Holy Warriors Read online

  The refined colours of its paintings, the precious gilding of its images, the pure transparency of its windows which shimmer from all sides, the mystical power of its altars, the marvellous adornment of its shrines studded with precious stones, give to this house of prayer such a degree of beauty that on entering one would think oneself transported to heaven and one might, with reason, imagine oneself taken into one of the most beautiful rooms of paradise.10

  We have a superb insight into Louis’s personality through the account of John of Joinville, who, as he never tires from telling his reader, was a reasonably close companion of the king. He was also a man saturated in the chivalric and literary ideals of the age and his lively, gossipy style and acute observations constitute probably the most readable crusader narrative of all.11 His writing was a product of the highly literate courtly culture of the county of Champagne, and there are moments when it takes very little effort to imagine an aging Joinville (he lived to be ninety-two) sitting in front of a roaring fire, surrounded by young knights and squires, telling them (again and again) of his heroic deeds on the Nile. In Joinville we can see a vivid blend of the pilgrim and the holy warrior along with the status-conscious, honor-bound, secular knight.

  Joinville offered his own version of the heartbreaking moment shared by all crusaders when, aged twenty-one, he had to set out for the Holy Land. In the period prior to his departure he had called together his household and, on a smaller scale than Louis’s enquête, resolved any outstanding disputes. He went to Metz and mortgaged the greater part of his lands, perhaps to one of the Jewish moneylenders in the city. Then, before the hardships of the voyage began, he organized several days of feasting. Finally came the day to leave; Joinville neatly captured the gnawing emotions of departure: “I did not want to cast my eyes backwards towards Joinville at all, fearful that my heart would melt for the fine castle and the two children I was leaving behind.”12 The startling omission of his wife may (just about) be explained by the fact that by the time he wrote this section of the work in the 1270s there was a second Madame Joinville (the first had died in 1260) and the author may have felt it inappropriate to include too emotional a tribute to the previous incumbent. On his way out of Champagne he also made a short pilgrimage—on foot, in his shirt and with legs bare—to local family shrines where he prayed for divine aid and was given relics and precious objects to help him on his journey. For Joinville at least, a pilgrim’s devotion, so important to the First Crusaders over 150 years previously, formed a significant aspect of his own motivation as a crusader.

  Louis’s army numbered 2,500 knights, 5,000 squires and sergeants, 5,000 crossbowmen, 10,000 foot soldiers, and 7,000 to 8,000 horses. Special vessels were constructed to transport the horses and Joinville was impressed when his animals were led through a door on the side of the boat and down into the hold; the entrance was then carefully sealed because when the ship was fully loaded and underway it would be below the waterline.13

  EARLY SUCCESS: THE CAPTURE OF DAMIETTA

  The king reached Cyprus in September 1248 although he needed to wait for the myriad of other French contingents to arrive. The stay over the winter was not a happy one; 250 knights died of illness; thus one-tenth of the prime fighting force was eliminated before it had seen action. Egypt was, again, to be the target for the crusade. The familiar strategic arguments remained valid—as Ibn Wasil, a contemporary Muslim writer, commented, Louis “was a devoted adherent to the Christian faith and so his spirit told him that he should recover Jerusalem for the Franks . . . but he knew that he would achieve this only by conquering Egypt.”14 A document said to be the last testament of Sultan Ayyub confirmed this point even more plainly: “Know, my son, that Egypt is the seat of the empire and from it you can defy all other monarchs: if you hold it, you hold the entire East and they will mint coins and recite the khutba in your name.”15

  The Seventh Crusade already had one stroke of good fortune: Sultan Ayyub was suffering from a debilitating illness and the political situation in Cairo became increasingly tense as people positioned themselves for the succession. Among the most important of the factions to emerge were the Bahri Mamluks, a group created by Ayyub to be his fighting elite. The Muslim rulers had long purchased slaves from central Asia or the Crimea for their armies, and Ayyub decided to separate the most promising of them and sent them to the island of al-Rawda in the Nile (Bahr al-Nil may explain their name Bahri) where they converted to Islam, lived in barracks, and trained exceptionally hard. Conversion aside, in these other respects they bore some similarities to the Christian Military Orders. After completing their training they were emancipated and came to form the sultan’s military household.

  Bad weather and the need to fabricate special landing craft meant the French ships could not set sail from Cyprus until May 1249. Just like the Fifth Crusade they headed for the northern Egyptian port of Damietta. A terrible storm scattered the boats and it took a while to regroup; it was only on June 5 that Louis prepared to land. As the vessels grounded, a detachment of Muslims charged the Christians but a volley of crossbow fire forced them back. The crusaders poured onto the beach, headed by the standard of Saint Denis, the patron saint of France. The king saw the flag ahead of him and leaped into the water up to his armpits, determined to follow the emblem of his sovereignty; truly this was a French, royal crusade. The invaders pursued the fleeing Muslims and their commander, Fakhr al-Din (whom we met as an ambassador to Frederick II), simply fled. Ayyub was furious because some Muslim writers judged the city to have been so well provisioned that it could have held out for two years if properly defended. Thus the crusaders walked into Damietta—something they could scarcely believe was possible given that their predecessors on the Fifth Crusade (who included men such as Joinville’s father) had spent eighteen months outside it. The Muslim world was appalled: “It was a disaster without precedent . . . there was great grief and amazement, and despair fell on the whole of Egypt, the more so because the sultan was ill, too weak to move, and without the strength to control his army, which was trying to impose its will on him instead.”16

  In one sense this unexpected turn of events completely baffled the crusaders; nowhere in their plans had they catered for the prospect of an immediate victory—what should they do next? A council of the French nobles gathered; the options were either Alexandria or Cairo. The former was the preeminent commercial port of the Mediterranean and could act as an assembly point for crusader forces before they headed up the Nile. The alternative was to go straight to Cairo (or Babylon as it was often known) via Mansourah, just as the Fifth Crusaders had tried. The arguments swung to and fro with most favoring Alexandria; finally, however, one of Louis’s brothers, Count Robert of Artois, pressed the case for Cairo: “to kill the serpent, first you must crush the head.”17 This pithy strategic metaphor won the day and the assembly resolved to head southward. First, however, they decided to wait for the arrival of another royal brother, Alphonse of Poitiers. More seriously, they were worried by the annual Nile flood because it was only a month before the river would begin to rise. It is possible that had the crusaders simply pressed on after taking Damietta they could have gotten ahead of the flood, crossed the sections of the Nile that caused them such problems later on, and exploited Ayyub’s frailty to devastating effect, yet—fatally—they were much more cautious.

  An intriguing document survives to illuminate the French stay in Damietta: the foundation charter of the Church of the Blessed Mary, formerly the main mosque.18 This was an official French government charter, produced by Louis’s chancery and confirmed by the royal seal. It began with effusive thanks to God for his divine blessing in giving the crusaders victory at Damietta and it stated that the city was now “utterly purged of the pagans’ filth.” It delineated the landholdings of the church and exempted the clergy from tax. Numerous other rights relating to mills, ovens, fisheries, salt springs, the bazaar, and the harbor were outlined too, all granted “in perpetuity;” furthermore, “when thi
s land is liberated from the hand of the unbelievers” the archbishop was to receive the fiefs of ten knights who would do homage to him and serve appropriately on his behalf. What all this really meant was that Louis regarded Damietta as a permanent acquisition by the Capetian monarchy. Unlike the Fifth Crusade when Damietta was taken under the control of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the presence of a dominant western ruler gave the Christian conquest a different feel—that of the beginnings of a new empire.

  Another writer, known as Rothelin, indicated that Louis handed out property and revenues to the three great Military Orders, to the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and to the nobles of the Latin East. Rothelin, a contemporary source, stated that the churches were endowed with “chalices, censers, candelabras, seals, crosses, crucifixes, books, chasubles, albs, stoles, banners, altar cloths, silk hangings, images of Our Lady, choir surplices, tunics, dalmatics, reliquaries in gold, silver and crystal”;19 priests, chaplains, and clerks were installed too. The completeness of this list is astonishing—all of these objects must have been brought over from France in clear anticipation of conquest and settlement. To travel with such a certainty of success offers a fascinating insight into the mentality of Louis and his army as they set out on the crusade.

  Meanwhile, Ayyub’s illness continued its debilitating course. Fearful of the effect an announcement of his death might have on an already demoralized populace, those closest to the sultan conspired to hide his decline. Under the orders of his wife, Shajar al-Durr, and the emir, Fakhr al-Din, doctors enacted a freakish daily charade whereby they continued to enter his tent, take in food, and issue pronouncements in his name. Given Ayyub’s anger at Fakhr al-Din after the fiasco at Damietta, some officials doubted that the sultan would have given him any authority at all, but it seems that—as intended—the majority of people remained ignorant of the true condition of their ruler. Ayyub died on November 22, 1249, and his entourage needed to get a message to his surviving son, Turanshah, who was based far away in Mesopotamia, to come south because by now the Frankish advance was poised to begin. Ayyub’s coffin was spirited away until it could be properly housed in Cairo where, tucked away next to his madrasa, it still remains. The shadow leadership dispatched letters to be read from the pulpit of the Great Mosque in Cairo that urged everyone to fulfill their duty, to come and join the jihad, and to drive out the Franks.

  THE BATTLE OF MANSOURAH: THE FOLLY OF ROBERT OF ARTOIS

  By late November, once the Nile floods had subsided, the crusaders set out; they progressed in good formation with the fleet sailing close by the troops to provide supplies. The march to Cairo was said to take only a few days but Louis’s progress was agonizingly slow. Fierce headwinds meant the crusader fleet could barely make any ground at all; in addition, the crusaders had to cross countless small canals and to resist harassment from the Egyptians. By mid-December the Christians faced their first major obstacle when they had to traverse the Bahr as-Saghir, a branch of the Nile near the town of Mansourah, only about one-third of the way to their target. The Egyptian troops, led by Fakhr al-Din, barred their path as well; finding a place to ford an entire army proved extremely troublesome for the crusaders. The Muslims bombarded the Christian camp with Greek fire, a terrifying experience as Joinville described: “These were the characteristics of Greek fire: the part that came foremost had the bulk of a vinegar barrel, while the flaming tail that shot from it extended as far as a long lance. It made such a noise as it came that it was as if the heavens thundered; it seemed as if a dragon was flying through the air. The great mass of the fire cast such a great light that one could see as clearly across the camp as if it were day.”20 Louis’s reaction to this fearsome episode reveals much about his religiosity; Joinville again provides the evidence: “Each time our saintly king heard that they had launched Greek fire at us, he sat up in his bed, reached out his hands to Our Lord and said as he wept, ‘Sweet Lord God, protect my people for me!’ And I truly believe his prayers served us well in our time of need.”21

  In early 1250 the crusaders tried to build a series of pontoon bridges, yet, in an almost farcical response, as quickly as the Christians’ jetty extended into the river the Muslims dug away the opposite bank! The offer of a healthy reward eventually prompted a local peasant to indicate a suitable ford. As dawn broke on the morning of February 8, 1250, Robert of Artois and the master of the Templars led the vanguard over a narrow, treacherous causeway. A few men slipped off the side and drowned, but most made it across. Muslim resistance was minimal and the crusaders charged on toward the main camp. Their opponents were caught unawares—Fakhr al-Din was slaughtered in his bath—and many Muslims, including numerous women and children, were killed. Caught up in the adrenaline rush of victory, Robert of Artois made a cataclysmic misjudgment. In direct contradiction of Louis’s orders, he did not stop and wait for the main army to cross the Nile and consolidate the victory; instead, he led the cavalry onward. This was a matter of great offense to the Templars, who should have been at the head of the army, and they asked Robert to let them past. Accounts differ as to what happened next; dubiously, Joinville blamed the deaf knight holding Robert’s horse for his failure to hear and pass on the Templars’ request. Thus, the count continued forward and so, fearing dishonor, the Templars followed him into the town of Mansourah. Another report suggested the French crusaders taunted the Templars and accused them of cowardice for appearing hesitant: “If the Templars and Hospitallers and the men who live here [the Levant] had really wanted it, the land would have been conquered long ago.” Another crusader allegedly asked Robert: “Won’t it be wicked and cowardly if we do not pursue our enemies?” Robert ignored further cautionary advice from the Templars, as well as a repeated command from the king; suffused with martial valor and a destructive sense of competitive honor, he urged his men to continue.22

  Recklessly, the crusader knights hurtled inside Mansourah, thus sealing their own fate and perhaps that of the entire expedition. The Muslims began to regroup and, led by the Bahri Mamluks, they realized the gravity of Robert’s mistake; the town gates were closed and the crusaders were, de facto, entombed alive in the town. While the dense warren of streets prevented them from charging at their enemy, the Muslims were able to kill the Christians’ mounts and then pick off the stranded knights. By this stage of the struggle it was around midday and the Christians must have been thirsty and exhausted after hours of fighting. Sources tell of men pinned in houses, running up stairways and barricading themselves in rooms. One can imagine blows raining down on a door, the shouts and cries of attackers sensing victory—and revenge; the murmured prayers of crusaders expecting martyrdom, yet still fighting desperately in the vain hope that a relief force might arrive. Yet as time passed they must have realized that there was no prospect of escape and their fate was to be ripped apart by a hail of knife blows. Robert himself perished, along with 1,500 of the finest crusader knights, including 280 Templars, the men with most experience of war in the East. For the Bahri, this was a famous victory and one from which they made considerable political capital in later years.

  Louis and part of the main army had also crossed the Nile and as the day wore on it became clear that the Muslims had recovered from the loss of their camp. Joinville himself was now in the thick of the fighting. He brilliantly conveys the confusion and noise of a battlefield, as well as the esprit de corps among his companions. He proudly related the bravery of particular individuals—and noted the cowardice of others, although out of courtesy to the dead, he refrained from mentioning names. At one stage Joinville and four of his friends were cornered. Erart of Sivry took a terrible blow to the face that left his nose hanging over his lips, while Frederic of Louppy “had a lance thrust between his shoulders which made a wound so large that the blood came from his body as if from the bung-hole of a barrel.”23 In this desperate situation memories of homelands and loved ones came to mind. As the struggle continued, the count of Soissons called out to Joinville, “Let this pack of hounds how
l! By God’s coif [a neck protector]—this was the oath he most often swore—we’ll talk of this day again, you and I, in the ladies’ chamber.”24 Yet the Muslim archers took their toll. Joinville, was relieved to have found a padded tunic, which he used as a shield: “It served me very well, since I was only wounded by their arrows in five places, and my horse in fifteen.”25

  Louis himself was an inspirational leader who shared in the danger with his troops and did much to keep morale up: “I never saw a man so finely armed; he could be seen from the shoulders up, set above the rest of his men, with a gilded helmet on his head and a German sword in his hand,” eulogized Joinville.26 This epic battle ended at nightfall and the two sides paused to regroup. Someone had to tell the king that his brother was dead. An officer of the Hospitallers volunteered that he was certain that Robert was in Paradise and, in any case, he urged the king to be proud of his army’s achievements that day. “God should be praised for all that He has given me,” replied the king; only then, Joinville reports, did great tears begin to fall from his eyes.27 Both armies pitched camp and began to dig in. For the crusaders this was disastrous; they had lost momentum in their march southward and they still needed to get past Mansourah. The Muslims were jubilant after killing Count Robert and so many of the finest Christian knights; as Ibn Wasil wrote, “This was the first battle in which the Turkish lions [the Mamluks] defeated the infidel dogs.”28