486 Tyerman, God’s War, 745.
487 Ibid., 747.
488 Van Cleve, Frederick II, 217 note 5, in Tyerman, God’s War, 750.
489 Grousset, The Epic of the Crusades, 231.
490 Ibid., 232.
491 Tyerman, God’s War, 753.
492 Pernoud, The Crusaders, 291.
493 Tyerman, God’s War, 740.
8
The End of the Crusader States
If we are conquered, we shall be martyrs; if we triumph, the glory of God and of France, and of all Christendom will be exalted. This is God’s cause; we shall conquer for Christ’s sake. He will triumph in us; he will give the glory, the honor, the blessing, not to us, but to his name.
King St. Louis IX494
God is pleased! The Kingdom of the Cross has perished.
Abu’l-Tana495
The king was sick and near death. One attendant even believed he had already died and moved to cover his body with the bed sheet but was stopped by another nurse who “said he still had his soul in his body.” The king heard their debate and, although previously mute, requested they bring him the cross—for he was going on the Crusade.496
The Saintly King of the Franks
It was a bold and risky decision. Some believed the vow was not binding since the king had taken it while ill and that impaired his judgment. Yet when he had indeed recovered from illness, in December 1244 the king took the cross again in a dramatic manner by ripping the previously sewn cross from his garment and handing it to the bishop of Paris. He then ordered the prelate to give it back to him “so that no one can keep saying that he took it without knowing what he was doing.”497
The king’s insistence on taking the cross and journeying to the Holy Land was an outgrowth of his deep faith and love for Christ. He yearned to see Jerusalem under Christian control once more. His desire was so great that he was prepared to risk his personal and royal fortunes on the expedition. He was sovereign of the wealthiest region in all Christendom and the king of the most populous Christian country.498 There was much to lose by going on Crusade, but the “perfect Crusader,” King St. Louis IX, knew that the eternal reward greatly outweighed the temporal risk.499
The thirteenth century was the “century of St. Louis,” as no man more exemplified the tenor of the age than the saintly king of the Franks.500 Louis was blond, slender, handsome, gentle though firm, decisive in policy and generous in charity. He was a devout and dutiful son and a loving husband and father. Along with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Louis was the most important political figure of the thirteenth century and the central figure in Christendom.501
Those two men could not have been more opposite in all aspects of their lives. Frederick was the “Crusader without faith” whereas Louis was the “perfect Crusader.” One man seemed to eschew all religious faith whereas the other embraced it and was declared a saint of the Church. Frederick kept a harem of Muslim women whereas, uncharacteristic of the age for monarchy, Louis was a monogamous husband. The two men can be easily distinguished by their ultimate dreams in life: “Frederick II thinking only of his imperial dream and Louis IX of his eschatological dream.”502 Louis was a product of his times but he also shaped the era in which he lived and his influence (and intercession) continues to the modern world. There was perhaps no greater king in the history of France. He governed his realm peacefully and justly for forty-four years and followed three principles as monarch: devotion to God, self-discipline, and affection for his people.
Louis’s Family
The saint was born on April 25, 1214 at Poissy on the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist. His later biographer and personal friend, John of Joinville, who lived to the advanced age of ninety-three and wrote his life of Saint Louis thirty years after the king’s death, noted the significance of Louis’s birth, the celebrations performed on the Feast of St. Mark, and his two Crusades:
On this day, people carry the cross in processions in many places, and in France they are called black crosses. So, this was like a prophecy of the great multitude of people who died on these two Crusades, the one in Egypt and the other when he died at Carthage for there was much great mourning over these in this world and many great joys that arise from them in heaven for those who died as true Crusaders on these two great pilgrimages.503
Louis was close to his brothers and sister. Robert, his most beloved brother, was only two years younger and they were constant companions.504 He accompanied Louis on his first Crusade to Egypt and was killed in a battle with Muslim forces. Alphonse was born in 1220 and accompanied his saintly brother on both Crusades, dying on the return trip from Tunis in 1271. The youngest brother, Charles, became king of Naples and Sicily and died in 1285. Although he was close to his brothers, it was Louis’s sister, Isabelle, who was most similar to the king. From her youth Isabelle was a deeply pious woman who took a vow of chastity and refused to marry Conrad, the son of Frederick II. Instead, “she lived at court, dressed modestly, and practiced exercises of remarkable piety.”505 Eventually, Louis built a convent for a group of Poor Clares in 1259, to which Isabelle retired in 1263. His devout sister never took the habit but lived a holy life as a laywoman. She died in 1269, right before Louis’s departure on his second Crusade. Her sanctity of life was recognized by the Church centuries after her death and she is known as St. Isabelle of France.506
In spring of 1234, the twenty-three year old king married thirteen-year-old Marguerite of Provence. Their marriage was fruitful: Eleven children were born to the royal couple,
the first in 1240. Louis was the ancestor of all subsequent kings of France, a fact recalled by the priest on the scaffold with Louis XVI in 1793 when he called the condemned monarch “a son of St. Louis.”507
A Life of Faith
Even in an age of faith, the king’s personal piety and sanctity stood out. He was concerned for his own salvation but even more so for the salvation of his subjects, which he considered “his highest duty.”508
His personal piety involved wearing simple clothing, especially after his return from the Crusade, and a regimented prayer life. Louis awoke each night at midnight to participate with his royal chaplains in the Liturgy of the Hours and said fifty “Hail Mary’s” each evening, kneeling and standing for each prayer.509 Louis’s prayer life was augmented by penitential practices including fasting, the wearing of a hair shirt, and the special personal practice of not laughing on Fridays. The king greatly enjoyed life and joking so the mortification of not laughing one day a week was a serious and difficult penance.510 Louis recognized the need for grace to refrain from sin as well as the need to beg the Lord’s mercy for committed sins, so he went to confession weekly and maintained both a daytime and nighttime confessor in order to receive the sacrament when needed.511
The First Crusade of King St. Louis IX512
Within two months of Louis’s taking the cross in December 1244, Pope Innocent IV authorized Odo of Châteauroux to preach the Crusade in France. While Odo preached the Crusade and recruited warriors to join the king, Louis began the massive material preparations required. He entered into agreements with the Italian cities of Genoa and Venice to provide transports for his army while royal agents spent the following two years stockpiling food and supplies, especially in Cyprus.513
Continuing the practice of First Crusade warriors, King St. Louis IX prepared himself spiritually for his armed pilgrimage to the Holy Land. However, because he was king, he extended these practices to encompass his entire kingdom. In 1247 he appointed royal investigators to inquire throughout the realm about complaints against royal officials in order to settle any grievances before he left on the Crusade. He entrusted this task to mendicant friars whose duty was “to draw up a list of all the injustices committed by the agents of the king or in the name of the king in order to wipe them out and satisfy any royal subjects who had been wronged.”514
Crusading was expensive, and financing the expedition was borne mostly by the king. Louis heavily subsidized his fellow C
rusaders, including his later biographer, John of Joinville. Joinville’s experience was typical and provides a picture of how important the king’s financial contributions were to the campaign. Joinville took the cross for Louis’s expedition, receiving the pilgrim staff from the Cistercians, and made his spiritual preparation by walking barefoot as a penitent touring local shrines before his departure.515 He initially refused to swear fealty to the king, since he was not originally his vassal, and decided to travel independently to Outrémer. In order to finance his Crusade he heavily mortgaged his lands, but his funds were not enough and he ran out of money while in Cyprus. Desperate, he reached out to the king and entered into royal service upon which the king granted him 800 livres tournois (l.t.). Louis’s total expenditures on the Crusade would amount to 1.5 million l.t. or six times the annual royal income.516
The king left Paris on June 12, 1248 after receiving the insignia of a pilgrim and the oriflamme at St. Denis. Louis went as a penitent to the cathedral of Notre Dame, where he participated in Mass, and then walked barefoot to the abbey of St. Antoine-des-Champs. Recognizing the penitential nature of the Crusade and his desire to engage fully in the spiritual opportunities afforded from such a journey, the king changed his appearance. He eschewed rich and costly clothing and accouterments and dressed instead as a humble and simple penitent throughout the expedition.517
The king traveled from Paris to Lyons where he met with Pope Innocent IV, and then made way to Aigues Mortes, which was a man-made port in royal territory. Louis thus became the first French king to leave for the Crusade from his own soil.518 His fleet departed on August 25, 1248 and sailed for Cyprus. They spent the winter on the island, and the delay, although understandable, “devoured supplies, sapped morale, and gave the Egyptians time to prepare their defenses.”519 The army left the island on May 30, 1249 en route to Egypt. Louis had decided to re-enact the Fifth Crusade and liberate Egypt in order to use it as a base of operations from which to liberate the Holy City.
Egypt
The French fleet arrived at Damietta on June 4, 1249 and once more the Muslim garrison prepared to fight Crusaders. The next morning the Crusaders undertook an amphibious landing with Louis in the lead. When warriors waded to shore the Muslim garrison commander, Fakhr al-Din, saw the strength of the Crusader army and decided to withdraw from the city to the sultan’s camp several miles away.
The city, now emptied of its defenders, was soon occupied by the French Crusaders in a surprisingly easy undertaking, which was the opposite of the siege during the Fifth Crusade. Indeed, “Damietta had fallen in hours instead of the seventeen months it had taken in 1218–19.”520 Louis found stockpiles of food, equipment, and material that the Muslims left behind in their hasty retreat. The king decided to spend the summer in Damietta while waiting for his brother Alphonse and other Crusaders to arrive. As winter approached, Louis thought an attack on Cairo would give the Christians complete control of Egypt and finish the task left undone by the Fifth Crusade, so he gave the command to march there in late November 1249. He left a garrison and his five-months-pregnant queen in Damietta and ordered the fleet to shadow the army’s movement offshore.
One of the main reasons for the eventual failure of Louis’s expedition was the inability to learn from the mistakes of the Fifth Crusade. Louis inadvertently made the exact same mistakes, one of which was the failure to build supply depots along the route to Cairo before the main army left Damietta.
The slow-moving Crusader army finally reached the outskirts of Mansourah in late December. Louis quickly ordered his troops to dig in and fortify their position. In order to capture Mansourah, the Crusaders needed to cross the Bahr as-Saghir river, but Muslim forces prevented them from building a causeway. After receiving intelligence about a ford upriver that offered an opportunity to surprise and outflank the Muslims guarding the town, Louis developed a carefully coordinated plan. It centered on an advance element under the command of his brother, Robert of Artois, capturing the ford during a surprise night attack and, once it was secured, awaiting the crossing of the main army before advancing on the town.
The Attack
The surprise attack on the ford occurred on February 7, 1250. It was successful but, in a fateful decision that ultimately doomed the entire Crusade, Robert failed to abide by the plan and instead advanced on the Muslim army camp without Louis and the main army.
Robert’s initial attack on Fakhr al-Din’s field camp was effective. The Crusaders easily surprised and overwhelmed the Muslim force. The surprise was so complete that Fakhr al-Din was killed during his morning washings, unable to defend himself from the onslaught of the Christian warriors.521
Some of the Muslim troops ran in haste to the safety of Mansourah, and Robert, flush with his stunning victory, pursued them in further violation of his orders. Robert’s unit advanced into Mansourah, where the majority of the Muslim troops were quartered. The hasty decision led to his death and the slaughter of his 300 knights, most of whom were killed by defenders throwing blocks of wood from the windows of city houses.522 It was a risky action undertaken in the heat of battle by a warrior raised and trained from an early age to ignore personal risk and seek glory and honor on the battlefield.
Louis was deeply grieved at the news of his brother’s death and regarded it as martyrdom. Upon his later return from the Crusade, Louis petitioned the papacy to recognize his fallen brother as a martyr but the pope refused the request.523 Louis’s reaction was in keeping with most Crusade veterans who consistently believed their fallen comrades should be regarded as martyrs, but the Church never identified the dead warriors as such. Although they fought for Christ and his patrimony, their deaths in combat (or from disease and starvation) were not the result of persecution for the Faith.
The main body of the Crusade army crossed the river while Robert was engaged in his folly and, after his death, the Muslim army counterattacked. The fighting was intense and lasted all day as hand-to-hand melees broke out across the battlefield. Joinville also recorded the intensity of the combat as he was hit by five arrows and his horse by fifteen during the struggle.524 The Crusaders were finally victorious as the Muslim forces retreated into the town, but the victory was costly, It would also prove to be “the prelude to catastrophe.”525
Time to Retreat
Although Louis’s personal bravery during his Egyptian campaign cannot be questioned, his military strategy was deficient, and the discipline of his army (or at least that of his brother) proved an Achilles heel. His brother’s rash advance resulted in high casualties, and now Louis did not have enough troops to attack Mansourah—let alone Cairo. He was faced with a critical decision: stay and try to press the attack or retreat immediately to Damietta to regroup and refit.
Unfortunately, the king proved the leadership axiom that a bad leader is not someone who makes bad decisions, but someone who makes no decisions. He opted to hold the army in place in an untenable tactical location surrounded by water in a virtual cul-de-sac. The Crusaders remained for almost two months from February 11 to April 5, their food supplies dwindling to a critical level and the Muslim forces gathering strength. The Egyptians knew the supply line to the Crusader army was the key to victory, so they attacked and captured relief convoys.
The situation became unbearable as disease, particularly scurvy and dysentery, broke out among the Crusaders, further weakening their military effectiveness. Even the king was afflicted to the point where the back of his trousers was cut open to deal with the nasty effects of dysentery.526
The king gave the order for a general retreat on April 5 and the army began the slow return march to Damietta. They never made it. “Hampered by enemy forces, illness, hunger, fatigue, difficult terrain, and collapsing morale, the shattered army on land, shadowed by a rag-bag navy increasingly vulnerable to enemy shipping on the Nile, effectively disintegrated.”527 The next day Louis sued for peace.
The Muslim army surrounded the pitiable Crusader host and immediately executed al
l the sick, wounded, and poor Crusaders. Louis and the French nobility were captured and sent to the prisons of Mansourah. The sultan of Egypt, Turan Shah, giddy at the capture of the noble French king, further humiliated him by sending his captured royal cloak to Damascus where it was paraded through the city as a war trophy.528
Having thus gloated, Turan Shah now needed to assess the reality of the situation. He was faced with the same decision as his grandfather al-Kamil was during the Fifth Crusade. The Crusader field army was defeated but the city of Damietta was still in Christian hands. Should he undertake a costly siege to recapture the city or find a diplomatic settlement?
He chose the latter and entered into detailed negotiations with the imprisoned king. After a few weeks, they reached a deal. Louis agreed to return Damietta and to pay 800,000 bezants , or more than three times the annual royal income, for his freedom. Turan Shah agreed to release the king after payment of half the ransom with the stipulation Louis remain onboard ship off the coast of Damietta until the second half was paid. Queen Marguerite worked tirelessly to collect the required funding and, after delivery of the 400,000 bezants, Louis was released.
His captivity had lasted a month during which time his captors tried to convince him to renounce his faith and embrace Islam. The saintly king had refused, telling his captors “You can very well kill my body, but you will never have my soul.”529 The king also maintained his honesty and integrity despite the harsh conditions and the humiliation of defeat. Despite his verbal agreement to remain on ship off the coast of Damietta until the second half of the ransom, his barons tried to convince him to leave without paying the second half; he steadfastly refused.530 Once safely back among his remaining army, Louis learned the initial ransom payment was left purposefully short by 10,000 pounds. He was furious at the deception and immediately ordered it paid to Turan Shah.531
Ruling the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Upon his release from prison, Louis discussed his plans with his nobles. The king was determined to stay in the Holy Land but allowed those who wanted to leave to do so. Louis wrote a letter to his subjects explaining why he was remaining in Outrémer for an unspecified time. He told them he was staying in order that “something good, the deliverance of the captives, the preservation of the castles and fortresses of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and [of obtaining] other advantages for Christendom” would result.532 He urged his subjects to take the cross and journey to the Holy Land to join him in these endeavors.
The Glory of the Crusades Page 21