But the Carismians, though they were able to conquer, had no ability to hold their conquests. Like most semicivilized hordes, they reaped what they found, but had no enterprise to sow again for other harvests. They quickly quarrelled with their ally, the Sultan of Cairo. New combinations were made against them, and in a few years they disappeared from history, merged, doubtless, with other peoples whose home lands they shared. THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. CHAPTER XLIII. ST. LOUIS. The news of the Carismian invasion of Palestine reduced Europe to a condition of panic. It came on the heels of other adversities, which had shaken the stoutest hearts. The Latin empire at Constantinople, as we have noted, was again on the verge of falling into the hands of the Greeks. The Tartars were ravaging the Danube, and threatening the domain of the Emperor Frederick II. Terror paralyzed trade, travel, and social intercourse everywhere; even in Italy and along the borders of France fear fed the imagination that an army of demi-demons was about to appear. The rustling of the woods, the soughing of the winds, forest fires, the dust raised by storms, strange cloud shapes on the horizon, were omens, if not the signs, of the advance of this horde let loose from hell. Pope Innocent IV. called a council at Lyons. In his opening address he spoke of the five wounds of the Saviour, which he likened to five griefs that afflicted him as the Vicegerent of Christ. These were the Tartar menace, the Greek schism, the Carismian conquest of Palestine, the relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline and progress of heresy, and, finally, as if it were the climax of the woes of Christendom, the obduracy of the Emperor Frederick II. in opposing the papal schemes. The Holy Father could weep over the wickedness of Tartars, Carismians, and Moslems, but he could only rage against Frederick. His spirit communicated itself to his prelates. Under his direction they passed resolutions advising the Germans to dig trenches and build walls against the Tartars; they also calmly proposed a crusade against the Infidels; but, with more evidence of deep feeling, they bent to the floor, dashed out the lights of their candles, and repeated with sepulchral voices the amen to the papal anathema of the foremost Christian monarch in the world. The Pope’s fulmination concluded with these words: “I forbid any, under pain of excommunication, to henceforth yield him obedience. I command the electors to elect another emperor, and I reserve to myself the right of disposing of his kingdom of Sicily.” This was the glory of the so-called Ecumenical Council of Lyons.