by Robert Payne
Nearly half the Frisian fleet arrived at the end of May. Most of these ships came from the Rhineland. The Kingdom of Jerusalem had a small fleet of its own, and there were therefore about a hundred ships lying at anchor in the Bay of Acre. The Germans and Frisians had brought provisions and supplies. The shock that followed the departure of the king of Hungary and his army was wearing off and the Crusaders were of good heart again.
In retrospect, they could see that they had lived through a terrible winter. Although the expeditions through the Galilee had been important for testing the enemy’s strength, they had accomplished nothing else of value. There had been a feeling of acute distress, the crops had failed, they had few horses, and the expectation of reinforcements from Europe were not being fulfilled. The mood of the Crusaders before the arrival of the fleet is clearly revealed in a letter written by William of Chartres to the pope at some time during that long winter.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM WILLIAM OF CHARTRES, MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, TO THE POPE HONORIUS III, FROM ACRE SOMETIME IN THE WINTER OF 1217.
TO THE VERY REVEREND FATHER IN CHRIST, the Lord Honorius, by the Providence of God Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman Church, Brother William of Chartres, humble master of the poor chivalry of the Temple, proffereth all due obedience and reverence with the kiss of the foot.
. . . [I]n these parts corn and barley and all the necessities of life have become extraordinarily dear. This year the harvest has utterly disappointed the expectations of our husbandmen, and has almost totally failed. The natives, indeed, now depend altogether on the corn imported from the West, but as yet very little foreign grain has been received, and to increase our uneasiness nearly all our knights are dismounted and we cannot secure enough horses to replace those which have perished. It is therefore all the more important, O Holy Father, to warn all those who deign to assume the Cross of this scarcity that they may furnish themselves with plentiful supplies of grain and horses.
Before the arrival of the King of Hungary and the Duke of Austria we had decided to march against the city of Naplous and to bring the Saracen chief Coradin to an engagement with our forces, and we have all now decided to undertake an expedition into Egypt by sea and by land, and by destroying the city of Damietta we shall be able to command the road to Jerusalem.
The strange belief that Damietta controlled the road to Jerusalem had become by this time an obsession of the Crusaders. Damietta was in fact a place to be avoided, a place of misery and pestilence, certain to be the graveyard of innumerable soldiers. William of Chartres died a few months after writing this letter in the pestilential camp near Damietta.
Once the council of war, which consisted of John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, Duke Leopold of Austria, and the masters of the Temple, the Hospital, and the Teutonic Knights, had decided upon attacking Damietta, there was no turning back.
Although they were still expecting the rest of the Frisian fleet, it was decided that with a hundred ships they could safely attempt an attack on Egypt. The fleet set sail without a commander in chief. It assembled off Chastel Pèlerin, saluting the impregnable fortress, which shone like a white headland. They were about to set sail for the south when the wind dropped. Only a small part of the fleet was able to catch any wind. This small part succeeded in sailing south and anchored off the Damietta mouth of the Nile to await the main fleet. Six days later, when it arrived, John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, assumed the role of commander in chief.
There had already been a landing and the Christian army had put up tents on the west bank of the river two miles from Damietta. But heavy chains moored on one side of the river to a small fortress blocked the only navigable channel. The chronicler Oliver of Paderborn thought of a simple scheme for attacking the fortress. He lashed two ships together, built a high mast equipped with scaling ladders, and covered mast and ships with skins so that they could not be set on fire. In his chronicle he lovingly describes the making of this floating fortress.
Prayers were recited, and Ralph of Merencourt, Patriarch of Jerusalem, lay prostrate in the dust before a portion of the True Cross which he had brought from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Success depended upon capturing the fortress. To Oliver’s delight his floating fortress was able to grapple with the fortress on land. The Egyptians realized they were in danger. They succeeded in setting fire to the floating fortress, but the Christians put out the fire; and went on, with the help of a flying bridge, to batter their way into the interior of the fortress. The surviving Egyptians, numbering a hundred men, surrendered to the Duke of Austria and were held prisoner.
With the fortress captured, it was an easy matter to cut the chains. The advance on Damietta now began.
If the Christians had sailed up to the walls of Damietta, they might have captured the city, which was still unprepared for a frontal assault. Instead they waited for reinforcements, deliberated, and were cautious to excess.
The capture of the fortress took place in the middle of August. In the middle of September, the Papal Legate, Cardinal Pelagius, arrived on the scene, claiming that he had been appointed commander in chief by the pope. A Spaniard with a sharp satirical mind, harsh, obdurate, singularly ignorant of warfare, and always tactless, he went out of his way to insult King John of Brienne, insisting that he, the cardinal, would lead the army, hitherto ill led, to victory, and he pointed to the failures of the Crusaders as a sign that a new commander was long overdue.
Cardinal Pelagius had brought a small army with him, and at about the same time a French and English contingent had arrived to swell the ranks of the Crusaders. Among the Englishmen was Ranulf, Earl of Chester, an extremely brave but also a most bloodthirsty man.
In November a tempest nearly drowned the Crusaders. In the middle of the night the waters rose, tents floated away, food supplies were ruined, and when the floods subsided, they saw “the fishes of the sea and of the river fearlessly penetrating our sleeping quarters and we were able to catch them with our hands, a delicacy we would cheerfully have foregone.” So wrote the chronicler Oliver of Paderborn.
With the tempest came the plague: fever, pains in the legs and arms, rotting of the teeth and gums, and soon parts of the body turned black. Men died in agony, with faces, arms, and legs eaten away. Oliver of Paderborn says that those who survived until the spring were given back their health, but perhaps a fifth of the Crusaders died in that long, cold winter.
In February 1219, Cardinal Pelagius ordered an attack on al-Adiliya, where the Sultan al-Kamil had his headquarters. The attack was called off because they found themselves riding into a blinding rainstorm. A few days later advance patrols discovered that the sultan had abandoned al-Adiliya, but if anyone thought the sultan had abandoned this stronghold for fear of the Christians he was mistaken; he was in fact fleeing from his own lieutenants who were conspiring against him. The plot was quickly uncovered, the sultan executed the conspirators, and marched his troops to Ashmun-Tannah, where he was met by the army of his brother al-Mu’azzam, King of Damascus. He was now in a much better position to fight the Christians, or so it seemed.
But the capture of al-Adiliya had given heart to the Christians. They were well entrenched, and they were beginning to understand the language of dykes, canals, rivers, and waterways. On Palm Sunday the Muslims attacked al-Adiliya, but to no avail. Every available person was thrown into the battle. The Crusaders fought with extraordinary determination. The women of the camp brought water, wine, and bread to the soldiers, and carried heavy stones to the front lines. The priests served as doctors and nurses, bandaging wounds and blessing injuries suffered in battle. There was no time for the processions and parades associated with Palm Sunday. “Our crossbows, bows and arrows, lances, swords and shields were our palms,” Oliver wrote proudly.
Yet no one had gained a victory, and Damietta with its triple walls, its innumerable shops, gardens, orchards, factories, and mosques, remained untaken. Nevertheless Damietta, had the Crusaders known it, was ripe for conquest. Famine
and pestilence stalked the city. They were suffering from the same plague that still ran through the Christian camp. While the Sultan al-Kamil promised that they would soon be relieved, he was unable to come to their rescue. Prices rose alarmingly. A fig was sold for eleven bezants, a princely sum. Too weak to mount the walls and keep guard, the soldiers of Damietta shut the city gates and allowed no one to go in or out. The Christians could only guess how deeply they were suffering.
Sporadic attempts were made to rush the walls, but without success. At last on the night of November 5, 1219, King John of Brienne directed an assault, and the city was taken “without resistance, without treachery, without violent pillage or turmoil.” The reason why it was so easily taken became clear when they entered it. The streets were strewn with the bodies of people dead of famine or pestilence. Oliver of Paderborn wrote:
As we entered the city, we encountered an intolerable stench and an appalling sight. The dead had killed the living. Husbands and wives, fathers and sons, masters and slaves, had killed each other with the odor of corruption. Not only were the streets full of the dead, but corpses lay in the houses, in the bedrooms and on the beds. When a husband died, then his helpless wife also died and his son died near him, and a handmaiden died near her mistress, having wasted away. “The young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.” Infants clung to their mothers’ breasts, embraced by the dead. Rich men raised on dainty food died of hunger amid heaps of wheat, desiring in vain their familiar melons, garlic, onions, fish, poultry, fruit and herbs. In them was fulfilled the words of the prophet: “Instead of a sweet smell there shall be stink.”
Eighty thousand men, women, and children had perished during the siege. Only three thousand remained alive when the Crusaders entered the city, many of them dreadfully ill. Of these, three hundred were taken captive. These were the surviving dignitaries and their families, who might be ransomed off to the sultan, or sold in a slave market, or even baptized.
The mosque of Damietta was converted into a church dedicated to the Virgin. The wealth of the city was distributed among the knights and the clerics. Cardinal Pelagius contended that the city belonged to the Church, not to the Crusaders. On this subject he was adamant until King John of Brienne threatened to abandon the army and sail back to Acre. Thereupon the cardinal relented, declaring that he would permit the king to be the temporal ruler until the coming of Frederick II, the Hohenstaufen and Holy Roman Emperor, who was believed to be planning a great expedition to the East for a final confrontation with Islam. But Frederick delayed and the confrontation between the Holy Roman emperor and the sultan of Egypt was indefinitely postponed.
In Palestine things were going a little better, although al-Mu’azzam attacked Caesarea—most of its inhabitants escaped—and he went on to attack the great fortress of Chastel Pèlerin, again without success. The walls of Jerusalem were torn down, evidence that the Saracens believed the Christians might recover it. Acre was in danger, and for a while King John of Brienne abandoned the canals and waterways of Egypt to superintend its fortifications. In November al-Mu’azzam retired to Damascus to watch the events in Egypt from afar.
Soon after the fall of Damietta, the Christians captured Tanis, an important town a few miles to the east. The castle of Tanis was protected by a double moat and seven strong towers, but when the defenders saw the army coming, they panicked. Although there were only a thousand troops, the garrison at Tanis thought they were only the vanguard of the main army. The Egyptians may have shown weakness by fleeing from the castle of Tanis, but they possessed hidden reserves of strength. Peter of Montague, writing after the fall of Damietta and Tanis, was well aware of the dangers of the Egyptian adventure.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM PETER OF MONTAGUE, MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, TO THE BISHOP OF ELY, FROM ACRE, OCTOBER 1220.
BROTHER PETER OF MONTAGU, Master of the Knights of the Temple, to the reverend brother in Christ, N, by the grace of God Bishop of Ely, salvation!
. . . The Sultan of Egypt is encamped at a short distance from Damietta at the head of a vast army, and he has recently built bridges across both branches of the Nile, to impede the progress of the Christian army. He remains there, quietly awaiting our approach; and his soldiers are so numerous that the faithful cannot leave their trenches around Damietta without great danger. Meanwhile we have surrounded the town and the two camps with deep trenches and we have strongly fortified both banks of the river as far as the seacoast, hoping that the Lord will console and comfort us with speedy aid.
The Saracens have perceived our weakness. . . . Be it known to you that Coradin, Sultan of Damascus, has gathered a large army of Saracens and attacked Tyre and Acre. As the garrisons of these places were weakened in order to strengthen our forces in Egypt, they can with difficulty sustain themselves against his attacks. Coradin has also pitched his tents before the fortress called Chastel Pèlerin, and has put us to enormous expense to defend this place. He has besieged and captured the castle of Caesarea.
For a long time now we have been expecting the arrival of the Emperor and all those other noble personages who have assumed the Cross and by whose aid we hope to be relieved from our dangers and difficulties and to bring our exertions to happy fruition. If we are disappointed of the aid we expect next summer (which God forbid), all our newly acquired conquests together with the places we have held for ages past will be left in a very dubious state. We ourselves, and others in these parts, are so impoverished by the heavy expenses we have incurred in prosecuting the affairs of Jesus Christ that we shall be unable to contribute the necessary funds, unless we speedily receive succour and subsidies from the faithful.
Such letters, sent from the master of the Temple in Acre, were dispatched throughout Europe. They were not universally welcomed. Rumor pointed to an increasing misuse of the money sent to the Crusaders. The pope came to know about it, and he set up an inquiry. He wrote to Pelagius, the Papal Legate, and to the patriarch of Jerusalem, and the masters of the Temple, the Hospital, and the Teutonic Knights. He received, as might be expected, a ringing refutation of the calumnies heaped upon the financial agents of the Crusaders. There had been no embezzlement: every penny sent to the Holy Land could be accounted for. To the bishops of France, England, and Sicily—the countries where the rumor was widespread—the pope wrote vehemently that the military orders in the Holy Land were financially respectable and were incapable of committing financial crimes. But he provided no accounting of the enormous cost of the Crusade.
Peter of Montague had written the letters at a particularly bad time. It was a period of stalemate. The loss of Caesarea had disheartened many of the Crusaders; some knights had been withdrawn from Damietta and sent to stiffen the resistance at Chastel Pèlerin, which remained unconquered. But the army at Damietta could not afford the loss of a single man. Yet throughout this time knights were continually abandoning the battlefield and returning home to manage their own affairs. They were free agents; they could not be compelled to stay; like King Andrew of Hungary they could simply leave.
The stalemate, the diminishing number of knights, and the presence of Pelagius all contributed to making life intolerable for the Christian army. And Frederick II deeply affected the atmosphere of the times: his repeated promises that he was about to come to the East finally wore people down. They lost hope. The pope also lost hope. Frederick had been crowned by the pope in Rome in November and had promised to embark on a new Crusade in the spring, but he was still busy suppressing uprisings in Germany. He would come in his own good time.
Little known, and not yet perceived as a great and towering force, was the Mongol leader Genghis Khan, who swept into Azerbaijan in that same year. There he destroyed an army led by King George of Georgia, thereby reducing the military power of the Christian state to zero. Eventually, the Mongols would ally themselves with the Christians, but that was yet to come.
At this time, if Cardinal Pelagius had ordered an attack on Cairo after Damietta and Tanis had been capt
ured, he might have won a great victory, for al-Kamil was in a mood of despair. The longer the stalemate continued, the more eagerly did al-Kamil prepare his defenses, recruit more soldiers, and build more ships. The cardinal raged against the inertia and drunkenness of his own soldiers, but could do nothing. There were frequent skirmishes, small towns changed hands, the Christians learned to maneuver among the canals, and a number of strange, prophetical books appeared. These books, perhaps manufactured in the feverish court of Frederick II, were full of prophecies about a great king coming from the West and meeting another great king from the East, who was perhaps King David, the son or nephew of Prester John, the mysterious Christian emperor believed to be lurking in central Asia or Ethiopia. These apocalyptic prophecies, based on Revelation, were too precise to be ignored. Letters from King David also appeared, promising succor to the Christians. In the light of these letters and prophecies the cardinal saw himself as the forerunner of the kings of the East and West.
Toward the end of July 1221, the cardinal decided to throw his whole force against the sultan. Reinforcements had arrived from Genoa and Apulia. Matthew, Count of Apulia, the viceroy ruling over Frederick II’s territories in southern Italy, came with eight galleys. Hundreds of pilgrims had also arrived, and they could be used as laborers and water-carriers. King John of Brienne, who disputed the cardinal’s generalship and who had returned to Acre, was summoned to take command of the army. He did so reluctantly, quarreling with the cardinal to the very end. By July 20 the Christians were in Sharimshah, a city halfway between Damietta and Mansourah, which had been abandoned by the enemy: the sultan had given orders that his own palace in Sharimshah should be destroyed. The cardinal believed that the way was now open for the march on Cairo.