More than three years passed away before Louis was able to fulfil the engagement to which he had thus pledged himself. We might almost say that he was pledged to himself and by himself alone, and against the will of nearly every one about him.
The Crusades still possessed great fascination for the public mind, and were still the object of religious and chivalric enthusiasm; but, at the same time, they were dreaded and discouraged from a political point of view, and there were many men of very considerable standing, both among the clergy and laity, who would not have dared to say so, but who had no desire whatever to take part in a new crusade. Under the influence of this state of public feeling, not the less seriously entertained because it shrank from showing itself openly, Louis continued for the next three years to busy himself with the affairs of France and Europe. He tried to mediate in his neighbours' quarrels, and attempted to bring about a reconciliation between the Pope and the Emperor, as if it had been the one object of his life. His mother and the wisest of his advisers had once for a short time entertained some hope of being able to induce him to abandon his enterprise. The Bishop of Paris, the same who in the crisis of his illness and at his urgent request had given him the Crusader's cross, one day said to him: 'My lord the King, bethink you that when you received the cross, when suddenly and without due consideration you made this portentous vow, you were very feeble, and, to confess the truth, of clouded mind; your words, therefore, had not the weight of royal authority and verity. Our lord the Pope knows the requirements of your kingdom and the weakness of your bodily health, and he will very willingly grant you a dispensation.Consider how many dangers threaten us: the power of the schismatic Frederick, the snares of the rich King Henry of England, the treason of the Poitevins, only just crushed out, and the subtle disputes of the Albigenses. Germany is agitated; Italy has no peace. The Holy Land is difficult of access; you may never reach it, and, if you do, you leave behind you the implacable hatred for each other of the Pope and the Emperor.'
Queen Blanche made an appeal of a different kind. She reminded her son of the good counsel she had always given him, and told him that a son who obeyed and trusted his mother was well pleasing in the sight of God. She promised that if he would be content to give up his project, the Holy Land should not suffer, for more troops should be sent thither than he would have marched at the head of. The King listened attentively to all that was said, and was deeply moved by it. Then he answered:
'You tell me that I was not in the possession of all my faculties when I took the cross. Therefore, since it is your wish I renounce the cross, I restore it to you.' And with his own hands he unfastened the cross from his shoulder: 'There, my lord bishop, I place the cross with which I was invested in your hands again.'
All present were full of joy, and began to congratulate each other, when, with a sudden change of countenance and of manner, the King said: 'My friends, at this present time I am assuredly in possession of my reason and of all my senses. I am neither weak in health nor of clouded mind.I now ask to have my cross given back to me. He who knows all things knows that not one morsel of food shall enter my lips until it is once again affixed to my shoulder.' 'These words plainly showed that the finger of God was in this matter, and therefore no one ventured to raise a single objection to the will of the King.' [Footnote 16]
[Footnote 16: Matthew Paris, p. 407.]
Louis proclaimed his resolve openly, and urged forward the preparations for a new crusade. He announced that he would start after Pentecost in the following year, 1248.
His brothers first, and then the majority of his vassals, knights as well as great barons, also took the cross. The enthusiasm of Louis was contagious, and many were kindled by it, whilst others for very shame could not forsake their king and lord, who was so noble a prince and so faithful a Christian. On Friday, the 12th of June, 1248, the King went to St. Denis, and there received the oriflamme, and then the pilgrim's wallet and staff. After this, he returned to Paris, and went barefooted to Notre Dame to hear mass, followed by a great crowd of people. Queen Margaret was to accompany him to the East, and she went through the same farewell ceremonies, sometimes with and sometimes after her husband. Queen Blanche waited for her son at Corbeil, and Louis there took leave of her, having first appointed her Regent of France, and granted her the fullest powers during his absence. Some say, however, that she accompanied him as far as Cluny.
'O my fair son, my fair and gentle son!' she said when he bade her adieu. 'O my most tender son, my heart tells me that I shall never see thee more!' And one account adds that, in spite of her high spirit and great courage, she fainted twice when she saw her son finally depart.
The King went on his way, and at Lyons received the benediction of the Pope Innocent IV.; he there put a stop to the brigandage of the wicked lord of one of the castles on the banks of the Rhone, and at length reached Aiguesmortes, in Provence, as some say in July, according to others in the beginning of August. He was to set sail from thence, and had requested all the Crusaders who intended to cross the sea with him to meet him there. He took up his abode in a very humble house, which, as it was the King's residence, was dignified by the name of 'palace;' it would not accommodate his own suite and the retinue of his brothers, tents were therefore erected for them outside the town, and in the neighbouring hamlets. A great number of Crusaders, vassals or allies of the King of France, arrived in rapid succession, and these had separate camps distinguished by their standards. There were thirty-eight large ships in the port hard by, and a whole host of vessels of transport. The preparations of the fleet were completed on the 20th of August, and on Tuesday, the 25th, Louis went to the humble church, Notre Dame des Sablons, to invoke the protection of God for his enterprise, and on the same day he embarked. A young writer of the present age, who has collected local details full of interest with regard to this solemn event, says:—
'It was left entirely to the master-mariners to decide when the wind would be favourable for setting sail, and on Friday the 28th, after careful deliberation, they were all agreed. They then summoned the pilot. "Are you ready?" said they. "Yes, masters," he answered. One of them stepped up to the King of France: "Sire, call up your parsons and priests, for the weather is fair and fine." Chaplains, monks, and bishops came on deck, and the same master-mariners called out, "Sing, good fathers; sing, in the name of God!" Whereupon they chant the "Veni Creator," which is taken up in vessel after vessel, until it is heard from one end of the fleet to the other. This pious canticle ended, the pilots call out to the sailors, "Hoist your sails in God's name!" And first from one ship and then from another you hear the captain calling, "Weigh your anchor, for you are too near, and may do us harm."
'Before long the wind filled our sails, and bore us out of sight of the land; we saw nothing but sky and sea, and every day the wind carried us farther away from the places of our birth. And I think this will show you that a man must be very foolhardy if he will run into such danger with other people's goods, or when he is in a state of mortal sin, for he goes to bed at night in a place which may be at the bottom of the sea the next morning.' [Footnote 17]
[Footnote 17: Topin, 'Aiguesmortes' (1865); Joinville, chap, xxviii.]
Thus thought and wrote the companion and historian of St. Louis, the Sire de Joinville, when, a few days after the King had left Aiguesmortes, he sailed from Marseilles to join him at Cyprus, the general rendezvous of the Crusaders.
I am not now writing the history of St. Louis, and of his heroic and unfortunate crusade. What I desire at this time specially to do is to show the man and the Christian in this king. The world is a stage on which we may see much that impresses us, but not much that we can imitate; great events abound, but noble and virtuous lives are rare, and therefore in every age they possess the charm of novelty, and afford the most salutary spectacle that can be presented to mankind.
Louis arrived at the island of Cyprus on the 12th of September, 1248. He did not expect to stay long there; he hoped to set sail without delay for Egypt, where he proposed to commence the struggle against the Mussulmans. At that time the Christian world believed that in order to deliver the Holy Land from the hands of the infidel, the first blow at Islamism must be struck in Egypt, its stronghold. Louis had appointed Cyprus merely as a meeting-place for the Crusaders who had set out from so many different parts; he had concentrated vast stores of all kinds in the island, provisions, arms, and implements of war, provided at his expense and by his care; but his intention was to convey them immediately to the shores of the Nile.At Cyprus, however, the difficulties and dangers of the expedition began to show themselves. These may have originated either in the social condition and manners of the period, or in the faults of individual men. Many of the crusading princes—nobles who were impatient of control and soldiers from choice—arrived tardily and at long intervals. The King of Cyprus, Henry of Lusignan, and his Cypriot vassals received the Crusaders kindly; and even promised to join the expedition, but they had not received due notice of it, and were not prepared to set out at once. They were glad to prolong the stay of the crusading army, which furnished the court with an opportunity for indulging in the festivities in which chivalry delighted, and proved a source of unexpected profit to the inhabitants of the island. The leader of the crusade, Louis, showed more perseverance in his religious zeal than tenacity of purpose in his practical aims, and he inspired admiration more readily than he exercised power over those with whom he was brought into contact. His opinion as to the wisdom of proceeding at once to Egypt did not guide the council of war, consisting of the principal leaders of the army; they decided on passing the winter in the island of Cyprus; and during those seven months of enforced idleness, the improvidence of the Crusaders, their ignorance of the places, people, and facts of every kind which they were rushing to meet, their blind self-confidence, their obstinate rivalry, their moral disorders and military insubordination, daily aggravated the already enormous difficulties of the enterprise.Louis spent his whole time amongst them in making peace, adjusting quarrels, repressing licence, reconciling the Templars and the Hospitallers. He received envoys from the King of Armenia, the Khan of Tartary, and many other princes of the East, Christian and Pagan, who came, not to offer support in the crusade, but by their intrigues to draw the Crusaders into their own quarrels, and to obtain help in promoting their own private interests.
'The Empress of Constantinople [Footnote 18] sent me word,' says Joinville, 'that she had arrived at Baffe, [Footnote 19] a city of Cyprus, and that I must needs go and seek her, I and Monseigneur Erard de Brienne. When we arrived we found that her vessel had dragged its anchors in a storm, and drifted over to Acre, and that she had nothing out of the whole of her luggage except the mantle she was wearing and a surcoat. [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 18: Marie de Brienne, wife of the Latin Emperor Baldwin II.][Footnote 19: The ancient Paphos.][Footnote 20: A garment worn by ladies over their petticoat and tight-fitting jacket.]
We escorted her to Limisso, where the King, the Queen, and all the nobles received her with great honour. On the morrow I sent her a piece of cloth for a garment, and some taffetas to line it with. She had come to ask the King's help for her lord, and she managed so well that she carried back two hundred letters and more from me and other friends she had there. In these letters we were bound by oath, if the King or the legate would send three hundred knights to Constantinople after the return of the King from the crusade, we were then bound, I say, by our oath, to go thither also.And when we were about to return, in order to fulfil this oath, I appealed to the King before the Count of Eu, whose letter I still have, saying that if he would send three hundred knights I would go and fulfil my oath. And the King answered that he had not the wherewithal, and that great as his treasure was he had poured it out to the very dregs.' [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: Joinville, c. xxx.]
In fact Louis had exhausted his means not only in paying the expenses of the expedition, but in providing money for the Christians scattered in the East, and for the Crusaders who accompanied him. This is a point on which Joinville could speak from experience: 'When I arrived in Cyprus,' says he, 'I found that, after my shipping expenses were paid, I had only 240 livres Tournois [Footnote 22] left. On this account some of my knights sent me word that, if I did not provide myself with money, they would leave me. But God, who has never failed me, provided for me in a wonderful manner, for the King, who was at Nicosia, sent to seek me, and put 800 livres into my coffers, and then I had more than I knew what to do with.' [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 22: See page 49.][Footnote 23: Joinville, c. xxix.]
At last they left Cyprus, but not without trouble, for a violent storm stranded a hundred and fifty vessels on the coast of Syria. They arrived in sight of Egypt and of Damietta. The principal Crusaders met on board the King's ship, theMontjoie. One of those present, Guy, a knight in the suite of the Comte de Melun, wrote to one of his friends, a student in Paris, and said that the King spoke as follows:
'My friends good and true! If we are inseparable in our love we shall be invincible. We could not have reached this place so quickly without the approval of God. Let us therefore land and take possession of it in all confidence. I am not the King of France; I am not the Holy Church. It is all of you who are both King of France and Holy Church. I am but a man, whose life will fade away like that of all other men when it pleases God. Whatever may be the result of our enterprise, it must be for our good. If we are defeated, we shall ascend to heaven as martyrs; if we conquer, the glory of the Lord will be exalted, and the renown of all France, still more of the whole of Christendom, will be increased. It would be madness to suppose that God, who is all-wise, has raised me up in vain. In our cause He will see His own cause, His great cause. Let us fight for Christ, and Christ will triumph in us, not for us, but for the honour and glory of His blessed name.'
The disembarkation was then decided upon, and commenced on the following day. Large numbers of Saracens were seen upon the shore. The boat which carried the oriflamme was one of the first to reach the land. 'When the King heard that the standard of St. Denis had touched the shore, he walked along his ship with mighty strides, and, in spite of the dissuasions of the legate who was with him, he leaped into the sea to follow it, although the water was up to his shoulders, and he made his way through it to his people who were on the shore, with his shield before his breast, his helmet on his head, and lance in hand. When he had landed he saw the Saracens, and asked who they were. He was told that they were Saracens; whereupon he couched his lance, held his shield before him, and would have made a course against them at once had not some of his more prudent followers prevented it.' [Footnote 24]
[Footnote 24: Joinville, chap, xxxv.; Matthew Paris.]
The knights were no less impetuous than their king. As soon as the Crusaders were encamped on the shore, one of the knights, Gautier d'Autrèche, issued all armed from his tent, 'put spurs to his horse,' says Joinville, 'and galloped off against the Turks; but before reaching them he was thrown, and the horse trod upon him. Four Turks attacked him as he lay upon the ground, and as they rode past struck him heavy blows with their maces. The Constable of France and some of the King's troops rescued him, and carried him back to his tent. Late at night we went to see him, for he was a man of high repute and of great valour. His chamberlain came to meet us, and begged us to walk softly so as not to awaken his master. We found him lying upon a coverlid of miniver, and we went up to him very softly and saw that he was dead. When the King heard of it, he said that he would not have a thousand such knights even if he could, for they would all take their own way as this one had done, and pay no heed to his commands.'
Louis remembered at that moment that he was a king and must be obeyed, but he himself was the first to give way to transports of blind unreflecting valour, and the very devotion to his cause made him continually forget, not only the difficulty of success, but the first conditions of it. The whole campaign in Egypt was a series of heroic and irrational actions. At first the boldness of the Crusaders' attack and their brilliant courage struck terror to the hearts of the Mussulmans.They abandoned Damietta notwithstanding its great strength and importance, and the Crusaders took possession of it without difficulty. When the Turkish commander, Fakr Eddin, appeared before the Sultan of Egypt, who was very ill and at the point of death: 'Could you not have held out even for an hour?' said the monarch. 'Was there not one man amongst you who would give his life for the place?' When he saw the Crusaders established in Damietta he tried to dislodge them, by proposing to the King that on the day after St. John the Baptist's day, which was near at hand, there should be a general engagement in a place to be agreed on by both sides, so that the East and West might fairly try the fortune of war, and those to whom fate gave the victory might have great glory, while the vanquished should retreat with due humility. 'Our lord the King answered, "I do not defy the enemy of Christ more on one day than on another; I do not fix any time when I shall rest; but I defy him now and always, to-morrow and all the days of my life, unless he takes pity upon his own soul and believes on our Lord Jesus Christ, who wishes that all men should be saved, and opens His compassionate heart to all those who turn to Him."'
The Sultan still prolonged his attempts at negotiation, and sent to ask the King, 'Why have you brought ploughs, spades, and other implements wherewith to cultivate a land which is ours? I could have given you quite enough wheat for the time that you will be here.' As if to say ironically, 'You are young and delicate, and will not remain here long.'To which the King answered, 'I made a vow and took an oath to come hither, and as far as it was in my power I fixed a time for my arrival, but I have neither made a vow nor taken an oath to return, nor have I fixed any time for my departure. That is why I brought agricultural implements with me.'
There were the same delays and loss of time in Damietta as there had been in Cyprus. The army waited for the arrival of new Crusaders, and whilst waiting they quarrelled over the booty taken in the city, consuming and wasting it without forethought; they fell into all kinds of excesses, which Louis saw and mourned over, but had not the power to repress. 'The barons began to give sumptuous banquets,' says Joinville, 'with great profusion of dishes, and the common soldiers gave themselves up to low debauchery; and it was for this reason that, when we returned from captivity, the King dismissed nearly all his attendants. When I asked him why he had taken such a step, he told me that he knew for certain that the men whom he had dismissed had kept places of ill fame within a stone's throw of his own tent, and that at a time when the army was enduring greater hardships and misery than it had ever known.'
At length, on the 20th of November, after five months of inactivity in Damietta, the army resumed its march: it had received important reinforcements from Europe; among others it had been joined by Alphonse, Count of Poitiers, one of the brothers of the King, and his suite; there was also a strong force of English crusaders just returned from Palestine, whither they had gone at first. Queen Margaret and many pilgrims were left at Damietta under the charge of five hundred chosen knights.There was no port at Damietta, and therefore many prudent leaders urged the seizure of Alexandria, so as to obtain a seaport before proceeding further; but, in opposition to their advice, it was decided that the army should march direct uponBabylon, that suburb of Cairo now known as 'Old Cairo,' which in their ignorance the majority of the Crusaders believed to be the true Babylon, and in which they hoped to find vast treasures and to avenge the ancient wrongs of the Hebrew captives. 'It is the head of the whole kingdom of Egypt,' said the Count of Artois, the impetuous brother of the King, 'and he who would destroy the serpent entirely must crush its head.' But the Mussulmans had now had time to recover from their first panic. They had reassembled their forces and prepared a vigorous resistance at all points; every day, at every step, the Crusaders were exposed to sudden attacks, and were assailed by instruments of war hitherto unknown to them. Louis was grievously disquieted. 'Every time,' says Joinville, 'that our holy king heard that the Saracens were throwing Greek fire, he would cast himself upon his couch and stretch out his hands towards the crucifix, saying, "Dear Lord God, take care of my people, keep them for me!" But his people would not take care of themselves, and the wisest counsels could not influence them so much as the impulsive ardour of the Count of Artois. On the 8th of February, 1250, twenty leagues from Damietta, at a place called Mansourah (or the City of Victory), which stands on the right bank of the Nile, the battle began.There was at first a promise of brilliant success for the Christians, but dissension arose between the Count of Artois and William of Sonnac, the Grand Master of the Templars: the latter wished to wait until the King and the bulk of the army came up, so that they might push their victory to the uttermost. 'At all events,' he said, 'it is to the Templars that the King has assigned the front rank on the march, and Count Robert's place is behind them.' Whilst this dispute was going on, an old tutor of the prince, called Foucault de Merle, who was deaf, and understood nothing that was being said, seized the bridle of Robert's horse and urged him onward, shouting, 'Forward, forward!' Robert turned to the Grand Master, and said that if he was afraid he could stay behind. 'Neither I nor my brethren are afraid,' answered William of Sonnac, 'we will not stay behind, we will go with you, but I greatly doubt whether any of us will ever return.' William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, the chief of the English crusaders, also put forward a few objections, but the Count of Artois replied to them with insults. 'Count Robert,' said William, 'I shall face danger and death without any fear, and we shall soon be in a place where you will not venture to come near my horse's tail.'
A messenger now arrived, saying that the King commanded his brother to wait for him. But Robert did not heed this, and galloped forward so as to be the first to enter Mansourah, followed by all those who had attempted to dissuade him. The Saracens, thinking that the whole Christian army was upon them, fled from the place; soon, however, they began to rally, especially the Mamelukes, a force consisting of Turkish slaves, and the chief strength of the Egyptian army; they rushed back into Mansourah and attacked the Christians, who were now broken up into small groups and scattered in all directions.The Count of Artois fell, covered with many wounds, and with him more than three hundred knights, his followers; the same number of English knights, with their leader, William Longsword, as also two hundred and eighty Templars, paid with their lives for the intemperate zeal of the French prince.
The King hastened to the support of his brother, but before he reached him or knew his fate he was himself surrounded by a host of Saracens, and he and his suite were engaged in a fresh and exciting scene of action. 'Never,' says Joinville, 'have I beheld so noble a knight; he was seen above all the rest, for he was taller by the whole head and shoulders; he had a gilded helmet on his head and a long German sword in his hand.' The combat grew so fierce that Louis was for a moment separated from his companions, and on the point of being taken prisoner by six Saracens, who had already seized his horse's bridle; he freed himself by some tremendous sword strokes, and was immediately surrounded by his knights, who had rushed to his rescue in alarm and fury. 'It is said,' writes Joinville, 'we should all have been lost on that day if the King had not been there in person.'
The Saracens began to give way: one of the knights of Malta, Henry of Ronnay, approached the King. Louis asked him if he had news of the Count of Artois, his brother; the knight answered that he had great news, for he was certain that the Count of Artois was in Paradise. 'Ah, sire!' he added, 'be of good comfort, for never King of France attained to such honours as you have done; you have crossed a dangerous river to meet your enemies, and have defeated them and put them to flight.You have captured their engines of war and their tents, and this night you will sleep in their quarters.' 'And the King answered, "that we ought to praise God for all His good gifts," and great tears fell from his eyes.'
All those who were engaged in this great struggle were as deeply affected as the King, but they did not all show such pious sorrow. In the heat of the tumult, 'Seneschal,' said the Comte of Soissons to Joinville, 'let these curs howl on, but,par la Coiffe-Dieu—his usual oath—we shall yet tell of this day in the ladies' bowers.'
Although the Crusaders held possession of the field of battle, they did not occupy it as victors: their losses had been heavy and memorable; the enemy hovered on all sides of them, and increased in number and audacity from hour to hour. On Friday, the 11th of February, three days after the battle of Mansourah, the King's camp was attacked by a swarm of Saracens, mounted and on foot. 'When they approached our army they began to throw bolts and darts, and to hurl stones according to their custom, and they fell so thick and fast that many of those present said they had never seen a heavier hail-storm. It was easy to see that these men had no fear of death, and held their lives cheap. When some were tired, others, fresh and eager, took their places. To me they did not seem like men, but more like savage wild beasts.' The Crusaders defended themselves heroically, sometimes entrenched behind their palisades, at others rushing forth to scatter their assailants. Louis was always to be found at the point of greatest danger. 'He was never of sad countenance, nor timorous, nor dismayed, and his face showed very clearly that there was neither fear nor perturbation in his heart.'
The Saracens were driven back at all points; and at the close of the day, when his nobles were gathered around him, the King said: 'We owe hearty thanks to our Lord for what He has done for us twice during this week; such great honour, that on Tuesday, the day before Lent, we drove the infidels from their camp, which we now occupy, and on the Friday following, the day just ended, we have defended ourselves against them, although we were on foot, whilst they were mounted.' [Footnote 25]
[Footnote 25: Faure, vol. i. p. 561; Joinville, chap. liv.]
But the most exalted virtues cannot compensate for the want of prudence and forethought, and neither great valour nor devout trust in God can remedy the defects of an ill-timed and badly-planned enterprise. When Louis rushed into his crusade he had not duly considered his own position and his strength, nor had he taken into account the difficulties and chances of the enterprise. He was not a victorious barbarian like Tchinggis Khan, overrunning and laying waste the whole world at the head of a wandering nation. Nor was he an adventurer-king like Richard Cœur-de-Lion, engrossed by his own pleasure and glory. In the middle of the thirteenth century the Crusades were no longer the objects of popular and universal interest throughout Christendom as they had been at the end of the eleventh. They had lost the seduction of novelty and the illusion of success.The crusades of Louis le Jeune and Philippe-Auguste had both failed; the Christian kingdom had disappeared from Jerusalem, and at Constantinople the Latin Empire was falling into ruin. When Louis left Damietta to conquer Egypt he was at the head of from 30,000 to 40,000 men, knights and soldiers, but a campaign of two months and two battles had sufficed to reduce this army to such an extent that from the 11th of February, 1250, king and nobles hoped for no more than to defend themselves against their enemies. Sickness and want of provisions soon augmented the difficulties of their situation; each day the Christian camp was more and more encumbered by the starving, the dying, and the dead: the necessity of retreat was evident to all. There was now a new Sultan, Malek-Moaddam, with whom Louis opened negotiations, offering to evacuate Egypt and give up Damietta provided that the kingdom of Jerusalem was restored to the Christians, and his army allowed to retreat unmolested. The Sultan seemed inclined to entertain this proposal, and asked what security the King would give him for the surrender of Damietta. Louis offered one of his brothers as a hostage. The Mussulman demanded the King himself. With one voice the whole army protested: 'We would rather,' said Geoffrey of Sargines, 'have been all slain or taken prisoners than have endured the reproach of having left our King in pawn.' The Sultan broke off all negotiations; and on the 5th of April, 1250, the Crusaders decided on a retreat.
It was at this time that all the virtues of the Christian were shown in their noblest and most attractive form in the King. Before the departure of he army, and whilst disease and famine were ravaging the camp, he went about to visit, to console, and to tend the sufferers; his presence and his words exercised a subtle influence over the sick and desponding. One day he had sent his chaplain Guillaume de Chartres to visit one of his personal attendants, a very worthy and humble man, named Gaugelme, who was at the point of death. As the chaplain was leaving—'I am waiting until my lord our holy King comes,' said the dying man: 'I cannot leave this world until I have seen him and spoken to him; then I shall die.' So the King went to see his servant, and spoke to him with much affection, and consoled him. He had only just left him, and had not reached his own tent, when he was told that Gaugelme was dead.
When the 5th of April arrived, the day fixed for the retreat, Louis himself was ill and very weak. He was urged to embark in one of the boats which was to sail slowly down the Nile carrying the wounded and those who were dangerously ill; but he refused peremptorily, saying, 'I will not be separated from my people in the hour of danger.' He remained on shore, and when the time came for starting he fainted several times from exhaustion. 'They called to us as we were sailing down the river,' says Joinville, 'to say that we must wait for the King.' But Louis persisted in his resolve; he was one of the last to leave the camp, mounted on a small Arab horse covered with silk housings; he accompanied the rear-guard, watched over by Geoffrey of Sargines, who was by his side, and 'defended me against the Saracens,' said Louis himself to Joinville, 'like a good servant who drives off the flies from his master's winecup.'
But the courage of the King and the devotion of his faithful followers could not even enable them to make good their retreat. About four leagues from the camp which they had just left, in a village situated on a slight eminence where it was still possible to attempt a defence, the rear-guard of the Crusaders, pressed, harassed, surrounded by Saracen troops, was compelled to halt. Louis could no longer sit upon his horse. 'They carried him into a house,' says Joinville, 'and laid him down almost dead, and a citizen's wife from Paris took his head upon her knees; they did not believe that he would last until evening.' With his consent one of his faithful followers went out to parley with one of the Mussulman chiefs: a truce was about to be concluded, and the Mussulman was in the act of taking the ring off his finger as a pledge that he would keep it; 'but meantime,' says Joinville, 'a very great misfortune befell us, for a vile traitor of a sergeant, whose name was Marcel, began shouting out to our people, "Sir knights, give up your arms, the King commands it; do not cause your King to be slain." And so, believing that the King had commanded it, they gave up their swords to the Saracens.' Being made prisoners, the King and all the rear-guard were now taken back to Mansourah. The King was put on board a boat; his two brothers, the Counts of Poitiers and Anjou, with all the other Crusaders, were bound with cords, and followed in a great troop marching on foot along the banks of the river.
The vanguard and all the rest of the army—those who, like Joinville, were sailing down the Nile, and those who travelled by land—soon met with the same fate. 'We thought it better,' says Joinville, 'to surrender to the Sultan's galleys, because then we had a chance of keeping together, than to surrender to the Saracens on the shore, who would have separated us, and sold us to the Bedouins. An old quartermaster said, "Sire, I can't swallow this advice." I asked him what he would like better, and he said, "To my mind it would be much better if we were all slain, for then we should go to Paradise." But we did not agree with him.'
All the prisoners were collected at Mansourah—more than ten thousand in number, says Joinville. And here the King met with fresh trials, and we have again to record his heroic Christian deeds. He was a prisoner, and was at first loaded with chains; he was so ill and weak that he could not stand: his teeth chattered, his face was pallid and covered with sores, and he was so thin that his bones seemed as if they would start through his skin. All his clothes were lost, and he had nothing but just one green surtout which a poor fellow in his service stripped off and gave to him; he had but one attendant left, a man named Ysambert, who cooked for him, dressed and undressed him, even carried him about, and this man says that never did he see the King angry or cast down, or complaining: on the contrary, he bore his own sufferings and the adversity of his followers with great patience, and prayed without ceasing. His fervent and unwearied piety excited the respect of the Mussulmans, and one of them brought him his Breviary, which had been lost at his capture. Louis received it with great joy, and at once resumed his observance of the services of the Catholic Church.The Sultan, Malek-Moaddam, freed him from his fetters and put an end to all his privations; he even treated him with a certain magnanimity; but at the same time he asked as the price of a truce and his liberty the immediate surrender of Damietta, a heavy ransom, and the restitution of several places in Palestine still held by the Christians. The Sultan would have liked to treat separately with all the principal Crusaders, in the hope of setting them at variance, and he therefore addressed the same demands to all of them. Louis forbade his followers to enter into any private negotiations, saying that it was for him alone to make terms for all of them, and that he would pay for all. The Sultan sent word to the Christian chiefs that he would have them beheaded if they refused his demands; but they all obeyed the King's injunction. Louis on his side answered that the places which he was called upon to surrender were not his; some of them belonged to foreign princes, who alone had any right to dispose of them, and others to the religious orders, Templars and Hospitallers, who had taken an oath never to surrender them for the ransom of any one, let him be whom he might.
The Sultan was surprised and annoyed. He threatened to put the King to the torture, or send him to the Grand Khalif of Bagdad, who would keep him in prison for the rest of his life. 'I am your prisoner,' said Louis; 'you can do with me as you will.'
'We are greatly astonished,' said the Mussulman. 'You say that you are our prisoner, and we had indeed thought so; but you treat us as if we were held captives by you.' The Sultan understood that he had to deal with a man of indomitable will, and the negotiations were therefore restricted to arrangements for the ransom and the surrender of Damietta. Louis was asked 500,000 livres [Footnote 26] (about £405,280 of our money) as the price of his liberty. 'I will gladly pay 500,000 livres as the ransom of my followers,' said he, 'and I will restore Damietta in return for my own liberty, for I am not a man who can be redeemed with gold.'
[Footnote 26: It is probable that the livre spoken of is the livre Tournois, and, according to M. de Wailly, this would be a sum of about 10,132,000 francs in modern French money.]
'By my faith,' said the Sultan, when he heard this, 'the Frank is a fine fellow not to higgle over such a sum of money. Go back, and tell him that I will give him 100,000 livres to help him pay the ransom.'
The negotiations were concluded on this basis: victors and vanquished left Mansourah, and travelling some by land and others down the river Nile, they arrived within a few leagues of Damietta. There, for the first time, the King and the Sultan had an interview; they decided on the manner in which the convention should be carried out, and appointed the 7th of May for the surrender of Damietta.
But on the 2d of May there was a great tumult in the Mussulman camp. Hurried movements and confused cries indicated some serious outbreak; Louis and his nobles waited anxiously, not knowing what was going on, or what the result would be to themselves. Suddenly several Mussulmans, Emirs of the Mamelukes, entered the King's tent, sword in hand, with an excited but not threatening aspect: they had just killed the Sultan Malek-Moaddam; he had incensed them, and they had been plotting against him for a long time.
'Fear nothing,' they said to Louis, with great deference, 'and, gentlemen, do not be alarmed. You need not be astonished at what has just taken place; there was no help for it. Fulfil your part of the treaty that has been made, and you shall soon be free.'
Then one of the Mameluke conspirators, Faress-Eddin-Octaï, who had just helped to kill the Sultan with his own hands, and to tear out his heart, entered the tent, sword in hand: 'What will you give me?' he said to the King, 'I have killed your enemy, who would have put you to death if he had lived;' and he then abruptly demanded that Louis should make him a knight. It was a very honourable title in the eyes of Orientals, and Saladin himself had been willing to receive it at the hands of one of his Christian prisoners. Louis answered nothing; several Crusaders around him urged him to gratify the wish of the Emir, with whom the decision of their fate now rested.
'I will never make a knight of an infidel,' said Louis. 'Let the Emir become a Christian, then I will take him back to France with me, and enrich him, and make him a knight.' At this the Mameluke withdrew in silence.
It has been said that the Mussulman conspirators, being puzzled in the choice of a new sovereign, and filled with admiration for the piety and resolution of Louis, which were equally indomitable, entertained the notion of making him their sultan. 'Do you think that I ought to have accepted the kingdom of Babylon [Footnote 27] if it had been offered me?' he once asked of Joinville. '"I answered," says Joinville, "that if he had he would have done a very foolish thing, seeing that they had just murdered their lord." Nevertheless, he said that he would not have refused it. And you must know that the project only failed because they said that the King was the haughtiest Christian ever known.'
[Footnote 27: See page 66, line 6: "Babylon, that suburb of Cairo now known as 'Old Cairo,'…"]
After three days of excitement and uncertainty in both camps, during which the Christians were at one moment threatened with a general massacre and the next treated with the greatest consideration, the negotiations were resumed and concluded, the terms being almost the same as those agreed upon by the King and the late Sultan. On the 5th of May, Louis with his nobles and the Mameluke chiefs had arrived before the walls of Damietta. There fresh dangers awaited them: some of the Saracens wanted to take possession of the town by force, and made an unsuccessful attempt to scale the walls; the Crusaders whom Louis had left to defend it, and at their head Queen Margaret, who had only just given birth to a son, hesitated to give the town back into the hands of the infidels. At every new difficulty and delay the Emir Faress-Eddin-Octaï, he whom Louis had refused to make a knight, said to the messengers who passed between, them, 'Tell the King from me that, so long as he is in our hands, he must not show in any way that this annoys him, or he is a dead man.' At length all the difficulties were removed, and the conditions agreed upon for the payment of the ransom and setting the Christian prisoners at liberty were fulfilled.
[Footnote 28 (unknown location on this page): Guillaume de Chartres; Bouquet's 'Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France,' vol. xx. p. 31; Joinville, chap. lxxii.]
On the morning of the 7th of May, 1250, Geoffrey of Sargines restored the keys to the Emirs; the Saracens rushed into the town in great disorder, and committed all kinds of acts of violence.
While the King was waiting on board his ship for the completion of the payment of the ransom for his brother the Count of Poitiers, a Saracen came up to him very well clad and a goodly man as to his person, and presented him with some jars of curdled milk and flowers of divers kinds, telling him that they were from the children of the Nazar [Footnote 29] of the former Sultan of Babylon. He spoke in French, and the King asked him where he had learnt it; upon which he answered that he had formerly been a Christian. Then the King said, 'Depart from me, for I will not speak another word to you.'
At length Louis saw a galley approaching in which he recognised his brother: 'Light up! light up!' he shouted to his sailors. It was the signal agreed upon for their departure, and leaving the shores of Egypt the whole Christian fleet set sail for the Holy Land.
[Footnote 29: Farmer-general Inspector. ]