Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/192

 be first occupied, then the Holy Land, and then Constantinople. When that was done, and not till then, would the Christian warriors, settled and established, be able to dwell safely. So at least says Marino Sanuto, writing in 1321.

But neither Edward's little army nor his legal skill could save King Hugh from discomfiture; in 1272 he was forced to submit to make a treaty with Bibars,, which left him only Acre and the right of pilgrimage to Nazareth, and for this he had to thank, it was said, the diplomacy of Edward. After Edward's departure, and an attempt to sustain the Frank cause in Tripoli, Hugh seems to have devoted himself to the care of his island kingdom, which was itself threatened by the monstrous policy of Charles of Anjou. That wretched tyrant, by way of inaugurating his purchased sovereignty, wrested Acre from King Hugh in 1277. He did not live to recover it. After a siege of four months the Cypriot knights declared their term of service at an end, and the siege was raised. Hugh was a patron of learned men, and a founder of monasteries. Probably he saw that unless the Christians were unanimous he must be content to sit still. The Hospitallers supported him; the Templars spited him; the Genoese helped him; the Venetians thwarted him. So he stayed in Cyprus, where the people to a great extent prospered under his care, and had sons and daughters. His wife was a lady of the house of Ibelin: he died at Tyre in 1284; he was buried in the abbey of Lapais. His eldest son, John I, who succeeded him, died in 1285; his brother and successor, Henry II, reigned from 1285 to 1324; witnessing a period of transitional history which affected the East as well as the West, and which furnishes, material of more curious if not wider interest.

So long as Acre held out against the Infidels, that is exactly a hundred years from the date when Richard restored it to Christendom, almost all the living interest of the Crusades centres in that curious stronghold; for it must have been a very strange encampment of fighting and praying men of all nations. There each of the great orders had its strong tower, palace, and appointed share of the wardship of the