Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/212

 third time since the Black Death, devastated by the plague; and the Sultan saw his opportunity; in 1417 he took and wrecked Limasol. In 1420 he swore the entire destruction of the Cypriots, and prepared for a final conquest. Four years after, during which King Janus, although he continued his policy of piratic expeditions, had made scarcely any preparation for defence, he attacked the island, including Cypriots and Genoese in a common purpose of extirpation. Famagosta was taken and pillaged. Two years later the king was defeated and taken prisoner, and Nicosia was sacked. The king's imprisonment lasted fifteen months; during which an attempt was made by an Italian, Sforza Pallavicino, to seize the government. In this he was defeated by the Queen Charlotte of Bourbon, who sent against him Carion of Ibelin, one of the last, if not the last of that great house, of whom anything historical is recorded. Ransomed at an enormous cost, Janus returned in 1427, but thoroughly broken in spirit and despairing of the fortunes of his house. One of his last acts was to marry his daughter Anne to Lewis of Savoy, a connexion which in the next generation helped to place the nominal crowns of Cyprus, Armenia and Jerusalem, among the honours of that aspiring house. He died in 143a, and with him the last sunset gleams of Cypriot glory vanished.

The native historians date the beginning of the downfall to the murder of King Peter in 1369; and if that date be taken we must allow that Petrarch, who thought that that event determined the loss of the East, was gifted with somewhat of prophetic spirit. But I think that, unfortunate as that event was for the Lusignan house, the doom of the Levantine principalities was already sealed. The great plague had swept off the old acclimatised Franks, especially those nobles who, like the lords of Ibelin, had increased and multiplied in the land. With all their faults these nobles were bona fide Crusaders; men who, like the first champions, were ready to cast in their lot in a Promised Land, and not, like the later adventurers, anxious merely to get all they could out of it, to make their fortunes. They were swept away. Then there was the antagonism of Genoa and Venice, a piece of history which, so