Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/372

 322 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE fruit when he was sick with a fever. They finally made a truce, leaving a portion of the coast in the hands of the Christians and allowing pilgrims free passage to Jerusalem for the next three years. The Christians also still held much of northern Syria. On his way home Richard fell into the hands of his enemy, the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, and his subjects had to pay a huge ransom to set him free. Many other crusades followed. In 1197 a German expe- dition took Beirut, but accomplished little else. A crusade End of * n I202 ~ I20 4 which was turned against Con- crusades to stantinople will be described later in another connection. In 1212 there was a crusading move- ment among the children, whose innocence it was hoped might prevail where sinful knights had failed. Most of these bands of children wandered about western Europe a while and then broke up; some came to Rome and were sent home by the pope; some reached the Mediterranean and were disappointed that a dry path to Palestine did not open up through the sea for them, as had happened of old in the Red Sea for the benefit of the children of Israel. Some of these were induced to embark by rascally shipowners, who carried them off to Mohammedan lands and sold them into slavery. The King of Hungary went to Syria on crusade in 12 1 7, and during the four years following an expedition was directed against Damietta in the Nile Delta. The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, went out in 1228, and by skillful diplomacy with little fighting secured from the Moslems the cession of Jerusalem and the country between it and the coast, and reconstituted the Kingdom of Jerusa- lem. It lasted until 1244, when the Turks retook the Holy City. By 1291 the Christians had lost Acre, their last stronghold in Syria. The Italian cities, however, retained their quarters and trading privileges even under Mohamme- dan rule. Meanwhile the last crusades of any importance were those of the saintly King of France, Louis IX, who in 1248 went to Egypt, where he was taken prisoner and ransomed, and in 1270 went to Tunis, where he died. The Christian people of western Europe did not, however, en-