dence that it was rare for the achievements of these adventurers to measure up remotely to their initial aspirations.

Such aspirations to colonialism were of course in many ways a substitute for, or a continuation of, the direction of such activities towards the Holy Land. It is often and correctly said that the exploitation of Byzantium in this way was a major reason for the decline of the crusading movement. Small and pleasant landholding or lordship in the Peloponnese or the Aegean islands could undoubtedly seem more comfortable than enterprises in Outremer. But the decline of crusading in the Holy Land is of course not that simple. For one thing, crusading energies were certainly not diminished after the first three crusades. If anything the movement exhausted itself by an excess and, perhaps, a diffusion of crusading as well as the gradual realization that success was so rare. The Fourth Crusade was merely the first in a long line of expeditions never to reach, and often never even aimed at, the Holy Land. It was soon followed by the Albigensian Crusade, in 1208, fought against the Cathars of southern France, and later by several 'political' crusades of the sort described above. The principle that crusades could be mounted against heretics, or enemies of the Church, as well as against the infidel, was rapidly exercised. Those which were against the infidel tended to be more frequent and less well planned. The Fifth Crusade, led by King Andrew of Hungary, left in 1217 for Acre, and only there decided to attempt to capture Damietta in Egypt. It was successful in this after a long siege, only to lose it again, outmanœuvred in an attempt to march on Cairo. Victims of their own excessive ambition, the crusaders had not heeded the advice of the colonists of Outremer and had rejected a Muslim offer of an exchange of Damietta for Jerusalem. Further crusades, of Frederick II in 1228-9, and of 1239-41, achieved temporary and unorthodox gains more by accident than by design, and the only major crusading figure of the thirteenth century was the French King Louis IX. The loss of Jerusalem in 1244 spurred him to lead an impressive expedition of a more conventional kind--well-organized, well-financed--to Egypt where, however, it ran aground in precisely the same way as

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