The memory of his defeat excited Louis, after sixteen years of wisdom and repose, to undertake the seventh and last of the crusades. His finances were restored, his kingdom was enlarged; a new generation of warriors had arisen, and he embarked with fresh confidence at the head of six thousand horse and thirty thousand foot. The loss of Antioch had provoked the enterprise; a wild hope of baptizing the king of Tunis tempted him to steer for the African coast; and the report of an immense treasure reconciled his troops to the delay of their voyage to the Holy Land. Instead of a proselyte, he found a siege: the French panted and died on the burning sands: St. Louis expired in his tent; and no sooner had he closed his eyes, than his son and successor gave the signal of the retreat.100 "It is thus," says a lively writer, "that a Christian king died near the ruins of Carthage, waging war against the sectaries of Mahomet, in a land to which Dido had introduced the deities of Syria." 101

A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Borgite dynasties 102 were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and the four-and-twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants. They produce the great charter of their liberties, the treaty of Selim the First with the republic; 103 and the Othman emperor still accepts from Egypt a

100 See the expedition in the annals of St. Louis, by William de Nangis, p. 270—287; and the Arabic Extracts, p. 545, 555, of the Louvre edition of Joinville. texmuzla opods to sourokoani bas ech 101 Voltaire, Hist. Générale, tom. ii. p. 391.

102 The chronology of the two dynasties of Mamalukes, the Baharites, Turks or Tartars of Kipzak, and the Borgites, Circassians, is given by Pocock (Prolegom. ad Abulpharag. p. 6-31) and Da Guignes, (tom. i. p. 264-270;) their history from Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c., to the beginning of the xvth century, by the same M. De Guignes, (tom. iv. p. 110—328.)

103

Savary, Lettres

l'Egypte, tom. ii. lettre xv. p. 189–208. I much question the authenticity of this copy; yet it is true, that Sultan Selim concluded a treaty with the Circassians or Mamalukes of Egypt, and left them . possession of arms, riches, and power. See a new Abrégé de l'Histoire Ottomane, composed in Egypt, and translated by M. Digeon, (tom. i. p. 55 68, Paris, 1781,) a curious, authentic, and national history.

slight acknowledgment of tribute and subjection. With some breathing intervals of peace and order, the two dynasties are marked as a period of rapine and bloodshed: 104 but their throne, however shaken, reposed on the two pillars of discipline and valor: their sway extended over Egypt, Nubia, Arabia, and Syria: their Mamalukes were multiplied from eight hundred to twenty-five thousand horse; and their num bers were increased by a provincial militia of one hundred and seven thousand foot, and the occasional aid of sixty-six thousand Arabs.105 Princes of such power and spirit could not long endure on their coast a hostile and independent nation; and if the ruin of the Franks was postponed about forty years, they were indebted to the cares of an unsettled reign, to the invasion of the Moguls, and to the occasional aid of some warlike pilgrims. Among these, the English reader will observe the name of our first Edward, who as sumed the cross in the lifetime of his father Henry. At the head of a thousand soldiers the future conqueror of Wales and Scotland delivered Acre from a siege; marched as far as Nazareth with an army of nine thousand men; emulated the fame of his uncle Richard; extorted, by his valor, a ten years' truce; and escaped, with a dangerous wound, from the dagger of a fanatic assassin.106+ Antioch,107 whose situ ation had been less exposed to the calamities of the holy war, jedi ul tom

104 Si totum quo regnum occupârunt tempus respicias, præsertim quod fini propius, reperies illud bellis, pugnis, injuriis, ac rapinis refertum, (Al Jannabi, apud Pocock, p. 31.) The reign of Mohammed (A. D. 1311—1341) affords a happy exception, (De Guignes, tom. iv. p. 208-210.)

105 They are now reduced to 8500: but the expense of each Mamaluke may be rated at a hundred louis: and Egypt groans under the avarice and insolence of these strangers, (Voyages de Volney, tom. i. p. 89-187.)

106 See Carte's History of England, vol. ii. p. 165-175, and his original authors, Thomas Wikes and Walter Hemingford, (1. iii. c. 31, 35,) in Gale's Collection, to tom. ii. p. 97, 589-592.) They are both ignorant of the princess Eleanor's piety in sucking the poisoned wound, and saving her husband at the risk of her own life.

107 Sanutus, Secret. Fidelium Crucis, 1. iii. p. xii. c. 9, and De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 143, from the Arabic historians. To a bobvionov mnilac

Gibbon colors rather highly the success of Edward. Wilken is more accurate, vol. vii. p. 593, &c.-M. + The sultan

9994

Wilken, vol. al. . bars was concerned in this attempt at assassination. 602. 2.Ptolemæus Lucensis is the earliest authority for the devotion of Eleanora. Ibid. 605.-M.

was finally occupied and ruined by Bondocdar, or Bibars sultan of Egypt and Syria; the Latin principality was extinguished; and the first seat of the Christian name was dis peopled by the slaughter of seventeen, and the captivity of one hundred, thousand of her inhabitants. The maritime towns of Laodicea, Gabala, Tripoli, Berytus, Sidon, Tyre, and Jaffa, and the stronger castles of the Hospitallers and Templars, successively fell; and the whole existence of the Franks was confined to the city and colony of St. John of Acre, which is sometimes described by the more classic title of Ptolemais.

:

After the loss of Jerusalem, Acre,108 which is distant about seventy miles, became the metropolis of the Latin Christians, and was adorned with strong and stately buildings, with aqueducts, an artificial port, and a double wall. The population was increased by the incessant streams of pilgrims and fugitives in the pauses of hostility the trade of the East and West was attracted to this convenient station; and the market could offer the produce of every clime and the interpreters of every tongue. But in this conflux of nations, every vice was propagated and practised: of all the disciples of Jesus and Mahomet, the male and female inhabitants of Acre were esteemed the most corrupt; nor could the abuse of religion be corrected by the discipline of law. The city had many sovereigns, and no government. The kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus, of the house of Lusignan, the princes of Antioch, the counts of Tripoli and Sidon, the great masters of the hospital, the temple, and the Teutonic order, the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, the pope's legate, the kings of France and England, assumed an independent command: seventeen tribunals exercised the power of life and death; every criminal was protected in the adjacent quarter; and the perpetual jealousy of the nations often burst forth in acts of violence and blood. Some adventurers, who disgraced the ensign of the cross, compensated their want of pay by the plunder of the Mahometan villages: nineteen Syrian merchants, who traded under the public faith, were despoilea and hanged by the Christians; and the denial of satisfaction justified the arms of the sultan Khalil. He marched against

109 The state of Acre is represented in all the chronicles of the times, and most accurately in John Villani, l. vii. c. 144, in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. xiii. p. 337, 338

Acre, at the head of sixty thousand horse and one hundred and forty thousand foot: his train of artillery (if I may use the word) was numerous and weighty: the separate timbers of a single engine were transported in one hundred wagons; and the royal historian Abulfeda, who served with the troops of Hamah, was himself a spectator of the holy war. Whatever might be the vices of the Franks, their courage was rekindled by enthusiasm and despair; but they were torn by the discord of seventeen chiefs, and overwhelmed on all sides by the powers of the sultan. After a siege of thirty. three days, the double wall was forced by the Moslems; the principal tower yielded to their engines; the Mamalukes made a general assault; the city was stormed; and death or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. The convent, or rather fortress, of the Templars resisted three days longer; but the great master was pierced with an arrow; and, of five hundred knights, only ten were left alive, less happy than the victims of the sword, if they lived to suffer on a scaffold, in the unjust and cruel proscription of the whole order. The king of Jerusalem, the patriarch, and the great master of the hospital, effected their retreat to the shore; but the sea was rough, the vessels were insufficient; and great numbers of the fugitives were drowned before they could reach the Isle of Cyprus, which might comfort Lusig nan for the loss of Palestine. By the command of the sultan, the churches and fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished: : a motive of avarice or fear still opened the holy sepulchre to some devout and defenceless pilgrims; and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with the WORLD'S DEBATE.109

See the final expulsion of the Franks, in Sanutus, 1. iii. p. xii. c. 11-22; Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c., in De Guignes, tom. iv. p.1 162, 164; and Vertot, tom. i. 1. iii. p. 407-428.*

After these chapters of Gibbon, the masterly prize composition, "Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades sur l'Europe, par A. H. L. Heeren: traduit de l'Allemand par Charles Villars, Paris, 1808," or the original German, in Heeren's "Vermischte Schriften," may be read with great advantage.-M. Bedotem en Mista connu en 10 2m7* Sud

CHAPTER LX.

SCHISM OF THE GREEKS AND LATINS.—STATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

REVOLT OF THE BULGARIANS. DETHRONED BY HIS BROTHER ALEXIUS.

FOURTH CRUSADE.

ISAAC ANGELUS ORIGIN OF THE ALLIANCE OF THE FRENCH AND VENE

TIANS WITH THE SON OF ISAAC. -THEIR NAVAL EXPEDITION TO CONSTANTINOPLE. THE TWO SIEGES AND FINAL CONQUEST OF THE CITY BY THE LATINS.

THE restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed by the separation of the Greek and Latin churches. A religious and national animosity still divides the two largest communions of the Christian world; and the schism of Constantinople, by alienating her most useful allies, and provoking her most dangerous enemies, has precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the East.

In the course of the present History, the aversion of the Greeks for the Latins has been often visible and conspicuous. It was originally derived from the disdain of servitude, inflamed, after the time of Constantine, by the pride of equality or dominion; and finally exasperated by the preference which their rebellious subjects had given to the alliance of the Franks. In every age the Greeks were proud of their superiority in profane and religious knowledge: they had first received the light of Christianity; they had pronounced the decrees of the seven general councils; they alone posressed the language of Scripture and philosophy; nor should he Barbarians, immersed in the darkness of the West,2 preume to argue on the high and mysterious questions of theo

In the successive centuries, from the ixth to the xviiith, Mosheim traces the schism of the Greeks with learning, clearness, and impartiality; the filioque, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 277,) Leo III. p. 303. Photius, p. 307, 308. Michael Cerularius, p. 370, 371, &c.

* Ανδρες δυσσεβείς καὶ ἀποτρόπαιοι, ἄνδρες ἐκ σκότους ἀναδυντες, τῆς yao Eonioiov poivas vnioxor yevrimaru, (Phot. Epist. n. 47, edit. Montacut.) The Oriental patriarch continues to apply the images of thunder, earthquake, hail, wild boar, precursors of Antichrist, &c., &c.