The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

THE SEVENTH CRUSADE.

CHAPTER XLIII.
ST. LOUIS.

The news of the Carismian invasion of Palestine reduced Europe to a condition of panic. It came on the heels of other adversities, which had shaken the stoutest hearts. The Latin empire at Constantinople, as we have noted, was again on the verge of falling into the hands of the Greeks. The Tartars were ravaging the Danube, and threatening the domain of the Emperor Frederick II. Terror paralyzed trade, travel, and social intercourse everywhere; even in Italy and along the borders of France fear fed the imagination that an army of demi-demons was about to appear. The rustling of the woods, the soughing of the winds, forest fires, the dust raised by storms, strange cloud shapes on the horizon, were omens, if not the signs, of the advance of this horde let loose from hell. Pope Innocent IV. called a council at Lyons. In his opening address he spoke of the five wounds of the Saviour, which he likened to five griefs that afflicted him as the Vicegerent of Christ. These were the Tartar menace, the Greek schism, the Carismian conquest of Palestine, the relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline and progress of heresy, and, finally, as if it were the climax of the woes of Christendom, the obduracy of the Emperor Frederick II. in opposing the papal schemes. The Holy Father could weep over the wickedness of Tartars, Carismians, and Moslems, but he could only rage against Frederick. His spirit communicated itself to his prelates. Under his direction they passed resolutions advising the Germans to dig trenches and build walls against the Tartars; they also calmly proposed a crusade against the Infidels; but, with more evidence of deep feeling, they bent to the floor, dashed out the lights of their candles, and repeated with sepulchral voices the amen to the papal anathema of the foremost Christian monarch in the world. The Pope’s fulmination concluded with these words: “I forbid any, under pain of excommunication, to henceforth yield him obedience. I command the electors to elect another emperor, and I reserve to myself the right of disposing of his kingdom of Sicily.” This was the glory of the so-called Ecumenical Council of Lyons.

Frederick, on hearing of the outrage perpetrated upon him, called for his crown, and, placing it upon his head, exclaimed; “There it is; and before it shall be wrested from me my enemies shall know the terror of my arms. Let this pontiff tremble, who has broken every tie that bound me to him.” From that day, as history shows, the popes lost power ever again to lead united Europe.

But for the pious zeal of one man, it is not probable that another crusading host would ever have set out against the Moslem.

The hero of the seventh crusade was Louis IX., the “Good St. Louis” of France. He was the son of Louis VIII., who, Guizot says, “added to the history of France no glory, save that of having been the son of Philip Augustus, the husband of Blanche of Castile, and the father of St. Louis.”

Blanche of Castile was a woman remarkable for her personal beauty and queenly bearing. She knew how to unite dignity of mien and elegance of estate with that suavity which wins the hearts of all. According to a contemporary, Matthew Paris, she was “the most discreet woman of her time, with a mind singularly quick and penetrating, and with a man’s heart to leaven her woman’s sex and ideas; personally magnanimous, of indomitable energy, sovereign mistress in all the affairs of her age, worthy to be compared with Semiramis, the most eminent of her sex.” The only weakness remembered of Queen Blanche was one which might be attributed to the intensity of her maternal affection. She was rudely jealous of Marguerite when the latter became wife of her son Louis, and resented the least absorption of her son’s attention and love. She was possessed of decided ability for government, and at the death of her husband, Louis VIII. (1226), assumed the direction of affairs as the guardian of her son, then a lad of eleven years.

Louis IX. is described as very handsome, his features of almost feminine delicacy, his hair light, long, and flowing. He was extremely courteous, gentle, and companionable. One might have suspected weakness from the softness of his manners, until it was observed that he maintained the same quiet demeanor while shrewdly watching the chicanery of the court and while planning the most warlike and desperate expeditions against his foes. When La Marche rebelled and insulted his Majesty, Louis made no retort, but deliberated regarding him with his counsellors without apparent resentment, and laid plans so shrewd and far-reaching that they conquered both the rebel’s arms and hatred. The kings of France had always been at variance, often at swords’ points, with the great feudal barons of the realm; but in 1243 Louis made such arrangement with them as won their complete fidelity.

The moral qualities of Louis IX., as well as his repute for sound judgment, led to his selection by foreigners to arbitrate their disputes, as when Henry III. of England and his barons submitted their differences to the French king’s opinion. He was by impulse and principle a philanthropist, loving the people of all conditions. The sick domestics of the palace were often nursed by the royal hand. Wherever he went his servants were ordered to distribute sufficient money to provide for the needs of one hundred poor persons, that the people might not feel the shadow of royalty without its sunshine. The chroniclers delight in picturing the monarch under the broad tree, listening to the complaints of a crowd of his humblest subjects. That justice and mercy might extend beyond his personal supervision, he appointed “restitution offices,” where the best of men granted rehearing of any case in which a worsted litigant deemed himself injured by the letter of the law. This, perhaps, is the first institution in the spirit of our modern courts of equity. During an illness, in which he thought he might die, he summoned his son Louis and said, “Fair son, I pray thee make thyself beloved of the people of thy kingdom, for verily I would rather a Scot should come and govern our people well and loyally than have thee govern them ill.”

The piety of Louis shone in his care of religious houses and in the establishment of hospitals, especially for leprosy, a disease which was brought into Europe by pilgrims returning from the East. Churches were multiplied and ornamented, for, said the monarch, “the most sure means to avoid perishing like the impious is to love and enrich the place in which dwells the glory of the Lord.”

It is not to the discredit of the personal character of Louis IX. that he was not entirely free from the bigotry and superstition of his age. He treated heresy as of the nature of rebellion, and did not stay the heavy hand of persecution in some instances. He especially revered relics. When a nail, which was believed to have been one of those that pierced the hands of Jesus, was temporarily missing from its casket, he cried, “I would rather that the best city in my kingdom had been swallowed up in the earth.” With joy he paid a large price to Baldwin II., the Latin King of Constantinople, for our Saviour’s crown of thorns. The “Holy Chapel,” which he built to shield the precious relics, still remains one of the finest monuments of mediæval times. In private life Louis would have preferred the daily routine of a monk to the diversions of the court. He prided himself on the hard haircloth worn next his skin as a token of perpetual humility more than he cared for his royal robe. At his waist hung, instead of silken tassels, a scourge of iron chains, which drew blood from his back once a week. He never laughed on a Friday. Except where the dignity of his throne required public defence, Louis scarcely maintained his royal self-respect, so meek did he try to be. A common woman once brazenly said to him, “You are unfit for a king of France, fit only to be a king of monks and priests.” Louis humbly replied, “You say the truth,” and with a smile gave her a handful of money.

As early as 1239, when Louis IX. was twenty-four years of age, he manifested great zeal for the crusades, and sent Amaury de Montfort to fight as his personal representative on the field. Five years later (1244) he was afflicted with such serious illness that at one moment he was believed to be dead. The watchers were startled by his sepulchral voice: “He, by God’s grace, hath visited me—He who cometh from on high hath recalled me from among the dead.” Reviving from his swoon, he bade the Bishop of Paris place upon his shoulder the cross of the voyage over the sea. Three years passed, during which he seemingly forgot the vow, but an incident proved that the holy enthusiasm still burned in his heart. Allusion being made one day to the cross he wore as having been assumed at a moment when he was of wavering mind through bodily weakness, the king instantly undid the emblem from his shoulder and gave it to the Bishop of Paris; he then added, “Now assuredly I am in my senses. He that knoweth all things knoweth that until that cross is replaced upon my shoulder no food shall enter my lips.”

At this time Pope Innocent IV. was attempting to arouse Europe to a new crusade, but since his greater zeal was for a crusade against Frederick II., the holy war lacked recruits. Germany was in the midst of the civil dissension which Innocent had stirred up by acknowledging his subservient tool, Henry, Landgrave of Hesse, as emperor. Italy was rent with the contention between Guelph and Ghibelline, fostered by the same mistaken judgment of Innocent. England was at war with Scotland and Wales. Frederick II., in order to avert the thickening disasters from his realm, proposed to personally abdicate the imperial throne in favor of his son Conrad, and himself to lead an army to Palestine, with an oath never to return, if even this personal sacrifice would appease the papal resentment. Louis IX. besought the Holy Father to accede to this proposal and to assume a different attitude towards a Christian monarch, but Innocent was obdurate to all entreaties. The church of Christ was ruled by the hatred and wrath of one who, above all men, should have remembered the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The penalty of breaking the precepts of human wisdom and divine charity at length fell upon him. The Pope lost the sympathy of the kingdoms; even the French nobles, though jealous of Germany, formed a league for their defence against papal encroachments. This, if not the origin of, greatly favored the movement for Gallican liberties, which has continued ever since.

Louis IX. took upon himself the duty of leading the crusade; he convoked a parliament of the dignitaries of his realm, and by his eloquence moved the princes and nobles to follow his example. His queen, Marguerite, with many of her proudest ladies, assumed the cross. Among the warriors was the Prince de Joinville, the endeared companion and adviser of the king, to whose prolific and graceful pen the world is indebted for the history of Louis’s time and personal adventures. Those who did not at once volunteer to join the crusade were variously persuaded by the zeal of the monarch. It was the custom for the French kings at certain solemnities to present their courtiers with mantles, which they put on in his presence and wore afterwards as the sign of royal favor. Louis observed the custom on Christmas eve. As the guests marched from the shaded robing-room to the lighted chapel they were amazed to discover the cross of voyage sewed upon every man’s shoulder. The courtiers laughed at the joke perpetrated upon them, but, feeling its significance, yielded to the royal will and honored their investment by taking the crusaders’ vow.

The example of the king affected the entire population. In every village was seen the procession of volunteers seeking the blessing of the altar and enrolling themselves under their lords. Whole territories were thus stripped of their defenders and even of the tillers of the soil; rising arts were bereft of their workmen. France was despoiling itself for the sake of an idea. Modern utilitarianism may deride it, but our sentiment applauds where our judgment condemns. It was indeed still the “age of faith.”

In June, 1248, Louis took up the pilgrim staff together with the oriflamme of France. He left the kingdom to the care of his mother, Blanche, and with his wife set out upon what proved to be one of the most romantic and tragic of adventures. At Lyons he made confession to the Pope, whom he again unavailingly entreated to be at peace with Frederick. As the cavalcade was nearing Avignon his men were assaulted, and begged to be permitted to avenge the insult by an attack upon that city. “No,” replied the king; “I go from France not to avenge my own injuries, but those of my Lord Jesus Christ.” At Marseilles a similar outrage occurred. The king refused to retaliate, saying, “God forbid that Satan should prevail, for he is angered at our expedition and is seeking to put obstacles in the way.”

In August he set sail from Aigues-Mortes, a place he had purchased and in whose harbor he had prepared his fleet; he here diminished his host by discharging with abundant recompense all such as he deemed not of the right sort either in character or pious purpose. As the French had no experience in navigation, the movement of the fleet was committed to Genoese captains. Joinville’s experience will be appreciated by many landsmen: “A great fool is he who, having any sin on his soul, places himself in such danger; for if he goes to sleep at night he cannot be certain he shall not find himself at the bottom of the sea in the morning.” Landing in Cyprus, the expedition was warmly received by the king of the island, but found scanty supply of provisions. Louis appealed to the Venetians, who sent him much corn and wine. Frederick II., learning of the crusaders’ need, also sent supplies. Louis replied with thanks to the emperor, and sent another appeal to the Pope to forego his wrath upon so generous a friend to the cause of the Master; but it evoked no compassion in the relentless heart of the pontiff.

Louis was prevailed upon to spend the winter in Cyprus, under pledge of the Cypriotes to accompany him in the spring. Luxury brought relaxation of discipline and all its accompanying vices. This was followed by a pest, which caused the death of two hundred and fifty knights. During the winter there arrived an embassy of Tartars, who announced the conversion to Christianity of one of their great princes, and solicited alliance with the French. Louis apparently credited the story, and sent to the Tartar chief a scarlet tent, in the canvas of which were wrought in silken letters many texts of Scripture, which it was hoped might assist the convert’s meditation. The embassage proved to be a ruse—doubtless an attempt to spy out the destination and power of the crusaders.

A more significant overture was received from the Masters of the Templars and Hospitallers, who proposed, rather than war, to open negotiations with the Sultan of Cairo, who might be disposed to grant more than the Christians could wrest from him. This Louis regarded as an insult to his prowess and vow.

It had been determined to strike the enemy in Egypt. Of the wisdom of this project few were persuaded. The Arabian writers speak of it as showing an imbecile mind. Egypt was at this time governed by Negmeddin, son of Malek-Kamel, the conqueror of the Christians in their former attempt at Damietta. This chieftain had united in his hand all the Moslems from the Nile to the Euphrates. Aware of the plans of the coming invaders, he massed a great fleet to descend the Nile and meet the fleet of the Christians, and an army of commensurate proportions to guard the banks.

The crusaders sailed from Cyprus with eight hundred vessels; these carried not only warriors and implements of battle, but many artisans and vast material for establishing a colony, which project is regarded even by those who deprecate the military assault as showing the wide statesmanship of the French king. A storm scattered the fleet, driving many ships against the coast of Syria, and compelling Louis to return to Cyprus with the loss of half his armament.

A second attempt was more successful, and the fleet approached the walls of Damietta. Joinville dilates upon the magnificent spectacle: the sea covered for miles with the ships, whose topmasts gleamed with the sign of the cross; the mouth of the Nile guarded by the vessels of the Moslem; the shores lined with the multitude of warriors in various accoutrements, drawn from all the lands of the Infidel; the very sky resounding with their pagan cries and the noise of their trumpets and drums.

At break of the next day the French began the assault. Queen Marguerite’s bark was alone left at a distance, whence she might watch the fight. The knights stood, lance in hand, beside their horses on the broad barges, some of which were propelled by as many as three hundred rowers. At word of command the fleet seemed to be lifted by the innumerable oars and to be fairly hurled upon the shore. Before they could land the daylight became obscured with showers of arrows, javelins, and stones, that poured upon them from the banks. For a moment the fleet was retarded by the deluge of missiles that smote the rowers, but the king’s quick command redoubled their strokes. As the vessels grounded on the beach he himself led the assault, leaping into the sea shoulder-deep with sword in hand. The whole army emulated his heroism, and with the cry, “Montjoie! St. Denis!” plunged into the water. The attack was as when the sea itself assails the land with tidal wave. The Moslems were driven back. The crusaders completed their array on solid ground, but scarcely were they in battle order before the Moslem cavalry rode down upon them with the noise and speed of a sirocco from the neighboring desert. Amid the terrible mêlée Louis bent his knees a moment on the sands, anew giving himself to the will of Heaven, then dashed into the thickest of the fight. The shore ran with rills of blood, which incarnadined the sea. Steadily the oriflamme of France mounted the beach. The war-galleys made an equally furious assault upon the Moslem navy. With the impetuous ramming of the tough prows of the French vessels many a ship filled with Egyptian warriors was sent to the bottom. The cross gained the mouth of the river, up which its defenders fled. By nightfall the coast and both banks of the Nile had been gained, and under the stars of Egypt the Christian camp resounded with the Te Deum and shouts of victory.

The joy of the Christians was soon mingled with wonder. The horizon to the south of them suddenly seemed on fire. The scouts, approaching Damietta in the early dawn, discovered that its walls were like the crater of some vast volcano pouring up clouds of smoke shot through with flashes of flame. The gates of the town were wide open. Entering cautiously, they found the streets filled with newly slaughtered multitudes. It would seem that the panic of the Moslems had left them neither heart nor wit for the defence of their stronghold. In the blindness of their rage they had put to death multitudes of Christians, and the Christians, in the frenzy of their despair, had slain their Moslem neighbors. Fakr Eddin, the commandant, had given orders to fire the houses, mosques, and fortifications, consuming everything, that the crusaders might not profit by their victory.

The Christians upon entering the city found little spoil to tempt their rapacity, and were easily persuaded to celebrate their conquest with the services of religion. King Louis marched at the head of a grand procession to the great mosque, which they solemnly consecrated to the worship of the Virgin Mary. The Sultan of Cairo had been prevented by illness from personally taking part in the battle. He expressed his displeasure at the defeat of his soldiers by ordering the beheading of fifty-four men of the garrison of Damietta. But the display of vengeance upon the helpless could not restore his lost prestige in the presence of a gigantic enemy.

Queen Marguerite established her court in Damietta. The army encamped without the walls. All gave themselves up to enjoyment, as if a single defeat of the foe had been its annihilation. Instead of following up the advantage gained, it was determined to await the gathering of the ships scattered by the storm, and for the arrival of a French contingent under the king’s brother, who desired to also share in the conquest. Inaction produced the usual consequences in the camp. Vice reigned in the very proximity of the king’s quarters, which he was as powerless to prevent as monarchs of that age generally were to cleanse the slums that crept close to their palaces. The leaders fell to quarrelling over the scanty spoil of Damietta, and even disputed its possession by the sovereign. The soldiers robbed the traders who came into the camp, and soon prevented even the supply of comforts from this source. Foray parties brought in the Egyptian women they captured, and established harems, which had not even the screens of Oriental custom. The king’s authority fell into total disregard.

There was also strife between the English and the French. William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, excited jealousy by his impetuous and successful enterprises, in one of which he captured a stronghold near Alexandria, together with many women belonging to noble Egyptian families. In another raid he seized a richly laden caravan. The French disputed the possession of his booty. The Count d’Artois was especially envious of the renown of his fellow-warrior, and seized a portion of the spoil in the name of Louis. When the king hesitated to order its restoration, fearing to excite division in his immediate family, Earl William declared to the royal face, “You are not then a king, since you are not able to administer justice.” He left the camp and retired to Acre. The Count d’Artois added insult by exclaiming, “Now the army of the noble French is well purged of these tailed Englishmen”—alluding to a rumor that, as punishment for the murder of Thomas à Becket, the people of the British Isles had begun to develop the caudal appendage in proof that they were of “their father, the devil.”

During these dissensions the lines of the encampment were left without any systematic defence, and were constantly raided by parties of swift Bedouin riders, who made their assault as the sudden dust-clouds of Libya overwhelm the traveller and quickly disappear again in their kindred sands. Carismian adventurers were also lured by the sultan’s promise of a golden bezant for every Christian head, and half as much for a right hand, and a fifth for a foot. They dashed upon the detached groups, or stole secretly by night into the tents, and bore away their prize, leaving the mutilated bodies of the knights to tell of their deed. The sultan, Negmeddin, knowing that disease was hastening his end, redeemed the time by the incessant activity of his subalterns. Mansourah, at the junction of the branches of the Nile, soon presented the aspect of an impregnable circle of fortifications.

The arrival of the king’s brother, the Count of Poitiers, revived the martial ardor of the French; and it was decided to attack the Egyptian capital, Cairo, or Babylon (Babloon), as it was then called. The majority of the crusaders supposed this place to be the Babylon of the Scriptures, still stored with the immense riches of the ancients, and waiting for them to fulfil upon it the curses of the prophets. There was a rumor that certain renegade Moslems had already entered into a compact to deliver the citadel of Cairo to the advancing Christians. This report even reached Europe, where it was magnified into a detailed account of the capture of the Egyptian capital, and awakened universal joy, to be turned into mourning as the news of the real events arrived.

Negmeddin, Sultan of Cairo, died, but the event was kept secret within the citadel, while Chegger-Eddour, the favorite sultana, issued orders as if her husband were living, until the new sultan, Almoadam Turan Shan, had securely gripped the reins of power.

Meanwhile the French were advancing. On December 19th they reached the canal Aschmoun, a deep and broad stream, which could be crossed only by the crusaders building a causeway. As fast as this work extended into the stream the Moslems dug away the opposite bank, and so each day left the canal of unlessened width. The Infidels massed across the canal; their fleet waited in the Nile above. The Christians were forced to make their camp at Mansourah, on the identical site of the terrible disaster thirty years before.

But neither the memories of the spot which monumented the fatal end of the previous crusade, nor the evidences of danger which they saw on every side, could subdue the gayety for which the French even in that age were proverbial. When a knight of rank was being buried his companions interrupted the chanting of the mass for the repose of his soul by their bantering as to which of them was most apt to win the hand of his widow. Joinville notes the punishment that followed this irreverence, in that all of this company perished in the very next battle, and that not one of their widows respected the memory of her husband sufficiently to remain long without marrying one of his better-behaved comrades. On this old battle-ground the crusaders were incessantly assailed with missiles and with Greek fire, whose huge balls, exploding with tremendous detonations, scattered danger far and wide, and destroyed the wooden towers and engines of the French as fast as they could be constructed.

A ford was opportunely discovered not far distant; the French marched by night and prepared to wade the stream at daybreak. Robert, Count d’Artois, the king’s brother, begged the honor of crossing first. He promised to wait on the farther bank until the whole army was with him, but the flight of an opposing band of Moslems was too much for the hot head of this youth. In vain did the experienced Masters of the Templars and Hospitallers protest against the foolhardiness of pursuing the retreating band into the very midst of their fortifications and hosts. The Count d’Artois replied with taunts, impugning the loyalty and courage of the older warriors: “They fear that if the country be conquered their domination will cease.” This was too much for the self-restraint of the most cautious. “Raise, then, the banner!” cried the Master of the Templars. William Longsword still remonstrated. The Count d’Artois replied, “What cowardice in these long-tailed English!” To which the Englishman made equal bravado: “We shall be to-day where you will not dare to touch my horse’s tail.” With that all dashed ahead for the desperate assault. The Moslems could not at first withstand this impetuous charge. Fakr Eddin was surprised half dressed, and while endeavoring to rally his troops was slain. On swept the victors, driving the enemy over the plain and following them into Mansourah.

But a keen-eyed leader had taken the place of the fallen Fakr Eddin. Bibars Bendoctar, captain of the Mamelukes, quickly checked the flight, and by skilful manœuvring surrounded the city of Mansourah before the Christians could emerge from its gates. Thus the victors were imprisoned within the walls they had conquered. The main body of Christians, delayed in the crossing, at length followed after their comrades, not knowing of their unhappy fate. Without orderly array they spread over the field; a thousand battles were fought instead of one, as band after band met the scattered detachments of the enemy. Before the Christians could plan their engagement Bibars had collected an orderly force and was upon them. Riding through their disconnected ranks, he steadily pressed the slaughter-line back to the canal. The water was reddened with the blood of the wounded and soon covered with the bodies of the drowned. Louis, unable to issue commands that could be heard, set a splendid example of heroism by dashing with his squires into the thickest ranks of the foe. He so far outstripped his quickest attendants that he soon found himself alone, surrounded by six stalwart Moslems, who endeavored to capture him, his royal person being revealed by his gorgeous uniform. With great strength and skill, which his countrymen have never ceased to celebrate, he extricated himself from the danger and, joined by his guards, led the army in a resistless charge. Their valor saved that day.

But alas for those in Mansourah! For five hours this valiant but deluded band stood in the streets, fighting in vain for their lives. Almost the entire vanguard of fifteen hundred perished. England mourned William Longsword, whose death, according to the chronicle, was announced at the very moment to his mother by a vision of her son, a triumphant knight, entering heaven. The bravery of Longsword so impressed his enemies that they carefully marked his grave and in after years restored his body to his kinspeople. France lost the royal brother, Count d’Artois, who, the English say, attempted to escape by casting himself into the Nile. The Hospitallers left their Grand Master a prisoner. The Templars watched long that night before they beheld their leader returning to their camp covered with wounds and rags. Joinville, who narrates the events of that fatal day, consoled his king by showing him his own five ghastly wounds. The Christians were victorious if victory is proved solely by possession of the field.

Three days later Bibars reappeared; his army stretched from the canal to the river. Another day of terrible havoc followed. At nightfall the Christians had maintained their ground, but their losses were equal to a fresh defeat. The records of nearly all the great families of France are starred by the dead who represented them that night as they lay unburied on the plain of Mansourah.

Discretion suggested the retreat of the remnant of the crusaders to Damietta, but desperation took counsel only of its battle-heated blood. They determined to remain and hold the ground so dearly won. It was an unwise decision. While the human enemy was unable to resume the attack, a more fearful one stalked visibly among them. The multitude of dead bodies which covered the land and water quickly putrefied and bred pestilence. The picture of a knight walking days and nights along the canal, exposed to the fetid death-vapors while he searched among the corpses for his master, Robert d’Artois, might be an allegory of France itself as she moaned and waited for thousands of her sons who would never return. Those who survived were attacked by a virulent disease, which Joinville thus describes: “The flesh of our legs dried away to the bone, and our skins became of black or earth color, like an old saddle which has been a long time laid aside.” The fish of the Nile had become poisonous from feeding upon the dead bodies, and putrefied the mouths of those who ate them. “It became necessary for the barbers to cut out the swollen flesh of the gums of all who were afflicted with this disease so that they could not eat, but went about in the army crying and moaning.” So decimated were the ranks that grooms took the places of knights, not waiting for chivalric ceremonies, and put on the noble armor they had been accustomed to clean. There were not enough priests left alive to shrive the dying. King Louis gave himself up to nursing the sick and consoling their last hours until he himself was prostrated by the epidemic. The crusaders watched in anxiety by his cot what they feared would be the extinction of their last hope.

The Moslems, keeping at a safe distance from this death-beleaguered camp, added famine to the other horrors by cutting off supplies. They lay in wait for vessels laden with provisions from Europe, and seized them as they were ascending the Nile. At length almost the entire Christian fleet was captured. Louis was thus reduced to making proposals to abandon Egypt on condition of the restoration of Jerusalem to Christian rule. The sultan agreed, provided the king himself should be surrendered to him as a hostage until the last European had left the country. Louis consented, but the warriors refused to accede to what they deemed the disgraceful terms of putting in pawn their king. Nothing remained but an attempt to return to Damietta.

This retreat of the Christians was fraught with miseries which baffle description. The women, the children, and the sick were stowed in the few boats that remained, and in the darkness of night drifted down the stream. The soldiers took up their perilous march along the banks. Some of the nobles, together with the papal legate, having secured a vessel, urged the king to embark. He refused, being determined, as he declared, to tramp with the last man that survived. The camp they were leaving was quickly assailed by the Moslems, who went through it slaughtering all they could find. Louis turned back and fought with the desperation of a tigress protecting her young. The cry, “Wait for the king!” rang along the banks, and the vessels stopped; but Louis forbade any to loiter. At length the rear-guard was in motion. The king was provided with a horse, and, without helmet or cuirass, arrayed only with his sword and surrounded by a handful of braves, brought up the rear of a mighty funeral procession, in which the living were moving to their own graves. The king afterwards spoke of the heroic fidelity of one of his attendants, Geoffrey de Sargines, “who protected me against the Saracens as a good servant protects his lord’s tankard against the flies.” The cortège—it was such rather than an army—moved along roads lined with the dead and dying. Horrible cries startled them on every side. Peering through the darkness, they saw the forms of comrades often deprived of hands and feet.

As birds of prey follow the traveller in the desert and sometimes do not wait until he is dead before they attack his languishing form, so the Moslems pursued the band which they knew to be foredoomed to perish, and hastened the end by their murderous assault. Those who had embarked on boats met with a disaster equal to that of those who trudged on land. The enemy’s fleet stopped them near Mehallah. The Christian boats were huddled together so that they could not move. The crusaders could scarcely find foot room on the crowded decks; the Mussulman archers on the shore poured upon them a storm of arrows, many of which were tipped with the Greek fire. The Christians on the ships were no longer soldiers, but victims of slaughter.

On the land it was the same. The king, weak unto death, was defended by the little band about him. They brought him into a house in the town of Menieh; within doors a tradeswoman from Paris held the royal head in her lap, as was supposed, watching him die. Without in the streets brave men laid down their lives in a last effort to save even their king’s body, but their heroic devotion served only to emblazon itself on this darkest page of the history of the crusades. Louis was taken by the foe and loaded with chains, but he felt more weightily the shame of being the first king of France ever a prisoner in the hands of a foreign enemy. Joinville, who tells the story, was dragged to a neighboring house, and would have been slain but that a little child clung to him and, by this double appeal of helplessness, excited the interposition of one whom he calls “the good Saracen.”

The Moslems returned to Mansourah in triumph. They dressed their fleet in utmost gayety as it bore the person of their royal captive. Their armies marched on either bank of the Nile, escorting the Christian survivors, who were driven along with their hands bound behind their backs.

Queen Marguerite was at Damietta, already entering the pains of childbed. Ordering all to leave her chamber but an aged knight, she said to him, “I require you, on the faith you have pledged to me, that if the enemy shall take this city you will cut off my head rather than allow me to become a captive.” “Certainly, madam, I will do it,” he replied. The queen gave birth to a son, whom she called Jean Tristan, because of the sorrows that begirt his birth. Learning that the remnant of the city guard proposed abandoning Damietta, she forbade it as involving additional disgrace. “Be moved by my tears,” she cried, “and have pity on the poor child whom you see lying on my bosom.” The attitude of this heroine saved the city, the last spot of Christian possession in the land they had come to conquer.

Louis languished in prison. He had no clothing but a coarse cassock, which a fellow-prisoner had taken from his own person. Even the Moslems who guarded him afterwards expressed their reverence for the piety the captive monarch displayed, “worthy of a saint of Islam, the religion of holy resignation.” The sultan at length sent him a wardrobe of fifty magnificent dresses for himself and his attendants. Louis declined them, saying that as a French king he could not wear the raiment of a foreign prince. They prepared him a feast, but Louis declined to partake of it, because he was a captive. The services of the Moslem physicians he did not reject, knowing that if it was the purpose of his enemies to keep him alive to grace their triumph, it was his duty to his throne not to sacrifice any opportunity of lengthening life by which he might regain it. The sultan promised him liberty on condition of his issuing an order for the surrender of Damietta and the Christian strongholds of Palestine. He replied, “The Christian cities do not belong to me, but to God.” The sultan then threatened him with the most frightful torture, such as was reserved for the lowest criminals. Louis replied, “I am the sultan’s prisoner; he can do with me what he pleases.” A Moslem rejoined, “You treat us, sire, as if you had us in prison instead of our holding you.”

About him in an open court Louis daily looked upon the miseries of the remnant of his army. They were naked, clothed only in scars and blood from their unhealed wounds. Each day a number were dragged out and offered the alternative of abjuring their faith and embracing Mohammedanism or being slain. The dead bodies that were daily cast into the Nile told the story of their choice. Many were carried to Cairo to die in its dungeons or were sold as slaves to surrounding tribes.

The conquerors finally wearied of their attempt to subdue the proud spirits of those whose bodies they held, and proposed to liberate the king for a million golden bezants and the surrender of Damietta. Louis accepted the offer on condition that Queen Marguerite should approve, adding in the spirit of the Chivalry of that age, “The queen is my lady; I can do nothing without her consent.” It was agreed that Damietta should be the ransom for the king, while he should pay from his own purse the ransom money for such of his comrades as survived.

The fulfilment of the treaty was interrupted by a strange turn of affairs. The Sultan Almoadam, inflated with pride over his victories, had stirred the jealousy of the Mamelukes. Chegger-Eddour, the slave-woman who had risen to be the mistress of Egypt, turned also against the man whom as her husband she had raised to power. The sultan gave a banquet to his chief officers; at the end of the feast Bibars Bendoctar, the leader of the Mamelukes, approached him and aimed a blow with his dagger, which, however, inflicted but a slight wound. Almoadam fled to a tower; the Mamelukes fired the edifice; their victim threw himself through the smoke and flames from a window, his bruised body falling among his foes; Bibars smote him with a sabre. Bleeding and weak with terror, Almoadam flung himself into the Nile; the soldiers plunged after him and held him until dead beneath the water.

The infuriated Mamelukes then assailed the galley in which Joinville and several leaders of the Christians were confined, and bade them prepare for death. There was but a single priest in the company and no time for shriving one by one, so they confessed to one another, Joinville, the layman, giving to Guy d’Ibelin, as he says, “such absolution as God had given me power to give.” Fortunately the rage of the Mamelukes was diverted elsewhere, and the “dead men came to life.”

The Moslems, unable to secure a successor to Almoadam from among their warriors, gave the crown to the Sultana Chegger-Eddour, much to the disgust of the Mohammedan world. After great dissension and many threats the leaders of the Moslems proposed to carry out the treaty with the Franks which the unfortunate Almoadam had agreed to. They took an oath to observe its conditions and asked of Louis a similar pledge; this he rejected with scorn, assuming that the word of a French king needed no confirmation. The knights and lords of his party embarked on vessels and descended the Nile, the king marching with his Moslem guard along the shore. At Damietta he was joined by Queen Marguerite and her court.

In spite of its honorable surrender the Moslems hastened to loot Damietta and put to death every Christian that remained. This breach of treaty and their new taste of blood infuriated the mob of Moslems for further deeds of dishonor and cruelty. The galleys of the French were ordered to reascend the Nile. It was proposed to complete the tragedy in one act by slaughtering all the invaders. The Moslems were diverted from this outrage only by the consideration, as expressed in the speech of one of them, that “the dead pay no ransom,” and that to massacre the remnant of the French army would be to deprive themselves of the bezants pledged as the price of their lives. So the miserable exodus of the crusaders was resumed, not, however, without anticipation that the fickle temper of their captors might again change. At the mouth of the Nile a Genoese vessel received the king; as soon as he was on deck an array of archers sprang to the bulwarks and dispersed the Egyptians, and the vessel sped rapidly out to sea.

Louis put in at Acre, bringing to the meagre force there but a few more war-wasted men, wider demands upon its diminished resources, and a pestilent disease, which slew scores daily. In vain did France call for her king to return; pride or piety led him to refuse to desert his unhappy followers. There were still twelve thousand Frenchmen in the prisons of Egypt or scattered as slaves over the lands bordering the Nile. These he must endeavor to rescue. The Hospitallers, Templars, and Teutonic Knights, together with the nobles of Palestine, entreated his presence with them. For several weeks there were almost daily councils, some, among them the king’s two surviving brothers, declaring that France, threatened by England, needed the king, while his presence almost without following in Palestine could be no help to the Christian cause, if it did not excite the everywhere victorious Moslems to greater rapacity. Others among them, like Prince Joinville, advocated remaining. Louis listened to the latter. The king’s brothers, the dukes of Anjou and Poitiers, returned to France.

The Moslems of Egypt, grown quickly tired of the Sultana Chegger-Eddour, made her yield up the sceptre. She shrewdly passed it to a favorite, Aibek, by marrying him, and thus retained the substance of power.

The new Sultan of Egypt and the Sultan of Damascus and Aleppo each invoked the aid of Louis against the other. Motives of vengeance would have inclined him to side with the latter, but dread for the fate of the French still left in Egypt, and regard for his treaty, hard as its terms had been, prevented this choice, except in the event of the Egyptians not speedily fulfilling their part of the contract in liberating the captives. The threat of such alliance brought from Egypt some instalments of prisoners. One band of two hundred knights carried with them to Acre, as their best contribution to the cause, the bones of several of their comrades for burial in the Holy Land. Louis was deeply afflicted by the news that many of his soldiers refused to return to him, having renounced the faith of Christ, who no longer extended to them His succor. Some of these renegades amassed wealth and rose to power in Egypt, but never, if we are to believe the Moslem writers, reached the confidence and respect of the true followers of the Prophet. This defection is hardly to be wondered at, since that age refused to believe the words of Christ, “My kingdom is not of this world, else would My servants fight.” The Christians partook too largely of the Moslem idea that religion would triumph by the sword; but they had not the reserve faith of the Mohammedans, which led them to take up the kismet, “It is decreed,” when they were forced to retreat.

Europe sent an occasional knight to join the forlorn hope with Louis, but no organized force. The Pope exhausted his passion in pursuing with malediction the memory of Frederick II., who had just died. “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad,” he wrote to the people of Sicily upon the death of his old enemy. Against the new emperor, Conrad, he proclaimed a crusade, offering indulgence to the German mothers and fathers who would induce their sons to become traitors to their sovereign.

The English King, Henry III., offered to take the cross for Palestine, but, having raised a large sum of money for the purpose of an expedition, found other uses for it. He forbade a large band of his people embarking for the Holy Land, guarding his ports against their departure. He even, as Matthew Paris says, “like a hurt or offended child, who runs to his mother with his complaints,” obtained a papal mandate enforcing obedience to his whim in this regard. Queen Blanche, the regent of France, did indeed send a ship laden with money to her son, but the vessel was sunk off the Syrian coast.

The chief occupation of Louis and his knights was in repairing the few remaining fortifications held by the Christians, and in making pious pilgrimages to the holy places at Nazareth, Tabor, and Cana. The Sultan of Damascus invited him to Jerusalem, but, having come to conquer it, he would not consent to enter it as a guest, having in mind the example of Richard Cœur de Lion, who sixty years before had refused to look upon the city he could not rescue. The Egyptians pressed Louis for alliance against the Sultan of Damascus. They pledged to liberate all captives remaining in Egypt, and further to send to Palestine the heads of the Christians which had been exposed on the walls of Cairo; they would also give up Jerusalem and nearly all the cities of Palestine. Under this immense lure Louis made treaty with the Egyptians for fifteen years.

The Sultan of Damascus did not let his resentment cool before he interposed an army between the Christians and their new allies. He was defeated February 3, 1251. The Egyptians were unable or unwilling to fulfil the promise to join Louis’s forces. At the expiration of a year the Moslems had made peace with each other and declared war upon Louis as their common enemy. The Turkomans also made raid upon Sidon and slaughtered two thousand of the Christian people. Louis ordered Joinville to retaliate by assaulting Baneas, or Cæsarea Philippi, where they took recompense in blood. As they returned to Sidon they saw the ground covered with putrefying corpses of their martyred kinsmen. Louis bade them bury the dead, but no one would touch spade for the disgusting task. “Come, my friends, let us bestow a little earth upon the martyrs of Jesus Christ,” said the king; and springing from his horse, he took one of the bodies in his hands and gently laid it beneath the dirt. His example was followed by his suite.

A few months later news came of the death of Queen Blanche. The pens of the historians, who are usually concerned only with great affairs of state and the issue of battles, linger over the page in which they describe the tender lamentation of the good Louis. For two days he spoke to no one; then sent for Joinville, to whom he outpoured his passionate grief.

The call for Louis’s return to France was renewed; the throne had no protector; England was threatening. There was no possibility of further service in the East, yet the king was undecided. Religious processions of prayer were organized and the altars in various holy places besieged with petitions for the divine guidance of the royal mind. At length Heaven seemed to concur in what had long been the judgment of men, and the king consented to abandon the field.

Fourteen vessels were sufficient to convey his forces. Each was fitted with an altar for hourly service during the voyage. They raised anchor in the port of Sidon, April 24, 1254. Off Cyprus the king’s ships were nearly wrecked, but the courage of the sailors was revived by his words, if the sea did not subside at his prayer, as some say it did. A frightful tempest seems to have felt the spell of Queen Marguerite’s vow of a silver ship to St. Nicholas of Lorraine. After two months and a half (July 8th) the fleet reached Hyères. The king at first refused to land, as this place was not yet a French possession; but he was persuaded to yield his patriotic prejudice on account of his disgust for the water. His piety also triumphed over his worldly chagrin, for, “See,” said he, “if God has not proved to us how vast is His power, when by means of a single one of the four winds the King of France, the queen, their children, and so many other persons have escaped drowning.” After a journey of two months more, not a long one for the best mounted in that age, the royal party reached Paris, September 7, 1254. The king at once repaired to St. Denis to recognize the protection of his patron saint. Then, with universal welcome, he entered his capital. The popular enthusiasm was not altogether of joy as the people contrasted the little band of lords and knights returning to their wasted estates with the splendid retinue that six years before had gone forth to conquer a new empire for France and Christ. But one thing comforted them as they contemplated the disaster—the piety of their monarch. This was the more marked as the age had lost much of its religious zest. This crusade was very unlike the first in that it was sustained by the new spirit of Chivalry rather than of mere sanctity. Cross-wearing was no longer thought to be necessarily the emblazoning of Heaven. The haughtiness, the worldliness, not to say the wickedness, of the popes, who should have been its spiritual leaders, but who were engrossed in the gratification of their own jealousies, almost lost the church the respect of the nations. The beauty of Louis’s devotion, its unselfishness and spirituality, somewhat redeemed the character of the movement upon which Christ Himself seemed to frown through His adverse providence.