§ 57. ST. LOUIS AND THE LAST CRUSADES. 285
Jerusalem. The sultan of Damascus offered him the oppor tunity and Louis would have accepted it but for the advice of his councillors,1 who argued that his separation from the army would endanger it, and pointing to the example of Richard, persuaded the king that it would be beneath his dignity to enter a city he could not conquer. He set sail from Acre in the spring of 1254. His queen, Margaret, and the three children born to them in the East, were with him. It was a pitiful conclusion to an expedition which once had given promise of a splendid consummation.
So complete a failure might have been expected to destroy all hope of ever recovering Palestine. But the hold of the crusading idea upon the mind of Europe was still great. Urban IV. and Clement III. made renewed appeals to Christendom, and Louis did not forget the Holy Land. In 1267, with his hand upon the crown of thorns, he an nounced to his assembled prelates and barons his purpose to go forth a second time in holy crusade.
In the meantime the news from the East had been of con tinuous disaster at the hand of the enemy and of discord among the Christians themselves. In 1258 forty Venetian vessels engaged in conflict with a Genoese fleet of fifty ships off Acre with a loss of seventeen hundred men. A year later the Templars and Hospitallers had a pitched battle. In 1263 Bibars, the founder of the Mameluke rule in Egypt, appeared before Acre. In 1268 Antioch fell.
In spite of bodily weakness and the protest of his nobles, Louis sailed in 1270. 2 The fleet steered for Tunis,3 proba bly out of deference to Charles of Anjou, now king of Naples, who was bent upon forcing the sultan to meet his
1 Joinville, an. 1253.
2 Joinville declined the king's appeal to accompany him, and advised against the expedition on the ground of the peaceable state of France with the king at home, and of the king's physical weakness which prevented him from wearing armor or sitting on horseback long at a time,
8 Since 1881 a dependency of France.
286 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
tributary obligations to Sicily.1 Sixty thousand men consti tuted the expedition, but disaster was its predestined portion. The camp was scarcely pitched on the site of Carthage when the plague broke out. Among the victims was the king's son, John Tristan, born at Damietta, and the king himself. Louis died with a resignation accordant with the piety which had marked his life. He ordered his body placed on a bed of ashes ; and again and again repeated the prayer, " Make us, we beseech thee, O Lord, to despise the pros perity of this world and not to fear any of its adversities." The night of August 24 his mind was upon Jerusalem, and starting up from his fevered sleep, he exclaimed, " Jerusalem ! Jerusalem! we will go." His last words, according to the report of an attendant, were, " I will enter into thy house, O Lord, I will worship in thy holy sanctuary, I will glorify Thy name, O Lord." 2 The next day the royal sufferer passed to the Jerusalem above. His body was taken to France and laid away in St. Denis.3 In 1297 the good king was canon ized, the only one of the prominent participants in the Crusades to attain to that distinction, unless we except St. Bernard.
§ 58. The Last Stronghold of the Crusaders in Palestine.
Witli Louis the last hope of Christian tenure of any part of Palestine was gone. At his death the French army dis banded.
In 1271 Edward, son and heir of Henry III. of England,
1 The sultan had agreed to pay yearly tribute to Roger II. In the treaty made at the close of the expedition, he agreed to make up the arrearages of tribute to Charles.
2M. Paris, an. 1271.
3 The question whether the king's heart was deposited in the Sainte Chapelle at Paris or not, led to a spirited discussion in 1843. See Letronne, Examen critique <le, la decouverte du pretendu cceur de tft. Louis faite a la Sainte Chapelle le 15 Nai 1S43, Paris, 1844 ; Lenormant, Preuves de la decouverte du cceur de $t. Louis, Paris, 1846.