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.