Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/110

84 sequence that the enemy must have been worsted in the assault, many of the fugitive Christians, who had accompanied the military Orders in their retreat, determined, in spite of the most earnest warnings, once more to return to their homes. There they found themselves entrapped by the ruthless foe, and doomed to share the miserable fate of their comrades.

Meanwhile, the Templars having discovered that a detachment of Egyptians was acting in concert with the Korasmins, called upon their ally, the sultan of Damascus, to aid them in repelling his old antagonist. In reply to this appeal, the sultan despatched a body of 4,000 Darnascene horsemen to join the Christian force. With this reinforcement the Orders stood their ground in the vicinity of Gaza with the intention of watching what further course the victorious Korasmins would take. These latter did not leave them long in suspense. Satiated with slaughter, and weary of inactivity after a few days spent in the wildest revels and the vilest debauchery within the now desolate city, they advanced in a tumultuous horde, flushed with victory and eager for the fray, determined to overwhelm the handful of Latins by whom they were opposed.

In this conjuncture the councils of the Christians were much divided: the chiefs of the military Orders advised a prompt retreat, feeling that the enormous disproportion of their numbers rendered the chances of a battle so unequal as to be desperately hazardous. As, however, on the occasion of the expedition into Egypt, the presumption of one churchman, the legate Pelagius, had caused the miscarriage of the undertaking, so now, by the precipitation of another, was a still worse disaster brought about. The rash advice of the patriarch of Jerusalem overcame the prudent scruples of the other leaders, and it was, in deference to his views, decided that they should stand their ground and await the issue of a general engagement. It is one of the curious phenomena of those times that ecclesiastics were always to be found mixing themselves up with the most secular matters, and those especially with which they might be supposed to have hardly any concern, nay, still further, often, as in the instances here quoted, vehemently obtruding their opinions in questions of a purely military character, and in