Holy Warriors (45 page)

An intriguing document survives to illuminate the French stay in Damietta: the foundation charter of the Church of the Blessed Mary, formerly the main mosque.
¹⁸
This was an official French government charter, produced by Louis’s chancery and confirmed by the royal seal. It began with effusive thanks to God for his divine blessing in giving the crusaders victory at Damietta and it stated that the city was now “utterly purged of the pagans’ filth.” It delineated the landholdings of the church and exempted the clergy from tax. Numerous other rights relating to mills, ovens, fisheries, salt springs, the bazaar, and the harbor were outlined too, all granted “in perpetuity;” furthermore, “when this land is liberated from the hand of the unbelievers” the archbishop was to receive the fiefs of ten knights who would do homage to him and serve appropriately on his behalf. What all this really meant was that Louis regarded Damietta as a permanent acquisition by the Capetian monarchy. Unlike the Fifth Crusade when Damietta was taken under the control of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the presence of a dominant western ruler gave the Christian conquest a different feel—that of the beginnings of a new empire.

Another writer, known as Rothelin, indicated that Louis handed out property and revenues to the three great Military Orders, to the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and to the nobles of the Latin East. Rothelin, a contemporary source, stated that the churches were endowed with “chalices, censers, candelabras, seals, crosses, crucifixes, books, chasubles, albs, stoles, banners, altar cloths, silk hangings, images of Our Lady, choir surplices, tunics,
dalmatics, reliquaries in gold, silver and crystal”;
¹⁹
priests, chaplains, and clerks were installed too. The completeness of this list is astonishing—all of these objects must have been brought over from France in clear anticipation of conquest and settlement. To travel with such a certainty of success offers a fascinating insight into the mentality of Louis and his army as they set out on the crusade.

Meanwhile, Ayyub’s illness continued its debilitating course. Fearful of the effect an announcement of his death might have on an already demoralized populace, those closest to the sultan conspired to hide his decline. Under the orders of his wife, Shajar al-Durr, and the emir, Fakhr al-Din, doctors enacted a freakish daily charade whereby they continued to enter his tent, take in food, and issue pronouncements in his name. Given Ayyub’s anger at Fakhr al-Din after the fiasco at Damietta, some officials doubted that the sultan would have given him any authority at all, but it seems that—as intended—the majority of people remained ignorant of the true condition of their ruler. Ayyub died on November 22, 1249, and his entourage needed to get a message to his surviving son, Turanshah, who was based far away in Mesopotamia, to come south because by now the Frankish advance was poised to begin. Ayyub’s coffin was spirited away until it could be properly housed in Cairo where, tucked away next to his madrasa, it still remains. The shadow leadership dispatched letters to be read from the pulpit of the Great Mosque in Cairo that urged everyone to fulfill their duty, to come and join the jihad, and to drive out the Franks.

By late November, once the Nile floods had subsided, the crusaders set out; they progressed in good formation with the fleet sailing close by the troops to provide supplies. The march to Cairo was said to take only a few days but Louis’s progress was agonizingly slow. Fierce headwinds meant the crusader fleet could barely make any ground at all; in addition, the crusaders had to cross countless small canals and to resist harassment from the Egyptians. By mid-December the Christians faced their first major obstacle when they had to traverse the Bahr as-Saghir, a branch of the Nile near the town of Mansourah, only about one-third of the way to their target. The Egyptian
troops, led by Fakhr al-Din, barred their path as well; finding a place to ford an entire army proved extremely troublesome for the crusaders. The Muslims bombarded the Christian camp with Greek fire, a terrifying experience as Joinville described: “These were the characteristics of Greek fire: the part that came foremost had the bulk of a vinegar barrel, while the flaming tail that shot from it extended as far as a long lance. It made such a noise as it came that it was as if the heavens thundered; it seemed as if a dragon was flying through the air. The great mass of the fire cast such a great light that one could see as clearly across the camp as if it were day.”
²⁰
Louis’s reaction to this fearsome episode reveals much about his religiosity; Joinville again provides the evidence: “Each time our saintly king heard that they had launched Greek fire at us, he sat up in his bed, reached out his hands to Our Lord and said as he wept, ‘Sweet Lord God, protect my people for me!’ And I truly believe his prayers served us well in our time of need.”
²¹

In early 1250 the crusaders tried to build a series of pontoon bridges, yet, in an almost farcical response, as quickly as the Christians’ jetty extended into the river the Muslims dug away the opposite bank! The offer of a healthy reward eventually prompted a local peasant to indicate a suitable ford. As dawn broke on the morning of February 8, 1250, Robert of Artois and the master of the Templars led the vanguard over a narrow, treacherous causeway. A few men slipped off the side and drowned, but most made it across. Muslim resistance was minimal and the crusaders charged on toward the main camp. Their opponents were caught unawares—Fakhr al-Din was slaughtered in his bath—and many Muslims, including numerous women and children, were killed. Caught up in the adrenaline rush of victory, Robert of Artois made a cataclysmic misjudgment. In direct contradiction of Louis’s orders, he did not stop and wait for the main army to cross the Nile and consolidate the victory; instead, he led the cavalry onward. This was a matter of great offense to the Templars, who should have been at the head of the army, and they asked Robert to let them past. Accounts differ as to what happened next; dubiously, Joinville blamed the deaf knight holding Robert’s horse for his failure to hear and pass on the Templars’ request. Thus, the count continued forward and so, fearing dishonor, the Templars followed him into the town of Mansourah. Another report suggested the French crusaders taunted the Templars and accused them of cowardice for appearing hesitant: “If the Templars and Hospitallers and the men who live here [the Levant] had really wanted it, the land would have
been conquered long ago.” Another crusader allegedly asked Robert: “Won’t it be wicked and cowardly if we do not pursue our enemies?” Robert ignored further cautionary advice from the Templars, as well as a repeated command from the king; suffused with martial valor and a destructive sense of competitive honor, he urged his men to continue.
²²

Recklessly, the crusader knights hurtled inside Mansourah, thus sealing their own fate and perhaps that of the entire expedition. The Muslims began to regroup and, led by the Bahri Mamluks, they realized the gravity of Robert’s mistake; the town gates were closed and the crusaders were, de facto, entombed alive in the town. While the dense warren of streets prevented them from charging at their enemy, the Muslims were able to kill the Christians’ mounts and then pick off the stranded knights. By this stage of the struggle it was around midday and the Christians must have been thirsty and exhausted after hours of fighting. Sources tell of men pinned in houses, running up stairways and barricading themselves in rooms. One can imagine blows raining down on a door, the shouts and cries of attackers sensing victory—and revenge; the murmured prayers of crusaders expecting martyrdom, yet still fighting desperately in the vain hope that a relief force might arrive. Yet as time passed they must have realized that there was no prospect of escape and their fate was to be ripped apart by a hail of knife blows. Robert himself perished, along with 1,500 of the finest crusader knights, including 280 Templars, the men with most experience of war in the East. For the Bahri, this was a famous victory and one from which they made considerable political capital in later years.

Louis and part of the main army had also crossed the Nile and as the day wore on it became clear that the Muslims had recovered from the loss of their camp. Joinville himself was now in the thick of the fighting. He brilliantly conveys the confusion and noise of a battlefield, as well as the esprit de corps among his companions. He proudly related the bravery of particular individuals—and noted the cowardice of others, although out of courtesy to the dead, he refrained from mentioning names. At one stage Joinville and four of his friends were cornered. Erart of Sivry took a terrible blow to the face that left his nose hanging over his lips, while Frederic of Louppy “had a lance thrust between his shoulders which made a wound so large that the blood came from his body as if from the bung-hole of a barrel.”
²³
In this desperate situation memories of homelands and loved ones came to mind. As the struggle continued, the count of Soissons called out to
Joinville, “Let this pack of hounds howl! By God’s coif [a neck protector]—this was the oath he most often swore—we’ll talk of this day again, you and I, in the ladies’ chamber.”
²⁴
Yet the Muslim archers took their toll. Joinville, was relieved to have found a padded tunic, which he used as a shield: “It served me very well, since I was only wounded by their arrows in five places, and my horse in fifteen.”
²⁵

Louis himself was an inspirational leader who shared in the danger with his troops and did much to keep morale up: “I never saw a man so finely armed; he could be seen from the shoulders up, set above the rest of his men, with a gilded helmet on his head and a German sword in his hand,” eulogized Joinville.
²⁶
This epic battle ended at nightfall and the two sides paused to regroup. Someone had to tell the king that his brother was dead. An officer of the Hospitallers volunteered that he was certain that Robert was in Paradise and, in any case, he urged the king to be proud of his army’s achievements that day. “God should be praised for all that He has given me,” replied the king; only then, Joinville reports, did great tears begin to fall from his eyes.
²⁷
Both armies pitched camp and began to dig in. For the crusaders this was disastrous; they had lost momentum in their march southward and they still needed to get past Mansourah. The Muslims were jubilant after killing Count Robert and so many of the finest Christian knights; as Ibn Wasil wrote, “This was the first battle in which the Turkish lions [the Mamluks] defeated the infidel dogs.”
²⁸

In late February 1250 Turanshah arrived at Mansourah; Ayyub’s death was formally announced and prayers were no longer said in his name. Turanshah was a controversial young man, destined to rule for only ninety-one days and to be the last of the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt. All accounts of his career were written under the subsequent regime and generally cast him in a hostile light. He was said to have been loathed by his father: while some sources report that he had an interest in adab and science, others claimed he was of low intelligence with a nervous twitch that affected his face and his left arm. Yet all this is with the benefit of hindsight—at the time, his presence provided a considerable boost to Muslim morale.

The two forces were now camped opposite each other; both sides made
sporadic forays, but an epidemic in the Christian camp and the Muslims’ successful blockade of the river caused the balance to tip decisively against the crusaders. The Egyptians had exploited their local knowledge to send camels carrying prefabricated boats overland to a canal. Once launched, this enabled them to bar the way to Christian shipping. In one engagement fifty-two ships were taken, in another, thirty-two; “the Muslims had the upper hand and now nourished plans to attack,” as Ibn Wasil commented.
²⁹
Meanwhile, the physical and mental condition of the crusaders, ignorant of the blockade, plummeted. Joinville himself was afflicted with a tertian fever brought on by his wounds and was bedridden. Many of the army were struck by scurvy. Joinville provides another memorable description: “people had so much dead flesh on their gums that the barbers had to remove it before they could chew their food and swallow it down. It was most pitiful to hear people throughout the camp howling as their dead flesh was cut away because they screamed like women in childbirth.”
³⁰

The crusaders began to worry that God no longer favored their enterprise. When one small vessel eluded the blockade to bring news of what was happening it was obvious that there was little chance of escape and Turanshah swiftly rejected a halfhearted attempt to strike a bargain and exchange Damietta for Jerusalem. The crusaders decided to march back to Damietta. If they succeeded, the expedition would at least have a secure base in Egypt where they could regroup.

Slowly the French army started the retreat northward, some moving by land, the others on the remaining boats. Louis himself suffered alongside his men—so bad was his dysentery that he frequently fainted and it was reported that the lower part of his drawers had to be cut away from the royal personage.
³¹
Constant harassment by the Egyptians hampered the Christians’ progress, with the Mamluks—“Islam’s Templars,” as Ibn Wasil proudly called them—the main source of danger.
³²

In the end, only about fifteen miles short of their target, the Christians were forced to surrender. Some of the king’s advisers, such as his brother Charles of Anjou, had urged Louis to flee, believing that he could escape by taking ship, but their leader had no intention of deserting his men: “Count of Anjou, if you think I am a burden to you, get rid of me; but I will never leave my people.”
³³

Joinville was one of those who traveled by water. Most of the men were suffering terribly from their wounds and sickness and could offer no resistance.
Joinville’s vessel was boarded and it seemed that the passengers would be butchered. Some crusaders prepared themselves for martyrdom, but Joinville, for all his piety, was more practical. He had managed to keep with him a box of personal possessions—relics and jewels—and, realizing that he was going to be taken, he threw them into the Nile. On the advice of one of the sailors he then pretended to be a cousin of the king, in other words, even though wounded, he would be of value to ransom. Louis himself was captured and almost the entire Christian force fell into Muslim hands. The treatment of prisoners varied: Joinville’s priest fainted and was duly killed and cast into the river, yet Joinville himself was allowed to keep a scarlet cloak lined with miniver (given to him by his mother), and was offered a remedy to cure a throat ailment. These small mercies aside, this proud crusade was in utter ruins; Ibn Wasil gloated: