nis in the

coast; and the report of an immense treasure reconciled his CHAP. troops to the delay of their voyage to the Holy Land. In LIX. stead of a proselyte, he found a siege; the French panted His death and died on the burning sands; St. Louis expired in his before Tu tent; and no sooner had he closed his eyes, than his son and successor gave the signal of the retreat.100 "It is thus," crusade, says a lively writer, " that a Christian king died near the 1270. "ruins of Carthage, waging war against the sectaries of Aug. 25. "Mahomet, in a land to which Dido had introduced the

seventh

A. D.

A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised, The Mathan that which condemns the natives of a country to per- malukes of Egypt, petual servitude, under the arbitrary dominion of strangers A. D. and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above 1250... 1517. 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 fourand-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 ac cepts from Egypt a 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, repos. ed on the two pillars of discipline and valour; their sway extended over Egypt, Nubia, Arabia, and Syria; their

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.

101 Voltaire, Hist. Generale, 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 de Guignes (tom. i. p. 264...270); their history from Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c. to the beginning of the xvth centu ry, by the same M. de Guignes (tom. iv. p. 110...328):

103 Savary, Lettres sur 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 in possession of arms, riches, and power. See a new Abregé de l'Histoire Ottomane, composed in Egypt, and translated by M. Digeon (tom. i. p. 55...58. Paris, 1781), a curious, authentic, and national history.

104 Si totum quo regnum occupârunt tempus respicias, prefertim 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 an happy exception (de Guignes, tom. iv. p. 208...210).

LIX.

CHAP. Mamalukes were multiplied from eight hundred to twentyfive thousand horse; and their numbers were encreased 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 an 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 Mogols, and to the occasional aid of some warlike pilgrims. Among these, the English reader will observe the name of our first Edward, who assumed the cross in the life time 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 valour, a ten years truce; and escaped, with a dangerous wound, from the dagger of a fanatic assassin.106 Antioch,107 whose situation had been Antioch, less exposed to the calamities of the holy war, 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 dispeopled 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 Hospitalers 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.

Loss of

A. D.

1268, -June 12.

After the loss of Jerusalem, Acre,108 which is distant about seventy miles, became the metropolis of the Latin

105 They are now reduced to 8500: but the expense of each Mamaluke may be rated at 100 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 Wilkes and Walter Hemingford (1. iii. c. 34, 35), in Gale's Collection (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.

108 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.

LIX.

Christians, and was adorned with strong and stately build- CHAP. ings, with aqueducts, an artificial port, and a double wall. The population was encreased 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 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 despoiled and hanged by the Christians; and the denial of satisfaction justified the arms of the sultan Khalil. He marched against 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 waggons: 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- The loss of three days, the double wall was forced by the Moslems; the Acre and the Holy principal tower yielded to their engines; the Mamalukes Land, made a general assault; the city was stormed; and death

LIX.

A. D.

1291, May 18.

CHAP. 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 sul tan, 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

CHAP.
LX.

Schism.

of the Greeks.

CHAP. LX.

Schism of the Greeks and Latins... State of Constantinople...Re volt of the Bulgarians...Isaac Angelus dethroned by his brother Alexius...Origin of the Fourth Crusade...Alliance of the French and Venetians 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 ene

109 See the final expulsion of the Franks, in Sanutus, l. iii. p. xii. c. 11... 22. Abulfeda Macrizi, &c. in de Guignes, tom. iv. p. 162. 164. and Vertot, tom. i. l. iii. p 407...428.

1 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.

mies, has precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman CHAP. empire in the East.

to the

LX.

In the course of the present history, the aversion of the Their Greeks for the Latins has been often visible and conspicu- aversion ous. It was originally derived from the disdain of servitude, Latins. 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 possessed the language of scripture and philosophy; nor should the Barbarians, immersed in the darkness of the West,2 presume to argue on the high and mysterious questions of theological science. Those Barbarians despised in their turn the restless and subtle levity of the Orientals, the authors of every heresy; and blessed their own simplicity, which was content to hold the tradition of the apostolic church. Yet in the seventh century, the synods of Spain, and afterwards of France, improved or corrupted the Nicene creed, on the mysterious subject of the third person of the Trinity. In Procession the long controversies of the East, the nature and generation of the Holy Ghost. of the Christ had been scrupulously defined; and the wellknown relation of father and son seemed to convey a faint image to the human mind. The idea of birth was less analagous to the Holy Spirit, who, instead of a divine gift or attribute, was considered by the Catholics, as a substance, a person, a god; he was not begotten, but in the orthodox style he proceeded. Did he proceed from the Father alone, perhaps by the Son? or from the Father and the Son? The first of these opinions was asserted by the Greeks, the second by the Latins; and the addition to the Nicene creed of the word filioque, kindled the flame of discord between the Oriental and the Gallic churches. In the origin of the dis

2 Ανδρες δυσσεβεις και αποτροπαίοι, άνδρες εκ σκοτώς αναδύντες, της γας Εσπερια μειράς υπήρχον γεννήματα (Phot. Epist. p. 47. edit. Montacut). The Oriental patriarch continues to apply the images of thunder, earthquake, hail, wild-boar, præcursors of Antichrist, &c. &c.

3 The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost, is discussed in the historical, theological, and controversial sense, or nonsense, by the Jesuit Petavius (Dogmata Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii. p. 362...440).