He obtained the grant, and thus raised 1,000 marks, while Richard of Cornwall actually gained from one archdeacon L600, and in proportion from others.
Louis, for three years, was detained by the necessity of arranging matters for the tranquillity of his own kingdom, and not till the Friday in Whitsun-week, 1248, was he solemnly invested at St. Denis with the pilgrim's staff and wallet, and presented with the oriflamme, the standard of the convent, which he bore as Count of Paris. His two brothers, Robert Comte d'Artois, and Charles Comte d'Anjou, and his wife Marguerite of Provence, accompanied him, together with a great number of the nobility, among whom the most interesting was the faithful and attached Sieur de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who has left us a minute record of his master's adventures.
They sailed from Aigues Mortes, August 25th, 1248, and Joinville reflected that he could not imagine how a man in a state of mortal sin could ever put to sea, since he knew not, when he fell asleep at night, whether morning would not find him at the bottom of the sea. On coming near the coast of Barbary, Joinville's ship seems to have been becalmed, for it continued for three whole days in view of the same round mountain, to the great dismay of the crew, until a _preux d'homme_ priest suggested, that in his parish, in cases of distress, such as dearth, or flood, or pestilence, processions chanting the Litany were made on three Saturdays following. The day was Saturday, and the crew acted on his advice, making the procession round the masts, even the sick being carried by their friends. The next day they were out of sight of the mountain, and on the third Saturday safely landed at Cyprus. Here the Crusaders remained for eight months, since Egypt was the intended point of attack, and they wished to allow the inundation of the Nile to subside. At length, in the summer of 1249, they arrived before Damietta, which was even better fortified than when it had previously held out for fifteen months; but it now surrendered, after Fakreddin, the Mameluke commander, had suffered one defeat under its walls, and the Christians entered in triumph. Here Louis made an unfortunate delay, while waiting for reinforcements brought by his brother Alfonse, Comte de Poitiers.
To the rude and superstitious noblesse, a Crusade appeared a certain means of securing salvation, as indeed the clergy led them to believe; and this belief seemed to remove all restraint of morality from the ill-disposed, so that the pure and pious King was bitterly grieved by the license which he found himself unable to restrain. Much harm was done by the excess in which the troops indulged while revelling in the plunder of Damietta. The prudent would have reserved the stores there laid up for time of need, but old crusaders insisted on "the good old custom of the Holy Land," as they called it, namely, the distribution of two-thirds among the army; and though the King ransomed some portion, the money did as much harm in promoting revelry as the provisions themselves.
Longespee arrived, with 200 English knights; but the small band of English and their landless leader met with nothing but contumely from their allies, especially the King's brother, Robert Comte d'Artois, a haughty and impetuous youth. The English took a small castle on the road to Alexandria, where one of the Saracen Emirs had placed his harem. It was reported that Longespee had acquired a huge treasure there, and Robert insulted him to his face, and deprived him of his just share of the spoil. Longespee, complained to the King; but Louis could give him no redress. "You are no King, if you cannot do justice," said William.
Louis meekly suffered the reproach. He had, in his submission, made over his judgment and authority to the papal legates-men far less fit than he to exercise power-and matters went chiefly as they and his fiery brothers chose to direct. Wiser counsellors recommended securing the other seaport, Alexandria; but Prince Alfonse declared, that the only way to kill a snake, was to strike the head, and persuaded the council that the move should be upon Grand Cairo, or, as the Crusaders chose to call it, Babylon.
On November 25th, 1249, the army advanced, and the conjuncture should have been favorable, for the Sultan was just dead, and his son absent at Damascus; but nothing could have been worse concerted than the expedition-ill-provisioned, without boats to cross the canals, without engines of war, the soldiery disorganized; while the Mameluke force were picked soldiers, recruited from the handsomest Circassian children, bred up for arms alone, and with an _esprit de corps_ that rendered them a terror to friend and foe almost down to our own times. They harassed the Christians at every step, and destroyed their machines, and terrified them excessively by showers of Greek fire, a compound of naphtha and other combustibles launched from hollow engines, which ignited as it traversed the air, and was very hard to extinguish.
The Franks regarded it with a superstitious horror, as a fiendish mystery, and compared it to a fiery dragon with a tail as long as a lance; but it did not actually cause many deaths, and they met with no serious disaster till they came to the canal of Aschmoum, which flowed between them and Mansourah. They tried to build a causeway across it, but their commencement was destroyed by the Greek fire, and a Bedouin offered, for 500 bezants, to show them a ford on the Shrove Tuesday of 1250. Robert d'Artois begged to lead the vanguard, and secure the passage of the rest; and when the King hesitated to confide so important a charge to one so rash and impetuous, he swore on the Gospels that, when he should have gained the bank on the other side, nothing should induce him to leave it till the whole army should have crossed. The King consented, but placed the command in the hands of the wise Guillaume de Sonnac, Grand Master of the Templars, who, with his knights, the Hospitallers, Longespee and the English, and Robert's own band, formed a body of 1,400.
The Saracens who guarded the ford were taken by surprise, and fled in confusion; and the Christians, mounting the bank, beheld the inhabitants and garrison of Mansourah hurrying away in terror.
The temptation made the impetuous prince forget his promises, and he was dashing forward in pursuit, when the Grand Master tried to check him, by representing that, though the enemy were at present under the influence of panic terror, they would soon rally, and that the only safety for the I,400 was to wait, with the canal in their rear, until the rest of the army should have crossed; otherwise, as soon as their small number should be perceived, they would infallibly be surrounded and cut off.
The fiery youth listened with scorn and impatience. "I see," cried he, "that it is well said, that the Orders have an understanding with the Infidel! They love power, they love money, and so will not see the war ended. This is the way that so many crusading princes have been served by them."
"Noble Count," said Pierre de Villebride, the Grand Master of St. John, trying to calm him, "why do you think we gave up our homes and took these vows? Was it to overthrow the Church and lose our own souls? Such things be far, far from us, or from any Christian."
But De Sonnac would not parley; he called to his esquire, "Spread wide the Beauseant banner. Arms and death must decide our honor and fate. We might be invincible, united; but division is our ruin."
Longespee interposed. "Lord Count," said he, "you cannot err in following the counsel of a holy man like the Grand Master, well tried in arms. Young men are never dishonored by hearkening to their elders."
"The tail! that smacks of the tail!" exclaimed the headstrong Robert.
[Footnote: On Thomas a Becket's last journey to Canterbury, Raoul de Broc's followers had cut off the tails of his pack-horses. It was a vulgar reproach to the men of Kent that the outrage had been punished by the growth of the same appendage on the whole of the inhabitants of the county; and, whereas the English populace applied the accusation to the Kentishmen, foreigners extended it to the whole nation when in a humor for insult and abuse, such as that of this unhappy prince.]