The brave Sergines, whom Louis IX. had at his departure left at Ptolemaïs, and the wisest of the other defenders of the Holy Land, had neither authority enough to reëstablish tranquillity, nor troops enough to resist the attacks of the Mussulmans. The only hope of safety which appeared to be left to the Christians of Palestine, arose from the divisions which also troubled the empire of the Saracens; every day new revolutions broke out among the Mamelukes; but, by a singular contrast, feuds, that weakened the power of the Franks, often seemed only to increase that of their enemies. If, from the feeble kingdom of Jerusalem, we pass into Egypt, we there behold the strange spectacle of a government founded by revolt, and strengthening itself amidst political tempests. The Christian colonies, since the taking of Jerusalem, by Saladin, had no longer a common centre or a common tie; the kings of Jerusalem, in losing their capital, lost an authority which served at least as a war-cry, by which to rally ardent spirits around them. Nothing was preserved of royalty but the name, nothing was gained from republicanism but its license. As to the Mamelukes, they were less a nation than an army, in which they at first quarrelled for a leader, and in which they afterwards obeyed him blindly. From the bosom of each of their revolutions sprang a military despotism, armed with all the passions that had given birth to it, and, what must have redoubled the alarm of the Christians, this despotism breathed nothing but war and conquest.