The period from 1274 is distinguished by a deep level of reflection about crusading and how to make it work; in the end the fall of Acre in 1291 brought no response comparable to the Third Crusade after Hattin. Even while wintering in Cyprus in 1248, St Louis had looked farther afield, to the world beyond Islam. By the time he arrived in the East, the military threat posed to the civilised world by the Mongols was well known. Briefly, in the early months of 1300, it looked as though Jerusalem might be recovered for Christendom. The Mongol il-khan, Ghazan, won a dramatic victory over the Mamluks at Homs, in northern Syria. When the news reached the West, diplomatic efforts were launched to revive the Frankish–Mongol alliance, this time with Armenian help. Just as methods of finance and recruitment became more efficient from 1274 onward so also military and geopolitical strategy took a leap forward through the ‘recovery treatises’.