two pillars of discipline and valour; their sway extended over Egypt, Nubia, Arabia, and Syria; their Mamalukes were multiplied from eight hundred to twenty-five thousand horse; and their numbers were increased by a provincial militia of one hundred and seven thousand foot, and the occasional aid of sixty-six thousand Arabs.[1] 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 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 valour, a ten years' truce; and escaped, with a dangerous wound, from the dagger of a fanatic assassin.[2] Antioch,[3] whose situation had been less exposed to the calamities of the holy war, Loss of Antioch. A.D. 1268. June 12 was finally occupied and ruined by Bondocdar, or Bibars,[4] 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 Tennplars, 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,[5] which is distant about seventy miles, became the metropolis of the Latin Christians,- ↑ 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).
- ↑ See Carte's History of England, vol. ii. p. 165-175, and his original authors, Thomas Wikes [Wykes; ed. by Luard, Annales Monastici, iv. 1869] and Walter Hemingford [Walterus Gisburniensis; ed. by H. C. Hamilton for the English Historical Society, 1848] (l. iii. c. 34, 35) in Gale's Collections (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.
- ↑ Sanutus, Secret. Fidelium Crucis, l. iii. p. xii. c. 9, and de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 143, from the Arabic historians.
- ↑ [Baybars al-Bundukdāri = the arbalestier.]
- ↑ 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.
