A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (21 page)

Map
2. The Nile Delta.

Al-Adil was sick when the news of the fall
of the fort reached him at Damascus a few days later. He had just heard that
his son al-Mu’azzam had taken and destroyed Caesarea; but the shock of the
disaster at Damietta was too much for him. He died on 31 August, aged about
seventy-five. Saphadin, as the Crusaders called him, lacked his brother Saladin’s
remarkable personality; and his dealings with his nephews, Saladin’s sons, had
shown a certain disloyalty and cunning. But he had held together the Ayubite
Empire and had been a capable, tolerant and peace-loving ruler. To the
Christians he had been consistently kindly and honourable, and he earned and
kept their admiration and respect. He was succeeded in Syria by his younger
son, al-Mu’azzam, and in Egypt by the elder, al-Kamil.

The disaster to the Moslems was not so
great as al-Adil had feared. If the Christians had pressed on and at once
attacked Damietta, the town might well have fallen. But after the capture of
the fort, they hesitated and decided to await reinforcements. Many of the
Frisians returned to their homes, to be punished for their desertion of the
cause by death in a great flood that swept over Frisia the day after their
arrival there. It was known by now that the long-planned Papal expedition had
already left Italy. There had been constant delays. But at last Pope Honorius
had been able to equip a fleet, at the cost of twenty thousand silver marks, to
transport the troops that had waited over a year at Brindisi. At their head he
put Cardinal Pelagius of St Lucia.

1218: Arrival of Cardinal Pelagius

About the same time two French nobles,
Herve, Count of Nevers, and Hugh of Lusignan, Count of La Marche, negotiated
with the Genoese for ships to take a company of French and English Crusaders to
the East. Though the Count of Nevers was a notoriously bad son of the Church,
the Pope allowed him to pay for the transport with a tax of a twentieth of
their income taken from the ecclesiastics of France. The two Counts were joined
at Genoa by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, William II, and the Bishops of Paris,
Laon and Angers, and other lesser potentates, and by the Earls of Chester,
Arundel, Derby and Winchester. The Pope sent Robert, Cardinal Courcon, to be
spiritual director of the fleet, but without any legatine powers.

Cardinal Pelagius and his expedition
arrived at the Christian camp in the middle of September. Pelagius was a
Spaniard, a man of great industry and administrative experience, but singularly
lacking in tact. He had been already employed to settle the question of the
Greek Churches in the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and had only succeeded in
making them more passionately hostile to Rome. His coming to Damietta at once
caused trouble. John of Brienne had been accepted as leader of the Crusade. His
leadership had been disputed the previous years by the Kings of Hungary and
Cyprus; but the one had departed and the other was dead. Pelagius considered that
as Legate he alone was in charge. The rivalry of the various participant
nations was all too clearly visible. Only the Pope’s representative could keep
them in order. He brought news that the young Western Emperor, Frederick II,
had promised to follow with an Imperial army. When he came he would certainly
be given supreme military command. But Pelagius was not going to take any order
from King John, who was, after all, king only through his dead wife.

In October al-Malik al-Kamil had
sufficient reinforcements to attempt an attack on the Crusaders’ camp by a
flotilla that he sent down the river. It was driven off, chiefly through King
John’s energy. A few days later the Moslems built a bridge across the Nile a
little above the town. Pelagius organized an unsuccessful raid on the works;
but al-Kamil did not follow up the construction by moving his army across the
river. Instead, he made another attack from the water. It was a fierce
onslaught; but it was too late. The first contingent of French Crusaders had
arrived and led the defence. A second attack reached the edge of the camp
itself, but was driven back into the river, where many of the Moslem troops
were drowned.

After the whole French and English army
arrived, late in October, there was a lull in the fighting. Al-Adil’s death had
delayed the help that al-Kamil expected from Syria. He now awaited an army that
his brother al-Mu’azzam promised him. The Christians had their own
difficulties. They dug a canal from the sea to the river above the Moslem
bridge, but they could not fill it. On the night of 29 November a northerly
gale blew the sea in over the low land on which their camp stood. Every tent
was flooded and the stores were soaked. Several boats were wrecked and others
driven across to the Moslem camp. Horses were drowned. When the flood subsided,
there were fishes lying about everywhere, a delicacy, says the chronicler
Oliver of Paderborn, that everyone would gladly have foregone. To prevent a
recurrence Pelagius ordered a dyke to be quickly constructed. All the wreckage,
even torn sails and horses’ carcasses were used to raise it higher. The only
good result of the flood was that the canal now was filled, and Christian boats
could penetrate up the river.

1219: Occupation of al-Adiliya

Hardly was the camp repaired before a
serious epidemic struck the army. The victims suffered from a high fever, and
their skins turned black. At least a sixth of the soldiers died of it,
including the Cardinal Robert Courcon. The survivors were left enfeebled and
depressed. There followed a winter that was unusually severe. It was well for
the Christians that the Moslems also suffered from illness and the cold.

Early in February 1219, Pelagius
considered that the morale of the army could only be restored by activity. On Saturday,
2 February, he persuaded the army to set out to attack the Moslems. But a
blinding rainstorm forced it back. The following Tuesday news reached the camp
that the Sultan and his army were retreating. The Crusaders hurried across to
al-Adiliya and found the site deserted. After driving back a sortie from the
garrison of Damietta they occupied al-Adiliya, and thus cut the town off
completely.

Al-Kamil’s sudden flight had been caused
by his discovery of a conspiracy in his entourage. One of his emirs, Imad
ad-Din Ahmed Ibn al-Mashtub, was planning to murder him and replace him by his
brother al-Faiz. In his despair, not knowing how many of his staff were
implicated, the Sultan thought of fleeing to Yemen, where his son al-Masud was
governor, when he heard that his brother al-Mu’azzam was at last coming to his
help. He moved with his troops south-eastward to Ashmun, where the two brother
Sultans met on 7 February. Al-Mu’azzam’s presence with a large army cowed the
conspirators. Ibn al-Mashtub was arrested and sent to prison at Kerak, while
the Prince al-Faiz was banished to Sinjar and died mysteriously on the way
there. Al-Kamil had saved his throne, but at the price of losing Damietta.

Even with al-Mu’azzam’s help al-Kamil
could not now dislodge the Christians. The river, the lagoons and the canals
made it impossible for the Moslems to take advantage of their superior numbers.
Attacks on the two camps, on the west bank and at al-Adiliya, failed. The
Sultan then set up his camp at Fariskur, some six miles south of Damietta,
ready to attack the Crusaders in the rear should they try to assault Damietta.
Throughout the spring the stalemate continued. There were fierce battles on
Palm Sunday and again on Whit-Sunday, when the Moslems vainly tried to force
their way into al-Adiliya. In Damietta itself, though food was still plentiful,
the garrison had been greatly reduced by disease; but still the Christians did
not dare to make an assault.

In the meantime the Sultan al-Mu’azzam
decided to dismantle Jerusalem. It might be necessary to offer the Christians
Jerusalem to terminate the war. If so, it would be handed over in a ruined and
untenable condition. The demolition of the walls was begun on 19 March. It
caused panic in the city. The Moslem citizens believed that the Franks were
coming, and many of them fled in terror across the Jordan. The tenantless
houses were then pillaged by the soldiers. Some fanatics wished to destroy the
Holy Sepulchre; but the Sultan would not allow it. After Jerusalem the
fortresses of Galilee, Toron, Safed and Banyas, were all dismantled. At the
same time the two Sultans appealed for help throughout the Moslem world,
addressing their prayers in particular to the Caliph at Baghdad; who promised
to send a vast army, which never came.

The icy winter was followed by a burning
summer; and the morale of the Crusaders fell again. Again Pelagius insisted on
action. After a vigorous Moslem attack on the camp had been driven back on 20
July, with heavy losses on both sides, the Crusaders concentrated on the
bombardment of the town walls. While they were so engaged, vainly, as the Greek
fire used by their defenders did great damage to their engines and could not be
quenched by wine and acid, another Moslem attack very nearly destroyed the
whole Christian army, which was only saved by the sudden fall of darkness. A
second assault on the walls on 6 August was equally ineffectual.

1219: Saint Francis of Assisi

The reverses roused the common soldiers of
the Crusade to action. They blamed their leaders for sloth and bad generalship.
Many of the more distinguished nobles had been killed, including the Counts of
La Marche and Bar-sur-Seine and William of Chartres, Grand Master of the
Templars. Others had returned to Europe. Leopold of Austria left the army in
May. He had been the most energetic of the princes; but he had served for two
years in the East, and no one could reproach him for returning to his own
country. His gallantry had erased the ill-repute that his father had won by his
quarrels with Coeur-de-Lion on the Third Crusade. He took home with him a
fragment of the True Cross. But the convoy that took him to Europe carried
others whose departure seemed a desertion of the cause. Towards the end of
August, while King John and Pelagius wrangled over strategy, the one advocating
a tightening of the siege, the other an attack on the Sultan’s camp, the
soldiers took matters into their own hands and on the 29th poured out in a
disorderly mass against the Moslem lines. The Moslems feigned retreat, then
counter-attacked. Pelagius had tried to assume command; but despite his
exhortations the Italian regiments turned round and fled, and soon there was
general panic. It was only the skill of King John and the French and English
nobles and the Military Orders that rescued the survivors and held the camp.

The battle had been watched with a sad
dismay by a distinguished visitor to the camp, Brother Francis of Assisi. He
had come to the East believing, as many other good and unwise persons before
and after him have believed, that a peace-mission can bring about peace. He-now
asked permission of Pelagius to go to see the Sultan. After some hesitation
Pelagius agreed, and sent him under a flag of truce to Fariskur. The Moslem
guards were suspicious at first but soon decided that anyone so simple, so
gentle and so dirty must be mad, and treated him with the respect due to a man
who had been touched by God. He was taken to the Sultan al-Kamil who was
charmed by him and listened patiently to his appeal, but who was too kind and
too highly civilised to allow him to give witness to his faith in an ordeal by
fire; nor would he risk the acrimony that a public discussion on religion would
now arouse. Francis was offered many gifts, which he refused, and was sent back
with an honourable escort to the Christians.

The Saint’s intervention was not in fact
needed, for al-Kamil himself inclined towards peace. The Nile had risen very
little that summer, and Egypt was threatened with famine. The government needed
all its resources to rush in food from neighbouring lands. Al-Mu’azzam was
anxious to return with his army to Syria; and neither Sultan was happy about
the activities of their brother al-Ashraf further north. At Baghdad the Caliph
Nasr was in the power of the Khwarismian Shah, Jelal ad-Din, whose father
Mohammed had destroyed the Seldjuk dominion in Iran and founded an empire
stretching from the Indus to the Tigris. Jelal ad-Din could be used against
al-Ashraf, but in view of his known ambitions it would be dangerous to
encourage him too far. Al-Mu’azzam was ready therefore to support al-Kamil in
any friendly overture to the Franks. Some time in September a Frankish prisoner
came from the Sultan offering a short truce and suggesting that the Moslems
would be prepared to cede Jerusalem. The truce was accepted; but the Christians
refused to discuss further peace terms.

1219: Al-Kamil offers Peace-terms

The truce was spent by both sides in repairing
their defences. Many of the Crusaders found it also a suitable opportunity for
returning home. Some had already left at the beginning of the month, and on 14
September twelve more shiploads sailed away. The loss was recovered a week
later when the French lord Sauvary of Mauleon arrived with a company
transported in ten Genoese galleys. When al-Kamil broke the truce and attacked
the Franks on the 26th, the newcomers successfully led the defence.

Al-Kamil still hoped for peace. He knew
that Damietta could not be held. The garrison was too much thinned by disease
to man the walls, and his attempts to throw in reinforcements had failed. Nor
were the traitors in the Christian camp whose services he had bought successful
in any of their projects. At the end of October he sent two captive knights to
give the Franks his definite terms. If they would evacuate Egypt, he would
return them the True Cross, and they could have Jerusalem, all central
Palestine and Galilee. The Moslems would only retain the castles of
Oultrejourdain, but would pay a tribute for them.

It was a startling offer. With no more
fighting the Holy City, with Bethlehem, Nazareth and the True Cross, could be
restored to Christendom. King John advised its acceptance, and his own barons
and the barons from England, France and Germany supported him. But Pelagius
would have none of it, nor would the Patriarch of Jerusalem. They thought it
wrong to come to terms with the infidel. The Military Orders agreed with them
for strategic reasons. Jerusalem and the Galilean castles had been dismantled;
and it would anyhow be impossible to hold Jerusalem without the command of
Oultrejourdain. The Italians were equally opposed to the terms. However little
the Italian maritime cities had liked the breach with Egypt, now that it had
come they wished to secure Damietta as a trading centre. The annexation of
inland territory was of no interest to them. The dispute between the two
parties grew so bitter that Bishop James of Acre believed the Sultan to have
made his offer merely to cause dissension. At Pelagius’s insistence it was
refused.

A few days later a scouting party sent by
Pelagius reported that the outer wall of Damietta was unmanned. Next day,
Tuesday, 5 November 1219, the Crusaders advanced in force and swept over it and
over the inner wall, hardly opposed. Within the town they found almost the
whole garrison sick. Only three thousand citizens were living, many of them too
feeble even to bury the dead. Food and treasure were there in plenty, but
disease had done the Christians’ work for them. As soon as the town was fully
taken over, three hundred of the leading citizens were set aside as hostages;
the young children were handed to the clergy to be baptized and used for the
service of the Church, and the remainder were sold as slaves. The treasure was
to be divided amongst the Crusaders, according to each man’s rank; but not all
the Legate’s anathemas could prevent thieving and concealment of precious
objects by the troops.