[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.