nd slaves to the enemies of the faith.

It was easy to foretell, from the very first, that the military occupation
of the Holy Land would not be permanent. In consequence of this,
therefore, the nearer the loss of this fine conquest seemed to be, the
greater were the efforts made by the maritime towns of the West to
re-establish, on a more solid and lasting basis, a commercial alliance
with Egypt, the country which they selected to replace Palestine, in a
mercantile point of view. Marseilles was the greatest supporter of this
intercourse with Egypt; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries she
reached a very high position, which she owed to her shipowners and
traders. In the fourteenth century, however, the princes of the house of
Anjou ruined her like the rest of Provence, in the great and fruitless
efforts which they made to recover the kingdom of Naples; and it was not
until the reign of Louis XI. that the old Phoenician city recovered its
maritime and commercial prosperity (Fig. 193).

[Illustration: Fig. 192.--Merchant Vessel in a Storm.--Fac-simile of a
Woodcut in the "Grand Kalendrier et Compost des Bergers," in folio:
printed at Troyes, about 1490, by Nicolas de Rouge.[*]

[Footnote *: "Mortal man, living in the world, is compared to a vessel
on perilous seas, bearing rich merchandise, by which, if it can come to
harbour, the merchant will be rendered rich and happy. The ship from the
commencement to the end of its voyage is in great peril of being lost or
taken by an enemy, for the seas are always beset with perils. So is the
body of man during its sojourn in the world. The merchandise he bears is
his soul, his virtues, and his good deeds. The harbour is paradise, and
he who reaches that haven is made supremely rich. The sea is the world,
full of vices and sins, and in which all, during their passage through
life, are in peril and danger of losing body and soul and of being
drowned in the infernal sea, from which God in His grace keep us!
Amen."]
]

[Illustration: Fig. 193.--View and Plan of Marseilles and its Harbour, in
the Sixteenth Century.--From a Copper-plate in the Collection of G. Bruin,
in folio: "Theatre des Citez du Monde."]

Languedoc, depressed, and for a time nearly ruined in the thirteenth
century by the effect of the wars of the Albigenses, was enabled,
subsequently, to recover itself. Beziers, Agde, Narbonne, and especially
Montpellier, so quickly established imp