The sad fortune experienced by this splendid army did not prevent the same king from engaging in a new Crusade, twenty years later, (1270.) He disembarked upon that occasion at the ruins of Carthage, and besieged Tunis. The plague swept off half his army in a few months, and himself was one of its victims. The King of Sicily, having arrived with powerful reinforcements at the time of Louis's death, and desiring to carry back the remains of the army to his island of Sicily, encountered a tempest which caused a loss of four thousand men and twenty large ships. This prince was not deterred by this misfortune from desiring the conquest of the Greek empire and of Constantinople, which seemed a prize of greater value and more readily obtained. Philip, the son and successor of Saint Louis, being anxious to return to France, would have nothing to do with that project. This was the last effort. The Christians who were abandoned in Syria were destroyed in the noted attacks of Tripoli and Ptolemais: some of the remnants of the religious orders took refuge at Cyprus and established themselves at Rhodes.
The Mussulmans, in their turn, crossed the Dardanelles at Gallipolis in 1355, and took possession, one after the other, of the European provinces of the Eastern Empire, to which the Latins had themselves given the fatal blow.
Mohammed II., while besieging Constantinople in 1453, is said to have had his fleet transported by land with a view to placing it in the canal and closing the port: it is stated to have been large enough to be manned by twenty thousand select foot-soldiers. After the capture of this capital, Mohammed found his means increased by all those of the Greek navy, and in a short time his empire attained the first rank of maritime powers. He ordered an attack to be made upon Rhodes and upon Otranto on the Italian main, whilst he proceeded to Hungary in search of a more worthy opponent (Hunniades.) Repulsed and wounded at Belgrade, the sultan fell upon Trebizond with a numerous fleet, brought that city to sue for terms, and then proceeded with a fleet of four hundred sail to make a