The Story of the Crusades

by E. M. Wilmot-Buxton

"Now it so happened that as soon as the Count of Artois had passed over the stream, he and all his people fell upon the Turks, who had fled before them. The Templars notified to him that he was doing them great despite in that, while his place was to come after them, he was going before them, and they besought him to suffer them to go before, as had been arranged by the king. Now it chanced that the Count of Artois did not venture to answer them because of my Lord Foucaud of Merle, who held the bridle of his horse; and this Foucaud of Merle was a very good knight, but heard naught of what the Templars were saying to the Count, seeing that he was deaf, and was all the while crying, 'Out on them! Out on them!'

"Now when the Templars saw this, they thought they would be shamed if they suffered the Count to outride them, so they struck spurs into their horses, helter-skelter, and chased the Turks, and the Turks fled before them, right through the town of Mansourah and into the fields beyond towards Babylon.

"But when the Crusaders thought to return, the Turks threw beams and blocks of wood upon them in the streets, which were narrow. There were killed the Count of Artois, the Lord of Couci, who was called Raoul, and so many other knights that the number was reckoned at three hundred. The Temple, as the Master has since told me, lost there fourteen score men-at-arms, and all mounted."

The whole blame of this disastrous affair must be laid at the door of the Count of Artois, in spite of Joinville's attempt to put it on the shoulders of Lord Foucaud. When the Grand Master of the Templars had warned the Count of the risk of pursuing men who had but given way to a moment's panic, the latter openly accused him of treachery.

"Do you suppose," cried the Master, "that we have left our homes and our substance and taken the habit of a religious in a strange land, only to betray the Cause of God and to forfeit our salvation?"

And with that he prepared to go to almost certain death. Then William Longsword, son of the Earl of Salisbury, did his best to turn the Count from such a course of destruction, and was met with insult. "See how timid are these tailed English! It would be well if the army were purged of such folk!" "At least," returned Longsword, "we English to-day will be where you will not dare to touch our horses' tails."

Longsword fell that day with his face to the foe, Artois, in trying to escape, and the whole force must have been destroyed had not the King's division come to the rescue, while Joinville, who tells the tale, managed to hold the bridge across to the town. Says the latter, "We were all covered with the darts that failed to hit the sergeants. Now it chanced that I found a Saracen's quilted tunic lined with tow: I turned the open side towards me and made a shield of it, which did me good service, for I was only wounded by their darts in five places, and my horse in fifteen. And it chanced again that one of my burgesses of Joinville brought me a pennon with my arms and a lance head thereto, and every time that we saw that the Turks pressed too hardly upon the sergeants, we charged them and they went flying.

"The good Count of Soissons, in that point of danger, jested with me, and said, 'Seneschal, let these curs howl! We shall talk of this day yet, you and I, in ladies' chambers.'"

At sunset, when the King's crossbow men came up, the Saracens fled, and Joinville, hastening to Louis, conducted him with loving care to his tent. "And as we were going, I made him take off his helmet, and lent him my steel cap, so that he might have air.

"When he had passed over the river, there came to him Brother Henry, Provost of the Hospitallers, and kissed his mailed hand. The king asked if he had any tidings of the Count of Artois, his brother, and the Provost said that he had news of him indeed, for he knew of a certainty that his brother, the Count of Artois, was in Paradise.