Bishop Galeran of Beirut reached the West in 1245, bearing tidings of La Forbie and the Frankish army’s destruction. In late June he attended a Church council convened by the new Pope Innocent IV at Lyons (south-eastern France), the papal court having fled Italy because of the conflict with Emperor Frederick II of Germany. Parlous as Outremer’s predicament was, the pope and his prelates judged other issues to be more pressing: namely, their own survival. Frederick’s excommunication was reconfirmed and, this time, he was officially deposed of his crown rights to Germany and Sicily–a move that prompted the outbreak of open warfare between the papacy and the Hohenstaufen Empire. Innocent IV was also concerned with directing resources to the Latin Empire of Romania, which was edging ever more certainly towards collapse. The pope agreed to proclaim a new crusade to the Near East, appointing the French cardinal-bishop Odo of Châteauroux as papal legate to the campaign, but it was evident that the Levantine cause was a relatively low priority.
Bishop Galeran’s prospects of securing support from the great monarchs of Latin Europe also seemed dismal. Emperor Frederick obviously was in no position to leave the West. Henry III of England was preoccupied with the business of bringing his over-mighty nobles to heel, and even sought to ban Galeran from preaching the cross on English soil. Only one king would stand out in this sea of preoccupation and indifference, responding to Outremer’s call, a sovereign devoted to the war for the Holy Land–Louis IX of France, a man who would be canonised by the Roman Church as a saint.
KING LOUIS IX OF FRANCE
In 1244 King Louis was some thirty years old, tall, slight of frame, pale-skinned and fair-haired. By ancestry, his royal blood was infused with the crusading impulse, born as he was of an unbroken line–stretching back to Louis VII and Philip II–of Capetian kings who had waged the holy war. King Louis IX also inherited a French realm that had been transformed from its position of weakness in the early twelfth century. The long-lived Philip II had proved to be a gifted bureaucrat, and his forty-three-year reign saw huge improvements in governmental regulation and financial administration. Success, likewise, was achieved in the struggle with England, culminating in the conquest of Normandy and vast tracts of Angevin territory in western France.
After Philip’s death in 1223, however, his son Louis VIII survived just three years. Thus, Louis IX was only twelve when he came to the throne. His forceful mother Blanche of Castile assumed the regency, ruling with assured competence; indeed, even as a full-grown man of thirty, King Louis had yet to emerge from Blanche’s rather overbearing shadow.
Louis appears to have been a devout Christian. He gained a reputation for attending mass daily and for his keen interest in sermons. In 1238 he bought the Crown of Thorns, thought to have been worn by Jesus on the cross, looted from Byzantine Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade and then sold by the penniless ruler of Latin Romania. Over the next decade, Louis built a magnificent new chapel in the heart of Paris to house this relic of Christ’s Passion–the Sainte-Chapelle–a towering masterpiece of the technologically advanced ‘Gothic’ style of architecture that had come to dominate western Europe. Louis was also a generous patron of religious houses across France. In his dealings with the papacy, the Capetian sovereign showed due deference and respect to the Latin Church, but not to the detriment of royal authority or his own spiritual beliefs. Thus, he allowed Frederick II’s excommunication to be announced in France, but forbade the preaching of a crusade against the emperor on French soil.
Louis’ early reign taught him something of war, but he had yet to reveal any spark of martial genius or strategic vision akin to that which had possessed Richard the Lionheart. The Capetian was capable, however, of inspiring loyalty and fidelity in his troops, not least through the assiduous care taken to ensure their wellbeing and morale. In fact, Louis’ whole approach to the business of monarchy and generalship was heavily influenced by notions of honour, justice and obligation. These principles were at the heart of the codes of chivalric conduct that had solidified in the course of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and now informed almost every aspect of Christian knightly culture. Nascent ideals of chivalry had played a role in crusading from the start; certainly they formed a backdrop to the Third Crusade. But by the 1240s they were a dominant force, shaping the approach to, and prosecution of, holy war.
For Louis IX and those who followed him, crusading was a means to fulfil a debt of dutiful service owed to God and a struggle in which one’s reputation might be preserved and advanced. Cherished renown was there to be earned through valorous feats of arms, although, of course, the danger of cowardice or failure–and thus the threat of deleterious shame–also hung in the air. Crusaders continued to be attracted by the spiritual reward of an indulgence, but while many still conceived of themselves as pilgrims, this idea of holy war as a devotional journey was increasingly balanced or even eclipsed by the image of crusading as a chivalric endeavour. This shift would have marked consequences on the battlefield, not least because of the inherent tension between seeking personal glory and following orders.
Louis may have harboured thoughts of enlisting in a crusade during the 1230s, and he lent financial support to the Barons’ Crusade, but by late 1244 his determination to take the cross was hardening. By this stage, news of Jerusalem’s capture by the Khwarizmians was probably circulating in the West, but Bishop Galeran had yet to report the shattering defeat at La Forbie. That winter the French king fell ill with a severe fever and in December he lay abed in Paris, ‘so near dying that one of [his servants] wanted to draw the sheet over his face, maintaining that he was dead’. In the grip of this dire infirmity, Louis declared his unswerving determination to lead a crusade and was said to have ‘asked for the cross to be given to him’ there and then. The crusade became the enterprise through which he asserted his adulthood and independence–and the cause to which he would dedicate his life.29
THE PREPARATIONS FOR WAR
It would be almost four years before Louis IX embarked on his crusade. This delay was not the result of deliberate prevarication, but, rather, a consequence of the meticulous precision with which the king sought to prepare for the holy war. The expedition was to be dominated by the French. The conflict between the Hohenstaufen Empire and the papacy precluded German and Italian involvement, although Frederick II did make Sicily’s ports and markets available to the Capetian monarch. A few prominent English nobles took the cross, in spite of Henry III’s misgivings–most notably, the king’s half-brother William Longsword.
In France, Louis’ ardent enthusiasm and the efforts of the papal legate Odo of Châteauroux prompted widespread enrolment. All three of the king’s brothers enlisted: Robert of Artois, Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou. A grand assembly held in Paris in October 1245 ended with many other leading counts, dukes and prelates committing to the expedition. The count of Champagne was busy in northern Spain, but many leading members of his household joined up, among them a twenty-three-year-old knight named John of Joinville, who had inherited the title of seneschal of Champagne (by this date, an office with oversight of lordly ceremony). As a participant in the coming crusade, Joinville came to know King Louis well and witnessed the holy war first-hand. Years later the seneschal wrote a vivid record of what he saw and experienced, albeit one that portrayed the French monarch in a heroic light. Joinville’s Old French account–a mixture of personal memoir and royal biography (at times even hagiography)–offers one of the most visceral and illuminating insights into the human experience of crusading.30
Joinville’s testimony, alongside a wealth of other contemporary evidence, makes it abundantly clear that Louis IX threw himself into the preparations for his forthcoming expedition with enormous energy. The elaborate measures taken reveal a commendable degree of foresight and an eye for detail. It is also apparent that the king’s approach to planning grew from a belief that the crusade’s success depended on both practical and spiritual considerations.
Louis adopted a remarkably clinical approach to the matter of logistical preparation, tapping into the increasing administrative sophistication of thirteenth-century France. He had no intention of leading a ramshackle foraging force into the East. Selecting Cyprus as his advance staging post, the king set about building up a supply of the food, weaponry and resources needed for war. After two years of stockpiling goods on the island the vast mounds of wheat and barley awaiting the army apparently resembled hills, while the stacks of wine barrels were, from a distance, easily mistaken for barns. Aigues-Mortes, a new fortified port on France’s south-eastern coast, served as the expedition’s European base of operations.
This feverish activity cost a fortune. The Capetian monarchy made an extraordinary financial commitment to the crusade and Louis amassed a sizeable war chest with which to fund the campaign. Royal accounts suggest that his expenditure during the first two years totalled two millionlivres tournois (gold ‘pounds’ of the weight accepted in Tours), much of which went on paying either wages or subsidies to French knights. Given that total royal income was no more than 250,000 livres tournois per annum in this period, the economic strain of mounting the campaign was massive. To help foot the bill, Louis was granted one-twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues in France by the pope, and this was later increased to one-tenth for three years. Crown officials also extorted money from heretics and Jews, and, all in all, Louis was content to beg, borrow and steal in the name of the holy war. In addition, he encouraged other leading crusaders to raise their own funds and to contribute to the organisation of transport.31
Many earlier crusades had been derailed by the internal rivalries that beset Latin Christendom. This same hostile political environment had caused monarchs to delay or abandon their plans to campaign in the Levant because of anxiety caused by the potential consequences of a prolonged absence. But although Louis IX was conscious of his commitments to the realm of France, he evidently considered these to be outweighed by the absolute necessity to lead a crusade. Thus, before setting out for the East, the king conferred the regency of his Capetian domain upon his experienced mother Blanche. Likewise, he did his best to settle the political affairs of Europe: attempting to broker a settlement between the papacy and Frederick II; encouraging peace with England. But even when these steps enjoyed negligible success (as in the Hohenstaufen conflict with Rome) and the threats to France’s safety and Louis’ own position as king remained, he refused to postpone his departure or commute his pledge.
Alongside his efforts to bring harmony–and, as he saw it, Christian fellowship–to the West, in a more personal sense the Capetian king set about making peace with his people and with his soul. Louis clearly believed that his crusade would not prevail simply through the works of man, but that it had to be conducted in a spirit of contrite devotion and with a purified heart. He took the innovative step of instituting a series of enquiries, conducted in the main by Mendicant Friars, to settle any outstanding legal disputes within his realm, and to root out any corruption and injustice caused by himself, his officials or even his ancestors. As far back as the First Crusade, some of those taking the cross had sought to put their affairs in order and to resolve disputes before departure, but never on this scale.
Louis’ crusade began in Paris on 12 June 1248 with an emotive, ritualised public ceremony designed to echo the piety of his crusading forebears. The king received the symbols of the crusading pilgrim–the scrip and staff–at Notre-Dame Cathedral and then walked barefoot to the royal Church of St Denis to take up the Oriflame, France’s historic battle standard. From there he made his way south to the coast, departing with his army from Aigues-Mortes and Marseilles in late August.
Best estimates suggest that Louis led a total force of between 20,000 and 25,000 men. This included around 2,800 knights, 5,600 mounted sergeants and a further 10,000 infantry. In addition, some 5,000 crossbowmen fought in the crusade and significant advances in the accuracy and power of the bows they wielded enabled these troops to play an important role in the campaign. This was certainly not a vast host, but the king seems to have made a conscious decision to go to war with a select fighting force rather than a sprawling horde–he even left behind many thousands of other troops and non-combatants who, hoping to join the expedition, had gathered at Aigues-Mortes of their own accord.
Following the now established practice, the crusade made its journey to the Near East by sea. Louis travelled aboard a grand royal vessel, dubbed Montjoie, or ‘Hill of Joy’, the name given to the spot from which pilgrims to Jerusalem gained their first sight of the Holy City. But for most Franks the voyage to the eastern Mediterranean was a frightening and desperately uncomfortable affair. Normal transport craft offered perhaps 1,500 square feet of deck space (roughly equivalent to half the size of a modern tennis court) but had to carry around 500 passengers, and sometimes many more. Not surprisingly, one crusader likened sea travel to being locked in a prison. Lower decks were often used to ferry horses, although Louis also commissioned specially designed transports for this most precious cargo of animals, essential to the Latins’ preferred style of mounted warfare.
John of Joinville described the experience of departing from Marseilles in late August 1248. Having boarded his ship, he watched as horses were led below decks through a door in the hull. This portal was then carefully sealed with caulking ‘as is done with a barrel before plunging it into water, because once the ship is on the high seas, that door is completely submerged’. Urged on by the vessel’s captain, all the crew and passengers sang a hymn popular with crusaders, ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’ (Come, Creator Spirit), as the sails were unfurled and the journey began. But even with his morale lifted, Joinville admitted to feelings of intense trepidation over sea travel, observing that no one ‘can tell when he goes to sleep at night, whether or not he may be lying at the bottom of the sea the next morning’. On this occasion, his fears proved unfounded, and the seneschal reached Cyprus about three weeks later, where King Louis had already arrived on 17 September.32
STORMING THE NILE
Upon reaching Cyprus, Louis IX made no precipitous move to initiate a military campaign; instead, he dedicated the following winter and spring to marshalling his forces and finalising strategy. The expedition was joined by troop contingents from Latin Palestine–including many leading Frankish nobles and substantial forces drawn from each of the three main Military Orders–and by the venerable patriarch of Jerusalem, Robert of Nantes (said to have been in his late seventies), who, together with the papal legate Odo of Châteauroux, oversaw the spiritual care of the army. Regardless of these arrivals, Louis’ claim to supreme command of the crusade appears to have been undisputed.
A firm decision was made at this stage (if not earlier) to prosecute an Egyptian campaign, because of the continued vulnerability of Sultan al-Salih’s Ayyubid regime. Louis’ objective seems to have been the conquest of all Egypt. Rather than dabble in negotiation, either in advance of an assault or once initial territorial gains were made, he intended to crush the centre of Ayyubid power and then use the Nile region as a new base from which to recapture the rest of the Holy Land. This was an ambitious but not entirely unrealistic plan. After some debate weighing the relative merits of attacking Alexandria or Damietta, the latter eventually was chosen and Louis’ crusade was set on course to follow in the footsteps of the Fifth Crusade.
The expedition emerged from months of nervous anticipation on Cyprus with an acknowledged leader and an agreed goal–two promising indicators. But the delay also had its costs. Intelligence of Louis’ arrival allowed al-Salih to prepare his defences in Egypt. Illness (perhaps in the form of malaria) also cost the lives of some 260 Latin barons and knights–around one-tenth of the total force–even before the campaign properly began. For others, the prolonged period of inactivity sapped financial resources: like a number of his compatriots, Joinville almost ran out of money to pay his knights and was taken into service with King Louis.
By late spring, however, the preparations were complete. On 13 May 1249 a mighty fleet of around 120 large galleys and perhaps another 1,000 smaller vessels set sail from Cyprus. Joinville wrote that ‘it seemed as if all the sea, as far as the eye could behold, was covered with the canvas of the ships’ sails’. Storms and difficult winds dispersed some of the naval convoy, and it took twenty-three days to reach the Egyptian coast. Towards the end of the journey, the crusaders came across a group of four Muslim galleys. Three were promptly sunk by fire arrows and catapult stones shot from the Franks’ deck-mounted engines, but one vessel escaped, albeit badly damaged, and seems to have issued a warning to the Muslims stationed on the North African coast.33
In early June, the Latins anchored offshore from Damietta. The Fifth Crusade had managed to land on the beaches north of the city and west of the Nile unheralded–Louis’ men were not to enjoy the same luxury. Ranged along the seafront were thousands of Ayyubid troops under the command of Fakhr al-Din, the emir who had negotiated with Frederick II in the 1220s and had now risen to become one of al-Salih’s leading generals. The mouth of the Nile also was guarded by a Muslim flotilla. Confronted by this entrenched opposition, Louis convened a war council onMontjoie and a decision was made to launch a massed landing the following morning. The king and his advisers must have known that they were about to take a huge gamble–attempting the most audacious amphibious assault in crusading history. Any lack of coordination among vessels arriving on the beach might leave isolated Frankish warriors to be annihilated. And if the brute force of the initial assault faltered and no foothold on the coast was gained, then the entire expedition might collapse with its first offensive.
The beach assault
As the sun rose on Saturday 5 June 1249, thousands of Latins huddled in their ships reciting prayers. All had been instructed to make confessions during the night. On Montjoie, Louis attended mass, as he did each morning. Then, across the fleet, the difficult work began of switching from large transport ships to shallower-draughted landing craft. John of Joinville and his men jumped into a longboat, which became so overloaded that it almost sank. Later he watched as one unfortunate knight mistimed his leap to a boat just as ‘it drew away, so that he fell into the sea and drowned’.
Joinville described the scene on the delta coast with vivid clarity: ‘The full array of the sultan’s forces [were] drawn up along the shore. It was a sight to enchant the eye, for the sultan’s [standards] were all of gold, and where the sun caught them they shone resplendent. The din this army made with its kettledrums and Saracen horns was terrifying to hear.’ All around him, hundreds of craft were bearing down upon the beach, many of them brightly painted with coats of arms, streaming with pennons, their oarsmen straining to drive forward.
John of Joinville’s longboat was among the first to reach land, pulling up directly in front of a pack of Muslim horsemen, who immediately charged forward. He described how, leaping into the shallow water, ‘we stuck the sharp end of our shields into the sand and fixed our lances firmly in the ground with the points towards the enemy’. This bristling metal ring of protection saved Joinville and his men, for ‘the moment [the charging enemy] saw the lances about to pierce their bellies, they wheeled around and fled’. Having survived their first encounter, John’s party held their ground even as thousands more Latins reached the shoreline.34
Up and down the coast fierce fighting broke out, as the Muslims launched withering volleys of arrows and spears on to the landing craft. It soon became clear that not every Frankish boat was shallow enough to reach the sands. At this terrible moment there was a very real possibility that the attack might stall, but urgent orders went out to disembark and wade ashore. Some jumped too soon ‘in their fervent eagerness’ and drowned; others found themselves up to their waists or even armpits, but immediately began striding forward. Many knights struggled to disembark their horses so that they could fight astride a mount, while Christian crossbowmen sought to provide cover, unleashing a scouring rain of missiles that according to one crusader came ‘so thick and so fast that it was a wonder to see’. Ferocious skirmishes broke out all along the shore, but the heavily armoured Frankish knights soon formed well-ordered units, and, once these beachheads were established on land, the Muslims’ attacks became increasingly ineffective.
As the assault turned in the Latins’ favour, Louis IX was watching from his own landing craft, beside Odo of Châteauroux. The plan was for the king to stay on board in safety, but when the Capetian sovereign saw his royal standard, the Oriflame, planted in the sands of Egypt, his patience broke. Against the papal legate’s heated objections, Louis leapt overboard into chest-high water and forged his way forward, ‘with his shield hung from his neck, his helmet on his head, and lance in hand, till he joined his people on the shore’. There, with his blood up, the king had to be held back from charging into combat.
Pockets of fighting continued until midday, but the Ayyubid defence was badly orchestrated and lacked determination. Fakhr al-Din eventually retreated inland towards Damietta. The Muslims were said to have lost 500 men, including three emirs and many horses, while the Franks suffered only limited losses. The entire landing had been a startling success. Many crusaders clearly felt that they had been lifted to victory by God’s grace, one writing in a letter that the Latins fought ‘like strong athletes of the Lord’.35
Even better fortune was to follow. King Louis must have expected and prepared for a hard-fought siege of Damietta, only too aware of the gruelling eighteen-month investment undertaken by the Fifth Crusade. As the day drew to a close, he began to ferry supplies ashore, preparing to fortify his position and, if necessary, to repel a counter-attack. But the very next day the Franks were astounded to discover that Damietta had been abandoned. Trails of smoke were seen rising above the city, and scouts returned to report that its garrison had fled, some by land, others down the Nile. In a single stroke, Louis had achieved the first goal of his campaign, establishing a foothold on the Nile and opening the doorway to Egypt. It was the most stunning opening foray of any crusade. In the sweltering heat of the North African summer, the image of the Ayyubids fleeing from the beaches and then forsaking Damietta seems to have burned into the minds of Louis and his compatriots. For them, it was an image to relish–one that seemed to speak of a Muslim world on the brink of collapse and to foreshadow ultimate Christian victory.
AYYUBID DECLINE
The crusaders assumed that their success in early June 1249 was born of their own martial superiority and the enfeebled state of Islam. But while these notions contained more than a grain of truth, they also concealed the underlying reality of the situation. Fakhr al-Din’s decision to quit the field on 5 June does not appear primarily to have been a response to Latin ferocity. In fact, he conceded the beaches and then promptly marched the Egyptian field army south, straight past Damietta, because his real ambitions lay elsewhere. The city had been garrisoned by a regiment known as the Kinaniyya, renowned for their bravery; but horrified to find themselves deserted, they too absconded during the night. Pouring south, all of these forces regrouped at the main Ayyubid encampment, where Sultan al-Salih’s grip on power was in terminal decline.
After the Muslim triumph at La Forbie in 1244, al-Salih had turned his back on the Khwarizmians. Judging this horde of untamed mercenaries to be too dangerous and uncontrollable to be trusted, he barred his former allies from entering Egypt. Left to ravage Palestine and Syria with little coherent purpose, the rampaging savagery that had driven the Khwarizmians eventually burned itself out, and in 1246 they were roundly defeated by a coalition of Syrian Muslims. In the years that followed, al-Salih moved to assume control of Damascus and to occupy further sections of Palestine.
Around this time, however, the sultan fell gravely ill with consumption. By 1249 his health was deteriorating rapidly and he was able to travel only when borne upon a litter. In one respect, therefore, King Louis IX’s crusade was propitiously timed, because it coincided with a period of severe debility for the Ayyubid high command. Yet, even though al-Salih was dying, there were others eager to take his place, among them Fakhr al-Din. So it was that the emir readily abandoned his post at Damietta in early summer 1249, worried that if enmeshed in a prolonged engagement on the coast he might miss his opportunity to seize power when the sultan died. The outcome of events at the mouth of the Nile Delta enraged the ailing al-Salih. He seems to have suspected the real reason behind Fakhr al-Din’s retreat, but lacked the confidence openly to punish such a prominent emir. The Kinaniyya were less fortunate, and the sultan had the entire regiment hanged.36
This brutalised atmosphere of mistrust, betrayal and rivalry was just one expression of a wider malaise affecting the Ayyubid realm across the Levant. After long decades of domination, the dynasty established by Saladin and his brother al-Adil was inching towards disintegration–bedevilled by ineffectual leadership and paralysed by internecine intrigue. But this did not mean that the Frankish conquest of Egypt or the Holy Land would proceed unopposed. In fact, even beyond Fakhr al-Din’s dreams of glory, another extraordinarily potent force was rising to prominence in Egypt: the mamluks.
Mamluks–the swords of Islam
Mamluks, or slave soldiers, had been used by Muslim rulers in the Levant for centuries, playing significant roles in Zangid and Ayyubid armies through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These fiercely loyal, highly professional warriors were the product of an elaborate system of slavery and military training. Most were Turks from the Russian Kipchak steppes far to the north, beyond the Black Sea; captured as boys (usually between the ages of eight and twelve) by well-organised slave rings, they were sold to Islamic potentates in the Near and Middle East and then indoctrinated in the Muslim faith and trained in the arts of war.
Mamluks were prized not only for their unrivalled martial skill, but also for their fidelity. Because their welfare and survival were directly linked to just one master, they tended to be remarkably faithful–an unusual quality in the conniving quagmire of medieval Islamic power politics. Commenting on their commendable reliability, an eleventh-century Seljuq ruler observed that ‘one obedient slave is better than 300 sons; for the latter desire their father’s death, the former long life for his master’. Strange as it may sound, their loyalty was also a product of relatively rosy life prospects, as many prominent mamluks went on to enjoy command roles, liberty and prosperity.
Rulers from Nur al-Din to al-Kamil employed mamluks in positions ranging from ‘royal’ bodyguards to battlefield generals, but no sultan was more reliant upon their services than al-Salih. After about 1240 he became increasingly suspicious of the trustworthiness of his other retainers and soldiers, and built up a much larger mamluk army. The elite core of this force was a one-thousand-strong regiment known as the Bahriyya (a name derived from their garrison near Cairo on an island in the Nile, which in Arabic was known as the bahr al-Nil, or ‘the sea of the Nile’). One Muslim contemporary recorded that the Bahriyya quickly ‘became a mighty force, of extreme courage and boldness, from which the Muslims derived the greatest benefit’. To an extent, al-Salih’s creation of this select band, alongside his wider use of other mamluk units, made perfect sense. The continued survival of his teetering political regime soon came to depend upon the Bahriyya’s enduring support. But if and when al-Salih died, their loyalty to an Ayyubid successor might waver–indeed, the mamluks might begin even to question whether they should lead rather than follow.
For the time being, the balance held. Al-Salih lived on through the summer and autumn of 1249, establishing a well-protected base of operations for his army beside the fortified town of Mansourah–the same position taken up by his Ayyubid predecessors at the time of the Fifth Crusade. With the Muslim host thus entrenched, and its ranks bolstered by the presence of the Bahriyya, it was evident that King Louis’ crusade would meet far stiffer resistance than that encountered at Damietta if it dared to venture south along the Nile.37
TO CONQUER EGYPT
The Frankish occupation of Damietta was followed by another period of cautious inactivity on Louis’ part. The Capetian sovereign had no interest in using Damietta as a bargaining chip to achieve territorial concessions in Palestine–he aspired instead to conquer all Ayyubid Egypt and then, with Muslim resistance shattered, turn east towards Jerusalem. This strategy meant that, at some point, the crusade would have to march inland. The king seems to have been aware of some of the problems faced in Egypt by Cardinal Pelagius and John of Brienne twenty-eight years earlier, and a number of Christian eyewitnesses present at Damietta in 1249 refer explicitly to the reversals experienced by the Fifth Crusaders. Certainly, with the Nile flood pending, Louis made no immediate attempt to march south. Instead, the expedition waited out the summer.
Through these months, Louis and his advisers debated the next step in the campaign. The port of Alexandria was mooted as a possible target, but one of the king’s brothers, Robert of Artois, apparently recommended a direct southward invasion, arguing that ‘to kill the serpent, you must first of all crush its head’. With al-Salih’s Ayyubid army now barracked at Mansourah, Louis’ crusade, therefore, would face a similar strategic challenge to that confronted by Pelagius. But the experience of the Damietta landings pointed to Muslim weakness, and if success could be achieved on the Nile, the gains might be spectacular. A Muslim chronicler recognised the danger, noting that ‘if the [Ayyubid] army at Mansourah were to be driven back just one stage to the rear, the whole of Egypt would be conquered in the shortest time’.38
Around 20 November 1249, with the floodwaters receding, Louis’ army began its advance along the east bank of the Nile. In comparison to Pelagius, the king had a better–albeit not perfect–understanding of the delta’s topography and a fuller appreciation of the challenge ahead. He set out to trace the route of the river south, marching in parallel with a fleet of ‘many great and small boats loaded with foodstuffs, weapons, engines, armour and everything else needed in warfare’. Progress was slow, partly because a wind blowing from the south made it difficult to advance against the Nile’s current, but a few early probing assaults by the Ayyubids were beaten back easily, and the Christians closed inexorably on Mansourah.
Towards the closing stages of the journey, Louis–like Pelagius before him–must have marched past the point where the Mahalla Canal joined the Nile, but this critical waterway was not mentioned in any of the Christian accounts of the advance and it appears that the Franks made no attempt to block or guard its course. At first glance this seems like sheer neglectful folly, given the decisive role the canal played in 1221. But in all probability neither Louis and his contemporaries, nor the Fifth Crusaders themselves, ever understood fully how al-Kamil managed to get a fleet on to the northern reaches of the Nile. And even if the French king did take the time to reconnoitre the canal in 1249, outside the main summer spate of the flood its low waters were probably deemed to be unnavigable.
In any case, the Franks completed their march on 21 December, taking up a position identical to that occupied by the Fifth Crusade, north of the fork between the Nile and the Tanis River. The Ayyubids had erected a tented camp on the opposite, southern banks of the Tanis, while billeting the bulk of their forces a little further to the south. The Bahriyya mamluks, meanwhile, had been quartered within Mansourah (which, since 1221, had grown from an encampment into a more permanent fortified settlement). In the course of Louis’ march from Damietta, events within the Ayyubid court had moved on apace. After a long, crippling battle with illness, al-Salih died on 22 November. At this point, Fakhr al-Din forged an alliance with one of the late sultan’s widows, Shajar al-Durr. According to Muslim sources, the pair made every effort to conceal al-Salih’s demise: having his body carefully wrapped in a shroud and then spirited away in a coffin; forging his signature on documents that transferred overall command of the army to Fakhr al-Din; even continuing to set the dinner table each evening and claiming that the sultan was too ill to attend.
As far as Shajar al-Durr was concerned, this deception was designed to preserve the veneer of Ayyubid unity in the face of the crusader advance, and to allow the succession to the sultanate to be settled. To this end, Aqtay–commander of the elite Bahriyyamamluks–was sent to Mesopotamia to invite al-Salih’s son and heir, al-Mu‘azzam Turanshah, to assume control of Egypt. Fakhr al-Din agreed to this plan, both to avoid suspicion and because the scheme removed Aqtay (a potential rival) from the field. In private, though, Fakhr al-Din seems to have hoped that, given the distances involved and the enemy lands to be crossed, either the message would not get through or Turanshah would fail in any attempt to reach North Africa. In the words of one Muslim chronicler, Fakhr al-Din ‘was aiming at sole and arbitrary rule’.
Despite all this convoluted intrigue, news of al-Salih’s death eventually leaked out, causing alarm and unrest in Cairo. Before long, Louis IX also discovered that, as he later put it, ‘the sultan of Egypt had just ended his wretched life’–tidings that only increased the king’s hopes for victory.39
The main challenge now confronting the crusaders was somehow to breach the physical barrier of the fast-flowing Tanis River. Louis’ stratagem, seemingly formulated in Damietta, was to build a causeway ‘constructed of timber and earth’ across the river. To achieve this goal, the king instructed his chief engineer Joscelin of Cornaut to oversee a two-stage plan. A pair of ‘cat-houses’–movable towers with extending ‘cats’, or protective screens–were raised, under which labourers would be able to work on the causeway. At the same time, some eighteen stone-throwing engines brought from the coast were erected to provide covering fire. Once all these contraptions had been assembled and manoeuvred into position, the second, more perilous, phase of actual causeway construction began.
Unfortunately for the Franks, the Egyptian army had its own battery of sixteen ballistic engines on the south bank of the Tanis. As soon as the crusaders came into range, Fakhr al-Din initiated an incessant bombardment, ‘using relays of men day and night’ to sustain a constant barrage of ‘stones, javelins, arrows [and] crossbow bolts [that] flew as thick as rain’. Like so many Muslim armies before them, the Ayyubids stationed at Mansourah also held a deadly technological advantage over their Christian foes: a ready supply of highly combustible Greek fire (or, as one Frank aptly named it, ‘Hellfire’). Fakhr al-Din targeted the Latins’ wooden ‘cat-houses’ with volleys of Greek fire to devastating effect. John of Joinville was ordered to man one of these vulnerable towers over a series of nights, and later frankly described the utter terror he and his men experienced, watching flasks of Greek fire hurtling through the darkened sky like ‘dragon[s] flying through the air’, with long ‘tail[s] of fire stream[ing] behind’ them. One day in early 1250 when John was not on duty, the Ayyubid barrage finally told, and the towers went down in flames. Thankful that this had not occurred on his watch, Joinville wrote, ‘I and my knights praised God for such an accident.’40
Even with the ‘cat-houses’, the attempts to fashion a causeway had been failing because the river’s fast-moving current eroded the structure. In the first week of February, Louis called off the futile efforts, and morale within the camp sank as it seemed an impasse had been reached. Around this same time, however, a Muslim traitor–variously described as a Bedouin or as a deserter from the Egyptian army–told the Latins about a ford some distance down the course of the Tanis that would give them access to the southern banks of the river. Offered this unexpected glimpse of hope, the French king immediately decided to use this ford to mount a direct attack on the Ayyubid camp.
Aware of the terrible risks involved in this operation, and of the lethal consequences of being caught and surrounded on the far side of the Tanis, Louis formulated his tactics with care. To avoid detection, the crossing would begin before daybreak. The depth of the ford and the need for swift engagement precluded the involvement of infantry, so only mounted knights and sergeants were selected. And with an eye to maintaining strict discipline, these men were drawn from the king’s trusted French contingents and the Templar and Hospitaller Orders. The Franks of Outremer and the Teutonic Knights were to remain in place, defending the northern camp. Above all, it was imperative that the entire strike force reach the south bank and regroup before any attack was mounted. With this in mind, Louis ‘commanded them all–great men and small–that no one should dare to break ranks’.41
The Battle of Mansourah
Before first light on Tuesday 8 February 1250, the king’s plan was put into action. The Templars led the way, closely followed by a party of knights commanded by Louis’ brother Count Robert of Artois, which included the Englishman William Longsword, earl of Salisbury. It soon became clear that the ford was deeper than expected, requiring horses to swim midstream, and the steep, muddy banks on either side caused some crusaders to fall from their mounts and drown. Nonetheless, hundreds of Franks began to emerge on the far shore.
Then, just as the sun was rising, Robert of Artois made a sudden and unexpected decision to launch an assault, charging at the head of his men towards the Ayyubids’ riverside base. In the confusion, the Templars followed close behind, leaving Louis and the bulk of the strike force stranded in the ford. In this one instant, all hope of an ordered offensive evaporated. It is impossible to know what caused Robert to act so precipitously: perhaps he saw the chance for a surprise attack slipping away; or the promise of glory and renown may have spurred him on. As he rode off, those left behind–the king included–must have felt a mixture of shock, puzzlement and anger.
Even so, at first it looked as though Robert’s audacity might win the day. Ploughing into the unsuspecting Muslim camp, where many were still asleep, the count’s combined force of around 600 crusaders and Templars encountered only token resistance. Racing in among the enemy tents, they began the work of butchery. Fakhr al-Din, who was carrying out his morning ablutions, quickly threw on some clothes, mounted a horse and rode out, unarmed, into the tumult. Set upon by a party of Templars, he was cut down and slain by two mighty sword blows. Elsewhere the slaughter was indiscriminate. One Frankish account described how the Latins were ‘killing all and sparing none’, observing that ‘it was sad indeed to see so many dead bodies and so much blood spilt, except that they were enemies of the Christian faith’.42
This brutal riot overran the Ayyubid encampment and, had Robert now elected to hold the field, reorder his forces and await Louis’ arrival, a stunning victory might well have been at hand. But this was not to be. With Muslim stragglers streaming towards Mansourah, the count of Artois made a woefully hot-headed decision to pursue them. As he moved to initiate a second charge, the Templar commander urged caution, but Robert chided him for his cowardice. According to one Christian account, the Templar replied: ‘Neither I nor my brothers are afraid…but let me tell you that none of us expect to come back, neither you, nor ourselves.’
Together they and their men rode the short distance south to Mansourah and raced into the town. There the folly of their courageous but suicidal decision immediately became apparent. On the open plain, even in the Ayyubid camp, the Christians had been afforded the freedom to manoeuvre and fight in close-knit groups. But once in among the town’s cramped streets and alleyways, that style of warfare proved impossible. Worse still, upon entering Mansourah, the Franks came face to face with the elite Bahriyya regiment quartered in the town. This was to be the Latins’ first deadly encounter with these ‘lions of battle’. A Muslim chronicler described how the mamluks fought with utter ruthlessness and resolve. Surrounding the crusaders ‘on every side’, attacking with spear, sword and bow, they ‘turned their crosses upside down’. Of the 600 or so who rode into Mansourah barely a handful escaped, and both Robert of Artois and William Longsword were killed.43
Back on the banks of the Tanis, as yet unaware of the dreadful slaughter then just beginning in Mansourah, Louis was making a valiant attempt to retain control of his remaining troops, even as squadrons of mounted mamluks began racing forward to counter-attack. One crusader described how ‘a tremendous noise of horns, bugles and drums broke out’ as they drew near; ‘men shouted, horses neighed; it was horrible to see or hear’. But in the thick of the throng, the king held his nerve and slowly fought his way forward to establish a position on the southern edge of the river, opposite the crusader camp. Here the Franks rallied to the Oriflame and made a desperate attempt to hold their ground, while the mamluks loosed ‘dense clouds of bolts and arrows’ and rushed in to engage in hand-to-hand combat. The damage sustained on that day was appalling. One of Joinville’s knights took ‘a lance-thrust between his shoulders, which made so large a wound that the blood poured from his body as if from a bung-hole in a barrel’. Another received a blow from a Muslim sword in the middle of his face that cut ‘through his nose so that it was left dangling over his lips’. He carried on fighting, only to die later of his injuries. As for himself, John wrote: ‘I was only wounded by the enemy’s arrows in five places, though my horse was wounded in fifteen.’
The crusaders came close to routing–some tried to swim across the Tanis, and one eyewitness ‘saw the river strewn with lances and shields, and full of men and horses drowning in the water’. For those fighting alongside the king it seemed as if there was an endless stream of enemies to face, and ‘for every [Muslim] killed, another at once appeared, fresh and vigorous’. But through it all, Louis remained steadfast, refusing to be broken. Inspired by his resilience, the Christians endured wave upon wave of attack, until at last, at around three o’clock in the afternoon, the Muslim offensive slackened. As night fell, the battered Franks retained possession of the field.44
Latin sources described this, the Battle of Mansourah, as a great crusader victory, and in one sense it was a triumph. Holding out against horrendous odds, the Franks had established a bridgehead south of the Tanis. But the cost of this achievement was immense. The deaths of Robert of Artois and his contingent, alongside a large proportion of the Templar host, deprived the expedition of many of its fiercest warriors. In any battles still to come, their loss would be keenly felt. And though the crusaders had crossed the river, the town of Mansourah stood before them still, barring their advance.
BETWEEN VICTORY AND DEFEAT
In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Mansourah, Louis IX was confronted by a pressing strategic dilemma. In theory the king had two options: to cut his losses and fall back across the Tanis; or to dig in on the south bank, in the hope of somehow overcoming the Ayyubid enemy. Choosing the former would have been tantamount to conceding defeat, for though this cautious tactic might have permitted the crusade to regroup, the chances of mounting a second cross-river offensive, with a now weakened army, were limited. Louis must also have recognised that the shame and frustration of forsaking a bridgehead won through the sacrifice of so many Christian lives would crush Frankish spirits, probably beyond repair. That night, or at dawn the following morning, the king could have ordered a withdrawal, but this act would have signalled the failure of his Egyptian strategy, effectively marking the crusade’s end.
Given Louis’ earnest belief that his endeavour enjoyed divine sanction and support, and the constant pressure placed upon him to uphold the tenets of chivalry and honour the achievements of his crusading ancestors, it is hardly surprising that he rejected any thought of retreat. Instead, he immediately began to consolidate his position south of the river, scavenging materials from the overrun Muslim camp–including wood from the fourteen remaining engines–to improvise a stockade, while also digging a shallow defensive trench. At the same time, a number of small boats were lashed together to create a makeshift bridge across the Tanis, linking the old northern camp and the crusaders’ new outpost. By these measures, the Franks sought to prepare themselves for the storm of war that would surely come. And for now, Louis seems to have clung to the memory of the sudden victory at Damietta, convinced that Ayyubid resistance was about to collapse.
Three days later, the king’s hopes suffered a first blow. On Friday 11 February, the mamluks initiated a massive onslaught, spearheaded by the Bahriyya, which lasted from dawn till dusk. Thousands of Muslims surrounded the crusader camp, intent upon dislodging the Franks through aerial bombardment and bloody close-quarter combat. Christians later declared that they attacked ‘so persistently, horribly and dreadfully’ that many Latins from Outremer ‘said that they had never seen such a bold and violent assault’. The mamluks’ unbridled ferocity terrified the crusaders, one of whom wrote that they ‘hardly seemed human, but like wild beasts, frantic with rage’, adding that ‘they clearly thought nothing of dying’. Many Franks were carrying injuries from the Battle of Mansourah–Joinville, for example, was no longer able to don armour because of his wounds–but, nonetheless, they fought back manfully, aided by raking showers of crossbow bolts unleashed from the old camp across the river. Once again Louis kept his nerve and the Christians held their ground, but only through the sacrifice of hundreds more dead and injured, among them the master of the Templars, who had lost one eye on 8 February and now lost another and soon died from his wounds.
The Latins demonstrated immense fortitude in the two dreadful mêlèes endured that week. They also claimed to have killed some 4,000 Muslims in this second encounter. There are no figures in Arabic chronicles with which to confirm this count, but, even if accurate, these losses seem to have done little to dent the Ayyubids’ overwhelming numerical superiority. The crusader army had survived, albeit in a terribly weakened state. From this point onwards, it must have been obvious that they were in no position to mount an offensive of their own. At absolute best, they could hope to retain their precarious foothold on the south bank. And if Mansourah was not to be attacked, then how could the war be won?
In the days and weeks that followed, this question became ever more imperative. The Egyptians carried out regular probing attacks, but otherwise were content to confine the Christians within their stockade. By late February, with no possible hint of progress in the campaign, the atmosphere in the camp began to darken, and the crusaders’ predicament was only exacerbated by the outbreak of illness. This was partly linked to the enormous number of dead piled upon the plain and floating in the water. Joinville described seeing scores of bodies dragged down the Tanis by the current, until they piled up against the Franks’ bridge of boats, so that ‘all the river was full of corpses, from one bank to another, and as far upstream as one could cast a small stone’. Food shortages were also starting to take hold, and this led to scurvy.45
In this situation, the supply chain down the Nile to Damietta became an essential lifeline. So far, the Christian fleet had been free to ferry goods to the camps at Mansourah, but this was about to change. On 25 February 1250, after long months of travel from Iraq, the Ayyubid heir to Egypt, al-Mu‘azzam Turanshah, arrived at the Nile Delta. He immediately brought new impetus to the Muslim cause. With the Nile flood long abated, the Mahalla Canal contained too little water to be entered to the south, but Turanshah had some fifty ships portaged across land to the canal’s northern reaches. From there, these vessels were able to sail down to the Nile, bypassing the Frankish fleet at Mansourah. Joinville admitted that this dramatic move ‘came as a great shock to our people’. Turanshah’s ploy was virtually identical to the trap sprung against the Fifth Crusade, and for Louis’ expedition it spelled disaster.
Over the next few weeks Ayyubid ships intercepted two Christian supply convoys heading south from Damietta. Cut off by this blockade, the crusaders soon found themselves in a hopeless position. A Latin contemporary described the awful sense of desperation that now gripped the army: ‘Everyone expected to die, no one supposed he could escape. It would have been hard to find one man in all that great host who was not mourning a dead friend, or a single tent or shelter without its sick or dead.’ By this stage, Joinville’s wounds had become infected. He later recalled lying in his tent in a feverish state; outside, ‘barber-surgeons’ were cutting away the rotting gums of those afflicted with scurvy, so they might eat. Joinville could hear the cries of those enduring this gruesome surgery resounding through the camp, and likened them to those ‘of a woman in labour’. Starvation also began to take a heavy toll among men and horses. Many Franks happily consumed carrion from dead horses, donkeys and mules, and later resorted to eating cats and dogs.46
The price of indecision
By early March 1250, conditions in the main Christian camp on the south bank of the Tanis were unbearable. One eyewitness admitted that ‘men said openly that all was lost’. Louis was largely responsible for this ruinous state of affairs. In mid-February, he had failed to make a realistic strategic assessment of the risks and possible rewards involved in maintaining the crusaders’ southern camp, holding on to the forlorn hope of Ayyubid disintegration. He also grossly underestimated the vulnerability of his Nile supply line and the number of troops needed to overcome the Egyptian army at Mansourah.
Some of these errors might have been mitigated had the king now acted with decisive resolution–recognising that his position was utterly untenable. The only logical choices remaining were immediate retreat or negotiation, but throughout the month of March Louis embraced neither. Instead, as his troops weakened and died all around him, the French monarch seems to have been paralysed by indecision–unable to face the fact that his grand Egyptian strategy had been thwarted. It was not until early April that Louis finally took action, but by this stage he was too late. Seeking to secure terms of truce with the Ayyubids, he seems to have offered to exchange Damietta for Jerusalem (raising yet another parallel with the Fifth Crusade). A deal of this sort might have been acceptable in February 1250, perhaps even in March, but by April the Muslim stranglehold was clear to all. Turanshah knew that he held a telling advantage and, sensing that victory was close at hand, rebutted Louis’ proposal. All that remained now to the Christians was to attempt a retreat north, across the forty miles of open ground to Damietta.47
On 4 April orders were passed through the lines of the exhausted Latin host. The hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of sick and wounded were to be loaded on to boats and ferried down the Nile in the vain hope that some craft might evade the Muslim cordon. The remaining able-bodied crusaders were to march overland to the coast.
By this stage Louis himself was suffering with dysentery. Many leading Franks urged him to flee, either by ship or on horseback, so as to avoid capture. But in a valiant, if somewhat foolhardy, show of solidarity, the king refused to abandon his men. He had led them into Egypt; now he hoped to guide them back out to safety. An ill-conceived plan was hatched to escape under cover of darkness, leaving the tents standing in the southern camp so as not to warn the Muslims that an exodus was under way. Louis also ordered his engineer, Joscelin of Cornaut, to cut the ropes holding the bridge of boats in place once the Tanis had been crossed.
Unfortunately the whole scheme quickly fell apart. Most of the crusaders made it back to the north shore at dusk, but a group of Ayyubid scouts realised what was happening and raised the alarm. With enemy troops bearing down on his position, Joscelin seems to have lost his nerve and fled–certainly the bridge remained in place, and packs of Muslim soldiers crossed over to give chase. In the failing light, panic spread and a chaotic rout began. One Muslim eyewitness described how ‘we followed on their tracks in pursuit; nor did the sword cease its work among their backsides throughout the night. Shame and catastrophe were their lot.’
Earlier that same evening, John of Joinville and two of his surviving knights had boarded a boat and were waiting to push off. He now watched as wounded men, left in the confusion to fend for themselves in the old northern camp, started to crawl to the banks of the Nile, desperately trying to get on to any ship. He wrote: ‘As I was urging the sailors to let us get away, the Saracens entered the [northern] camp, and I saw by the light of the fires that they were slaughtering the poor fellows on the bank.’ Joinville’s vessel made it out into the river and, as the current took the craft downstream, he made good his escape.48
By daybreak on 5 April 1250, the full extent of the disaster was apparent. On land, disordered groups of Franks were being keenly pursued by mamluk troops who had no interest in showing clemency. Over the next few days, many hundreds of retreating Christians were slain. One band got to within a day of Damietta, but were then surrounded and capitulated. Throughout the host, the great symbols of Frankish pride and indomitability fell: the Oriflame ‘was torn to pieces’ the Templar standard ‘trampled under foot’.
Riding north, the aged Patriarch Robert and Odo of Châteauroux somehow managed to elude capture, but, after the first twenty-four hours, shattered by their exertions, they were unable to go on. Robert later described in a letter how, by chance, they stumbled across a small boat tied up on the shore and eventually reached Damietta. Few were so fortunate. Most of the ships carrying the sick and injured were ransacked or burned in the water. John of Joinville’s boat made slow progress downstream, even as he beheld terrible scenes of carnage on the banks, but his craft was finally spotted. With four Muslim vessels bearing down on them, Joinville turned to his men, asking if they should land and try to fight their way to safety, or stay on the water and be captured. With disarming honesty, he described how one of his servants declared: ‘We should all let ourselves be slain, for thus we shall go to paradise’, but admitted that ‘none of us heeded his advice’. In fact, when his boat was boarded, Joinville lied to prevent his execution on the spot, saying that he was the king’s cousin. As a result he was taken into captivity.49
In the midst of all this mayhem, King Louis became separated from most of his troops. He was now so stricken with dysentery that he had to have a hole cut in his breeches. A small group of his most loyal retainers made a brave attempt to lead him to safety, and eventually they took refuge in a small village. There, cowering, half dead, in a squalid hut, the mighty sovereign of France was captured. His daring attempt to conquer Egypt was at an end.
THE PENITENT KING
Louis IX’s errors of judgement at Mansourah–perhaps most notably his failure to learn fully from the mistakes of the Fifth Crusade–were now compounded by his own imprisonment. Never before had a king of the Latin West been taken captive during a crusade. This unparalleled disaster placed Louis and the bedraggled remnants of his army in an enormously vulnerable position. Seized by the enemy outright, with no chance to secure terms of surrender, the Franks found themselves at the mercy of Islam. Relishing the triumph, one Muslim witness wrote:
A tally was made of the number of captives, and there were more than 20,000; those who had drowned or been killed numbered 7,000. I saw the dead, and they covered the face of the earth in their profusion…. It was a day of the kind the Muslims had never seen; nor had they heard of its like.
Prisoners were herded into holding camps across the Delta and sorted by rank. According to Arabic testimony, Turanshah ‘ordered the ordinary mass to be beheaded’, and instructed one of his lieutenants from Iraq to oversee the executions–the grisly work apparently proceeded at the rate of 300 a night. Other Franks were offered the choice of conversion or death, while higher-ranking nobles, like John of Joinville, were held aside because of their economic value as hostages. Joinville suggested that King Louis was threatened with torture, being shown a gruesome wooden vice, ‘notched with interlocking teeth’, that was used to crush a victim’s legs, but this is not hinted at elsewhere. Despite his illness and the ignominious circumstances of his capture, the monarch seems to have held his dignity.50
In fact, Louis’ circumstances were markedly improved by Turanshah’s own increasingly uncertain position at this time. Since his arrival at Mansourah, the Ayyubid heir had favoured his own soldiers and officials, thereby alienating many within the existing Egyptian army hierarchy–including the mamluk commander Aqtay and the Bahriyya. Keen to secure a deal that would consolidate his hold over the Nile region, Turanshah agreed to negotiate and, in mid-to late April, terms were settled. A ten-year truce was declared. The French king would be released in return for Damietta’s immediate surrender. A massive ransom of 800,000 gold bezants (or 400,000 livres tournois) was set for the 12,000 other Christians in Ayyubid custody.
In early May, however, it suddenly seemed that even the fulfilment of these punitive conditions might not bring the Christians to liberty, because the Ayyubid coup–so long awaited by Louis at Mansourah–finally took place. On 2 May Turanshah was murdered by Aqtay and a vicious young mamluk in the Bahriyya regiment, named Baybars. The ensuing power struggle initially saw Shajar al-Durr appointed as figurehead of Ayyubid Egypt. In reality, though, a seismic shift was now under way–one that would lead to the gradual but inexorable rise of the mamluks.
In spite of these dynastic upheavals, the Muslim repossession of Damietta went ahead as planned and Louis was released on 6 May 1250. He then set about collecting the funds with which to make an initial payment of half the ransom–200,000 livres tournois–177,000 of which was raised from the king’s war chest and the remainder taken from the Templars. This massive sum took two days to be weighed and counted. On 8 May Louis took ship to Palestine with his leading nobles, among them his two surviving brothers, Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou, and John of Joinville. As yet, the vast majority of the crusaders remained in captivity.
In adversity’s wake
All Louis IX’s hopes of subjugating Egypt and winning the war for the Holy Land had ended in failure. But in many ways the true and remarkable depth of the French king’s crusading idealism only became apparent after this humiliating defeat. In similar circumstances, shamed by such an unmitigated debacle, many a Christian monarch would have sloped off back to Europe, turning his back on the Near East. Louis did the opposite. Realising that his men would likely remain rotting in Muslim captivity unless he continued to pressure the Egyptian regime for their release, the king chose to remain in Palestine for the next four years.
In this time, Louis served as overlord of Outremer and, by 1252, had secured the liberation of his troops. Working tirelessly, he set about the unglamorous task of bolstering the kingdom of Jerusalem’s coastal defences–overseeing the extensive refortification of Acre, Jaffa, Caesarea and Sidon. He also established a permanent garrison of one hundred Frankish knights in Acre, paid for by the French crown at an annual cost of around 4,000 livres tournois.
Given the ardent self-promotion typical of other crusade leaders–from Richard the Lionheart to Frederick II of Germany–Louis also showed an extraordinary willingness to accept responsibility for the dreadful setbacks experienced in Egypt. The king’s supporters tried their best to transfer the blame to Robert of Artois, emphasising that it had been his advice that led to the march on Mansourah in autumn 1249 and criticising the count’s reckless behaviour on 8 February 1250. But in a letter written in August 1250, Louis himself praised Robert’s bravery, describing him as ‘our very dear and illustrious brother of honoured memory’, and expressing the hope and belief that he had been ‘crowned as a martyr’. In the same document, the king explained the crusade’s failure and his own incarceration as divine punishments, meted out ‘as our sins required’.51
Eventually, in April 1254, Louis travelled home to France. His mother Blanche had died two years earlier, and the Capetian realm had become increasingly unstable. The king returned from the Holy Land a changed man, and his later life was marked by extreme piety and austerity–wearing a hair shirt, he ate only meagre rations of the blandest food and engaged in seemingly constant prayer. At one point Louis even considered renouncing his crown and entering a monastery. He also harboured a heartfelt, lingering desire to launch another crusade, thereby, perhaps, to win redemption.
The Egyptian expedition reshaped King Louis’ life, but the events on the Nile also had a wider effect upon Latin Europe. The crusade of 1250 had been carefully planned, financed and supplied; its armies led by a paragon of Christian kingship. And still it had been subjected to an excoriating defeat. After one and a half centuries of almost unbroken failure in the war for the Holy Land, this latest reversal prompted an outpouring of doubt and despair in the West. Some even turned their backs on the Christian faith. In the second half of the thirteenth century–as Outremer’s strength continued to fade and new, seemingly invincible, enemies emerged on to the Levantine stage–the chances of mounting another crusade to the East seemed bleak indeed.