Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/207

 auxiliaries objected. There can be no doubt that the story is true, for it is from the pen of the legate himself: they refused even to stay all night in Alexandria, and having conspired with a certain prince, whose name the legate feels bound to keep secret, set sail for Cyprus. They sent word home too that the city was only half taken. It was a great disappointment to the ardent crusaders; but no doubt the English lords who had had experience in foreign warfare saw that Alexandria was untenable, and the season, for it was now the 10th of October, 1365, was too far advanced. The failure of the Crusade was bitterly commented on by Petrarch, who in a letter to Boccaccio writes, at the time, in the severest way of the greediness and irresolution of the Transalpines, and many years after laments, in an epistle to Philip de Mazzeriis, the loss to Christendom, and the wretched effect produced, by the failure, on the character and fate of the king. The English lords seem to have stayed sometime longer in Cyprus: the legate died at Famagosta in January, 1366, and they brought back to England the biography by Philip the Chancellor, which has furnished the most certain details of the story. After the Alexandrian expedition the Venetians, whose commerce was suffering, prevailed on Peter to treat for a peace with Egypt, which was to establish Cypriot consulates and reduce the customs in the ports of the Levant; but the attempt failed. The next year, with the Genoese and the Hospitallers, he ravaged the Syrian coast, but again had to make peace. He then visited Rome in search of succour, and