The conditions being ratified by the Egyptian sovereign, the Earl of Cornwall had the satisfaction to see the great object of the Crusaders once more accomplished. Palestine again belonged to the Christians. The Hospitallers opened their treasury to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, while the patriarch and clergy entered the holy city to reconsecrate the churches. For two years the gospel was the only religion administered in the sacred capital, and the faithful had begun to exult in the permanent subjection of their rivals, when a new enemy arose, more formidable to them than even the Saracens.
The victories of Zingis Khan had displaced several nations belonging to the great Tartar family, and among others the Karismians, who continued their retreat southward till they reached the confines of Egypt. The sultan, who perhaps had repented the liberality of his terms to the soldiers of Richard, advised the expatriated barbarians to take possession of Palestine. He even sent one of his principal officers and a large body of troops to serve as them guides; upon which, Barbacan, the Karismian general, at the head of twenty thousand cavalry, advanced into the Holy Land. The garrison of Jerusalem, being quite inadequate to its defence, retired, and were followed by many of the inhabitants. The invaders entered it without opposition, sparing neither life nor property, and respecting nothing, whether sacred or profane. At length the Templars and Hospitallers, forgetting their mutual animosities, united their bands to rescue the country from the grasp of such savages. A battle took place, which, after continuing two whole days, ended in the total defeat of the Christians; the Grand Masters of St. John and of the Temple being among the slain. Only thirty-three individuals of the latter order, and sixteen of the former, with three Teutonic cavaliers, remained alive, and succeeded in making their way to Acre, the last refuge of the vanquished knights. The Karismians, with their Egyptian allies, after having razed the fortifications of Ascalon and Tiberias, encamped on the seacoast, laid waste the surrounding territory, and slew or carried into bondage every Frank who fell into their hands. Nor was it till the year 1247 that the Syrians and Mamlouks, insulted by this northern horde, attacked them near Damascus, slew Barbacan their chief, and compelled the remainder to retrace their steps to the borders of the Caspian Lake.
The intelligence did not fail to reach Europe that the members of the Church in Palestine had been put to death or dispersed by the exiles of Karism. Pope Innocent the Fourth suggested the expediency of another Crusade, and even summoned all his faithful children to take arms. He wrote to Henry the Third, king of England, urging him to press on his subjects the necessity of punishing the Karismians. But the spirit of crusading was more active in France than in any other country of the West and it revived in all the vigour of its chivalrous piety in the reign of Louis the Ninth. Agreeably to the superstition of the times, he had vowed, while afflicted by a severe illness, that in case of recovery he would travel to the Holy Land. The Cross was likewise taken by the three royal brothers, the Counts of Artois, Poictiers, and Anjou, by the Duke of Burgundy, the Countess of Flanders and her two sons, together with many knights of high degree.
But it was not till 1249 that the soldiers of Louis were mustered, and his ships prepared for sea; the former amounting to fifty thousand, while his vessels of all descriptions exceeded eighteen hundred. They set sail for Egypt; a storm separated the fleet; but the royal division, in which were nearly three thousand knights and their men-at-arms, arrived in the neighbourhood of Damietta. On the second day the king ordered the disembarkation; he himself leaped into the water; his warriors followed him to the shore; upon which the Saracens, panic-struck at their boldness and determination, made but a slight show of defence, and fled into the interior. Although Damietta was better prepared for a siege than at that period when it defied the arms of the Crusaders during eighteen months, yet the garrison were pleased to seek safety in the fleetness of their horses. Louis fixed his residence in the city; a Christian government was established; and the clergy, as they were wont on such occasions, proceeded to purify the mosques.
Towards the close of the year, after being joined by a body of English volunteers, the French monarch resolved to march to Cairo and attack the sultan in the heart of his kingdom. But the floods of the Nile, and the intersection of the country by numerous canals, occasioned a second time the loss of a brave army. Famine and disease, too, aided the sword of the enemy, till at length the victors of Damietta were compelled to sue for a peace which they could no longer obtain. A retreat was ordered; but those who attempted to escape by the river were taken prisoners, and the fate of such as proceeded by land was equally disastrous. While they were occupied in constructing a bridge over a canal, the Saracens entered the camp and murdered the sick. The valiant king, though oppressed with the general calamity of disease, sustained boldly the shock of the enemy, throwing himself into the midst of them, resolved to perish rather than desert his troops. One of his attendants succeeded at length in drawing him from the presence of the foe, and conducted him to a village, where he sunk under his wounds and fatigue into a state of utter insensibility. In this miserable condition he was overtaken by the Moslems, who announced to him that he was their captive. One of his brothers, the gallant Artois, had already fallen in battle, but the two others, Anjou and Poictiers, with all the nobility, fell into the hands of the enemy.
The sultan did not abuse his victory, nor seek to impose upon Louis terms which a sovereign could not grant without forfeiting his honour. He agreed to accept a sum equivalent to five hundred thousand livres for the deliverance of the army, and the town of Damietta as a ransom for the royal person. Peace was to continue ten years between the Mussulmans and the Christians; while the Franks were to be restored to those privileges in the kingdom of Jerusalem which they had enjoyed previous to the recent invasion of the French. The repose which succeeded this treaty was interrupted by the murder of the sultan, who fell a victim to the jealousy, of the Mamlouks; but after a few acts of hostility too insignificant to be recorded, the emirs renewed, with a few modifications, the basis of the agreement on which the peace was established. Louis himself made a narrow escape from the sanguinary intrigues of those military slaves who had imbrued their hands in the blood of their own master. They declared that, as they had committed a sin by destroying their sultan, whom, by their law, they ought to have guarded as the apple of their eye, their religion would be violated if they suffered a Christian king to live. But the other chiefs, more honourable than the Mamlouks, disdained to commit a crime under any such pretext; and the French monarch, accordingly, was allowed to accompany the poor remains of his army to the citadel of Acre.
It has been remarked that the expedition of St. Louis into Egypt resembles in many respects the war carried on in that country thirty years before. In both cases the Christian armies were encamped near the entrance of the Ashmoun canal, beyond which they could not advance; and the surrender of Damietta in each instance was the price of safety. The errors of the Cardinal Pelagius seem not to have been recollected by the French king, who, in fact, trod in his steps with a fatal blindness, and ended by paying a still severer penalty.
A gleam of hope arose in the minds of the Crusaders from finding the rulers of Egypt and of Syria engaged in a furious war. The Mamlouks even condescended to solicit the cooperation of Louis, and agreed to purchase it by remitting one-half of the ransom which still remained unpaid. They further consented to deliver up Jerusalem itself, and also the youthful captives taken on the banks of the Nile, whom they had compelled to embrace the Mussulman faith. But before the Franks could appear in the field, the interposition of the calif had restored peace to the contending parties, both of whom immediately resumed their wonted dislike to the European invaders.
The infidels, however, at this period did not pursue their schemes of conquest with the vigour and ability which distinguished the movements of Noureddin, and more especially of Saladin, his renowned successor. They might have swept the feeble and exhausted Christians from the shores of Palestine; but they merely ravaged the country round Acre, and then proceeded to Sidon, in the strong castle of which Louis and his army had taken refuge. The blood and property of the citizens satisfied the barbarians, who departed without trying the valour of the soldiers who occupied the garrison.
The death of Queen Blanche, the mother of the king, and regent during his absence, afforded him a good apology for leaving the country, of which he had long been tired. The patriarch and barons of the Holy Land offered him their humble thanks for the honour he had bestowed upon their cause, and for the benefits which he had conferred upon themselves individually. Louis, sensible that he had gathered no laurels in Palestine, and that the interests of the church were even in a more hopeless condition than when he landed at Damietta, listened to their address with mingled emotions of shame and regret, and forthwith prepared himself for his voyage homewards.[176]