The End of the Crusades: The Failure of the Last Christian Kingdoms in the Holy Land

On June 16, 1272, the city of Acre awoke to shocking news that quickly spread by word of mouth: that night, there had been an assassination attempt on Lord Edward, son of the English king Henry III, who was in the Near East leading a crusade. A hitman—perhaps a member of the Nizari or Hashashin sect—stabbed him in the arm with a poisoned dagger, and although the prince managed to kill his attacker, the wound he received made him ill, forcing him to abandon a campaign that had already failed. The Ninth Crusade would be the last.

After Kutuz, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, defeated the Mongols in 1260 and died in the Battle of Ain Jalut, he was succeeded by General Baibars. He was a former slave of Kipchak origin—a Turkic people from Crimea—very tall and blond, with blue eyes although blind in one, and he quickly launched himself against the crusaders who still remained in the Syrian-Palestinian strip since the end of the Eighth Crusade, taking from them one by one the cities of Arsuf, Atlit, Haifa, Safed, Jaffa, Ascalon, and Caesarea. In 1268, Antioch fell, thus bringing an end to the eponymous principality and seriously threatening the Kingdom of Jerusalem—whose capital had fallen in 1244—and even the County of Tripoli.

It was then that Europe began to take seriously the desperate cry for help from those Christians and organized what would be the Ninth Crusade, which is sometimes considered merely a continuation or epilogue of the previous one, because the beginning of one overlaps with the end of the other.

last crusade final — Bust of Baibars. Credit: Ahmed yousri elmamlouk / Wikimedia Commons

The fact is that on June 24, 1268, the pious French king Louis IX the Saint (he was canonized in 1297) organized a large army that, with the support of the Pope, was to set off for Egypt to confront the Muslims. The expedition did not travel there directly but made a stop in Tunis, where the monarch fell ill with dysentery or typhoid fever and died, being succeeded by his son, Philip III the Bold.

It was August 25, 1270, and the danger that the mission would end before it began was overcome with the promised participation of England. King Henry III was already too old to fulfill his vow to join a crusade, but he allowed his firstborn Edward to go in his place. Edward had ample war experience acquired in the Barons’ Wars. Temperamental, inflexible, and ruthless, he was nicknamed Longshanks due to his height, being the first in the country to have an English name and speak that language. Today he is famous for his invasion of Scotland and the subsequent confrontation with William Wallace.

Edward, who had received a loan of seventy thousand livres tournois from the French sovereign to finance an armed contingent—which was not enough, and a special tax had to be established—set off for Tunis accompanied by his brother Edmund of Lancaster; he also brought his wife, Eleanor of Castile. In France, they learned of Louis IX’s death and decided to press on, wintering in Sardinia to cross the Mediterranean and disembark in Tunis in the spring of 1271. It was too late, as a treaty had been signed ending the conflict, signed by other crusaders such as the aforementioned Philip III, Charles I of Sicily, and Theobald II of Navarre.

Edward refused to recognize it because, among other things, he was excluded from the indemnities stipulated, and continued on to Acre with eight sailing ships and about thirty galleys, even though he had quite limited forces: just over two hundred knights and about a thousand infantrymen, bolstered by the modest troops provided by Edmund and two smaller contingents that also joined them, one Breton and the other Flemish. The city, defended by Bohemond VI of Antioch, was still under siege; however, upon seeing the arrival of the crusaders, the Mamluks withdrew.

Emboldened by this and reinforced by knights from the military orders and by Hugh III of Cyprus, Edward launched sporadic attacks that, however, were not enough to secure a resounding victory; the most decisive action was taking advantage of the fact that Baibars was in Aleppo facing a mongol incursion —coordinated with Edward— to massacre fifteen hundred Turkomans, most of them nomadic shepherds, which allowed him to seize a booty of five thousand head of cattle. He then quickly withdrew to avoid an enemy counterattack, having learned that Baibars had put the Mongols to flight.

The sultan feared a combined land-sea operation against Egypt, so he built a fleet to open a new front in Cyprus, forcing its king to leave the Holy Land to defend the island, leaving only his English counterpart behind. With seventeen galleys disguised as Christian ships, he tried to enter Limassol but was defeated and had to retreat, which once again placed his army opposite the crusader. Hugh III preferred to prevent another attempt by signing on his own a ten-year truce. Edward did not take it well and refused to go along with him.

Now, his already small army was further reduced, lacking enough troops to aspire to liberate Jerusalem, the goal always present in any crusader’s mind. Therefore, he had no choice but to accept reality and, after mediating in the disputes between Hugh III and the Ibelin family of Cyprus, he in turn accepted the mediation of Charles of Sicily to negotiate peace with Baibars. It was signed in Caesarea, in May 1272, and it was for a period of ten years, ten months, and ten days. The war was considered over.

Edmund set sail for England, but Edward stayed behind to ensure that the agreement was upheld. However, everyone knew he had a new expedition in mind for the future, something the Muslims were also aware of. That was when the previously mentioned attack occurred, possibly instigated by the sultan, perhaps by the emir of Ramla, or maybe by the Old Man of the Mountain (the leader of the hashashins), in the context of a fake conversion ceremony. The weapon used, as mentioned, was poisoned, and Edward fell ill, ultimately accepting the inevitability of his departure.

In September 1272, he left for Sicily, where he remained for some time recovering. He was still on the Mediterranean island when he successively received two tragic news items: the death of his son John and that of his father, both deeply felt. Now he had no choice but to return to England to assume the throne, but he did so slowly, in order to fully recover and taking advantage of the kingdom’s current stability. In fact, he was proclaimed in absentia —something never done before— with a royal council governing in his name, headed by Bishop Robert Burnell as Lord Chancellor.

On the way, the new monarch visited the new Pope (Gregory X, his former traveling companion, Teobaldo Visconti), Philip III, and his great-uncle Philip I of Savoy, suppressed a rebellion in Gascony, and arranged the marriage of his four-year-old daughter Eleanor to Alfonso of Aragon (the future Alfonso III the Free), as well as that of his son Henry to Joan of Navarre (who would also reign in France as the wife of Philip IV). And finally, once back, he was crowned in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury on August 19, 1274. Then he removed the crown, vowing not to wear it again until he had recovered all the lands his late father had lost.

The Ninth Crusade had lasted barely a year and was the last one, as Gregory X called for another that never took off, and his successor, Martin IV, would accept the Venetian proposal to wage it not against the Mamluks but against the Byzantines. The clauses of the peace agreement between Edward and Baibars stipulated that the Christians would retain two territories: one, the coastal strip between Acre and Sidon; the other, the County of Tripoli (which occupied the north and west of what are now Lebanon and Syria, respectively).

They needed no external enemy because they became embroiled in a full-blown civil war that pitted Hugh III against Charles of Anjou. Weakened, those kingdoms would eventually fall into Islamic hands.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on April 21, 2025: El final de las Cruzadas: el fracaso de los últimos reinos cristianos en Tierra Santa