Such was the contest of which Louis IX., in the account which he sent to France, speaks with such admirable simplicity. “On the first Friday in Lent, the camp being attacked, God favoured the French, and the infidels were repulsed with much loss.”
In this battle, as in the last, the Christians had had all the glory, the Saracens all the advantage. The Christian army lost a great number of its warriors, and almost all its horses: the enemy was reinforced every day; the Crusaders could not attempt to march upon Cairo, and prudence seemed to suggest that they should retrace their steps to Damietta. Retreat, still easy, offered a means of preserving the army for a more favourable season: but this plan could only be counselled by despair, and despair has great difficulty in mastering the hearts of the brave. Nothing could appear more disgraceful to the French than flying, or appearing to fly, before a conquered enemy: they resolved to remain.
Towards the end of February, Almoadam, whom Chigger-Eddour and the principal leaders of the Mamelukes had called to the throne of his father, arrived in Egypt, and was received with loud acclamations by the people, always desirous of change, and always delighted with a new reign. The emirs and magnates likewise displayed great joy, but their demonstrations were less sincere; they looked for the coming of the successor of Negmeddin with more anxiety than impatience; placing a very high value upon that which they had done for him, they, beforehand, expected his ingratitude. On the other side, the young prince was jealous of his authority; and the power of the emirs, the nature even of their services, gave him alarms that he had not the prudence to dissemble. It was not long before a mutual mistrust and a reciprocal estrangement arose between Almoadam and the leaders of the Mussulman army; the latter repented of having raised to empire a prince who showed a disposition to rule alone, and the former was determined to defend his power, even against those who had bestowed it upon him. This state of things and the disposition of men’s minds, appeared ominous of new revolutions in Egypt; unhappily these revolutions broke out too late to allow the Christians to derive any advantage from them.
The Crusaders likewise had soon to contend with calamities more destructive to them than even the power or the arms of the Mussulmans; a contagious disease made its appearance in the Christian army. They had neglected to bury the dead after the last two battles; the bodies cast confusedly and heedlessly into the Aschmoum, and floating on its waters, stopped before the bridge of boats constructed by the Crusaders, and covered the surface of the canal from one shore to the other. Pestilential exhalations quickly arose from this heap of carcasses. Louis IX. ordered the bodies of the Christians to be buried in the ditches dug by the Saracens on the bank; but these spoils of death, moved and transported without precaution, only assisted the progress of the epidemic. The spectacle which was then presented to the eyes of the Crusaders spread the deepest grief throughout the camp, and awakened a more perfect consciousness of their losses. Christian soldiers were seen searching among bodies which wounds, the hues of death, and the action of the sun and air had disfigured, for the deplorable remains of their friends or companions. Many of those upon whom friendship imposed this pious task, fell sick and died almost instantly. The devotedness and grief of one of the knights of Robert count d’Artois, were conspicuous among these affecting instances. This inconsolable knight passed whole nights and days on the banks of the canal, with his eyes intensely fixed upon the waters, braving contagion and death, in the hope of recovering and burying the young prince, whose loss was so deeply deplored by the French army.
The fatigues of war did not at all prevent the pious warriors from observing the abstinence of Lent; and the privations and austerities of penitence completed the exhaustion of their strength. The contagion attacked the most robust as well as the most weak;[311] their flesh withered away, their skin became livid, and was covered with black spots; their gums were inflamed and swollen so as to prevent the passage of food; the flowing of the blood from the nose was the sign of approaching death. Most of the diseased viewed the grim monarch without fear, and considered his dominions as the wished-for end of all their sufferings.
Dysentery and dangerous fevers were soon added to the above malady; nothing was heard in the Christian camp but prayers for the dying or the dead; nothing was seen but the pale and haggard countenances of unhappy beings who accompanied their companions to the tomb, and whom death must soon sweep away in their turn. The soldiers capable of bearing arms did not suffice for the guarding of the avenues of the camp. A thing unheard of in Christian armies, the grooms of knights were seen clothed in the armour of their masters, and taking their places in the post of danger. The clergy, who attended the sick and buried the dead, suffered greatly from the epidemic; very quickly there were not ecclesiastics enough to minister at the altars and perform the Christian ceremonies. One day, the sieur de Joinville, himself sick, and listening to the mass in his bed, was obliged to rise and support his almoner, ready to faint upon the steps of the altar. “Thus supported,” adds the kindly historian, “he finished his sacrament, chanted the mass quite through—but never chanted more.”[312]
We have seen in former holy wars, multitudes of Crusaders a prey to the most cruel scourges; the bravest of the warriors often despaired of the cause of the pilgrims, and deserted the banners of the cross; and many times the excess of their misery drew from them imprecations and blasphemies. We must here remark that the soldiers and companions of Louis IX. supported their evils with more patience and resignation. Not one knight thought of deserting the banners of the crusade, and not a seditious or sacrilegious complaint was heard in the army; the example of the pious monarch doubtless strengthened the courage of the Crusaders, and preserved them from the excesses of despair. Louis IX., deeply affected by the evils that desolated his army, employed every effort to mitigate and end them. If anything could have consoled the Crusaders in the miserable condition in which they were placed, it must have been seeing a king of France himself attending the sick, lavishing upon them every kind of assistance, and preparing them for death. In vain he was conjured not to expose himself to dangers still greater than those of the field of battle; nothing could shake his courage or check the ardour of his charity; he considered it his duty (it is thus he expressed himself) to expose his life for those who every day exposed theirs for him. One of his servants, a worthy man, being at the point of death, and exhorted by a priest to meet his fate like a Christian, replied, “I will not die till I have seen the king.” The king complied with his desire, and the man died in peace, consoled by the presence and words of his kind master. But at length he who consoled all others fell sick himself. The king was not able to leave his tent; the desolation became more profound and more general; they who suffered began now to lose all hope; it seemed as if Providence had abandoned them, and that heaven no longer protected the soldiers of the cross.
The Saracens remained motionless in their camp, leaving their awful auxiliaries, diseases, to perform their mission undisturbed; only Almoadam, in order to add famine to the other evils his enemies experienced, resolved to interrupt all communication between the Christians and Damietta, whence they received provisions by way of the Nile. Having got together a great number of boats, the sultan caused them to be taken to pieces, and afterwards transported over-land to the mouth of the canal of Mehallah. A French flotilla came up the river without suspicion, bearing provisions for the camp, and fell directly into an ambuscade of galleys, placed behind a small island. All at once the enemies appear, surprise the Christians, attack them with fury, kill a thousand soldiers, and obtain possession of fifty vessels laden with provisions. A few days afterwards, other vessels coming up the river towards Mansourah experienced the same fate. No one arrived at the camp; no news came from Damietta, and the Christians were abandoning themselves to the most melancholy presentiments, when a vessel belonging to the count of Flanders, which had escaped the enemy by a miracle, came to announce to them that all the vessels of the Crusaders had been taken, and that the Mussulman flag dominated along the whole course of the river.
Famine soon made frightful ravages in the army; and such as had been spared by disease, were threatened with death from misery and hunger. Both leaders and soldiers were seized with the deepest despondency; and the king at length judged it best to attempt to enter into a truce with the Mussulmans. Philip de Montfort was employed in the embassy to the sultan of Egypt; commissioners were named on both sides to conclude a treaty. Those of the king of France proposed to surrender Damietta to the sultan, on condition that Jerusalem and all the other places in Palestine, that had fallen into the hands of the Mussulmans in the late wars, should be given up to the Christians. The sultan, who dreaded the bravery and the despair of the Crusaders, who, besides, had reason to fear that his enemies might receive reinforcements, and that Damietta might hold out for a considerable time, accepted the proposed conditions. When the question of hostages came to be discussed, the king offered his two brothers; but whether the sultan placed no faith in the loyalty of his enemies, or whether he was wanting in it himself, he required that the king of France should remain in his hands, as a guarantee of the treaty. Sergines, one of the commissioners, could not listen to this proposal without anger. “You ought to know Frenchmen better,” cried he, “than to suppose they would ever allow their king to remain a prisoner with Mussulmans.” A council was held on this subject in the Christian army. The king consented to everything, but the lords and barons exclaimed with vehemence against the giving up of their sovereign. On one side, the monarch was willing to purchase the safety of his people by his own personal danger; on the other, a crowd of warriors all warmly declared they could not suffer such a disgrace, and that they would rather die than place their king in pledge. The more Louis was beloved by his warriors, the less he was master in this circumstance; and every one thinking it to his honour, and almost consistent with his duty, to disobey him, the negotiation was abandoned.
To paint the frightful scarcity that desolated the Christian camp, contemporary chronicles relate, as an extraordinary thing, that a sheep was sold for as much as ten crowns, an ox for eighty livres, and an egg for twelve deniers. Such high prices exceeded the means of most of the pilgrims; some were obliged to live upon the fish caught in the Nile, others upon herbs and roots.