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 Majorca, the fleet was dispersed by a tempest; one part of the vessels gained the coasts of Asia, another took shelter in the ports of Sardinia, the vessel that the King of Arragon was on board of was cast upon the coast of Languedoc.

The arrival at Ptolemais of the Aragonese crusaders, commanded by a natural son of James, restored some hopes to the Franks of Palestine.  An envoy from the King of Aragon, according to the oriental chronicles, repaired to the Khan of the Tartars, to announce to him that the Spanish monarch would soon arrive with his army.  But whether he was detained by the charms of Berengaria, or whether the tempest that dispersed his fleet made him believe that heaven was averse to his pilgrimage, James did not arrive.  His departure, in which he appeared to despise the counsels of the holy see, had been severely censured; and his return, which was attributed to his disgraceful passion, met with an equal share of blame.  Murmurs likewise arose against the King of Portugal, who had levied the tenths, but did not leave his kingdom.

All those who in Europe took an interest in the crusade, had, at this time, their eyes directed toward the kingdom of Naples, where Charles of Anjou was making great preparations to accompany his brother into the East; but this kingdom, recently conquered, was doomed again to be the theatre of a war kindled by vengeance and ambition.  There fell out in the states of Naples and Sicily, which had so often changed masters, that which almost always takes place after a revolution:  deceived hopes were changed into hatreds; the excesses inseparable from a conquest, the presence of an army proud of its victories, with the too violent government of Charles, animated the people against their new King.

Clement IV thought it his duty to give a timely and salutary warning.  “Your kingdom,” he wrote to him, “at first exhausted by the agents of your authority, is now torn by your enemies; thus the caterpillar destroys what has escaped the grasshopper.  The kingdom of Sicily and Naples has not been wanting in men to desolate it; where now are they that will defend it?” This letter of the Pope’s announced storms ready to break forth.  Many of those who had called Charles to the throne regretted the house of Swabia, and directed their new hopes toward Italy, strengthening Conradin, heir of Frederick and of Conrad.  This young Prince quitted Germany with an army and advanced toward Italy, strengthening himself in his march with the party of the Ghibellines, and with all those whom the domination of Charles had irritated.  All Italy was in flames, and the Pope, Charles’ protector, retired to Viterbo, had no defence to afford him, except only the thunders of the Church.