§ 58. THE LAST STKCXNGHOLD OF THE CKUSADERS. 287
reached Acre by way of Tunis. His expedition was but a wing of Louis's army. A loan of 80,000 marks from the French king enabled him to prepare the armament. His consort Eleanor was with him, and a daughter born on the Syrian coast was called Joan of Acre. Before returning to England to assume the crown, he concluded an empty treaty of peace for ten years.
Attempts were made to again fan the embers of the once fervid enthusiasm into a flame, but in vain. Gregory X., who was in the Holy Land at the time of his election to the papal chair, carried with him westward a passionate purpose to help the struggling Latin colonies in Palestine. Before leaving Acre, 1272, he preached from Ps. 137:5, " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." His appeals, issued a day or two after his corona tion, met with little response. The Council of Lyons, 1274, which he convened, had for its chief object the arrangements for a Crusade. Two years later Gregory died, and the enter prise was abandoned.
In 1289 Tripoli was lost, and the bitter rivalry between the Military Orders hastened the surrender of Acre, 1291,1 and with it all Christian rule in Syria was brought to an end. The Templars and Hospitallers escaped. The popula tion of sixty thousand was reduced to slavery or put to the sword. For one hundred and fifty years Acre had been the metropolis of Latin life in the East. It had furnished a camp for army after army, and witnessed the entry and de parture of kings and queens from the chief states of Europe. But the city was also a byword for turbulence and vice. Nicolas IV. had sent ships to aid the besieged, and again called upon the princes of Europe for help ; but his call fell on closed ears.
As the Crusades progressed, a voice was lifted here and there calling in question the religious propriety of such
1 For a contemporary description of Acre, see Itin. regis Ricardi, I. 32.
288 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
movements and their ultimate value. At the close of the twelfth century, the abbot Joachim complained that the popes were making them a pretext for their own aggrandize ment, and upon the basis of Joshua 6 : 26 ; 1 Kings 16 : 24, he predicted a curse upon an attempt to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. "Let the popes," he said, "mourn over their own Jerusalem — that is, the universal Church not built with hands and purchased by divine blood, and not over the fallen Jerusalem." l Humbert de Romanis, general of the Dominicans, in making out a list of matters to be handled at the Council of Lyons, 1274, felt obliged to refute no less than seven objections to the Crusades. They were such as these. It was contrary to the precepts of the New Testament to advance religion by the sword ; Christians may defend them selves, but have no right to invade the lands of another ; it is wrong to shed the blood of unbelievers and Saracens ; and the disasters of the Crusades proved they were contrary to the will of God.2
Raymundus Lullus, after returning from his mission to North Africa, in 1308, declared 3 " that the conquest of the Holy Land should be attempted in no other way than as Christ and the Apostles undertook to accomplish it — by prayers, tears, and the offering up of our own lives. Many are the princes and knights that have gone to the Promised Land with a view to conquer it, but if this mode had been pleasing to the Lord, they would assuredly have wrested it from the Saracens before this. Thus it is manifest to pious monks that Thou art daily waiting for them to do for love to Thee what Thou hast done from love to them."
The successors of Nicolas IV., however, continued to cling to the idea of conquering the Holy Land by arms. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they made repeated
1 Com. in Jerem., see Neander, Ch. Hist., IV. 189 sqq., Engl. trans.
2 Mansi, XXIV. 111-120.
3 Contemplations of God. See Zwemer, Life of Eaymund Lull, 52, 149.