The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

THE EIGHTH CRUSADE.

CHAPTER XLIV.
DEATH OF ST. LOUIS—FALL OF ACRE.

For sixteen years the crusading impulse seemed dead, under the general belief in the hopelessness of further efforts. The songs of the Troubadours even were turned to lamentations, and were burdened with the refrain that Christ had fallen asleep and no longer regarded His people. In the meanwhile there was rising in the East the new power of the Mamelukes, which was destined to accomplish the fears of Christendom.

It will be recalled that Chegger-Eddour, the slave Sultana of Egypt, had continued her power by marrying Aibek, the Mameluke, and thus installing him as Sultan of Cairo. Whatever Aibek’s ability to rule men, he utterly failed to master a woman’s heart. Learning that he whom she had created her lord was proposing additional matrimonial alliance with a princess of Mosul, Chegger-Eddour stabbed him to death. While his dead body was lying at her feet she sent for the emir Saif Eddin, and offered him her hand and kingdom. Horrified at the bloody throne he was invited to sit upon, Saif fled away. Chegger-Eddour, with versatile affection, the same day lured two other emirs to look upon her bloody charms, but, as even a bird will flee the fascination of a serpent when once it sees its mate disappear in the devouring jaws, the emirs did not wait for the embrace of the beautiful enchantress. That night Chegger-Eddour’s body, red with her own blood, was tossed into the castle ditch, and the son of Aibek, a lad of fifteen years, came to the throne.

But the news of the progress of the Tartars, who had already overthrown the caliphate of Bagdad and were marching through Syria upon Egypt, led the Mamelukes to put the reins into stronger hands. They chose for their leader Koutouz, renowned for ability and success on many a field. Koutouz met the advancing Tartars and utterly defeated them in a great battle on the plain of Tiberas. The Christians, having endeavored to make alliance with the Tartars as against the Egyptians, roused the Moslem spirit of retaliation. Koutouz for a while restrained his people in the name of Moslem fidelity to vows, since the treaty with the Christians was still in effect. Bibars, the victorious leader against Louis IX. in the affair of Mansourah, opposed the policy of Koutouz. Meeting him while hunting, he slew the sultan and claimed the throne on the ground of having thus made room for himself. Such was the reverence for brute power that the assassin’s stroke was recognized as the indication of the will of Allah. The preparations which had been made at Cairo for the triumphal return of Koutouz, the conqueror of the Tartars, were utilized for the coronation of Bibars as his successor.

The elevation of Bibars was an omen of woe for the Christian cause. Pope Alexander IV. confessed that it would now be impossible for any Christian power to maintain itself in the Holy Land.

Bibars inaugurated his reign over the Moslems by ravaging Palestine, destroying Nazareth, Cæsarea, Arsuf, and Safed, murdering the inhabitants, and dividing the land among his emirs. Returning to Egypt, he recuperated his army and made an incursion into Armenia, taking Jaffa and Antioch on his way (1268). So many were his captives that the Arabian chronicler says, “There was not a slave of a slave that did not possess a slave.”

But one heart in Europe seemed still to throb with either faith or courage. The pious Louis IX. was worn with cares, harassed with the memory of his previous disaster, and depressed by a wasting disease. One day he entered his parliament hall in the Louvre, carrying the “crown of thorns.” In presence of the princes and nobles he resumed the cross; for three years he incessantly labored amassing means and men. The despair of Europe, having exhausted its doleful sentiment, at the call of the saintly king changed to hope. The king’s sons, the English princes, Edward and Edmund, the earls of Pembroke and Warwick, John Baliol, with many nobles of Scotland, the kings of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, emulated the piety of Louis. The zeal of most of these, however, evaporated in the long delay or under the influence of the dangers that threatened them at home in the distracted condition of their lands.

In March, 1270, Louis repaired to Notre Dame, barefooted, with scrip and staff, and placed his kingdom under care of the patron saint of France. He then traversed the land to the former port of departure, Aigues-Mortes, and on July 4, 1270, embarked upon the Mediterranean.

Tunis, on the North African coast, was the rendezvous of innumerable Moslem pirates, whose swift ships and desperate crews menaced all the passable water between France and the Holy Land. The city itself was regarded as an inestimable prize, stored as it was with the riches of commerce and plunder. But most priceless, in the thought of Louis, was its king, of whom it was rumored that he inclined to the Christian faith. Louis declared that he would willingly die in a dungeon if by any means he might be the hand of Providence leading so noble a convert to the foot of the cross.

It was decided to make a descent upon the African coast. A landing was easily effected. The Tunisians, not daring to make attack, endeavored to lure the invaders inward. All hopes of the conversion of their king disappeared when the dusky monarch sent a salutation in which he promised to come with a hundred thousand warriors and receive his baptism in the blood of battle, a prelibation of which would be in the slaughter of every Christian in his dominions.

Meanwhile all North Africa, even to the Nile, was moving westward under the inspiration of Bibars and the faith of the Prophet. Nature, too, seemed to be allied with the Moslems. The fiery sirocco loaded the atmosphere. The enemy increased the torment by tossing the hot sands into the air near the Christian camps. The winds drove these fiery particles upon them, burying them as under the cinders from a volcano. Dysentery and the African plague soon added their horrors. The camp was reduced to the condition of a battle-field after slaughter. Men died faster than they could be buried, and fed the plague with their carcasses. The flower of the French army withered away. Tristan, the king’s son, he that was born amid the sorrows of Damietta, fell a victim, in spite of his father’s prayers and loving ministrations.

Louis himself was stricken. They reared the cross in front of his tent, that from its mystery of love and grace he might gather strength still to live or to die. Calling before him his eldest surviving son, Philip, he instructed him how to govern the kingdom that might soon be his. He bade him maintain the dignity and franchises of the throne, with justice to every class, to avoid warring upon Christian nations, and, above all, show himself the friend of the poor, the consoler of the suffering, and the avenger of the injured of whatever degree. He then turned to his daughter, the Queen of Navarre, with counsel befitting her station. Though realizing that his end was near, he did not refuse to listen to an embassage from the Greek emperor. Many hours he then spent in prayer. His mind at length began to waver; in his delirium he cried out, “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! We will go to Jerusalem!” Recovering a little, he bade his attendants place him upon a bed of ashes, the place of a penitent sinner; lying here, he cried, “O Lord, I shall enter into Thy house and shall worship Thee in Thy tabernacle.” Then, while uttering the words, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” he fell asleep. The beauty and calm of his features grew deeper until, immobile in death, they seemed to salute the passing world with a benediction from the heavenly (August 25, 1270).

With the breath of Louis IX. the crusading enterprise of Europe may be said to have finally expired. The movements that followed, whatever valor may have been displayed in them, were as the waves that continue to dash themselves to pieces on the rocky shore after the tempest that stirred them has died down.

A few weeks after Louis’s death Prince Edward of England (afterwards King Edward I.) arrived at Tunis with a brave troop of his young countrymen. The African coast offering no field for adventures, he went the following spring (1271) to Acre. After various raids upon the neighboring country, and narrowly escaping death by the poisoned dagger of an assassin, he made a ten years’ truce with the Moslems and returned home.

With the termination of this treaty the Christian strongholds fell one by one to the Moslems, and the dislodged inhabitants took final and fatal refuge in Acre. Here were gathered the heterogeneous remnants of Christian populations, together with as diverse bands from all parts of the world, who for greed or piety had taken the sword of the waning cause. The city was rent with dissensions, the various parties contending as a pack of dogs for the last bone. Even the Templars and Hospitallers fought in the streets for such shadows of military honor as might be left in the general disgrace. Thus for twenty years Acre remained a monument of the mercy or indifference of the Moslems.

In 1291 Pope Nicholas IV. sent a band of seventeen hundred mercenaries to protect the place. These men, failing to receive the pay promised them, looted the stores of Saracen merchants. The Sultan Khalil, second successor of Bibars, demanded redress; it was refused. Khalil marched his troops beneath the walls.

The capture of the place was inevitable. The certain destruction that awaited them affected the inhabitants as once the people of Jerusalem, who cried, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” The revelry of the self-abandoned multitude ceased only in their ruin. The assault of the foe was quickly rewarded. Just a century after its recovery from the Moslems through the valor of Richard Cœur de Lion, Acre fell back again to their possession. Sixty thousand Christians were borne away to slavery or put to death.

Thus faded from the land of the Christ the last ray of hope of its occupation by His people, until it shall be conquered by the weapon which He appointed—“the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.”