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.”