Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/382

 360 THE DECLINE AND FALL He takes Damietta. A.D. 1249 [May] [A.D. 1250, March] His captivity in Egypt. A.D. 1250, April 5— May 6 hundred and thirty thousand foot^ who pei'formed their pil- grimage under the shadow of his power.^"^ In complete armour, the oriflamme waving before him, Louis leaped foremost on the beach ; and the strong city of Damietta, which had cost his predecessors a siege of sixteen months, was abandoned on the first assault by the trembling Moslems. But Damietta was the fii'st and last of his conquests ; and in the fifth and sixth crusades the same causes, almost on the same ground, were productive of similar calamities.^*^'^ After a ruinous delay, which introduced into the camp the seeds of an epidemical disease, the Franks advanced from the sea-coast towards the capital of Egypt, and strove to surmount the unseasonable in- undation of the Nile, which opposed their progress. Under the eye of their intrepid monarch, the barons and knights of France displayed their invincible contempt of danger and discipline : his brother, the count of Artois, stormed with inconsiderate valour the town of Massoura ; and the carrier-pigeons announced to the inhabitants of Cairo, that all was lost. But a soldier, who afterwards usurped the sceptre, rallied the flying troops ; the main bod)^ of the Christians was far behind their vanguard ; and Artois was overpowered and slain. A shower of Greek fire was incessantly poured on the invaders ; the Nile was commanded by the Egyptian galleys, the open country by the Arabs ; all provisions were intercepted ; eacli day aggravated the sickness and famine ; and about the same time a retreat was found to be necessary and impracticable. The Oriental writers confess that Louis might have escaped, if he would have deserted his sub- jects : he was made prisoner, with the greatest part of his nobles ; all who could not redeem their lives by service or ransom were inhumanly massacred ; and the walls of Cairo were decorated Avith a circle of Christian heads.^"'-' The king of France was loaded v/ith chains ; but the generous victor, agreat- '0'' Joinville, p. 32 ; Arabic Extracts, p. 549. 108 The last editors have enriched their Joinville with large and curious extracts from the Arabic historians, Macrizi, Abulfeda, &c. See likewise Abulpharagius (Dynast, p. 322-325), who calls him by the corrupt name of Redefraiis. Matthew Paris [x>. 683, 684) has described the rival folly of the French and English who fought and fell at Massoura. [Makrizi's important work is now accessible in Quatremere's French translation. See Appendix i. The crusade has been recently narrated by Mr. E. J. Davis in a work entitled Invasion of Egypt in A.n. 1249 by Louis IX. of France and a History of the Contemporary Sultans of Egypt (1897).] lo^Savary, in his agreeable Lettres sur I'Egypt, has given a description of Damietta (torn. i. lettre xxiii. p. 274-290) and a narrative of the expedition of .St. Louis (xxv. p. 306). [In his Art of War, ii. p. 338-50, Mr. Oman gives a full account of the Ijattle of Mansurah. He shows that the battle was lost because the reckless charge of Robert of .Artois led to the separation of the cavalry and infantry ; and it was only by a combination of cavalry and infantry that it was possible to deal with the horse-archers of the East.]