The Dream and the Tomb (58 page)

Oddly enough, the king who worshipped relics was not a man to pay attention to signs and portents. As soon as the storm had abated, he collected his remaining ships and gave orders to sail straight for Damietta. He had about a third of his army with him. Many of the ships scattered by the storm would reach Damietta later.

By this time it had, by constant repetition, become an article of faith that the road to Jerusalem lay through Egypt. Jerusalem would be free when the power of Egypt was destroyed, when the Christians were established in Alexandria, Damietta, and Cairo. The Crusader passion for doing things the hard way received its ultimate benediction in this obsession with Egypt. The unmapped and treacherous tributaries of the Nile Delta offered no easy passage; the deadly heat of the Egyptian summer, the sandstorms, the Nile floods, the pestilences, the interminable sandy deserts, all these
would have suggested to any sensible Crusader that there were better ways to safeguard Jerusalem. But the Crusaders were not sensible; they expected miracles, and sometimes King Louis provided them. At other times, he provided them with overwhelming disasters.

As-Salih Ayub, Sultan of Egypt, was the grandnephew of Saladin and the son of the wise al-Kamil by a Sudanese slave woman. He was cruel, imperious, covetous of the wealth of his emirs, and strangely addicted to drowning his enemies. He was not a cultured man: He detested reading, knew nothing about the sciences, and was at home only in the camp or in the audience chambers of his palaces, where he gave orders crisply to his terrified subjects. No high officer dared to make any move without his express permission. Yet he was a good soldier who understood battlefields, lines of force, and the deployment of reserves as well as any Christian prince or general. He had thought the Franks would attack Syria, which showed his intelligence. When he heard, through spies on the island of Cyprus, that the Franks' real objective was Damietta, he hurried back to Egypt. He had to be carried on a litter because he was in an advanced state of consumption and suffered horribly from ulcers. While he was being brought back to Egypt, the defense of the country was in the hands of Fakhr ad-Din, the former ambassador to the court of Frederick II.

No Egyptian warships were waiting for the French fleet when it arrived off Damietta, the triple-walled city with many towers and a wide moat on the landward side, so designed that it was very nearly impregnable. The Egyptian army was waiting for the Christians on the shore some distance away. There was no attempt to prevent the landing. In the distance the Crusaders could see the Egyptian cavalry, their weapons gleaming like gold in the hot sunshine. The noise of their drums, cymbals, and horns was deafening, but they did not attack. John of Joinville, puzzled because the expected massive attack never came, learned later that the Egyptians had sent carrier pigeons to Ashmun-Tannah, a town on one of the Nile tributaries, where the sultan was staying. Three times the carrier pigeons were sent off, but there was no reply. The Egyptian generals concluded that the sultan was dead or dying. Having never been empowered to make decisions, the generals were irresolute.

But while there was no attack, there were many skirmishes. Here and there along the coast the Egyptians fought off the invading ships by plunging into the sea, cavalrymen attacking the armed boatmen with swords and lances.

Seeing these skirmishes from the poop of his flagship, the
Montjoie
, King Louis could not resist the excitement. He leaped into the water and, his shield hanging from his neck and a lance in his hand, he strode ashore. As soon as he saw the enemy, he set his lance at his shoulder and his shield in front of him, and he would have charged the Egyptians if wiser men had not held him back.

The French landed on the morning of June 4, and by evening they had won the beachhead. On the following evening, the Egyptian troops withdrew from the city, very quietly, and the next morning there came a renegade Egyptian to the French camp, saying that the city had been abandoned. The bridge of boats across the moat was left intact. During the afternoon, the Christians marched into the city in force and planted the king's banner on the highest tower.

The sultan was incensed when he heard of the abandonment of Damietta. Some emirs were hanged, and Fakhr ad-Din was in danger of his life.

So little damage was done to the Christian forces by the Egyptians, so easily and quickly did Damietta fall to the Christians, that people like Guy of Melun, who fought in the ranks, thought a miracle had taken place through the intervention of King Louis.

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM GUY, A PILGRIM, TO HIS FRIEND IN PARIS, FROM DAMIETTA, 1249.

. . . [A]fter a few days a sudden tempest drove us over a wide expanse of the sea. Several of our vessels were driven apart and scattered. The Sultan of Cairo and other Saracen princes, informed by spies that we intended to attack Alexandria, had assembled an infinite multitude of armed men at Cairo as well as at Damietta and Alexandria, and awaited us in order to put us to the sword. One night we were borne over the waves by a violent tempest. Toward morning the sky cleared, the storm abated, and our scattered vessels came together safely. An experienced pilot who knew all the coast and who was considered a faithful guide, was sent to the masthead. After he had carefully examined all the surrounding country, he cried: “God help us, God help us, we are before Damietta!”

All of us could see the land. Other pilots on other vessels had already made the same observation. The King, assured of our position, endeavoured to reanimate and console his men. “My faithful friends,” he said to them, “we shall be invincible if we are inseparable in our charity. It is not without the divine permission that we have been brought here to a country so powerfully protected. I am neither the King of France nor the Holy Church; you are both. I am only a man whose life will end like other men's when it shall please God. Everything is in our favor, whatever may happen to us. If we are conquered, we shall be martyrs. If we triumph, the glory of God will be thereby exalted—the glory of France, yea, even of Christianity will be exalted thereby. Certainly it would be foolish to believe that God, who foresees all things,
has incited me in vain. This is His cause, we shall conquer for Christ, He will triumph in us, He will give the glory, the honor and the blessing not unto us, but unto His name. . . .”

. . . We lost only a single man by the enemy's fire. Two or three others, too eager for the combat, threw themselves into the water too quickly and perished there. The Saracens gave way and retired into their city, fleeing shamefully and with great loss. Several of them were mutilated or mortally wounded.

We followed them closely but our chiefs who feared an ambuscade held us back. While we were fighting, some slaves and prisoners broke their chains, for the jailers came out to fight us. Only the women, children and old men remained in the city. These slaves and prisoners were full of joy and rushed up to us, crying: “Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord.” These events happened on Friday, the day of our Lord's passion; we drew from it a favorable augury. The King disembarked joyfully and safely, as well as the rest of the Christian army. We rested until the next day when, with the aid and the guidance of slaves who knew the country and the roads, we took possession of what remained to be captured of the land and shore. During the night the Saracens who had discovered that the prisoners had escaped, killed those who remained. They thus made of them glorious martyrs of Christ, to their own damnation.

The following night and Sunday morning, as they lacked weapons and troops, the Saracens seeing the multitude of the Christians who were landing, their courage and firmness, and the sudden desolation of their own city, departed with their chiefs, taking their women and children and carrying off everything movable. They fled from the other side of the city by little gates which they had made long before. Some escaped by land, others by sea, abandoning their city filled with supplies of all kinds. That same day, at three o'clock, two prisoners who had escaped by chance from the Saracens, came to tell us what had happened. The King, no longer fearing an ambuscade, entered the city at nine o'clock without hindrance and without shedding blood. Of all who entered only Hugo Brun, Count de la Marche, was severely wounded. He lost too much blood from his wounds to survive.

I must not forget to say that the Saracens, after having decided to flee, hurled at us a great quantity of Greek fire which was very injurious to us, because it was carried by a wind that blew from the city. But the wind suddenly changing carried the fire back upon Damietta where it burned several persons. It would have consumed more property if the slaves who had been left behind
had not extinguished it by a process which they knew, and by the will of God.

The King having entered the city amidst cries of joy went immediately into the temple of the Saracens to pray and to thank God whom he regarded as the author of what had taken place. The Te Deum was chanted, and after the temple had been purified, mass was celebrated. We found in the city an infinite quantity of food, arms, engines, precious clothing, vases, gold and silver utensils and other things. In addition we had our provisions and other necessary objects brought from our vessels.

By the divine glory the Christian army, like a pond which is greatly swollen by the torrents pouring into it, was added to each day by members of the Teutonic Order, by Templars and Hospitallers, without speaking of the pilgrims who arrived at every moment. The Templars and Hospitallers did not want to believe in such a triumph. In fact, nothing that had happened was credible. All seemed miraculous. . . .

THEY would say of King Louis IX that he was a man who rarely showed emotion, that he maintained in his everyday life the calm of a prayerful man, and that he never spoke ill of anyone unless he was a traitor or an infidel. All this was true of the outer man, who always succeeded in maintaining his royal dignity, but the inner man was in constant turmoil: his desire for sanctity was at war with his desire to be remembered as a warrior and as a prince who governed well.

All the evidence goes to show that he believed the abandonment of Damietta came as a result of his own generalship and in answer to his prayers. He was not surprised or even elated; it was what he had expected all along. What he did not know was that the city was a trap; and he fell into it.

He made his solemn entry into Damietta on June 6. The great gates opened on a city from which everyone had fled. The houses, shops, and palaces were intact; the granaries were filled with wheat, barley, and rice; the armories were filled with weapons; the oil vats were full of oil.

Within a few days Damietta was transformed into a Christian city. The king lived in the sultan's palace, the papal legate lived in the nearby fortress of the former military commander, the great mosque was transformed into a church, and fifty-three Christian prisoners found in the dungeons were given their freedom. The army was lodged outside the city, because the king feared an imminent attack by the sultan. For a few days there were no attacks except by marauding Bedouin who galloped up to the city at night in the hope of acquiring a few Christian heads, the sultan having promised ten bezants for every head presented to him. But the Christians were on guard, the crossbowmen generally kept the Bedouin at a distance, and, when too many of them succeeded in passing the guards, the king ordered a palisade to be erected around the camp. Later the palisade was transformed into earthworks, and the camp became a small fortress.

The Nile was about to overflow, as it always does in June. Between June and September, fighting in the Nile Delta was very nearly impossible. The king decided to dig in for the long summer and prepare for an attack on Cairo, which was over 100 miles to the south of Damietta. The count of Brittany and most of the barons would have preferred to besiege Alexandria, where there was an excellent port, so that provisions could be brought to the army whenever needed, but Robert, Count of Artois, the king's brother, was adamant that they should march on Cairo. The king relied heavily on this brother, who regarded himself as the military expert in the family. The decision to march on Cairo would turn out to be suicidal and would lead to the destruction of the entire Christian army.

The long summer itself, after its brilliant beginning, became a nightmare. The tremendous heat, the snakes, the insects, the sense of isolation in a foreign land, all these affected the foot soldiers cooped up behind the earthworks. The knights, of course, could enter the city at will. The lords lived well, the soldiers complained bitterly; by the time the king began to march on Cairo, he was commanding troops whose morale had been shaken by nearly five months of enforced inactivity, boredom, and misery.

Robert, Count of Artois, reasoned that the best way to kill a snake was to smash its head. This statement might have made more sense if accurate maps had been available. The Crusaders did not know how to reach Cairo, the political head. But the capture of Cairo would have been of little use to them, since in any event the real head was the Egyptian army, which was lying in wait for them at Mansourah, and which they would have to destroy before they could reach Cairo. In the plans of the king and his brother there was no element of surprise, no feints, no cunning. The huge, unwieldy Christian army was ordered to move southward among the canals and rivers; it was visible to spies, who were able to report all its movements. As it marched further and further into marshy land, there was the possibility that at any moment retreat would be cut off.

And always, there were delays. Just as they had wasted a winter in Cyprus and a long summer in Damietta, so they allowed the autumn to pass, and it was winter again when they left Damietta, leaving Queen Marguerite and the patriarch of Jerusalem in the walled city with a small garrison to protect them. A few days later they received news that the sultan was dead. They also heard that the sultana and Fakhr ad-Din had assumed power, while waiting for the arrival of the heir to the throne, the sultan's son Turanshah, who was viceroy in the Jezireh. Turanshah was a long time coming, and this too portended good fortune for the Christian army. King Louis could not bring himself to believe that a woman could rule Muslim country, though he was perfectly content to let his mother, Blanche of Castile, rule over France in his absence.