own, His mighty cause. Fight we for Christ; it is Christ who will triumph in us, not for our own sake, but for the honor and blessedness of His name.” It was determined to disembark the next day. An army of Saracens lined the shore. The galley which bore the oriflamme was one of the first to touch. When the king heard tell that the banner of St. Denis was on shore, he, in spite of the pope’s legate, who was with him, would not leave it; he leaped into the sea, which was up to his arm-pits, and went, shield on neck, helm on head, and lance in hand, and joined his people on the sea-shore. When he came to land, and perceived the Saracens, he asked what folk they were, and it was told him that they were the Saracens; then he put his lance beneath his arm and his shield in front of him, and would have charged the Saracens, if his mighty men, who were with him, had suffered him.
This, from his very first outset, was Louis exactly, the most fervent of Christians and the most splendid of knights, much rather than a general and a king.
Such he appeared at the moment of landing, and such he was during the whole duration, and throughout all the incidents of his campaign in Egypt, from June, 1249, to May, 1250: ever admirable for his moral greatness and knightly valor, but without foresight or consecutive plan as a leader, without efficiency as a commander in action, and ever decided or biassed either by his own momentary impressions or the fancies of his comrades. He took Damietta without the least difficulty. The Mussulmans, stricken with surprise as much as terror, abandoned the place; and when Fakr-Eddin, the commandant of the Turks, came before the Sultan of Egypt, Malek-Saleh, who was ill, and almost dying, “Couldst thou not have held out for at least an instant?” said the sultan. “What! not a single one of you got slain!” Having become masters of Damietta, St. Louis and the crusaders committed the same fault there as in the Isle of Cyprus: they halted there for an indefinite time. They were expecting fresh crusaders; and they spent the time of expectation in quarrelling over the partition of the booty taken in the city. They made away with it, they wasted it blindly. “The barons,” said Joinville, “took to giving grand banquets, with an excess of meats; and the people of the common sort took up with bad women.” Louis saw and deplored these irregularities, without being in a condition to stop them.
At length, on the 20th of November, 1249, after more than five months’ inactivity at Damietta, the crusaders put themselves once more in motion, with the determination of marching upon Babylon, that outskirt of Cairo, now called Old Cairo, which the greater part of them, in their ignorance, mistook for the real Babylon, and where they flattered themselves they would find immense riches, and avenge the olden sufferings of the Hebrew captives. The Mussulmans had found time to recover from their first fright, and to organize, at all points, a vigorous resistance. On the 8th of February, 1250, a battle took place twenty leagues from Damietta, at Mansourah (the city of victory), on the right bank of the Nile. The king’s brother, Robert, Count of Artois, marched with the vanguard, and obtained an early success; but William de Sonnac, grand master of the Templars, and William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, leader of the English crusaders but lately arrived at Damietta, insisted upon his waiting for the king before pushing the victory to the uttermost. Robert taxed them, ironically, with caution. “Count Robert,” said William Longsword, “we shall be presently where thou’lt not dare to come nigh the tail of my horse.” There came a message from the king ordering his brother to wait for him; but Robert made no account of it. “I have already put the Saracens to flight,” said he, “and I will wait for none to complete their defeat;” and he rushed forward into Mansourah. All those who had dissuaded him followed after; they found the Mussulmans numerous and perfectly rallied; in a few moments the Count of Artois fell, pierced with wounds, and more than three hundred knights of his train, the same number of English, together with their leader, William Longsword, and two hundred and eighty Templars, paid with their lives for the senseless ardor of the French prince.
The king hurried up in all haste to the aid of his brother; but he had scarcely arrived, and as yet knew nothing of his brother’s fate, when he himself engaged so impetuously in the battle that he was on the point of being taken prisoner by six Saracens who had already seized the reins of his horse. He was defending himself vigorously with his sword, when several of his knights came up with him, and set him free. He asked one of them if he had any news of his brother; and the other answered, “Certainly I have news of him: for I am sure that he is now in Paradise.” “Praised be God!” answered the king, with a tear or two, and went on with his fighting. The battle-field was left that day to the crusaders; but they were not allowed to occupy it as conquerors, for, three days afterwards, on the 11th of February, 1250, the camp of St. Louis was assailed by clouds of Saracens, horse and foot, Mamelukes and Bedouins. All surprise had vanished, the Mussulmans measured at a glance the numbers of the Christians, and attacked them in full assurance of success, whatever heroism they might display; and the crusaders themselves indulged in no more self-illusion, and thought only of defending themselves. Lack of provisions and sickness soon rendered defence almost as impossible as attack; every day saw the Christian camp more and more encumbered with the famine-stricken, the dying, and the dead; and the necessity for retreating became evident. Louis made to the Sultan Malek-Moaddam an offer to evacuate Egypt, and give up Damietta, provided that the kingdom of Jerusalem were restored to the Christians, and the army permitted to accomplish its retreat without obstruction. The sultan, without accepting or rejecting the proposition, asked what guarantees would be given him for the surrender of Damietta. Louis offered as hostage one of his brothers, the Count of Anjou, or the Count of Poitiers. “We must have the king himself,” said the Mussulmans. A unanimous cry of indignation arose amongst the crusaders. “We would rather,” said Geoffrey de Sargines, “that we had been all slain, or taken prisoners by the Saracens, than be reproached with having left our king in pawn.” All negotiation was broken off; and on the 5th of April, 1250, the crusaders decided upon retreating.
This was the most deplorable scene of a deplorable drama; and at the same time it was, for the king, an occasion for displaying, in their most sublime and most attractive traits, all the virtues of the Christian. Whilst sickness and famine were devastating the camp, Louis made himself visitor, physician, and comforter; and his presence and his words exercised upon the worst cases a searching influence. He had one day sent his chaplain, William de Chartres, to visit one of his household servants, a modest man of some means, named Gaugelme, who was at the point of death. When the chaplain was retiring, “I am waiting for my lord, our saintly king, to come,” said the dying man; “I will not depart this life until I have seen him and spoken to him: and then I will die.” The king came, and addressed to him the most affectionate words of consolation; and when he had left him, and before he had re-entered his tent, he was told that Gaugelme had expired. When the 5th of April, the day fixed for the retreat, had come, Louis himself was ill and much enfeebled. He was urged to go aboard one of the vessels which were to descend the Nile, carrying the wounded and the most suffering; but he refused absolutely, saying, “I don’t separate from my people in the hour of danger.” He remained on land, and when he had to move forward he fainted twice. When he came to himself, he was amongst the last to leave the camp, got himself helped on to the back of a little Arab horse, covered with silken housings, and marched at a slow pace with the rear-guard, having beside him Geoffrey de Sargines, who watched over him, “and protected me against the Saracens,” said Louis himself to Joinville, “as a good servant protects his lord’s tankard against the flies.”
Neither the king’s courage nor his servants’ devotion was enough to insure success, even to the retreat. At four leagues’ distance from the camp it had just left, the rear-guard of the crusaders, harassed by clouds of Saracens, was obliged to halt. Louis could no longer keep on his horse. “He was put up at a house,” says Joinville, “and laid, almost dead, upon the lap of a tradeswoman from Paris; and it was believed that he would not last till evening.” With his consent, one of his lieges entered into parley with one of the Mussulman chiefs; a truce was about to be concluded, and the Mussulman was taking off his ring from his finger as a pledge that he would observe it. “But during this,” says Joinville, “there took place a great mishap. A traitor of a sergeant, whose name was Marcel, began calling to our people, ‘Sirs knights, surrender, for such is the king’s command: cause not the king’s death.’ All thought that it was the king’s command; and they gave
