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 362 THE DECLINE AND FALL His death before Tunis in the seventh crusade. AD. 1270, Aug. 25 The Mama- lukes of E?ypt. A.D. 12S0-U1T [Conquered by SaUm L A.D. 1517] 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 suc- cessor gave the signal of the retreat.^^^ '' 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." i^* A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual ser- vitude, 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 ^^^ were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Cir- cassian 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 ; ^i*' and the Othman emperor still accepts from Egypt a slight acknowledgment of tribute and subjection. ^^^ With some breathing intei'vals of peace and order, the two dynasties are marked as a period of rapine and bloodshed ; ^^^ but their throne, however shaken, reposed on the I 113 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. [R. Steinfeld, Ludwigs des Heiligen Kreuzzug nach Tunis, 1270, und die Politik Karls I. von Sizilien (1896).] 11-* Voltaire, Hist. G(§n6rale, torn. ii. p. 391. 115 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 (torn. i. p. 264-270) [see S. Lane-Poole, Mohammadan Dynasties, p. 80-83] ! their history from Abulfeda, Macrizi, &c., to the beginning of the 15th century, by the same M. de Guignes (tom. iv. p. iio- 328). [Weil's Gesch. der Chalifen, vols. 4 and 5.] 11^ Savary, Lettres sur I'Egypt, 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 Nlamalukes of Egypt, and left them in possession of arms, riches, and power. See a new Abr6g6 de I'Histoire Ottomane, composed in Egypt, and translated by M. Digeon (tom. i. p. 55-58, Paris, 1781), a curious, authentic, and national history. 11" [And E^ypt was governed by a Turkish Pasha, whose power was limited by the council of beys. ] 11* Si totum quo regnum occuparunt tempus respicias, presertim quod fini propius, reperies illud bellis, pugnis, injuriis, ac rapinis refertum (.A.1 Jannabi, apud Pocock, p. 31). The reign of Mohammed {..D. 1311-1341) affords an happy exception (de Guignes, tom. iv. p. 208-210).