CAMEO XXIX. THE LONGESPÉES IN THE EGYPTIAN CRUSADES. (1219-1254.)
King of England.
1216. Henry III.
Kings of Scotland.
1214. Alexander II.
1249. Alexander III.
Kings of France.
1180. Philip III.
1223. Louis VIII.
1226. Louis IX.
Emperors of Germany. 1209. Friedrich II.
1259. Conrad IV.
Popes. 1216. Innocent III.
1227. Honorius III.
1241. Gregory IX.
1241. Celestin IV.
1242. Innocent IV.
The crusading spirit had not yet died away, but it was often diverted by the Popes, who sent the champions of the Cross to make war on European heretics instead of the Moslems of Palestine.
William Longespée, the son of Fair Rosamond, was, however, a zealous crusador in the East itself. He had been with Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, and in 1219 again took the Cross, and shared an expedition led by the titular King of Jerusalem, a French knight, named Jean de Brienne, who had married Marie, the daughter of that Isabelle whom Richard I. had placed on the throne of Jerusalem. Under him, an attempt was made to carry the war into the enemy’s quarters, by attacking the Saracens in Egypt, and with a large force of crusaders he laid siege to Damietta. The reigning Sultan, Malek el Kamel, marched to its relief, and encamping at Mansourah, in the delta of the Nile, fought two severe battles with doubtful success, but could not assist the garrison, who, after holding out for fifteen months, at length surrendered. The unhappy city was in such a state from the effects of hunger and disease, that the Christians themselves, suffering from severe sickness, did not dare to enter it, till the prisoners, as the price of their liberty, had encountered the risk of cleansing it and burying the dead.
Even then they remained, encamped outside, and Kamel continued to watch them from Mansourah, where he built permanent houses, and formed his camp into a town, while awaiting the aid of the natural defender of Egypt, the Nile, which, in due time arising, inundated the whole Christian camp, and washed away the stores. The troops, already reduced by sickness, were living in a swamp, the water and mud ankle-deep, and with currents of deeper water rushing in all directions, drowning the incautious; while want and disease preyed upon the rest, till Jean de Brienne was obliged to go and treat with the Sultan. When received courteously in the commodious, royal tent at Mansourah, the contrast to the miseries which his friends were enduring so affected him, that he burst into a fit of weeping, that moved the generous Kamel at once, without conditions, to send as a free gift a supply of provisions to his distressed enemies. A treaty was then concluded, by which the crusaders restored Damiotta, after having held it for eight months, and were allowed every facility for their departure.
Though hardy, patient and enterprising as a crusader, Longespée was lawless and unscrupulous, and paid no respect to the ordinances of religion, neither confessing himself nor being a communicant; while his wife, the lady Ella, Countess of Salisbury in her own right, continued a devout observer of her duties.
Soon after his return from Egypt, Longespée, in sailing from Gascony to England, was in great danger, from a storm in the Bay of Biscay of many days’ continuance, and so violent, that all the jewels, treasure, and other freight, were thrown overboard to lighten the vessel. In the height of the peril, the mast was illuminated, no doubt by that strange electric brightness called by sailors “St. Elmo’s Light,” but which, to the conscience-stricken earl, was a heavenly messenger, sent to convert and save him. It was even reported that it was a wax-light, sheltered from the wind by a female form of marvellous radiance and beauty, at whose appearance the tempest lulled, and the ship came safely to land.
The Countess Ella availed herself of the impression thus made upon her husband to persuade him to seek the ghostly counsel of St. Edmund Rich, then a canon of Salisbury; and the first sight of the countenance of the holy man at once subdued him, so that he forsook his evil ways, devoutly received the rites so long neglected, and spent his few remaining years in trying to atone for his past sins.
In 1226, he was taken suddenly ill at a banquet given by Hubert de Burgh, and being carried home, sent for the Bishop of Salisbury, Richard Poer, who found him in a high fever; but he at once threw himself from his bed upon the floor, weeping, and crying out that he was a traitor to the Most High: nor would he allow himself to be raised till he had made his confession, and received the Holy Eucharist.
He died a few days subsequently, and was buried at Old Sarum, whence his tomb was afterward removed to the cathedral at Salisbury, where his effigy lies in the nave, in chain armor, with his legs crossed as a crusader. The Countess Ella founded a monastery at Laycock, where she took the veil. Her eldest son, William Longespée, succeeded to the Castle of Sarum, but afterward offended the King by quitting the realm without the royal license, for which breach of rule Henry III. seized his possessions, and he remained a knight adventurer. In this capacity he followed his cousin, Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall, who took the Cross in 1240.