by Robert Payne
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. . . .
Victory and Defeat
at Damietta
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.
They left Damietta on November 20, and another month passed before they reached the main defensive positions of Mansourah. There were the usual skirmishes on the way. The king gave orders that skirmishes were to be avoided wherever possible, but when five hundred Egyptian cavalry fell on the Templar vanguard, the Templars in their fury decided to teach them a lesson. Their horses were fresh; the Egyptian horses were already weary; and in the general charge no Egyptians survived, for they were either cut down or they fell into the river and were drowned.
In such forays, involving small numbers, the Templars always gave a good account of themselves. They were assault troops, trained for sudden raids, improvisations, hit-and-run attacks. Their chief fault was that they defied the rules, while the chief fault of the king was that he obeyed the rules even when they were absurd.
On February 8, 1250, in a grey misty dawn, the Templar vanguard, with Robert, Count of Artois, in command, was to cross a ford, thereby outflanking the Egyptian position before Mansourah. The ford had been conveniently pointed out by a renegade Muslim, who was rewarded with fifty bezants for his pains. For once there would be the element of surprise. The knights would make their way over the ford and then wait for the main army under the duke of Burgundy to come up. They were to hold the bank, while the bowmen came running over a pontoon bridge. Until the whole army had crossed over, there must be no movement, no sallies, no attempt to engage the enemy. The king wanted to be sure that the attack against the enemy would be a massive one, carefully choreographed.
The army was now very close to the walls of Mansourah. Robert rode across the ford with the Templars, saw the Egyptian cavalry in front of him, heard the horns and trumpets of the enemy, and with his retinue hurled himself against them. The Templars tried to stop him but, being unsuccessful, they decided to join him in order to protect his life. There was a wild skirmish.
Fakhr ad-Din was in his bath, having his hair dyed with fiery red henna. Hearing the dreadful noise, he jumped out of the bath, threw a robe over himself, leaped on a horse, and charged into battle, soon to be cut to pieces by knights in armor. But the Egyptians had prepared a trap by leaving one of Mansourah’s gates open. The open gate was altogether too inviting. The Templars and the count of Artois charged through it. It was a stupid and dangerous move. They soon lost themselves in the narrow streets, huge beams were thrown down on them, and they were unhorsed. Trying to fight their way out of the city, they were reduced to hand-to-hand combat with swords, maces, and knives, and were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Three hundred knights and nearly three hundred Templars were killed in the maze of Mansourah’s narrow streets.
The king could be seen fighting between Mansourah and the river, wearing a golden helmet and wielding a sword of German steel, and at one point he was surrounded by six horsemen and escaped by hacking at them with his sword. The French bowmen, for some inexplicable reason, had not yet crossed the river, while the Egyptian bowmen were busily killing off the French horses. The rest of the day passed in heavy skirmishing, until late in the afternoon, when the full force of the Christian bowmen came up and most of the Muslim cavalry retreated behind the walls of Mansourah. The king slept that night in the camp of Fakhr ad-Din, who had died in the battle. This was a victory of sorts, but small skirmishes continued through the night. That evening the king heard about the death of his favorite brother. With the knowledge that Robert of Artois had disobeyed him by his reckless ride into the city, and met a miserable death, all he could say was that God had been exceedingly good to him.
God, however, seemed to have forgotten the Christian army and failed to provide King Louis with military intelligence. A new leader had arisen to take the place of Fakhr ad-Din. This was Baibars al-Bundukdari, now a young Mameluke emir, who had been the officer in charge of the combined Egyptian and Khwarismian forces which had utterly destroyed the Christians at the battle of La Forbie. The defense of Mansourah was now in his hands, and he was more relentless and more pitiless than any Muslim commander had ever been. For the first time since Saladin, the Crusaders were confronted with a military commander of genius.
The king and his army remained outside the
walls of Mansourah for eight weeks, hoping that another miracle would happen. It did not. Baibars was conserving his strength, hoping the French would perish of their own perversity. Sultan Turanshah, having at last arrived in Egypt from an extended holiday in Damascus, was nominally in command, but Baibars was already commander in chief of the army, and it seems to have been Baibars who organized the fleet of light ships which suddenly appeared in the waterways between Damietta and Mansourah, thus cutting off the Crusaders’ supply ships. Baibars’s ships were carried on camelback in sections, and were sufficiently well equipped when put together to form another army behind the Christian army.
The king should have fought his way back to Damietta as soon as the first ship appeared. He lost more than eighty ships, and on March 16 a convoy of thirty-two ships was intercepted. Now, the king’s army could neither move backward nor could it move forward. Adding to this in solvable problem, there came famine, and then pestilence. Scurvy, typhoid, dysentery were rampant. The plagues of Egypt had returned.
