The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

The crusaders sailed from Cyprus with eight hundred vessels; these carried not only warriors and implements of battle, but many artisans and vast material for establishing a colony, which project is regarded even by those who deprecate the military assault as showing the wide statesmanship of the French king. A storm scattered the fleet, driving many ships against the coast of Syria, and compelling Louis to return to Cyprus with the loss of half his armament.

A second attempt was more successful, and the fleet approached the walls of Damietta. Joinville dilates upon the magnificent spectacle: the sea covered for miles with the ships, whose topmasts gleamed with the sign of the cross; the mouth of the Nile guarded by the vessels of the Moslem; the shores lined with the multitude of warriors in various accoutrements, drawn from all the lands of the Infidel; the very sky resounding with their pagan cries and the noise of their trumpets and drums.

At break of the next day the French began the assault. Queen Marguerite’s bark was alone left at a distance, whence she might watch the fight. The knights stood, lance in hand, beside their horses on the broad barges, some of which were propelled by as many as three hundred rowers. At word of command the fleet seemed to be lifted by the innumerable oars and to be fairly hurled upon the shore. Before they could land the daylight became obscured with showers of arrows, javelins, and stones, that poured upon them from the banks. For a moment the fleet was retarded by the deluge of missiles that smote the rowers, but the king’s quick command redoubled their strokes. As the vessels grounded on the beach he himself led the assault, leaping into the sea shoulder-deep with sword in hand. The whole army emulated his heroism, and with the cry, “Montjoie! St. Denis!” plunged into the water. The attack was as when the sea itself assails the land with tidal wave. The Moslems were driven back. The crusaders completed their array on solid ground, but scarcely were they in battle order before the Moslem cavalry rode down upon them with the noise and speed of a sirocco from the neighboring desert. Amid the terrible mêlée Louis bent his knees a moment on the sands, anew giving himself to the will of Heaven, then dashed into the thickest of the fight. The shore ran with rills of blood, which incarnadined the sea. Steadily the oriflamme of France mounted the beach. The war-galleys made an equally furious assault upon the Moslem navy. With the impetuous ramming of the tough prows of the French vessels many a ship filled with Egyptian warriors was sent to the bottom. The cross gained the mouth of the river, up which its defenders fled. By nightfall the coast and both banks of the Nile had been gained, and under the stars of Egypt the Christian camp resounded with the Te Deum and shouts of victory.

The joy of the Christians was soon mingled with wonder. The horizon to the south of them suddenly seemed on fire. The scouts, approaching Damietta in the early dawn, discovered that its walls were like the crater of some vast volcano pouring up clouds of smoke shot through with flashes of flame. The gates of the town were wide open. Entering cautiously, they found the streets filled with newly slaughtered multitudes. It would seem that the panic of the Moslems had left them neither heart nor wit for the defence of their stronghold. In the blindness of their rage they had put to death multitudes of Christians, and the Christians, in the frenzy of their despair, had slain their Moslem neighbors. Fakr Eddin, the commandant, had given orders to fire the houses, mosques, and fortifications, consuming everything, that the crusaders might not profit by their victory.

The Christians upon entering the city found little spoil to tempt their rapacity, and were easily persuaded to celebrate their conquest with the services of religion. King Louis marched at the head of a grand procession to the great mosque, which they solemnly consecrated to the worship of the Virgin Mary. The Sultan of Cairo had been prevented by illness from personally taking part in the battle. He expressed his displeasure at the defeat of his soldiers by ordering the beheading of fifty-four men of the garrison of Damietta. But the display of vengeance upon the helpless could not restore his lost prestige in the presence of a gigantic enemy.

Queen Marguerite established her court in Damietta. The army encamped without the walls. All gave themselves up to enjoyment, as if a single defeat of the foe had been its annihilation. Instead of following up the advantage gained, it was determined to await the gathering of the ships scattered by the storm, and for the arrival of a French contingent under the king’s brother, who desired to also share in the conquest. Inaction produced the usual consequences in the camp. Vice reigned in the very proximity of the king’s quarters, which he was as powerless to prevent as monarchs of that age generally were to cleanse the slums that crept close to their palaces. The leaders fell to quarrelling over the scanty spoil of Damietta, and even disputed its possession by the sovereign. The soldiers robbed the traders who came into the camp, and soon prevented even the supply of comforts from this source. Foray parties brought in the Egyptian women they captured, and established harems, which had not even the screens of Oriental custom. The king’s authority fell into total disregard.

There was also strife between the English and the French. William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, excited jealousy by his impetuous and successful enterprises, in one of which he captured a stronghold near Alexandria, together with many women belonging to noble Egyptian families. In another raid he seized a richly laden caravan. The French disputed the possession of his booty. The Count d’Artois was especially envious of the renown of his fellow-warrior, and seized a portion of the spoil in the name of Louis. When the king hesitated to order its restoration, fearing to excite division in his immediate family, Earl William declared to the royal face, “You are not then a king, since you are not able to administer justice.” He left the camp and retired to Acre. The Count d’Artois added insult by exclaiming, “Now the army of the noble French is well purged of these tailed Englishmen”—alluding to a rumor that, as punishment for the murder of Thomas à Becket, the people of the British Isles had begun to develop the caudal appendage in proof that they were of “their father, the devil.”

During these dissensions the lines of the encampment were left without any systematic defence, and were constantly raided by parties of swift Bedouin riders, who made their assault as the sudden dust-clouds of Libya overwhelm the traveller and quickly disappear again in their kindred sands. Carismian adventurers were also lured by the sultan’s promise of a golden bezant for every Christian head, and half as much for a right hand, and a fifth for a foot. They dashed upon the detached groups, or stole secretly by night into the tents, and bore away their prize, leaving the mutilated bodies of the knights to tell of their deed. The sultan, Negmeddin, knowing that disease was hastening his end, redeemed the time by the incessant activity of his subalterns. Mansourah, at the junction of the branches of the Nile, soon presented the aspect of an impregnable circle of fortifications.

The arrival of the king’s brother, the Count of Poitiers, revived the martial ardor of the French; and it was decided to attack the Egyptian capital, Cairo, or Babylon (Babloon), as it was then called. The majority of the crusaders supposed this place to be the Babylon of the Scriptures, still stored with the immense riches of the ancients, and waiting for them to fulfil upon it the curses of the prophets. There was a rumor that certain renegade Moslems had already entered into a compact to deliver the citadel of Cairo to the advancing Christians. This report even reached Europe, where it was magnified into a detailed account of the capture of the Egyptian capital, and awakened universal joy, to be turned into mourning as the news of the real events arrived.

Negmeddin, Sultan of Cairo, died, but the event was kept secret within the citadel, while Chegger-Eddour, the favorite sultana, issued orders as if her husband were living, until the new sultan, Almoadam Turan Shan, had securely gripped the reins of power.