194 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
of victory even with so small a force. The Templars, the
Hospitallers, and the Teutonic Knights accepted his leader-
ship, and an army of some six thousand men was collected.
The Moslems abandoned their threatened attack on Acre, and
trouble in Egypt prevented Bibars from sending reinforce-
ments to his general, Edward had hoped to regain some of
the lost possessions of the Latins, but he realised that with so
insignificant a following he was bound to fail. The raids
that he led into infidel territory were, however, serious
enough to cause petitions for assistance to be made to the
Sultan by his subjects, and in 1272 Bibars proposed a truce
of ten years with the Christians. Edward accepted but he
swore to come back with a larger force. He was, however,
called to the throne of England soon afterwards, and never
had the opportunity to see the East again.
Bibars respected the treaty, but some of his feudatories
would not be deterred from attacking the Franks. Appeals
from the Temple to the princes of Christendom were tossed
aside, and so desperate did the position become that within a
year of the truce, the Grand Master, Thomas Berard, and a
deputation of Templars visited England to beg in person for
aid. Edward I supported the Grand Master's appeal but
few men could be found to take the cross. The Pope,
Gregory IX, called a council of the Church at Lyons, and
Thomas described the precarious situation of the Christians.
A new Crusade was proclaimed and a tax levied on the Church
to pay for the costs of the expedition. With the death of
Pope Gregory, however, the project collapsed.
The embassy from the Temple returned to Acre in despair.
While entreaties continued to be made to the West, all faith
had been lost, and the Franks looked upon expulsion as
inevitable. The military Orders seemed to have only one
aim—-to squeeze as much money as they could from their
properties before Islam seized the whole land. In 1282,
however, the Christians had a further lease of life. Kalaoun,