It was easy to foretell, from the very first, that the military occupation of the Holy Land would not be permanent.  In consequence of this, therefore, the nearer the loss of this fine conquest seemed to be, the greater were the efforts made by the maritime towns of the West to re-establish, on a more solid and lasting basis, a commercial alliance with Egypt, the country which they selected to replace Palestine, in a mercantile point of view.  Marseilles was the greatest supporter of this intercourse with Egypt; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries she reached a very high position, which she owed to her shipowners and traders.  In the fourteenth century, however, the princes of the house of Anjou ruined her like the rest of Provence, in the great and fruitless efforts which they made to recover the kingdom of Naples; and it was not until the reign of Louis XI. that the old Phoenician city recovered its maritime and commercial prosperity (Fig. 193).

[Illustration:  Fig. 192.—­Merchant Vessel in a Storm.—­Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Grand Kalendrier et Compost des Bergers,” in folio:  printed at Troyes, about 1490, by Nicolas de Rouge.[*]

[Footnote *:  “Mortal man, living in the world, is compared to a vessel on perilous seas, bearing rich merchandise, by which, if it can come to harbour, the merchant will be rendered rich and happy.  The ship from the commencement to the end of its voyage is in great peril of being lost or taken by an enemy, for the seas are always beset with perils.  So is the body of man during its sojourn in the world.  The merchandise he bears is his soul, his virtues, and his good deeds.  The harbour is paradise, and he who reaches that haven is made supremely rich.  The sea is the world, full of vices and sins, and in which all, during their passage through life, are in peril and danger of losing body and soul and of being drowned in the infernal sea, from which God in His grace keep us!  Amen.”]

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[Illustration:  Fig. 193.—­View and Plan of Marseilles and its Harbour, in the Sixteenth Century.—­From a Copper-plate in the Collection of G. Bruin, in folio:  “Theatre des Citez du Monde.”]

Languedoc, depressed, and for a time nearly ruined in the thirteenth century by the effect of the wars of the Albigenses, was enabled, subsequently, to recover itself.  Beziers, Agde, Narbonne, and especially Montpellier, so quickly established important trading connections with all the ports of the Mediterranean, that at the end of the fourteenth century consuls were appointed at each of these towns, in order to protect and direct their transmarine commerce.  A traveller of the twelfth century, Benjamin de Tudele, relates that in these ports, which were afterwards called the stepping stones to the Levant, every language in the world might be heard.

Toulouse was soon on a par with the towns of Lower Languedoc, and the Garonne poured into the markets, not only the produce of Guienne, and of the western parts of France, but also those of Flanders, Normandy, and England.  We may observe, however, that Bordeaux, although placed in a most advantageous position, at the mouth of the river, only possessed, when under the English dominion, a very limited commerce, principally confined to the export of wines to Great Britain in exchange for corn, oil, &c.