The vital crusading spirit was now dead, and the succeeding crusades are to be explained rather as arising from the efforts of the papacy in its struggle against the secular power, to divert the military energies of the European nations toward Syria.
A crusading force from Hungary, Austria, and Bavaria achieved a remarkable feat in the capture of Damietta in Egypt in 1219, but under the urgent insistence of the papal legate, Pelagius, they proceeded to a foolhardy attack on Cairo, and an inundation of the Nile compelled them to choose between surrender and destruction.
The 13th centurycrusades never expressed such a popular fever, and after Acre fell for the last time in 1291, and after the extermination of the Occitan Cathars in the AlbigensianCrusade, the crusading ideal became devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe.
The eighthCrusade was organized by Louis IX in 1270, again sailing from Aigues-Mortes, initially to come to the aid of the remnants of the Crusader states in Syria.
The Crusaders' atrocities against Jews in the German and Hungarian towns, later also in those of France and England, and in the massacres of non-combatants in Palestine and Syria have become a significant part of the history of anti-Semitism, although no Crusade was ever declared against Jews.
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