arm themselves to save the
little that remained of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and Prince Edward
took the cross, to discharge the vow that his father, Henry III, had
made when the news reached Europe of the captivity of Louis IX in
Egypt. After the example of Edward, his brother, Prince Edmund, with
the earls of Pembroke and Warwick, and many knights and barons, agreed
to take arms against the infidels. The same zeal for the deliverance
of the holy places was manifested in Scotland, when John Baliol and
several nobles enrolled themselves under the banners of the cross.

Cataloni and Castile furnished a great number of crusaders; the King
of Portugal, and James, King of Aragon, took the cross. Dona Sancha,
one of the daughters of the Aragonese prince, had made a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, and had died in the hospital of St. John, after devoting
many years to the service of pilgrims and the sick. James had several
times conquered the Moors, but neither his exploits against the
infidels nor the remembrance of a daughter who had fallen a martyr to
Christian charity could sustain his piety against the attacks of his
earthly passions, and his shameful connection with Berengaria
scandalized Christendom.

The Pope, to whom he communicated his design of going to the Holy
Land, replied that Jesus Christ could not accept the services of a
prince who crucified him every day by his sins. The King of Aragon, by
a strange combination of opposite sentiments, would neither renounce
Berengaria nor give up his project of going to fight against the
infidels in the East. He renewed his oath in a great assembly at
Toledo, at which the ambassadors of the Khan of Tartary and of the
King of Armenia were present. We read, in a Spanish dissertation upon
the crusades, that Alfonso the Wise, who was not able to go to the
East himself, furnished the King of Aragon with a hundred men and a
hundred thousand marvedis in gold; the Order of St. James, and other
orders of knighthood, who had often accompanied the conqueror of the
Moors in his battles, supplied him also with men and money. The city
of Barcelona offered him eighty thousand Barcelonese sols, and Majorca
fifty thousand silver sols, with two equipped vessels. The fleet,
composed of thirty large ships, and a great number of smaller craft,
in which were embarked eight hundred men-at-arms and two thousand foot
soldiers, set out from Barcelona on the 4th of September, 1268. When
they arrived off Maj