Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/189

 life, and leaving the inheritance of his history to a child of a few months old, Hugh II, who reigned from 1253 to 1267.

The only incident of the reign of Hugh II turns, like that in his father's reign, on the question of regency. Queen Placentia acted as regent, but in the second year of the reign went over to Palestine and married Balian of Ibelin, the reigning lord of Arsouf. As Hugh was the last of the Lusignans, the marriage seems to have been unpopular; and, either in consequence of it, or after the death of the queen herself, a new bailiff was appointed. This was Hugh of Antioch, son of Henry of Antioch, and grandson of Bohemond IV; his mother Isabella was daughter of King Hugh I. He was nearest in blood to King Hugh and his presumptive successor. One military exploit signalised the regency: in 1265 he led to the defence of Acre against the Sultan Bibars a fleet of Cypriot vessels. Then, says Sanuto, was the military force of Cyprus in great valour and of great prudence; there were in the company 130 knights and much cavalry besides. The contribution however helped the falling cause but little. All in Palestine was going to ruin; already the Venetians and the Genoese were at war; the Templars and the Hospitallers were irreconcilable; the Frank princes were selling their estates and returning westward. The lord of Sidon sold, in 1260, Sidon and Belfort to the Templars; Balian sold Arsouf to the Hospitallers. Henry of Antioch and his wife claimed the regency of Palestine as against the house of Brienne. In 1264 Bibars destroyed Csesarea; and the defenders of Acre were obliged, in self-defence, to lay waste their suburbs, and leave open to the Saracens the great poliandrum or cemetery of S. Nicolas, in which 124,000 men had been buried in one year during the third Crusade. In 1261, the year before Hugh's appointment to the regency, the Latin empire of Constantinople fell. All the older medieval things were passing away in both East and West, and the tide which had led on the Crusades was turning.

The child king, Hugh II, died in 1267; and the bailiff, Hugh III, succeeded as king. Hugh II was the last of the house of Lusignan who was left in the East; in the West