that is, did him homage, according to the usage of those times. And the crusaders were mighty pleased to have this lord with them.”
Five years afterwards, at the close of 1244, Louis fell seriously ill at Pontoise; the alarm and sorrow in the kingdom were extreme; the king himself believed that his last hour was come; and he had all his household summoned, thanked them for their kind attentions, recommended them to be good servants of God, “and did all that a good Christian ought to do. His mother, his wife, his brothers, and all who were about him kept continually praying for him; his mother, beyond all others, adding to her prayers great austerities.” Once he appeared motionless and breathless; and he was supposed to be dead. “One of the dames who were tending him,” says Joinville, “would have drawn the sheet over his face, saying that he was dead; but another dame, who was on the other side of the bed, would not suffer it, saying that there was still life in his body. When the king heard the dispute between these two dames, our Lord wrought in him: he began to sigh, stretched his arms and legs, and said, in a hollow voice, as if he had come forth from the tomb, ‘He, by God’s grace, hath visited me, He who cometh from on high, and hath recalled me from amongst the dead.’ Scarcely had he recovered his senses and speech, when he sent for William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, together with Peter de Cuisy, Bishop of Meaux, in whose diocese he happened to be, and requested them ‘to place upon his shoulder the cross of the voyage over the sea.’ The two bishops tried to divert him from this idea, and the two queens, Blanche and Marguerite, conjured him on their knees to wait till he was well, and after that he might do as he pleased. He insisted, declaring that he would take no nourishment till he had received the cross. At last the Bishop of Paris yielded, and gave him a cross. The king received it with transport, kissing it, and placing it right gently Upon his breast.” “When the queen, his mother, knew that he had taken the cross,” says Joinville, “she made as great mourning as if she had seen him dead.”
Still more than three years rolled by before Louis fulfilled the engagement which he had thus entered into, with himself alone, one might say, and against the wish of nearly everybody about him. The crusades, although they still remained an object of religious and knightly aspiration, were from the political point of view decried; and, without daring to say so, many men of weight, lay or ecclesiastical, had no desire to take part in them. Under the influence of this public feeling, timidly exhibited but seriously cherished, Louis continued, for three years, to apply himself to the interior concerns of his kingdom and to his relations with the European powers, as if he had no other idea. There was a moment when his wisest counsellors and the queen his mother conceived a hope of inducing him to give up his purpose. “My lord king,” said one day that same Bishop of Paris, who, in the crisis of his illness, had given way to his wishes, “bethink you that, when you received the cross, when you suddenly and without reflection made this awful vow, you were weak, and, sooth to say, of a wandering mind, and that took away from your words the weight of verity and authority. Our lord the pope, who knoweth the necessities of your kingdom and your weakness of body, will gladly grant unto you a dispensation. Lo! we have the puissance of the schismatic Emperor Frederick, the snares of the wealthy King of the English, the treasons but lately stopped of the Poitevines, and the subtle wranglings of the Albigensians to fear; Germany is disturbed; Italy hath no rest; the Holy Land is hard of access; you will not easily penetrate thither, and behind you will be left the implacable hatred between the pope and Frederick. To whom will you leave us, every one of us, in our feebleness and desolation?” Queen Blanche appealed to other considerations, the good counsels she had always given her son, and the pleasure God took in seeing a son giving heed to and believing his mother; and to hers she promised, that, if he would remain, the Holy Land should not suffer, and that more troops should be sent thither than he could lead thither himself. The king listened attentively and with deep emotion. “You say,” he answered, “that I was not in possession of my senses when I took the cross. Well, as you wish it, I lay it aside; I give it back to you;” and raising his hand to his shoulder, he undid the cross upon it, saying, “Here it is, my lord bishop; I restore to you the cross I had put on.” All present congratulated themselves; but the king, with a sudden change of look and intention, said to them, “My friends, now, assuredly, I lack not sense and reason; I am neither weak nor wandering of mind; and I demand my cross back again. He who knoweth all things knoweth that until it is replaced upon my shoulder, no food shall enter my lips.” At these words all present declared that “herein was the finger of God, and none dared to raise, in opposition to the king’s saying, any objection.”
In June, 1248, Louis, after having received at St. Denis, together with the oriflamme, the scrip and staff of a pilgrim, took leave, at Corbeil or Cluny, of his mother, Queen Blanche, whom he left regent during his absence, with the fullest powers. “Most sweet fair son,” said she, embracing him; “fair tender son, I shall never see you more; full well my heart assures me.” He took with him Queen Marguerite of Provence, his wife, who had declared that she would never part from him. On arriving, in the early part of August, at Aigues-Mortes, he found assembled there a fleet of thirty-eight vessels with a certain number of transport-ships which he had hired from the republic of Genoa; and they were to convey to the East the troops and personal retinue of the king himself. The number of these vessels proves that Louis was far from bringing one of those vast armies with which the first crusades had been familiar; it even appears that he had been careful to get rid of such mobs, for, before embarking, he sent away nearly ten thousand bow-men, Genoese, Venetian, Pisan, and even French, whom he had at first engaged, and of whom, after inspection, he desired nothing further. The sixth crusade was the personal achievement of St. Louis, not the offspring of a popular movement, and he carried it out with a picked army, furnished by the feudal chivalry and by the religious and military orders dedicated to the service of the Holy Land.
The Isle of Cyprus was the trysting-place appointed for all the forces of the expedition. Louis arrived there on the 12th of September, 1248, and reckoned upon remaining there only a few days; for it was Egypt that he was in a hurry to reach. The Christian world was at that time of opinion that, to deliver the Holy Land, it was necessary first of all to strike a blow at Islamism in Egypt, wherein its chief strength resided. But scarcely had the crusaders formed a junction in Cyprus, when the vices of the expedition and the weaknesses of its chief began to be manifest. Louis, unshakable in his religious zeal, was wanting in clear ideas and fixed resolves as to the carrying out of his design; he inspired his associates with sympathy rather than exercised authority over them, and he made himself admired without making himself obeyed. He did not succeed in winning a majority in the council of chiefs over to his opinion as to the necessity for a speedy departure for Egypt; it was decided to pass the winter in Cyprus, and during this leisurely halt of seven months, the improvidence of the crusaders, their ignorance of the places, people, and facts amidst which they were about to launch themselves, their headstrong rashness, their stormy rivalries, and their moral and military irregularities aggravated the difficulties of the enterprise, great as they already were. Louis passed his time in interfering between them, in hushing up their quarrels, in upbraiding them for their licentiousness, and in reconciling the Templars and Hospitallers. His kindness was injurious to his power; he lent too ready an ear to the wishes or complaints of his comrades, and small matters took up his thoughts and his time almost as much as great.
At last a start was made from Cyprus in May, 1249, and, in spite of violent gales of wind which dispersed a large number of vessels, they arrived on the 4th of June before Damietta.
The crusader-chiefs met on board the king’s ship, the Mountjoy; and one of those present, Guy, a knight in the train of the Count of Melun, in a letter to one of his friends; a student at Paris, reports to him the king’s address in the following terms: “My friends and lieges, we shall be invincible if we be inseparable in brotherly love. It was not without the will of God that we arrived here so speedily. Descend we upon this land and occupy it in force. I am not the King of France. I am not Holy Church. It is all ye who are King and Holy Church. I am but a man whose life will pass away as that of any other man whenever it shall please God. Any issue of our expedition is to usward good; if we be conquered we shall wing our way to heaven as martyrs; and if we be conquerors, men will celebrate the glory of the Lord; and that of France, and, what is more, that of Christendom, will grow thereby. It
