Louis’ early reign taught him something of war, but he had yet to reveal any spark of martial genius or strategic vision akin to that which had possessed Richard the Lionheart. The Capetian was capable, however, of inspiring loyalty and fidelity in his troops, not least through the assiduous care taken to ensure their wellbeing and morale. In fact, Louis’ whole approach to the business of monarchy and generalship was heavily influenced by notions of honour, justice and obligation. These principles were at the heart of the codes of chivalric conduct that had solidified in the course of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and now informed almost every aspect of Christian knightly culture. Nascent ideals of chivalry had played a role in crusading from the start; certainly they formed a backdrop to the Third Crusade. But by the 1240s they were a dominant force, shaping the approach to, and prosecution of, holy war.
For Louis IX and those who followed him, crusading was a means to fulfil a debt of dutiful service owed to God and a struggle in which one’s reputation might be preserved and advanced. Cherished renown was there to be earned through valorous feats of arms, although, of course, the danger of cowardice or failure–and thus the threat of deleterious shame–also hung in the air. Crusaders continued to be attracted by the spiritual reward of an indulgence, but while many still conceived of themselves as pilgrims, this idea of holy war as a devotional journey was increasingly balanced or even eclipsed by the image of crusading as a chivalric endeavour. This shift would have marked consequences on the battlefield, not least because of the inherent tension between seeking personal glory and following orders.
Louis may have harboured thoughts of enlisting in a crusade during the 1230s, and he lent financial support to the Barons’ Crusade, but by late 1244 his determination to take the cross was hardening. By this stage, news of Jerusalem’s capture by the Khwarizmians was probably circulating in the West, but Bishop Galeran had yet to report the shattering defeat at La Forbie. That winter the French king fell ill with a severe fever and in December he lay abed in Paris, ‘so near dying that one of [his servants] wanted to draw the sheet over his face, maintaining that he was dead’. In the grip of this dire infirmity, Louis declared his unswerving determination to lead a crusade and was said to have ‘asked for the cross to be given to him’ there and then. The crusade became the enterprise through which he asserted his adulthood and independence–and the cause to which he would dedicate his life.29
THE PREPARATIONS FOR WAR
It would be almost four years before Louis IX embarked on his crusade. This delay was not the result of deliberate prevarication, but, rather, a consequence of the meticulous precision with which the king sought to prepare for the holy war. The expedition was to be dominated by the French. The conflict between the Hohenstaufen Empire and the papacy precluded German and Italian involvement, although Frederick II did make Sicily’s ports and markets available to the Capetian monarch. A few prominent English nobles took the cross, in spite of Henry III’s misgivings–most notably, the king’s half-brother William Longsword.
In France, Louis’ ardent enthusiasm and the efforts of the papal legate Odo of Châteauroux prompted widespread enrolment. All three of the king’s brothers enlisted: Robert of Artois, Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou. A grand assembly held in Paris in October 1245 ended with many other leading counts, dukes and prelates committing to the expedition. The count of Champagne was busy in northern Spain, but many leading members of his household joined up, among them a twenty-three-year-old knight named John of Joinville, who had inherited the title of seneschal of Champagne (by this date, an office with oversight of lordly ceremony). As a participant in the coming crusade, Joinville came to know King Louis well and witnessed the holy war first-hand. Years later the seneschal wrote a vivid record of what he saw and experienced, albeit one that portrayed the French monarch in a heroic light. Joinville’s Old French account–a mixture of personal memoir and royal biography (at times even hagiography)–offers one of the most visceral and illuminating insights into the human experience of crusading.30
Joinville’s testimony, alongside a wealth of other contemporary evidence, makes it abundantly clear that Louis IX threw himself into the preparations for his forthcoming expedition with enormous energy. The elaborate measures taken reveal a commendable degree of foresight and an eye for detail. It is also apparent that the king’s approach to planning grew from a belief that the crusade’s success depended on both practical and spiritual considerations.
Louis adopted a remarkably clinical approach to the matter of logistical preparation, tapping into the increasing administrative sophistication of thirteenth-century France. He had no intention of leading a ramshackle foraging force into the East. Selecting Cyprus as his advance staging post, the king set about building up a supply of the food, weaponry and resources needed for war. After two years of stockpiling goods on the island the vast mounds of wheat and barley awaiting the army apparently resembled hills, while the stacks of wine barrels were, from a distance, easily mistaken for barns. Aigues-Mortes, a new fortified port on France’s south-eastern coast, served as the expedition’s European base of operations.
This feverish activity cost a fortune. The Capetian monarchy made an extraordinary financial commitment to the crusade and Louis amassed a sizeable war chest with which to fund the campaign. Royal accounts suggest that his expenditure during the first two years totalled two million livres tournois (gold ‘pounds’ of the weight accepted in Tours), much of which went on paying either wages or subsidies to French knights. Given that total royal income was no more than 250,000 livres tournois per annum in this period, the economic strain of mounting the campaign was massive. To help foot the bill, Louis was granted one-twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues in France by the pope, and this was later increased to one-tenth for three years. Crown officials also extorted money from heretics and Jews, and, all in all, Louis was content to beg, borrow and steal in the name of the holy war. In addition, he encouraged other leading crusaders to raise their own funds and to contribute to the organisation of transport.31
Many earlier crusades had been derailed by the internal rivalries that beset Latin Christendom. This same hostile political environment had caused monarchs to delay or abandon their plans to campaign in the Levant because of anxiety caused by the potential consequences of a prolonged absence. But although Louis IX was conscious of his commitments to the realm of France, he evidently considered these to be outweighed by the absolute necessity to lead a crusade. Thus, before setting out for the East, the king conferred the regency of his Capetian domain upon his experienced mother Blanche. Likewise, he did his best to settle the political affairs of Europe: attempting to broker a settlement between the papacy and Frederick II; encouraging peace with England. But even when these steps enjoyed negligible success (as in the Hohenstaufen conflict with Rome) and the threats to France’s safety and Louis’ own position as king remained, he refused to postpone his departure or commute his pledge.
Alongside his efforts to bring harmony–and, as he saw it, Christian fellowship–to the West, in a more personal sense the Capetian king set about making peace with his people and with his soul. Louis clearly believed that his crusade would not prevail simply through the works of man, but that it had to be conducted in a spirit of contrite devotion and with a purified heart. He took the innovative step of instituting a series of enquiries, conducted in the main by Mendicant Friars, to settle any outstanding legal disputes within his realm, and to root out any corruption and injustice caused by himself, his officials or even his ancestors. As far back as the First Crusade, some of those taking the cross had sought to put their affairs in order and to resolve disputes before departure, but never on this scale.
Louis’ crusade began in Paris on 12 June 1248 with an emotive, ritualised public ceremony designed to echo the piety of his crusading forebears. The king received the symbols of the crusading pilgrim–the scrip and staff–at Notre-Dame Cathedral and then walke
d barefoot to the royal Church of St Denis to take up the Oriflame, France’s historic battle standard. From there he made his way south to the coast, departing with his army from Aigues-Mortes and Marseilles in late August.
Best estimates suggest that Louis led a total force of between 20,000 and 25,000 men. This included around 2,800 knights, 5,600 mounted sergeants and a further 10,000 infantry. In addition, some 5,000 crossbowmen fought in the crusade and significant advances in the accuracy and power of the bows they wielded enabled these troops to play an important role in the campaign. This was certainly not a vast host, but the king seems to have made a conscious decision to go to war with a select fighting force rather than a sprawling horde–he even left behind many thousands of other troops and non-combatants who, hoping to join the expedition, had gathered at Aigues-Mortes of their own accord.
Following the now established practice, the crusade made its journey to the Near East by sea. Louis travelled aboard a grand royal vessel, dubbed Montjoie, or ‘Hill of Joy’, the name given to the spot from which pilgrims to Jerusalem gained their first sight of the Holy City. But for most Franks the voyage to the eastern Mediterranean was a frightening and desperately uncomfortable affair. Normal transport craft offered perhaps 1,500 square feet of deck space (roughly equivalent to half the size of a modern tennis court) but had to carry around 500 passengers, and sometimes many more. Not surprisingly, one crusader likened sea travel to being locked in a prison. Lower decks were often used to ferry horses, although Louis also commissioned specially designed transports for this most precious cargo of animals, essential to the Latins’ preferred style of mounted warfare.
John of Joinville described the experience of departing from Marseilles in late August 1248. Having boarded his ship, he watched as horses were led below decks through a door in the hull. This portal was then carefully sealed with caulking ‘as is done with a barrel before plunging it into water, because once the ship is on the high seas, that door is completely submerged’. Urged on by the vessel’s captain, all the crew and passengers sang a hymn popular with crusaders, ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’ (Come, Creator Spirit), as the sails were unfurled and the journey began. But even with his morale lifted, Joinville admitted to feelings of intense trepidation over sea travel, observing that no one ‘can tell when he goes to sleep at night, whether or not he may be lying at the bottom of the sea the next morning’. On this occasion, his fears proved unfounded, and the seneschal reached Cyprus about three weeks later, where King Louis had already arrived on 17 September.32
STORMING THE NILE
Upon reaching Cyprus, Louis IX made no precipitous move to initiate a military campaign; instead, he dedicated the following winter and spring to marshalling his forces and finalising strategy. The expedition was joined by troop contingents from Latin Palestine–including many leading Frankish nobles and substantial forces drawn from each of the three main Military Orders–and by the venerable patriarch of Jerusalem, Robert of Nantes (said to have been in his late seventies), who, together with the papal legate Odo of Châteauroux, oversaw the spiritual care of the army. Regardless of these arrivals, Louis’ claim to supreme command of the crusade appears to have been undisputed.
A firm decision was made at this stage (if not earlier) to prosecute an Egyptian campaign, because of the continued vulnerability of Sultan al-Salih’s Ayyubid regime. Louis’ objective seems to have been the conquest of all Egypt. Rather than dabble in negotiation, either in advance of an assault or once initial territorial gains were made, he intended to crush the centre of Ayyubid power and then use the Nile region as a new base from which to recapture the rest of the Holy Land. This was an ambitious but not entirely unrealistic plan. After some debate weighing the relative merits of attacking Alexandria or Damietta, the latter eventually was chosen and Louis’ crusade was set on course to follow in the footsteps of the Fifth Crusade.
The expedition emerged from months of nervous anticipation on Cyprus with an acknowledged leader and an agreed goal–two promising indicators. But the delay also had its costs. Intelligence of Louis’ arrival allowed al-Salih to prepare his defences in Egypt. Illness (perhaps in the form of malaria) also cost the lives of some 260 Latin barons and knights–around one-tenth of the total force–even before the campaign properly began. For others, the prolonged period of inactivity sapped financial resources: like a number of his compatriots, Joinville almost ran out of money to pay his knights and was taken into service with King Louis.
By late spring, however, the preparations were complete. On 13 May 1249 a mighty fleet of around 120 large galleys and perhaps another 1,000 smaller vessels set sail from Cyprus. Joinville wrote that ‘it seemed as if all the sea, as far as the eye could behold, was covered with the canvas of the ships’ sails’. Storms and difficult winds dispersed some of the naval convoy, and it took twenty-three days to reach the Egyptian coast. Towards the end of the journey, the crusaders came across a group of four Muslim galleys. Three were promptly sunk by fire arrows and catapult stones shot from the Franks’ deck-mounted engines, but one vessel escaped, albeit badly damaged, and seems to have issued a warning to the Muslims stationed on the North African coast.33
In early June, the Latins anchored offshore from Damietta. The Fifth Crusade had managed to land on the beaches north of the city and west of the Nile unheralded–Louis’ men were not to enjoy the same luxury. Ranged along the seafront were thousands of Ayyubid troops under the command of Fakhr al-Din, the emir who had negotiated with Frederick II in the 1220s and had now risen to become one of al-Salih’s leading generals. The mouth of the Nile also was guarded by a Muslim flotilla. Confronted by this entrenched opposition, Louis convened a war council on Montjoie and a decision was made to launch a massed landing the following morning. The king and his advisers must have known that they were about to take a huge gamble–attempting the most audacious amphibious assault in crusading history. Any lack of coordination among vessels arriving on the beach might leave isolated Frankish warriors to be annihilated. And if the brute force of the initial assault faltered and no foothold on the coast was gained, then the entire expedition might collapse with its first offensive.
The beach assault
As the sun rose on Saturday 5 June 1249, thousands of Latins huddled in their ships reciting prayers. All had been instructed to make confessions during the night. On Montjoie, Louis attended mass, as he did each morning. Then, across the fleet, the difficult work began of switching from large transport ships to shallower-draughted landing craft. John of Joinville and his men jumped into a longboat, which became so overloaded that it almost sank. Later he watched as one unfortunate knight mistimed his leap to a boat just as ‘it drew away, so that he fell into the sea and drowned’.
Joinville described the scene on the delta coast with vivid clarity: ‘The full array of the sultan’s forces [were] drawn up along the shore. It was a sight to enchant the eye, for the sultan’s [standards] were all of gold, and where the sun caught them they shone resplendent. The din this army made with its kettledrums and Saracen horns was terrifying to hear.’ All around him, hundreds of craft were bearing down upon the beach, many of them brightly painted with coats of arms, streaming with pennons, their oarsmen straining to drive forward.
John of Joinville’s longboat was among the first to reach land, pulling up directly in front of a pack of Muslim horsemen, who immediately charged forward. He described how, leaping into the shallow water, ‘we stuck the sharp end of our shields into the sand and fixed our lances firmly in the ground with the points towards the enemy’. This bristling metal ring of protection saved Joinville and his men, for ‘the moment [the charging enemy] saw the lances about to pierce their bellies, they wheeled around and fled’. Having survived their first encounter, John’s party held their ground even as thousands more Latins reached the shoreline.34
Up and down the coast fierce fighting broke out, as the Muslims launched withering volleys of arrows and spears on to the landing craft. It soo
n became clear that not every Frankish boat was shallow enough to reach the sands. At this terrible moment there was a very real possibility that the attack might stall, but urgent orders went out to disembark and wade ashore. Some jumped too soon ‘in their fervent eagerness’ and drowned; others found themselves up to their waists or even armpits, but immediately began striding forward. Many knights struggled to disembark their horses so that they could fight astride a mount, while Christian crossbowmen sought to provide cover, unleashing a scouring rain of missiles that according to one crusader came ‘so thick and so fast that it was a wonder to see’. Ferocious skirmishes broke out all along the shore, but the heavily armoured Frankish knights soon formed well-ordered units, and, once these beachheads were established on land, the Muslims’ attacks became increasingly ineffective.
As the assault turned in the Latins’ favour, Louis IX was watching from his own landing craft, beside Odo of Châteauroux. The plan was for the king to stay on board in safety, but when the Capetian sovereign saw his royal standard, the Oriflame, planted in the sands of Egypt, his patience broke. Against the papal legate’s heated objections, Louis leapt overboard into chest-high water and forged his way forward, ‘with his shield hung from his neck, his helmet on his head, and lance in hand, till he joined his people on the shore’. There, with his blood up, the king had to be held back from charging into combat.
Pockets of fighting continued until midday, but the Ayyubid defence was badly orchestrated and lacked determination. Fakhr al-Din eventually retreated inland towards Damietta. The Muslims were said to have lost 500 men, including three emirs and many horses, while the Franks suffered only limited losses. The entire landing had been a startling success. Many crusaders clearly felt that they had been lifted to victory by God’s grace, one writing in a letter that the Latins fought ‘like strong athletes of the Lord’.35
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