the enterprise, and returned to Europe. The English prince, however, protested that though all should forsake him he would advance, if only attended by his groom. He passed the winter in Sicily, and embarked for Acre in the following spring. He found the city reduced to the utmost extremity, and on the point of surrendering to the Saracens, who had laid siege to it. The whole of Edward's forces did not exceed a thousand men. With these he advanced upon Nazareth, and after a severe conflict with the Moslems, made himself master of that city, slaying all the Saracens that remained in it without mercy. The climate put a stop to his successes. It was now the middle of summer, and the heat brought on a fever, from which Edward was slowly recovering, when a strange messenger desired to deliver some dispatches to the prince's own hand. He was admitted, and, as the young leader lay in his bed without attendants, he delivered the letters, and for a moment spoke of the affairs of Jaffa. The instant after he drew a dagger from his belt, and before Edward was aware, had stabbed him in the chest. The prince was enfeebled, but was still sufficiently vigorous to wrench the weapon from the assassin, and to put him to death with his own hand. His attendants, alarmed at the struggle, rushed into the apartment, and found Edward bleeding from the wound, inflicted

Chronica Hemingford in Gale, tom. ii. p. 593; Chronicon Wike in Gale, vol. ii. p. 95.

by a poisoned knife. The wounds, however, did not prove fatal. The accounts of their cure are conflicting. "It is storied," says Fuller, "how Eleanor his lady sucked all the poison out of them, without doing any harm to herself. So sovereign a medicine," he adds, " is a woman's tongue, anointed with the virtue of a loving affection. Pity it is so pretty a story should not be true-with all the miracles in love's legends-and sure he shall get himself no credit who undertakes to confute a passage so sounding to the honour of the sex. Yet it cannot stand with what others have written." The truth appears to be, that skilful means were promptly employed, and Edward's natural vigour, with care, soon restored him to health.†

The English prince spent fourteen months in Palestine.

At length, the sultan of Egypt, daunted by his courage and ability, and being himself engaged in ruinous wars in other directions, offered him peace on advantageous conditions. Edward, conscious of the smallness of his force for the achievement of great actions, and having received a letter from the king, his father, entreating his immediate return, gladly accepted the proposal, and left the Christians of the Holy Land to take advantage of a ten years' truce.‡

* Chronicon Wike in Gale, tom. ii. p. 97; Hemingford, tom. ii. p. 591.

Fuller's Historie of the Holy Warre, book iv. cap. xxix. Wike, tom. ii. p. 97; Hemingford, tom. ií. p. 591.

+ Rymer, tom. i. p. 487; Hemingford, tom. ii. p. 592.

Such was the Last Crusade. After the departure of the English prince, and while the remaining Christian possessions on the coast of Palestine were left in the peace which he had won, some final but abortive efforts were made to interest Europe in their preservation. In the year 1274, Gregory x. convened a council, and proposed a new Crusade, commanding the clergy to contribute a tithe of their income, through the six following years, towards the expense. But the pontiff dying shortly afterwards, the project was abandoned.*

The Latin empire in Palestine now hastened to dissolution. One place after another was captured by the Saracens, and at length Acre, the last stronghold of the Christians, was besieged. The Mameluke Tartars of Egypt marched into the Holy Land with sixty thousand horse, and one hundred and forty thousand foot, and encamped before this famous city. The Christian warriors offered a bold and determined resistance. This was the final blaze of chivalric valour in the wars of the cross. But unable to defend with equal effect the circuit of the walls, the Christians beheld their towers yielding to the mines and batteringrams of the enemy. After a siege of thirtythree days, the double wall was forced by the Moslems; they made a general assault; the city was stormed, and death or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. The fortress

*Labbai Conciliorum, tom. xi. p. 938; Annales Waverleiensis in Gale, tom. ii. p. 231.

of the Templars resisted three days longer, but the great master was pierced by an arrow, and of five hundred knights only ten were left alive. The king of Jerusalem, the patriarch, and the grand master of the hospital, effected their retreat to the shore, but the sea was rough, and the vessels were insufficient. The Turks pursued the fugitives, and dyed the sands and the waves with their blood. By the command of the sultan, Acre was burned down, and the churches and fortifications of the Latin cities

were demolished. The last vestige of the Christian power in Syria was now swept away, and "a mournful and solitary silence," says Gibbon," prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with the WORLD'S DEBATE.'

* Hist. Sanuti, lib. iii. pars xii. caps. xxi. xxii.; Gibbon, vol. xi. p. 168.

CHAPTER VII.

ENGLAND AND THE CRUSADES. A.D. 1095-1272

THE part taken by England in the holy wars, is naturally a subject of special interest to the English reader. A few pages, therefore, shall be specifically devoted to it. The fury of the Crusades never possessed the masses of the people of this country, as it did those on the continent. Many circumstances combine to account for this. The first Crusade was under taken soon after the Norman conquest, and the settlement of the conquerors being still precarious, they durst not abandon their newlyfounded homes in quest of foreign adventures. The Saxons, too, being peeled and plundered by their new masters, were not in a condition to be carried away by the general enthusiasm. The selfish, interested spirit of the king, William Rufus, moreover, keeping him from kindling in the widely-spreading flame, is thought to have checked its progress among his subjects. The failures and misfortunes of the Crusaders would be little calculated to arouse a nation which had taken so small a share