nd
re-embarked in November, 1270, with the remnants of an army anxious to
quit "that accursed land," wrote one of the crusaders, "where we languish
rather than live, exposed to torments of dust, fury of winds, corruption
of atmosphere, and putrefaction of corpses." A tempest caught the fleet
on the coast of Sicily; and Philip lost, by it several vessels, four or
five thousand men, and all the money he had received from the Mussulmans
of Tunis as the price of his departure. Whilst passing through Italy, at
Cosenza, his wife, Isabel of Aragon, six months gone with child, fell
from her horse, was delivered of a child which lived barely a few hours,
and died herself a day or two afterwards, leaving her husband almost as
sick as sad. He at last arrived at Paris, on the 21st of May, 1271,
bringing back with him five royal biers, that of his father, that of his
brother, John Tristan, Count of Nevers, that of his brother-in-law, Theo-
bald King of Navarre, that of his wife, and that of his son. The day
after his arrival he conducted them all in state to the Abbey of St.
Denis, and was crowned at Rheims, not until the 30th of August following.
His reign, which lasted fifteen years, was a period of neither repose nor
glory. He engaged in war several times over in Southern France and in
the north of Spain, in 1272, against Roger Bernard, Count of Foix, and in
1285 against Don Pedro III., King of Aragon, attempting conquests and
gaining victories, but becoming easily disgusted with his enterprises and
gaining no result of importance or durability. Without his taking
himself any official or active part in the matter, the name and credit of
France were more than once compromised in the affairs of Italy through
the continual wars and intrigues of his uncle Charles of Anjou, King of
Sicily, who was just as ambitious, just as turbulent, and just as
tyrannical as his brother St. Louis was scrupulous, temperate, and just.
It was in the reign of Philip the Bold that there took place in Sicily,
on the 30th of March, 1282, that notorious massacre of the French which
is known by the name of Sicilian Vespers, which was provoked by the
unbridled excesses of Charles of Anjou's comrades, and through which many
noble French families had to suffer cruelly.

[Illustration: THE SICILIAN VESPERS----156]

At the same time, the celebrated Italian Admiral Roger de Loria
inflicted, by sea, on the French party in Italy, the Provincal navy, and
the a