The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

On the land it was the same. The king, weak unto death, was defended by the little band about him. They brought him into a house in the town of Menieh; within doors a tradeswoman from Paris held the royal head in her lap, as was supposed, watching him die. Without in the streets brave men laid down their lives in a last effort to save even their king’s body, but their heroic devotion served only to emblazon itself on this darkest page of the history of the crusades. Louis was taken by the foe and loaded with chains, but he felt more weightily the shame of being the first king of France ever a prisoner in the hands of a foreign enemy. Joinville, who tells the story, was dragged to a neighboring house, and would have been slain but that a little child clung to him and, by this double appeal of helplessness, excited the interposition of one whom he calls “the good Saracen.”

The Moslems returned to Mansourah in triumph. They dressed their fleet in utmost gayety as it bore the person of their royal captive. Their armies marched on either bank of the Nile, escorting the Christian survivors, who were driven along with their hands bound behind their backs.

Queen Marguerite was at Damietta, already entering the pains of childbed. Ordering all to leave her chamber but an aged knight, she said to him, “I require you, on the faith you have pledged to me, that if the enemy shall take this city you will cut off my head rather than allow me to become a captive.” “Certainly, madam, I will do it,” he replied. The queen gave birth to a son, whom she called Jean Tristan, because of the sorrows that begirt his birth. Learning that the remnant of the city guard proposed abandoning Damietta, she forbade it as involving additional disgrace. “Be moved by my tears,” she cried, “and have pity on the poor child whom you see lying on my bosom.” The attitude of this heroine saved the city, the last spot of Christian possession in the land they had come to conquer.

Louis languished in prison. He had no clothing but a coarse cassock, which a fellow-prisoner had taken from his own person. Even the Moslems who guarded him afterwards expressed their reverence for the piety the captive monarch displayed, “worthy of a saint of Islam, the religion of holy resignation.” The sultan at length sent him a wardrobe of fifty magnificent dresses for himself and his attendants. Louis declined them, saying that as a French king he could not wear the raiment of a foreign prince. They prepared him a feast, but Louis declined to partake of it, because he was a captive. The services of the Moslem physicians he did not reject, knowing that if it was the purpose of his enemies to keep him alive to grace their triumph, it was his duty to his throne not to sacrifice any opportunity of lengthening life by which he might regain it. The sultan promised him liberty on condition of his issuing an order for the surrender of Damietta and the Christian strongholds of Palestine. He replied, “The Christian cities do not belong to me, but to God.” The sultan then threatened him with the most frightful torture, such as was reserved for the lowest criminals. Louis replied, “I am the sultan’s prisoner; he can do with me what he pleases.” A Moslem rejoined, “You treat us, sire, as if you had us in prison instead of our holding you.”

About him in an open court Louis daily looked upon the miseries of the remnant of his army. They were naked, clothed only in scars and blood from their unhealed wounds. Each day a number were dragged out and offered the alternative of abjuring their faith and embracing Mohammedanism or being slain. The dead bodies that were daily cast into the Nile told the story of their choice. Many were carried to Cairo to die in its dungeons or were sold as slaves to surrounding tribes.

The conquerors finally wearied of their attempt to subdue the proud spirits of those whose bodies they held, and proposed to liberate the king for a million golden bezants and the surrender of Damietta. Louis accepted the offer on condition that Queen Marguerite should approve, adding in the spirit of the Chivalry of that age, “The queen is my lady; I can do nothing without her consent.” It was agreed that Damietta should be the ransom for the king, while he should pay from his own purse the ransom money for such of his comrades as survived.

The fulfilment of the treaty was interrupted by a strange turn of affairs. The Sultan Almoadam, inflated with pride over his victories, had stirred the jealousy of the Mamelukes. Chegger-Eddour, the slave-woman who had risen to be the mistress of Egypt, turned also against the man whom as her husband she had raised to power. The sultan gave a banquet to his chief officers; at the end of the feast Bibars Bendoctar, the leader of the Mamelukes, approached him and aimed a blow with his dagger, which, however, inflicted but a slight wound. Almoadam fled to a tower; the Mamelukes fired the edifice; their victim threw himself through the smoke and flames from a window, his bruised body falling among his foes; Bibars smote him with a sabre. Bleeding and weak with terror, Almoadam flung himself into the Nile; the soldiers plunged after him and held him until dead beneath the water.

The infuriated Mamelukes then assailed the galley in which Joinville and several leaders of the Christians were confined, and bade them prepare for death. There was but a single priest in the company and no time for shriving one by one, so they confessed to one another, Joinville, the layman, giving to Guy d’Ibelin, as he says, “such absolution as God had given me power to give.” Fortunately the rage of the Mamelukes was diverted elsewhere, and the “dead men came to life.”

The Moslems, unable to secure a successor to Almoadam from among their warriors, gave the crown to the Sultana Chegger-Eddour, much to the disgust of the Mohammedan world. After great dissension and many threats the leaders of the Moslems proposed to carry out the treaty with the Franks which the unfortunate Almoadam had agreed to. They took an oath to observe its conditions and asked of Louis a similar pledge; this he rejected with scorn, assuming that the word of a French king needed no confirmation. The knights and lords of his party embarked on vessels and descended the Nile, the king marching with his Moslem guard along the shore. At Damietta he was joined by Queen Marguerite and her court.

In spite of its honorable surrender the Moslems hastened to loot Damietta and put to death every Christian that remained. This breach of treaty and their new taste of blood infuriated the mob of Moslems for further deeds of dishonor and cruelty. The galleys of the French were ordered to reascend the Nile. It was proposed to complete the tragedy in one act by slaughtering all the invaders. The Moslems were diverted from this outrage only by the consideration, as expressed in the speech of one of them, that “the dead pay no ransom,” and that to massacre the remnant of the French army would be to deprive themselves of the bezants pledged as the price of their lives. So the miserable exodus of the crusaders was resumed, not, however, without anticipation that the fickle temper of their captors might again change. At the mouth of the Nile a Genoese vessel received the king; as soon as he was on deck an array of archers sprang to the bulwarks and dispersed the Egyptians, and the vessel sped rapidly out to sea.