As soon as Louis had placed the administration of his kingdom in other hands, he gave himself up to the exercises of piety, and appeared to be no more than the most meek of Christians. The dress and attributes of a pilgrim became the only adornments of a powerful monarch. He wore no more splendid stuffs, no more valuable furs; his arms even, and the harness of his horses, glittered with nothing but the polish of steel and iron. His example had so much influence, says Joinville, that on the voyage not a single instance of an embroidered coat was seen, either upon the king or any one else. When endeavouring to reform splendour in equipages or dress, Louis caused the money he had been accustomed to expend in these to be distributed to the poor. Thus royal magnificence was in him nothing but the luxury of charity.
Queen Blanche accompanied him as far as Cluny. This princess was persuaded she should never see her son again until they met in heaven, and took leave of him in the most affectionate manner; the tears of mother and son bearing witness to the truth of their grief at parting. On his way, he saw the pope at Lyons, and conjured him, for the last time, to be merciful to Frederick, whom reverses had humiliated, and who implored pardon. After having represented the great interests of the crusade, after having spoken in the name of the numerous pilgrims who were abandoning everything for the cause of Christ, the pious mind of the king was astonished to find the pontiff still inexorable. The king then directed all his attention to the prosecution of his journey. Innocent promised to protect the kingdom of France against the heretic Frederick and the king of England; the latter of whom he always styled his vassal: he witnessed without regret the departure of a prince venerated for his love of justice, whose presence in Europe might be an obstacle to his policy. The sovereign pontiff had not much trouble in keeping his promise of defending the independence and peace of France; for the discords he excited in other states preserved that kingdom from all foreign annoyance during the time of the crusade.
The fleet, which awaited Louis at Aigues-Mortes, was composed of twenty-eight vessels, without reckoning those that were to transport the horses and the provisions. The king embarked, followed by his two brothers, Charles duke of Anjou, and Robert count d’Artois, and the queen Marguerite, who did not dread less the idea of remaining with her mother-in-law than that of living away from her husband.[286] Alphonse, count of Poictiers, deferred his departure till the following year, and returned to Paris to assist the queen regent with his counsels and authority. When the whole army of the Crusaders was embarked, the signal was given, the priests, according to the custom in maritime expeditions, sang the Veni Creator, and the fleet set sail.
France had then no marine, the sailors and pilots were almost all Spaniards or Italians. Two Genoese performed the functions of commanders or admirals. A great part of the barons and knights had never before seen the sea, and everything they saw filled them with surprise and dread; they invoked all the saints of Paradise, and recommended their souls to God. The good Joinville does not at all dissemble his fright, and cannot help saying: “A great fool is he who, having any sin on his soul, places himself in such a 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.”[287]
Louis IX. embarked at Aigues-Mortes, the 25th of August, and arrived at Cyprus on the 21st of September.[288] Henry, grandson of Guy of Lusignan, who obtained the kingdom of Cyprus in the third crusade, received the king of France at Limisso, and conducted him to his capital of Nicosia, amidst the acclamations of the people, nobility, and clergy.
A short time after the arrival of the Crusaders, it was decided in a council, that the arms of the Christians should, in the first place, be directed against Egypt. The reverses that had been met with on the banks of the Nile, in preceding wars, did not at all alarm the king of France and his barons; it is even more than probable that Louis, before he left his kingdom, had formed the design of carrying the war into the country from which the Mussulmans drew their wealth and their strength. The king of Cyprus, who had recently received the title of king of Jerusalem from the pope, the more strongly applauded, this determination, from its giving him reason to hope to be delivered from the most formidable of his neighbours, and the most cruel enemy of the Christian colonies in Syria. This prince also caused a crusade to be preached in his kingdom, for the sake of being placed in a condition to accompany the French Crusaders, and associate himself usefully in their conquests. He proposed to the king of France and his barons to wait till he had concluded his preparations. “The lords and prelates of Cyprus,” says William of Nangis, “all took the cross, appeared before Louis, and told him they would go with him wherever it should please him to lead them, if he would stay till the winter had passed away.” As Louis and the principal French nobles appeared but little disposed to delay their march, the Cypriots spared neither protestations of friendship, caresses, nor prayers to detain them. Every day was devoted to rejoicings and feastings, in which the nobility and wealthy men of the kingdom exhibited the splendour of eastern courts. The enchanting aspect of the isle, a country rich in all the delicious productions of nature, particularly that Cyprus wine which Solomon himself has not disdained to celebrate, seconded in a powerful manner the entreaties and seductions of the court of Nicosia. It was decided that the Christian army should not depart before the following spring.
It was not long before they became fully aware of the error they had committed. Amidst the excessive abundance that reigned in their camp, the Crusaders gave themselves up to intemperance; in a country in which pagan fables placed the altars of voluptuousness, the virtue of the pilgrims was every day exposed to fresh trials; a protracted idleness relaxed the discipline of the army, and, to crown these evils, a pestilential disease exercised great ravages among the defenders of the cross. The pilgrims had to lament the death of more than two hundred and fifty knights from this calamity. Contemporary chronicles mention among the lords and prelates that were victims to it, the counts of Dreux and Vendôme, Robert, bishop of Beauvais, and the brave William des Barres; the army had likewise to regret the loss of the last of the race of the Archambault de Bourbons, whose county became afterwards the heritage of the children of Saint Louis, and gave to the royal family of France a name that it has rendered for ever illustrious in the annals of that country.
A great number of barons and knights were in want of money to maintain their troops, and Louis freely opened his treasury to them. The sieur de Joinville, who had no more than one hundred and twenty livres tournois[289] left, received from the monarch eight hundred livres; a considerable sum in those days.
Many of the nobles complained of having sold their lands and ruined themselves to follow the king to the crusade. The liberality of Louis could not possibly satisfy all these complainants. A great number of knights, after being ruined by the abode in the isle of Cyprus, could not endure the idleness they were condemned to, but were anxious to set out for Syria or Egypt, hoping to make the Saracens pay the expenses of the war. Louis had a great deal of trouble to restrain them; historians agree in saying that he was only half obeyed; therefore, he had much more frequent occasion to exercise his patience and evangelical mildness than his authority; and if he succeeded in appeasing all discords and suppressing all murmurs, it was less by the ascendancy of his power than by that of his virtue.