and his empire was dismembered. Nevertheless, the respite which the Third Crusade had given to the Latin Kingdom was a precarious one; and the Fourth Crusade in 1204 went sadly astray and did nothing to promote Frankish interests in Palestine. The Fifth Crusade, led by King Andrew of Hungary in 1217–18, was equally unsuccessful. In both these Crusades the Italian maritime cities of Amalfi and Pisa, Genoa and Venice were impelled by their commercial ambitions to take an active part.
The Sixth Crusade.—Of more importance was the Sixth Crusade, led by the heterodox Emperor Frederick II. By the irony of history Frederick, who in many respects was far in advance of his time, was first of all excommunicated for not going on the Crusade, and was then excommunicated for going. In 1229 he became master of Jerusalem without shedding blood, only to find that the services of the Church could not be celebrated in the Holy Sepulchre, because the Pope had laid every town in which Frederick might be, the goal of the Christian world not excepted, under an interdict. For the next ten years Jerusalem was again a Latin city.
The Last Crusades.—At the end of Frederick's ten years of truce with the Moslems the Seventh Crusade set out under the leadership of Theobald; King of Navarre, and landed at Acre in the autumn of 1239. An attempt to recover Ascalon involved the Christian army in disaster, and in the following year Theobald went home, leaving a large number of prisoners in the hands of the Moslems, from whom their freedom was subsequently bought by Richard, Earl of Cornwall. In 1244 Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarizmians, a Tatar tribe from the south of Lake Aral.
The Eighth Crusade (1248–50) owed its inception to the piety and enthusiasm of S. Louis IX. of France, but, in spite of its leader's zeal, accomplished nothing tangible so far as Palestine was concerned. With the Crusade of Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward I. of England (1271–72), the Crusading movement spent its force. Accounts of the Crusades from the western point of view
