring upon the city all the ills that this violation would produce.

After the taking of Tripoli, the sultan of Cairo menaced the city of Ptolemaïs; nevertheless, whether he dreaded the despair of the inhabitants, or thought that the favourable moment was not yet arrived, he yielded to their solicitations, and renewed a truce with them for two years, two months, two weeks, two days, and two hours. According to a chronicle, the pope’s legate disapproved of the treaty, and caused some Mussulman traders, who came to Ptolemaïs, to be insulted: the Templars and the other military orders were desirous of making reparation to the sultan of Egypt; but the legate opposed them, and threatened to excommunicate all who should have the least intercourse with the infidels.[49]

An Arabian author assigns another motive for the violences committed against the Mussulmans. He relates that the wife of a rich inhabitant of Ptolemaïs, being deeply enamoured of a young Mussulman, had appointed a meeting with him in one of the gardens that surround the city; the husband, warned of this outrage against conjugal fidelity, gathers together some friends, goes out from Ptolemaïs with them,[50] surprises his wife and her seducer, and immolates them both to his injured honour. Some Mussulmans are drawn to the spot; the Christians come up in still greater numbers; the quarrel becomes angry and general; and every Mussulman is massacred.

These violences, which fame did not fail to exaggerate whilst narrating them, might give the sultan of Egypt a pretext for renewing the war; and the Christians, who plainly perceived their new perils, implored the assistance of the sovereign pontiff. The pope engaged Venice to furnish twenty-five galleys, and this fleet transported to Ptolemaïs a troop of sixteen hundred men, levied in haste in Italy. This reinforcement, which was sent to the inhabitants of Palestine for their defence, provoked their ruin; the soldiers of the Holy See, levied among adventurers and vagabonds, gave themselves up to all sorts of excesses. Having no regular pay, they plundered Christians and Mussulmans indiscriminately; at last, this undisciplined troop marched out of the city in arms, and made an incursion upon the lands of the Saracens. Everything was laid waste on their passage; towns and villages were pillaged, the inhabitants insulted, and many of them massacred. The sultan of Cairo sent ambassadors to the Christians to complain of these outrages, committed in a time of peace. On the arrival of the Mussulman envoys several councils were held in Ptolemaïs. Opinions were at first divided; some were willing to take the part of those who had broken the truce; others thought it more just and prudent to give satisfaction to the sultan, and solicit the continuation of the treaty. In the end, it was determined to send a deputation to Cairo, commissioned to make excuses and offer presents. Upon being admitted to an audience of Kelaoun, the deputation alleged that the offences had been committed by some soldiers who had come from the West, and in no case by the inhabitants of Ptolemaïs. The deputies, in the name of their city, offered to punish the authors of the disorders; but their submission and prayers produced no effect upon the sultan, who reproached them severely with making a jest of the faith of treaties, and with giving an asylum to disturbers of peace and foes to the laws of nations. He was the more inflexible, from thinking the opportunity a favourable one for carrying out his projects; he was aware that no crusade was in preparation in Europe, and he knew that all the succour from the West was reduced to this band of adventurers who had just broken the truce. Kelaoun sent back the ambassadors, threatening the city of Ptolemaïs with the whole weight of his anger: his orders were already given for preparations for war throughout all his provinces.

Immediately after the return of the ambassadors[51] a grand council was called, at which were present the patriarch of Jerusalem, John de Gresli, who commanded for the king of France, Messire Oste de Granson for the king of England, the grand masters of the Temple and the Hospital, the principal persons of the city, and a great number of citizens and pilgrims. When the deputies had rendered an account of their mission, and repeated the threats of the sultan, the patriarch addressed the assembly; his virtues, his gray hairs, his zeal for the cause of the Christians, all inspired confidence and respect. This venerable prelate exhorted all who heard him to arm themselves for the defence of the city, to remember that they were Christians, and that it was their duty to die for the cause of Christ; he conjured them to forget their discords, to have no other enemies but the Mussulmans, and to show themselves worthy of the holy cause for which they were about to fight. His eloquence awakened the generous feelings of his audience, and all swore to obey the exhortations of the patriarch: happy would it have been for the city of Ptolemaïs if its inhabitants and its defenders had preserved the same dispositions and the same enthusiasm amidst the perils and mischances of war!

They asked for succour in all quarters; a few pilgrims arrived from the West, and a few warriors from the isles of the Mediterranean: the king of Cyprus landed with five hundred men. These new auxiliaries and all who were able to bear arms in the city, amounted to nine hundred horsemen and ten thousand foot soldiers. They were divided into four bodies, charged with the defence of the towers and the ramparts. The first of these divisions was under the command of Oste de Granson and John de Gresli, the one with the English and the Picards, the other with the French; the second division was commanded by the king of Cyprus, in conjunction with the grand master of the Teutonic order; the third by the grand master of St. John, and the grand master of the knights of Canterbury; the fourth by the grand masters of the Temple and of St. Lazarus: a council of eight leaders was to govern the city during the siege.

The Mussulmans were preparing for the war in all quarters; everything was in motion from the banks of the Nile to those of the Euphrates. The sultan Kelaoun having fallen sick on leaving Cairo, sent before him seven principal emirs, each having four thousand horse and twenty thousand foot under his command. On their arrival upon the territories of Ptolemaïs, gardens, country-houses, the vines which covered the hills—everything was destroyed. The sight of the conflagration which arose on all sides, the distracted crowd of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who fled from their homes, with their goods, their flocks, and their families, warned Ptolemaïs of the execution of the threats and the sinister projects of the Saracens: there were several battles fought on the plain, but nothing remarkable or decisive; the Mussulmans waited the arrival of the sultan to commence the labours of the siege.

In the meanwhile, Kelaoun was still detained in Egypt by sickness, and feeling his end approach, the sultan sent for his son and his principal emirs; he recommended to the latter, to serve his son as they had served himself; and to the former, to follow up the war against the Christians without any intermission, conjuring him not to grant his remains the honour of sepulture before he had conquered the city of Ptolemaïs. Chalil swore to accomplish the last wishes of his father; and when Kelaoun had closed his eyes, the ulemas and the imauns assembled in the chapel in which his remains were deposited, and read during the whole night verses from the Koran, never ceasing to invoke their prophet against the disciples of Christ. Chalil did not delay setting forward on his march with his army. The Franks hoped that the death of Kelaoun would give birth to some disorders among the Mamelukes; but hatred for the Christians was a sufficient bond of union for the Mussulman soldiers; the siege even of Ptolemaïs, the hope of annihilating a Christian city, stifled all the germs of discord, and consolidated the power of Chalil, whom they proclaimed beforehand the conqueror of the Franks, and the pacificator of the Mussulman religion.

The sultan arrived before Ptolemaïs; his army covering a space of several leagues, from the sea to the mountains. More than three hundred machines of war were ready to batter the ramparts of the city. Aboulfeda, who was present at this siege, speaks of one of these machines which a hundred chariots were scarcely sufficient to transport.

This formidable preparation spread consternation among the inhabitants of Ptolemaïs. The grand master of the templars, despairing of the defence or of the salvation of the city, assembled the leaders to consult if there were any means of renewing the truce, and thus escaping inevitable ruin.[52] Repairing to the tent of the sultan, he demanded peace of him; and seeking to produce an effect upon his mind, he exaggerated the strength of Ptolemaïs; the sultan, dreading doubtless the difficulties of the siege, and hoping to find another opportunity of making himself master of the city, consented to a truce upon condition that every inhabitant should pay him a Venetian denier. The grand master on his return convoked an assembly of the people in the church of the Holy Cross, and laid before them the conditions the sultan placed upon the conclusion of a fresh truce. His advice was, that they should comply with these conditions, provided there were no other means of saving Ptolemaïs. Scarcely had he expressed his opinion, when the multitude rushed in in fury, uttering loud cries of treachery! and very nearly did the grand master expiate on the spot his foresight and zeal for the salvation of the city. From that time the only thought of this generous warrior was to die arms in hand for an ungrateful and frivolous people, incapable of repelling war by war, and not enduring to be saved by peace.

The presence of the sultan had redoubled the ardour of the Mussulman troops. From the day of his arrival the siege was prosecuted with incredible vigour. The army of the besiegers amounted to sixty thousand horse and a hundred and forty thousand foot, who constantly relieved each other, and left the besieged not a moment of repose. The machines hurled stones and enormous pieces of wood, the fall of which shook the palaces and houses of the city to their foundation. A shower of arrows, darts, fire-pots, and leaden balls was poured night and day upon the ramparts and towers. In the first assaults, the Christians killed a great number of the infidels who approached the walls with arrows and stones; they made many sorties, in one of which they penetrated to the tents of the Saracens. Being at length repulsed, some of them fell into the hands of the Mussulmans, and the Syrian horsemen, who had fastened the heads of the vanquished to the necks of their horses, went to display before the sultan of Cairo the barbarous trophies of a dearly-bought victory.

Danger at first united all the inhabitants of Ptolemaïs, and animated them with the same sentiments. In the early combats nothing could equal their ardour; they were sustained by the expectation of receiving succours from the West, and they hoped, also, that some advantages gained over the Saracens would force the besiegers to retreat; but in proportion as these hopes vanished, their zeal diminished; most of them were incapable of supporting lengthened fatigue; the sight of a peril which unceasingly returned exhausted their courage; the defenders of the ramparts perceived that their numbers were lessened daily; the port was covered with Christians departing from the city, and bearing their treasures with them. The example of those who thus fled completed the discouragement of those who remained; and in a city which numbered a hundred thousand inhabitants, and which, at the commencement of the siege, had furnished nearly twenty thousand warriors, only twelve thousand could at length be mustered under arms.

To desertion, another evil was soon added, which was dissension among the leaders; several of them disapproved of the measures that were adopted for the defence of the city, and because their opinions did not prevail in the council, they remained inactive, forgetful of the perils and evils which threatened both the city and themselves.

On the fourth day of May, after the siege had lasted nearly a month, the sultan of Cairo gave the signal for an assault. From daybreak, all the drums of the army, placed upon three hundred camels, spread a fearful and stunning noise. The most formidable of the machines of war were employed in battering the ramparts towards the gate and tower of St. Antony, on the east side of the city. This post was guarded by the soldiers of the king of Cyprus; the Mussulmans planted their ladders at the foot of the walls; the defence was not less spirited than the attack; the conflict lasted during the whole day, and night alone forced the Saracens to retreat. After this severe struggle, the king of Cyprus became more anxious for safety than glory, and determined to abandon a city which he had now no hopes of saving. He retired with his troop in the evening, under the pretence of taking some necessary repose, and, confiding the post of peril to the Teutonic knights, promised to return with daylight; but when the sun arose, the king of Cyprus had embarked with all his knights and three thousand soldiers. What were the surprise and indignation of the Christian warriors at the news of this dastardly desertion! “Would to heaven,” says the author of an account that lies before us,[53]—“would to heaven that a whirlwind had arisen, had submerged these base fugitives, and that they had sunk like lead to the bottom of the sea!”

On the morrow, the Mussulmans gave a fresh assault; covered by their long bucklers, they advanced in good order towards their machines, carrying a vast number of ladders. The Christians defended the approach to the walls for some time; but when the besiegers perceived that the towers, occupied on the preceding day by the Cypriots, were abandoned, their audacity increased, and they made incredible efforts to fill up the ditch, by casting into it stones, earth, and the carcases of their dead horses. Contemporary historians relate a circumstance of this part of the siege to which it is very difficult to give credit: a troop of sectaries, who were called Chages, followed the army of the Mamelukes; the devotion of these sectaries consisted in suffering all sorts of privations, and even in immolating themselves for the sake of Islamism: the sultan ordered them to fill up the ditch; they filled it up with their living bodies, and the Mussulman cavalry marched over them, to gain the foot of the walls![54]

The besiegers fought with fury; some planted their ladders and mounted in crowds to the ramparts; whilst others continued to batter the walls with the rams, and brought every available instrument into play to demolish them. At length a large breach opened a passage into the city, and this breach soon became the scene of a bloody and obstinate contest. Stones and arrows were abandoned, they now fought man to man, with lance, sword, and mace. The multitude of Saracens increased every instant, whilst no fresh succours were received by the Christians. After a long and brave resistance, the defenders of the rampart, worn out with fatigue and overwhelmed by numbers, were obliged to retreat into the city; the Saracens rushed forward in pursuit of them, and, what is scarcely to be believed, most of the inhabitants remained idle spectators, not because their courage was subdued by the sight of danger, but because the spirit of rivalry and jealousy was not stifled even by the feelings of a public and general calamity. “When the news of the entrance of the Saracens [we borrow the expressions of a contemporary historian] was spread through the city, many of the citizens, from malice towards each other, entertained not near so much pity for the common calamity as they ought to have done, and took no account of what might happen to them, thinking in their hearts that the sultan would do them no harm, because they had not consented to the violation of the truce.” In their infatuation they preferred owing their safety to the clemency of the conqueror, rather than to the bravery of the Christian warriors;[55] far from lending assistance to their neighbours, every one rejoiced in secret at their losses; the principal leaders of each quarter, or of each nation, were sparing of their soldiers, not in order to preserve their means of contending with the Saracens, but for the sake of having more empire in the city, and of husbanding their strength, so as to be on a future day the most powerful and formidable in the public dissensions.

True bravery, however, did not allow itself to be misled by such base passions; the troops of the Temple and the Hospital were found wherever danger called them. William de Clermont, marshal of the Hospitallers, hastened with his knights to the spot where peril was most imminent and the carnage the greatest. He met a crowd of Christians flying before their enemies; this brave warrior checked their flight and reanimated their courage, rushing among the Saracens, and cutting down all that came in his way; the Mussulmans, says an old chronicle, “fled away at his approach, like sheep before a wolf.” Then most of those who had turned their backs on the enemy returned to the fight; the shock was terrible, the slaughter frightful: towards evening the trumpets of the Saracens sounded a retreat, and all who had escaped from the swords of the Christians retired in disorder through the breach they had made. This unexpected advantage had a wonderful effect upon the spirits of the besieged. Such as had taken no part in the contest, but remained quietly in their dwellings, began to fear that they should be accused of betraying the Christian cause. They set forward, with banners displayed, and directed their course towards the gate of St. Antony. The sight of the field of battle, still covered with traces of carnage, must have awakened in them some generous feelings, and if they had not exhibited their bravery, their brother warriors, stretched upon the earth, who implored them to help them and dress their wounds, at least offered them an opportunity of exercising their humanity. The wounded were attended to, the dead were buried, and they then set about repairing the walls and placing the machines: the whole of the night was employed in preparing means of defence for the day which was to follow.

Before sunrise the next morning, a general assembly was convoked in the house of the Hospitallers. Sadness was depicted on every countenance; they had lost two thousand Christian warriors in the battle of the preceding day; there now were only seven thousand combatants left in the city; these were not enough to defend the towers and the ramparts; they were no longer sustained by the hope of conquering their enemies; the future presented nothing but one terrible prospect of perils and calamities. When all were met, the patriarch of Jerusalem addressed the melancholy assembly. The venerable prelate directed no reproaches against them who had not assisted in the fight of the preceding day; the past must be forgotten; he did not praise them who had signalized their bravery, for fear of awakening jealousy; in his discourse he did not venture to speak of country, for Ptolemaïs was not the country of most of those who listened to him. The picture of the misfortunes which threatened the city and every one of its inhabitants, was presented in the darkest colours; there was no hope, no asylum for the vanquished; nothing was to be expected from the clemency of the Saracens, who always accomplished their threats, and never fulfilled their promises. It was but too certain that Europe would send them no succour; they had not vessels enough to enable them to think of flying by sea:—thus the patriarch took less pains to dissipate the alarms of his auditors than to animate them by despair. He terminated his speech by exhorting them to place all their confidence in God and their swords, to prepare for fight by penitence, to love each other, to help each other, and to endeavour to render their lives or their death glorious for themselves and serviceable to Christianity.

The speech of the patriarch made the deepest impression upon the assembly; nothing was heard but sobs and sighs; every person present was in tears; the religious sentiments which are generally awakened by the aspect of a great peril, filled all their hearts with an ardour and an enthusiasm they had never before experienced; most of them embraced each other, and exchanged reciprocal exhortations to brave every danger; they mutually confessed their sins, and even expressed a hope for the crown of martyrdom; those who had meditated desertion the day before, swore that they would never abandon the city, but would die on the ramparts with their brethren and companions.

The leaders and soldiers then went to the posts entrusted to their bravery. Such as were not employed in the defence of the ramparts and towers, made themselves ready to contend with their enemies, if they should gain access to the city; barriers were erected in all the streets, and heaps of stones were collected on the roofs, and at the doors of houses, to crush the Mussulmans, or impede them on their march.

Scarcely were these preparations finished, than the air resounded with the notes of trumpets and the beating of drums; a horrible noise, proceeding from the plain, announced the approach of the Saracens. After having discharged a multitude of arrows, they advanced confidently towards the wall they had broken through the day before. But they met with a resistance they did not expect; many were slain at the foot of the ramparts; but as their number momentarily increased, their constantly renewed attacks necessarily exhausted the strength of the Christians, at first in small numbers, and receiving no reinforcements. Towards the end of the day, the Christians had scarcely the power to hurl a javelin or handle a lance. The wall began again to give way beneath the strokes of the rams; then the patriarch, ever present at the point of danger, exclaimed in a supplicating tone,—“Oh, God! surround us with a rampart that men cannot destroy, and cover us with the ægis of Thy power!” At hearing this, the soldiers appeared to rally and make a last effort; they precipitated themselves upon the enemy, calling upon the blessed Jesus, with a loud voice. The Saracens, adds our chronicler, called upon the name of their Mahomet, and uttered the most fearful threats against the defenders of the Christian faith.

Whilst this conflict was going on upon the ramparts, the city awaited in great dread the issue of the battle; the agitation of men’s minds gave birth to a thousand rumours, which were in turn adopted and rejected. It was reported in the most remote quarters, that the Christians were victorious, and the Mussulmans had fled; it was likewise added, that a fleet with an army on board had arrived from the West. To these news, which created a momentary joy, succeeded the most disheartening intelligence; and in all these reports there was nothing true but that which announced something inauspicious.

It was soon known that the Mussulmans had entered the city. The Christian warriors who defended the gate of St. Antony, had not been able to resist the shock of the enemy, and fled into the streets, imploring the assistance of the inhabitants. These latter then remembered the exhortations of the patriarch; reinforcements hasten from all quarters; the knights of the Hospital, with the valiant William at their head, reappear. A storm of stones falls from the tops of the houses; iron chains are stretched across the passage of the Mussulman cavalry; such as have been exhausted by fight recover their strength, and rush again into the mêlée; they who have come to their assistance follow their steps, break through the Mussulman battalions, disperse them and pursue them beyond the ramparts. In every one of these combats was exhibited all that valour can accomplish when united with despair. On contemplating, on one side the inevitable ruin of a great city, and on the other the efforts of a small number of defenders who put off, day after day, scenes of destruction and death, we cannot help feeling both compassion and surprise. The assaults were renewed without ceasing, and always with the same fury. At the end of every day’s conflict, the unfortunate inhabitants of Ptolemaïs congratulated themselves upon having triumphed over their enemies; but on the morrow, when the sun appeared above the horizon, what were their thoughts when they beheld from the top of their ramparts the Mussulman army still the same, covering the plain from the sea to the foot of Karenba and Carmel!

The Saracens, on their part, became astonished at the resistance which all their attacks met with; so many combats, in which their innumerable multitude had not been able to obtain a decided advantage, began to give them discouragement. In the infidel army it was impossible to explain the invincible bravery of the Christian soldiers without assigning miraculous causes for it. A thousand extraordinary tales flew from mouth to mouth, and struck the imagination of the gross crowd of the Mussulmans. They believed they saw two men in every one of those with whom they fought;[56] in the excess of their astonishment, they persuaded themselves that every warrior who fell beneath their stroke was reborn of himself, and returned stronger and more terrible than ever to the field of battle. The sultan of Cairo appeared to have lost all hope of taking the city by assault. It is asserted that the renegadoes, whose apostasy made them desirous of the ruin of the Christian name, sought every means to revive his courage; the sieur Barthélemi, who had sworn an eternal hatred to the Franks, followed the Mussulman army;[57] this implacable deserter neglected nothing to encourage the leaders, to reanimate them for battle, and awaken in their hearts the furious passions that constantly devoured his own. In addition to these, the imauns and sheiks, who were numerous in the Mameluke camps, pervaded the ranks of the army to inflame the fanaticism of the soldiers: the sultan threatened all who flew before the enemy with punishment, and offered immense rewards for those who should plant the standard of the Prophet, not upon the walls of Ptolemaïs, but in the centre of the city.

On the 4th of May, a day fatal to the Christians, the signal for a fresh assault was given. At dawn the Mussulman army was under arms, the sultan animating the soldiers by his presence. Both the attack and the defence were much more animated and obstinate than they had been for some days before. Among those who fell on the field of battle, there were seven Mussulmans for one Christian; but the Mussulmans could repair their losses; those of the Christians were irreparable. The Saracens still directed all their efforts against the tower and the gate of St. Antony.

They were already upon the breach, when the knights of the Temple formed the rash resolution of making a sortie, and attacking the camp of the Mussulmans. They found the enemy’s army drawn up in order of battle; after a bloody conflict, the Saracens repulsed the Christians, and pursued them to the foot of the ramparts. The grand master of the Temple was struck by an arrow and fell in the midst of his knights. The grand-master of the Hospital, at the same time received a wound which disabled him. The rout then became general, and all hope of saving the city was lost. There were scarcely a thousand Christian warriors left to defend the gate of St. Antony against the whole Mussulman army.

The Christians were obliged to yield to the multitude of their enemies; they directed their course towards the house of the Templars, situated on the seacoast. It was then that a death-pall seemed stretched over the whole city of Ptolemaïs: the Saracens advanced full of fury; there was not a street that did not become the theatre of carnage; a battle was fought for every tower, for every palace, and at the entrance of every public building; and in all these combats, so many men were killed, that, according to the report of an historian, they walked upon the dead as upon a bridge.

As if angry heaven gave the signal for destruction, a violent storm, accompanied by hail and rain, burst over the city; the horizon was all at once covered with such impenetrable darkness, that the combatants could scarcely distinguish the colours they fought under, or see what standard floated over the towers; all the scourges contributed to the desolation of Ptolemaïs; the flames appeared in several quarters, without any one making an effort to extinguish them; the conquerors only thought of destroying the city, the only object of the conquered was to escape. A multitude of people fled away at hazard, without knowing where they could hope to find an asylum. Whole families took refuge in the churches, where they were stifled by the flames, or cut to pieces at the foot of the altars; nuns and timid virgins mixed with the multitude which wandered through the city, or disfigured with wounds their faces and their bosoms,[58] to escape the brutality of the conquerors: what was most deplorable in the spectacle then presented in Ptolemaïs, was the desertion of the leaders, who abandoned a people in the height of its despair. John de Gresly and Oste de Granson, who had scarcely shown themselves upon the ramparts during the siege, fled away at the very commencement of the battle. Many others, who had taken the oath to die, at the aspect of this general destruction, only thought of saving their lives, and threw away their arms to facilitate their flight. History however is able to contrast some acts of true heroism with these base desertions. Our readers cannot have forgotten the brilliant actions of William de Clement. Amidst the ruins of Ptolemaïs, amidst the universal destruction, he still defied the enemy; attempting to rally some Christian warriors, he rode to the gate of St. Antony, which the Templars had just abandoned; though alone, he wished to renew the fight; he pierced through the ranks of the Saracens several times, and returned, still fighting; when he came back to the middle of the city, his war-horse (we copy a relation of the time) was much fatigued, as was he himself also; the war-horse no longer answered to the spur, and stopped in the street, as unable to do any more. The Saracens shot Brother William to the earth with arrows; and thus this loyal champion of Jesus Christ rendered up his soul to his creator.[59]

We cannot refuse our highest praise to the patriarch of Jerusalem, who, during the whole siege, shared all the dangers of the combatants; when he was dragged away towards the port by his friends, to evade the pursuit of the Mussulmans, the generous old man complained bitterly at being separated from his flock in the hour of peril. He was induced at last to embark, but as he insisted upon receiving on board his vessel all that presented themselves, the boat was sunk, and the faithful pastor died the victim of his charity.

The sea was tempestuous, the vessels could not approach close to land; the shore presented a heart-rending spectacle: here a mother called upon her son, there a son implored the assistance of his father; many precipitated themselves into the waves, in despair; the mass of people endeavoured to gain the vessels by swimming; some were drowned in the attempt, others were beaten off with oars. Several women of the noblest families flew in terror to the port, bringing with them their diamonds and their most valuable effects; they promised the mariners to become their wives, to give themselves and all their wealth up to them, if they would bear them away from this horrid scene; most of them were conveyed to the Isle of Cyprus: no pity was shown but to such as had treasures to bestow in return; thus, when tears had no effect upon hearts, avarice assumed the place of humanity, and saved some few victims. At length the Mussulman horsemen came down upon the port, and furiously pursued the Christians even into the waves: from that moment no one was able to escape the carnage.

Still, amidst the city given over to pillage, and a prey to the flames and the barbarity of the conquerors, several fortresses remained standing, and were defended by some Christian soldiers; these unfortunate warriors died sword in hand, without any other witnesses of their glorious end but their implacable enemies.

The castle of the Templars, in which all the knights who had escaped the steel of the Saracens had taken refuge, was soon the only place in the city that held out. The sultan having granted them a capitulation, sent three hundred Mussulmans to execute the treaty. Scarcely had these entered one of the principal towers, the tower of the grand-master, than they began to outrage the women who had taken refuge there. This violation of the rights of war irritated the Christian warriors to such a degree, that all the Saracens who had entered the tower were instantly immolated to their too just vengeance. The angry sultan ordered the siege to be prosecuted against the Christians in their last asylum, and that all should be put to the sword. The knights of the Temple and their companions defended themselves for several days: at length the tower of the grand-master was undermined, and fell at the very moment the Mussulmans were mounting to an assault: they who attacked it and they who defended it were equally crushed by its fall; women, children, Christian warriors, all who had come to seek refuge in the house of the Templars, perished, buried beneath the ruins. Every church of Ptolemaïs was plundered, profaned, and then given up to the flames. The sultan ordered all the principal edifices, with the towers and ramparts, to be demolished.

The Mussulman soldiers expressed their joy by ferocious clamours; which joy formed a horrible contrast with the desolation of the conquered. Amidst the tumultuous scenes of victory were mingled the screams of women, upon whom the barbarians were committing violence in their camp, and the cries of little children, borne away into slavery. A distracted multitude of fugitives, driven from ruin to ruin, and finding no place of refuge, directed their course to the tent of the sultan, to implore his mercy; Chalil distributed these Christian supplicants among his emirs, who caused them all to be massacred. Macrisi makes the number of these unhappy victims amount to ten thousand.

After the taking and the destruction of Ptolemaïs, the sultan sent one of his emirs with a body of troops to take possession of the city of Tyre; this city, seized with terror, opened its gates without resistance. The conquerors likewise possessed themselves of Berytus, Sidon, and all the Christian cities along the coast. These cities, which had not afforded the least succour to Ptolemaïs, in the last great struggle, and which believed themselves protected by a truce, beheld their population massacred, dispersed, and led into slavery; the fury of the Mussulmans extended even to the stones, they seemed to wish to destroy the very earth which the Christians had trod upon; their houses, their temples, the monuments of their piety, their valour and their industry, everything was condemned to perish with them by the sword or by fire.

Most of the contemporary chronicles attribute such great disasters to the sins of the inhabitants of Palestine, and in the scenes of destruction only behold the effect of that divine anger which fell upon Nineveh and Babylon. History must not reject these easy explanations; but it is, doubtless, permitted to penetrate deeper into human affairs, and whilst recognising the intervention of Heaven in the political destinies of nations, it is bound at least to endeavour to discover the means which Providence has employed to raise, to maintain for a time, and at length, to destroy empires.