Redirected to Tunis, Ended by Dysentery

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Eighth Crusade was Louis IX's second and final crusade, redirected from its original target in the Holy Land to Tunis in North Africa on the advice of his own brother Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, who hoped to draw the Hafsid ruler of Tunis, Muhammad I al-Mustansir, into an alliance or tribute relationship rather than fight a war for Jerusalem at all in this second expedition.

The crusading army landed near Tunis in July 1270, but dysentery swept through the camp within weeks, killing Louis himself on 25 August 1270 before any significant engagement with Hafsid forces ever took place on the ground. Charles of Anjou negotiated a tribute treaty with the Hafsids and withdrew the remaining crusader force soon after his brother's death, ending the campaign with no territorial or religious gain toward the Holy Land it had nominally been raised to help recover, its own king dead of disease rather than in any battle fought in his name. The Tunis expedition therefore ended without the crusading army ever facing the Hafsid forces it had been raised to fight, disease alone having accomplished what the campaign's own planners had never anticipated when they first redirected it away from the Holy Land.