St Louis, King Louis IX of France, disembarks in Carthage in 1270 during the 8th Crusade
Artist: Unknown
The preparations for the crusade required three years, during which St. Louis, in the hope of persuading every Christian state to send its troops against the infidels, did his best, but without success, to put an end to thepolitical quarrels that divided kings from their subjects.
He embarked, in1270, with his sons and his principal nobles, for Sardinia, which had been fixed upon as the rendezvous of the Crusaders.
On his arrival there it was decided that Tunis should be attacked first. A French chronicler mentions that the king had been given to understand that Tunis afforded great assistance to the Saltan of Cairo, which was very injurious to the HolyLand, and the barons believed that if that root of evil, the city of Tuni, were destroyed, it would be of much advantage to Christendom.
Other chroniclers, on the contrary, and amongst them Matthew Paris, give a more plausible motive for the expedition, viz., that the king had heard that the Moorish sovereign of that part of the coast had shown a disposition to embrace Christianity and join the western powers in their attempt to conquer Egypt.
However that may have been, the crusading fleet sailed for Tunis, carrying an army sadly tried by sickness, and whose ardour had already strangely begun to cool.
The Moors permitted the Christians, almost unopposed, to disembark and take possession of Carthage, which had dwindled down to a mere village.
Some of the Crusaders housed themselves in the ruins of the ancient Carthaginian city, the remainder bivouacked under the burning sun of Africa, surrounded and harassed.....
Fig. 111.—Disembarkation of St. Louis at Carthage.—Facsimile of a Woodcut in the Passaiges doultreiner: small folio, Paris, 1518.
