Palestine in 1268 had fallen into the deepest misery and desolation; the few towns and strongholds which remained in the hands of the Eastern Christians had been pillaged and sacked by the Mamelukes, who at last took Antioch, where they slew seventeen thousand of the inhabitants, and sold a hundred thousand more into slavery (Fig. 110). These dreadful tidings, which two centuries earlier would have caused a general indignation in Christendom, reached the West without creating much excitement, in the midst of the political troubles which were agitating most of the states of Europe. But since his return to France, St. Louis had worn the cross, if not on his garments, at least in his heart, and had always cherished the hope of realising the dream of his youth. “The cries of the miserable Eastern Christians,” says an old chronicle, “deprived him of rest; and he felt within him a deep anguish of soul and a passionate desire for martyrdom.”
Fig. 110.—Plan of Antioch in the Thirteenth Century, with its five gates—of St. Paul, of the Dog, of the Duke, of the Bridge, and of St. George. To the right is Mount Oronte; in the foreground is the sea.—From a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, No. 4,939, in the National Library of Paris.
Accordingly he convened a solemn parliament, when he announced to his assembled nobles his intention of undertaking a new crusade. At first many were greatly surprised and afflicted, thinking, writes the Sire de Joinville, “that those who had counselled the undertaking had committed an evil deed and a mortal sin.” Some, indeed, of the king’s most faithful servants openly refused to join his crusade, not through fear, but from wisdom, and with the intention perhaps of persuading him to abandon his fatal project; but the majority of the barons and feudal lords found it impossible to gainsay the will of their sovereign, and the example of the king was of still greater power than his orders. His three sons, the Counts of Toulouse, of Champagne, and of Flanders, took up the cross, as well as his brother, Charles of Anjou, who had recently been raised to the throne of Sicily, and many other princes of the royal house of France.
The preparations for the crusade required three years, during which St. Louis, in the hope of persuading every Christian state to send its troops against the infidels, did his best, but without success, to put an end to the political quarrels that divided kings from their subjects. He embarked, in 1270, with his sons and his principal nobles, for Sardinia, which had been fixed upon as the rendezvous of the Crusaders. On his arrival there it was decided that Tunis should be attacked first. A French chronicler mentions that the king had been given to understand that “Tunis afforded great assistance to the Sultan of Cairo, which was very injurious to the Holy Land, and the barons believed that if that root of evil, the city of Tunis, were destroyed, it would be of much advantage to Christendom.” Other chroniclers, on the contrary, and amongst them Matthew Paris, give a more plausible motive for the expedition, viz., that the king had heard that the Moorish sovereign of that part of the coast had shown a disposition to embrace Christianity and join the western powers in their attempt to conquer Egypt.
Fig. 111.—Disembarkation of St. Louis at Carthage.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Passaiges d’oultremer:” small folio, Paris, 1518.
However that may have been, the crusading fleet sailed for Tunis, carrying an army sadly tried by sickness, and whose ardour had already strangely begun to cool. The Moors permitted the Christians, almost unopposed, to disembark and take possession of Carthage (Fig. 111), which had dwindled down to a mere village. Some of the Crusaders housed themselves in the ruins of the ancient Carthaginian city, the remainder bivouacked under the burning sun of Africa, surrounded and harassed by the infidels, whose light cavalry kept continuously skirmishing around them. It was not long before the plague broke out in the Christian army, whilst it was still awaiting the arrival of the King of Sicily and his troops, and Louis IX., already in feeble health, bowed down by premature old age, and heartbroken in consequence of the death of one of his sons, was attacked by it.
Fig. 112.—St. John of Capistran, Franciscan Monk, who defended Belgrade against the Turks.—From a Painting by Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the Louvre. Fifteenth Century.