| #### 2. THE CRUSADE OF ST. LOUIS IX, 1247-1254 |

| #### #### Pope Gregory IX had, in August, 1230, ratified Frederick II's treaty with the sultan as part of the peace of San Germano, and Frederick had thereupon sent out one of his marshals, Richard Filangieri, to rule the new acquisition. Filangieri proceeded to centralise the administration, and ignored the old feudal constitution that made the barons the real rulers of the kingdom. The result was a civil war, which spread to Cyprus too, and occupied the next few years. When Frederick once more fell foul of the pope, after 1236, this struggle, too, passed into the East. #### In 1243 Frederick's son Conrad, the child of the marriage with the heiress of Jerusalem, came of age and the barons seized the opportunity to proclaim that the regency of Frederick was at an end. As Conrad was an absentee, a regency was, however, inevitable and the barons conferred this on the Queen of Cyprus, the next-of-kin to Conrad's mother. The imperialist garrison at Tyre resisted, but was speedily forced to surrender. A year later the Sultan of Egypt attacked, his forces swelled by the sudden addition of ten thousand Mohammedans -- the Kharis -- in flight before the new Mongol victories of the successors of Genghis Khan. In September, 1244, Jerusalem was once again in the hands of the Mohammedans. #### The news caused throughout Europe something considerably less than the universal dismay that had been the effect of Saladin's victory in 1187. There was, however, enough of the crusading spirit still alive to make the question of the recovery of Jerusalem one of the main questions before the Council of Lyons in the following June (1245). Innocent IV spoke of the state of the Latin East as one of the five wounds that afflicted the Church, and it was decided that yet once again an attempt should be made to rouse all Christendom, through the now traditional means of sermons and special embassies to the princes. The clergy were to contribute a twentieth of their revenues, the crusaders to be free of all taxes for three years, and tournaments were once more forbidden in the interests of the crusade. At the same time the pope planned a new offensive against the Mohammedans through an alliance with the ferocious Mongols, who, descending on the Near East from the all but legendary country of China, seemed, from their victories of the last few years, about to destroy Mohammedanism for ever. #### In the vast army of the Mongols all the peoples, and all the religions, of the vast continent between the Urals and the wall of China were represented. Among them were the Nestorians -- Christians lost to the sight of the popes for eight hundred years, who, in that time, albeit heretics, had built up a flourishing Church that included in its ranks Chinese and even Turks! The grandson of Genghis Khan was himself married to a Nestorian, and daily in his camp the religious offices of the Church, mass and the rest, were celebrated and officially announced. It was no doubt through the Venetians, informed of this through the commercial relations that took them everywhere, that the pope knew of the favourable disposition of the Mongols, and in 1245 he dispatched Franciscans and Dominicans to the East in the hope of converting the Mongol princes. #### None of these negotiations had, however, any effect on the fortunes of the crusade. The task of retrieving the disaster of 1244 was taken up once more by the French and by their king in person, St. Louis IX. Alone of the princes of Christendom, he set all his energy to the task. In England the preaching of the crusade had produced chiefly a flood of new protests against the financial levy that accompanied it; the King of Norway was allowed to turn his forces against the pagans of the north; the Spanish princes were occupied with the Saracens on their very threshold, the Catholics of Germany were bidden gain the indulgence by fighting the pope's battles against Frederick II. It was left to the King of France to recover the holy places. #### He set out in June, 1248. At Cyprus, envoys from the Mongols, who were at the moment preparing to attack the Caliph of Baghdad, met him, proposing an alliance. By the time St. Louis's acceptance reached the camp the Khan was dead, and it was three years before the saint learnt the news of this failure (1251). By that time the crusade of 1248 had ended in disaster #### Like the crusaders of 1219, St. Louis directed his attack on Egypt. On June 7, 1249, he took Damietta and then halted until reinforcements arrived from France. His army was as lacking in discipline as it was short in numbers. The reinforcements, Templars, Hospitallers and French crusaders under the King's brother Alphonse de Poitiers, brought the forces up to twenty thousand cavalry and forty thousand foot, and the army prepared to attack Mansourah. The first successes of the fight (February 8, 1250) were thrown away through the foolhardy recklessness of another of St. Louis's brothers, the Comte d'Artois. St. Louis's heroism finally drove back the Saracen attack, but the victory left the crusading army exhausted. The Saracens now blockaded the camp, dysentery and enteric fever set in, and on April I the order to retreat on Damietta was given. As the broken forces retired the Saracens attacked yet once again. It was a massacre rather than a battle, the greatest loss of the whole crusading movement. The knights and nobles were spared for the sake of what ransoms they might bring, but something like thirty thousand of the army were slain, and St. Louis was captured. He obtained his release by the promise to surrender Damietta and to pay 1,000,000 gold besants. The Saracens, in return, promised to free all the Christian prisoners in Egypt. #### For another four years St. Louis remained in the East, negotiating for the release of the Christian captives, strengthening the defence of what places in Palestine were still in Christian hands, Acre, Jaffa, Sidon, Cesarea. He was, however, never able to reorganise the offensive, and finally the news of the death of his mother, who was governing France in his absence, forced him to return (April 24, 1254). ####  |