History of the Crusades (eBook)

But too much confidence proved the bane of his army. They thought,  as they had accomplished so much, that nothing more remained to be  done, and gave themselves up to ease and luxury. When, by the command  of Louis, they marched towards Cairo, they were no longer the same  men; success, instead of inspiring, had unnerved them; debauchery had  brought on disease, and disease was aggravated by the heat of a  climate to which none of them were accustomed. Their progress towards  Massoura, on the road to Cairo, was checked by the Thanisian canal, on  the banks of which the Saracens were drawn up to dispute the passage.  Louis gave orders that a bridge should be thrown across; and the  operations commenced under cover of two cat-castles, or high moveable  towers. The Saracens soon destroyed them by throwing quantities of  Greek fire, the artillery of that day, upon them, and Louis was forced  to think of some other means of effecting his design. A peasant  agreed, for a considerable bribe, to point out a ford where the army  might wade across, and the Count d'Artois was despatched with fourteen  hundred men to attempt it, while Louis remained to face the Saracens  with the main body of the army. The Count d'Artois got safely over,  and defeated the detachment that had been sent to oppose his landing.  Flushed with the victory, the brave Count forgot the inferiority of  his numbers, and pursued the panic-stricken enemy into Massoura. He  was now completely cut off from the aid of his brother-crusaders,  which the Moslems perceiving, took courage and returned upon him, with  a force swollen by the garrison of Massoura, and by reinforcements  from the surrounding districts. The battle now became hand to hand.  The Christians fought with the energy of desperate men, but the  continually increasing numbers of the foe surrounded them completely,  and cut off all hope, either of victory or escape. The Count d'Artois  was among the foremost of the slain, and when Louis arrived to the  rescue, the brave advance-guard was nearly cut to pieces. Of the  fourteen hundred but three hundred remained. The fury of the battle  was now increased threefold. The French King and his troops performed  prodigies of valour, and the Saracens, under the command of the Emir  Ceccidun, fought as if they were determined to exterminate, in one  last decisive effort, the new European swarm that had settled upon  their coast. At the fall of the evening dews the Christians were  masters of the field of Massoura, and flattered themselves that they  were the victors. Self-love would not suffer them to confess that the  Saracens had withdrawn, and not retreated; but their leaders were too  wofully convinced that that fatal field had completed the  disorganization of the Christian army, and that all hopes of future  conquest were at an end.

Impressed with this truth, the crusaders sued for peace. The  Sultan insisted upon the immediate evacuation of Damietta, and that  Louis himself should be delivered as hostage for the fulfilment of the  condition. His army at once refused, and the negotiations were broken  off. It was now resolved to attempt a retreat; but the agile Saracens,  now in the front and now in the rear, rendered it a matter of extreme  difficulty, and cut off the stragglers in great numbers. Hundreds of  them were drowned in the Nile; and sickness and famine worked sad  ravage upon those who escaped all other casualties. Louis himself was  so weakened by disease, fatigue, and discouragement that he was  hardly able to sit upon his horse. In the confusion of the flight he  was separated from his attendants, and left a total stranger upon the  sands of Egypt, sick, weary, and almost friendless. One knight, Geffry  de Sergines, alone attended him, and led him to a miserable hut in a  small village, where for several days he lay in the hourly expectation  of death. He was at last discovered and taken prisoner by the  Saracens, who treated him with all the honour due to his rank and all  the pity due to his misfortunes. Under their care his health rapidly  improved, and the next consideration was that of his ransom.

The Saracens demanded, besides money, the cession of Acre,  Tripoli, and other cities of Palestine. Louis unhesitatingly refused,  and conducted himself with so much pride and courage that the Sultan  declared he was the proudest infidel he had ever beheld. After a good  deal of haggling, the Sultan agreed to waive these conditions, and a  treaty was finally concluded. The city of Damietta was restored; a  truce of ten years agreed upon, and ten thousand golden bezants paid  for the release of Louis and the liberation of all the captives. Louis  then withdrew to Jaffa, and spent two years in putting that city, and  Cesarea, with the other possessions of the Christians in Palestine,  into a proper state of defence. He then returned to his own country,  with great reputation as a saint, but very little as a soldier.

Matthew Paris informs us that, in the year 1250, while Louis was  in Egypt, "thousands of the English were resolved to go to the holy  war, had not the King strictly guarded his ports and kept his people  from running out of doors." When the news arrived of the reverses and  captivity of the French King, their ardour cooled; and the Crusade was  sung of only, but not spoken of.

In France, a very different feeling was the result. The news of  the King's capture spread consternation through the country. A fanatic  monk of Citeaux suddenly appeared in the villages, preaching to the  people, and announcing that the Holy Virgin, accompanied by a whole  army of saints and martyrs, had appeared to him, and commanded him to  stir up the shepherds and farm labourers to the defence of the Cross.  To them only was his discourse addressed, and his eloquence was such  that thousands flocked around him, ready to follow wherever he should  lead. The pastures and the corn-fields were deserted, and the  shepherds, or pastoureaux, as they were termed, became at last so  numerous as to amount to upwards of fifty thousand, -- Millot says one  hundred thousand men. [Elemens de l'Histoire de France.] The Queen  Blanche, who governed as Regent during the absence of the King,  encouraged at first the armies of the pastoureaux; but they soon gave  way to such vile excesses that the peaceably disposed were driven to  resistance. Robbery, murder, and violation marked their path; and all  good men, assisted by the government, united in putting them down.  They were finally dispersed, but not before three thousand of them had  been massacred. Many authors say that the slaughter was still greater.

The ten years' truce concluded in 1264, and St. Louis was urged by  two powerful motives to undertake a second expedition for the relief  of Palestine. These were fanaticism on the one hand, and a desire of  retrieving his military fame on the other, which had suffered more  than his parasites liked to remind him of. The Pope, of course,  encouraged his design, and once more the chivalry of Europe began to  bestir themselves. In 1268, Edward, the heir of the English monarchy,  announced his determination to join the Crusade; and the Pope (Clement  IV.) wrote to the prelates and clergy to aid the cause by their  persuasions and their revenues. In England, they agreed to contribute  a tenth of their possessions; and by a parliamentary order, a  twentieth was taken from the corn and moveables of all the laity at  Michaelmas.

In spite of the remonstrances of the few clearheaded statesmen who  surrounded him, urging the ruin that might in consequence fall upon  his then prosperous kingdom, Louis made every preparation for his  departure. The warlike nobility were nothing loth, and in the spring  of 1270, the King set sail with an army of sixty thousand men. He was  driven by stress of weather into Sardinia, and while there, a change  in his plans took place. Instead of proceeding to Acre, as he  originally intended, he shaped his course for Tunis, on the African  coast. The King of Tunis had some time previously expressed himself  favourably disposed towards the Christians and their religion, and  Louis, it appears, had hopes of converting him, and securing his aid  against the Sultan of Egypt. "What honour would be mine," he used to  say, "if I could become godfather to this Mussulman King." Filled with  this idea he landed in Africa, near the site of the city of Carthage,  but found that he had reckoned without his host. The King of Tunis had  no thoughts of renouncing his religion, nor intention of aiding the  Crusaders in any way. On the contrary, he opposed their landing with  all the forces that could be collected on so sudden an emergency. The  French, however, made good their first position, and defeated the  Moslems with considerable loss. They also gained some advantage over  the reinforcements that were sent to oppose them; but an infectious  flux appeared in the army, and put a stop to all future victories. The  soldiers died at the rate of a hundred in a day. The enemy, at the  same time, made as great havoc as the plague. St. Louis himself was ...