MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · August 25 · 1270
ON THIS DAY · 25 AUGUST 1270
Tunis
25 Aug 1270 — on his second crusade, Louis IX dies of dysentery in the camp outside Tunis, for reasons of strategy no one has ever fully explained. The last great royal crusade ends before it begins.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
Everyone now accepts Richard’s logic: Jerusalem can only be held by whoever holds Egypt. So the great crusades of the thirteenth century aim at the Nile. The Fifth Crusade takes Damietta, the fortress guarding the eastern Nile, in 1219 — then refuses the sultan’s astonishing offer to trade Egypt-for-Jerusalem, marches on Cairo, and is trapped and destroyed by the annual Nile flood, forced to give back everything it had won. The Egypt strategy is sound; the Nile is its graveyard.
From Chapter 10 — The Crusades of Kings of The Crusades, 1095–1291 (1229).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — The Egypt-first doctrine. Richard’s insight (Ch. 7) hardened into orthodoxy: the road to a secure Jerusalem ran through Cairo. It was correct in principle — and it repeatedly…
- The turn — Jerusalem regained by treaty, 18 February 1229. The most revealing moment of the later crusades: an excommunicate emperor recovers the Holy City without a battle, by negotiation — and is condemned…
- What it changed — A treaty-held Jerusalem, then gone. Frederick’s Jerusalem was undefended and short-lived; in 1244 Khwarezmian mercenaries sacked it and an allied army was destroyed at La Forbie (watch…
Then ask the room: Frederick II took Jerusalem by treaty and was condemned; Louis IX fought, failed, and was made a saint. What does that reveal about what the crusade was for? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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