entertaining no repugnance for artifice, preferring violence, sporting with treaties and oaths, practising a dissimulation that nobody could penetrate, possessed by an avarice that made him pitiless in the levying of tributes; having never retreated before an enemy, before an obstacle, or before a crime, his genius and character seemed made for the government, which he had in some sort founded, a monstrous government, which sustained itself by vices and excesses, and which could not possibly have subsisted in conjunction with moderation and virtue. His enemies and his subjects trembled equally before him; they trembled still around that litter which transported his remains from Damascus to Cairo. But so many excesses, so many violences, so many triumphs, which only ministered to his personal ambition, were not able to fix the crown in his family; his two sons only ascended the throne to descend from it again. Kelaoun, the bravest of the emirs, soon usurped the sovereign power; a uniform line of succession to the throne was not at all likely to be preserved in an army constantly exposed to sedition. Every Mameluke believed himself born for empire, and in this republic of slaves it appeared permissible for every one to dream of tyranny. A thing almost incredible,—that which appeared most calculated to ruin this band of turbulent soldiery, was precisely that which saved it; weakness or incapacity could never support itself long upon the throne, and amidst the tumult of factions, it almost always happened that the most brave and the most able was chosen to direct the government, and lead in war. Bibars had commenced the ruin of the Christians; Kelaoun was destined to complete it. In the West, Gregory in vain prosecuted the preparations, or rather the preachings of the crusade; he several times renewed his intreaties to Rodolph of Hapsburg, but Rodolph had an empire to preserve; it was useless for the pope to threaten to deprive him of his crown; the new emperor saw much less danger for him in the anger of the sovereign pontiff than in an expedition which would lead him so far from his states. At length Gregory died, without having been able to fulfil the promises he had made to the Christians of the East. Palestine received, from time to time, some succours from Europe; but these succours, scarcely ever arriving seasonably, appeared less likely to increase than to compromise its safety. The king of Sicily, who had caused himself to be proclaimed king of Jerusalem, sent some soldiers and a governor to Ptolemaïs; he was preparing to make a formidable expedition into Syria,[44] and his ambition, perhaps, might, in this circumstance, have been serviceable to the cause of the Christians, if a revolution had not suddenly put an end to his projects.