By this time, Yolande, the daughter of Jean de Brienne, had carried her rights to her husband, Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, the object of the bitter hatred of the Popes, who had thwarted him in every way, when he himself led an expedition to Palestine, and now, since the conquests of the crusaders would go to augment his power, would willingly have checked them. Gregory IX. strove to induce the English party to commute their vow for treasure, but they indignantly repelled the proposal, and set forth, under the solemn blessing of their own bishops. In France, they were received with great affection by Louis IX., and with much enthusiasm by the people; so that their progress was a triumph, till they came to Marseilles, where they embarked, disregarding a prohibition from the Pope which here met them.
At Acre, they were received by the clergy and people in solemn procession, chanting, “Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord;” and high were the hopes entertained that their deeds would rival those of the last Richard Plantagenet and William Longespée. But Richard, though brave and kindly-tempered, was no general; Palestine was in too miserable a condition for his succor to avail it, and all he could do was to make a treaty, and use his wealth to purchase free ingress to the holy places for the pilgrims; and, without himself entering Jerusalem, he returned home. He took with him as curiosities two Saracen damsels, trained to perform a dance with each foot, on a globe of crystal rolling on a smooth pavement, while they made various graceful gestures with their bodies, and struck together a couple of cymbals with their hands.
This was the whole result of the Crusade, for the treaty was set at naught by the Templars and Hospitallers, who called him a boy, and refused to be bound by his compact. In 1245, William Longespée again took the Cross under a very different leader.
In the previous year, Louis IX., King of France, had been attacked by an illness of such severity that his life was despaired of; and at one time a lady, who was watching by his bed, thought him actually dead, and was about to cover his face. He soon opened his eyes, and, stretching out his arms, said, “The light of the East hath shined on me, and called me back from the dead,” and he demanded the Cross, and at once took the vow for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. To part with so just and excellent a monarch on an expedition of such peril was grief and misery to his subjects, and, above all, to his mother, Queen Blanche, and every means was taken to dissuade him; but he would neither eat nor drink till the sign was given to him; and as soon as he had strength to explain himself, declared that he had, while in his trance, heard a voice from the East, calling on him, as the appointed messenger of Heaven, to avenge the insults offered to the Holy City. His mother mourned as for his death, his counsellors remonstrated, his people entreated; but nothing could outweigh such a summons, and his resolution was fixed. The Bishop of Paris saying that the vow was made while he was not fully master of his senses, he laid the Cross aside, but only to resume it, so as to be beyond all such suspicion.
The Crusade was preached, but it had now become a frequent practice, of which Henry III. was a lamentable example, lightly and hastily to assume the Cross in a moment of excitement, or even as a means of being disembarrassed from troublesome claims by the privileges of a Crusader, and then to purchase from the Pope absolution from the vow. It had become such an actual matter of traffic, that Richard of Cornwall positively obtained from Gregory IX. a grant of the money thus raised from recreant Crusaders. The landless William of Salisbury, going to the Pope, who was then at Lyons, thus addressed him: “Your Holiness sees that I am signed with the Cross. My name is great and well known: it is William Longespée. But my fortune does not match it. The King of England has bereft me of my earldom, but as this was done judicially, not out of personal ill-will, I blame him not. Yet, poor as I am, I have undertaken the pilgrimage. Now, since Prince Richard, the King’s brother, who has not taken the Cross, has obtained from you a grant to take money from such as lay it aside, surely I may beg for the like—I, who am signed, and yet without resource.”
He obtained the grant, and thus raised 1,000 marks, while Richard of Cornwall actually gained from one archdeacon £600, and in proportion from others.
Louis, for three years, was detained by the necessity of arranging matters for the tranquillity of his own kingdom, and not till the Friday in Whitsun-week, 1248, was he solemnly invested at St. Denis with the pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and presented with the oriflamme, the standard of the convent, which he bore as Count of Paris. His two brothers, Robert Comté d’Artois, and Charles Comte d’Anjou, and his wife Marguerite of Provence, accompanied him, together with a great number of the nobility, among whom the most interesting was the faithful and attached Sieur de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who has left us a minute record of his master’s adventures.
They sailed from Aigues Mortes, August 25th, 1248, and Joinville reflected that he could not imagine how a man in a state of mortal sin could ever put to sea, since he knew not, when he fell asleep at night, whether morning would not find him at the bottom of the sea. On coming near the coast of Barbary, Joinville’s ship seems to have been becalmed, for it continued for three whole days in view of the same round mountain, to the great dismay of the crew, until a preux d’homme priest suggested, that in his parish, in cases of distress, such as dearth, or flood, or pestilence, processions chanting the Litany were made on three Saturdays following. The day was Saturday, and the crew acted on his advice, making the procession round the masts, even the sick being carried by their friends. The next day they were out of sight of the mountain, and on the third Saturday safely landed at Cyprus. Here the Crusaders remained for eight months, since Egypt was the intended point of attack, and they wished to allow the inundation of the Nile to subside. At length, in the summer of 1249, they arrived before Damietta, which was even better fortified than when it had previously held out for fifteen months; but it now surrendered, after Fakreddin, the Mameluke commander, had suffered one defeat under its walls, and the Christians entered in triumph. Here Louis made an unfortunate delay, while waiting for reinforcements brought by his brother Alfonse, Comte de Poitiers.
To the rude and superstitious noblesse, a Crusade appeared a certain means of securing salvation, as indeed the clergy led them to believe; and this belief seemed to remove all restraint of morality from the ill-disposed, so that the pure and pious King was bitterly grieved by the license which he found himself unable to restrain. Much harm was done by the excess in which the troops indulged while revelling in the plunder of Damietta. The prudent would have reserved the stores there laid up for time of need, but old crusaders insisted on “the good old custom of the Holy Land,” as they called it, namely, the distribution of two-thirds among the army; and though the King ransomed some portion, the money did as much harm in promoting revelry as the provisions themselves.
Longespée arrived, with 200 English knights; but the small band of English and their landless leader met with nothing but contumely from their allies, especially the King’s brother, Robert Comte d’Artois, a haughty and impetuous youth. The English took a small castle on the road to Alexandria, where one of the Saracen Emirs had placed his harem. It was reported that Longespée had acquired a huge treasure there, and Robert insulted him to his face, and deprived him of his just share of the spoil. Longespée, complained to the King; but Louis could give him no redress. “You are no King, if you cannot do justice,” said William.