In February 1219, Cardinal Pelagius ordered an attack on al-Adiliya, where the Sultan al-Kamil had his headquarters. The attack was called off because they found themselves riding into a blinding rainstorm. A few days later advance patrols discovered that the sultan had abandoned al-Adiliya, but if anyone thought the sultan had abandoned this stronghold for fear of the Christians he was mistaken; he was in fact fleeing from his own lieutenants who were conspiring against him. The plot was quickly uncovered, the sultan executed the conspirators, and marched his troops to Ashmun-Tannah, where he was met by the army of his brother al-Mu'azzam, King of Damascus. He was now in a much better position to fight the Christians, or so it seemed.
But the capture of al-Adiliya had given heart to the Christians. They were well entrenched, and they were beginning to understand the language of dykes, canals, rivers, and waterways. On Palm Sunday the Muslims attacked al-Adiliya, but to no avail. Every available person was thrown into the battle. The Crusaders fought with extraordinary determination. The women of the camp brought water, wine, and bread to the soldiers, and carried heavy stones to the front lines. The priests served as doctors and
nurses, bandaging wounds and blessing injuries suffered in battle. There was no time for the processions and parades associated with Palm Sunday. “Our crossbows, bows and arrows, lances, swords and shields were our palms,” Oliver wrote proudly.
Yet no one had gained a victory, and Damietta with its triple walls, its innumerable shops, gardens, orchards, factories, and mosques, remained untaken. Nevertheless Damietta, had the Crusaders known it, was ripe for conquest. Famine and pestilence stalked the city. They were suffering from the same plague that still ran through the Christian camp. While the Sultan al-Kamil promised that they would soon be relieved, he was unable to come to their rescue. Prices rose alarmingly. A fig was sold for eleven bezants, a princely sum. Too weak to mount the walls and keep guard, the soldiers of Damietta shut the city gates and allowed no one to go in or out. The Christians could only guess how deeply they were suffering.
Sporadic attempts were made to rush the walls, but without success. At last on the night of November 5, 1219, King John of Brienne directed an assault, and the city was taken “without resistance, without treachery, without violent pillage or turmoil.” The reason why it was so easily taken became clear when they entered it. The streets were strewn with the bodies of people dead of famine or pestilence. Oliver of Paderborn wrote:
As we entered the city, we encountered an intolerable stench and an appalling sight. The dead had killed the living. Husbands and wives, fathers and sons, masters and slaves, had killed each other with the odor of corruption. Not only were the streets full of the dead, but corpses lay in the houses, in the bedrooms and on the beds. When a husband died, then his helpless wife also died and his son died near him, and a handmaiden died near her mistress, having wasted away. “The young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.” Infants clung to their mothers' breasts, embraced by the dead. Rich men raised on dainty food died of hunger amid heaps of wheat, desiring in vain their familiar melons, garlic, onions, fish, poultry, fruit and herbs. In them was fulfilled the words of the prophet: “Instead of a sweet smell there shall be stink.”
Eighty thousand men, women, and children had perished during the siege. Only three thousand remained alive when the Crusaders entered the city, many of them dreadfully ill. Of these, three hundred were taken captive. These were the surviving dignitaries and their families, who might be ransomed off to the sultan, or sold in a slave market, or even baptized.
The mosque of Damietta was converted into a church dedicated to the Virgin. The wealth of the city was distributed among the knights and the
clerics. Cardinal Pelagius contended that the city belonged to the Church, not to the Crusaders. On this subject he was adamant until King John of Brienne threatened to abandon the army and sail back to Acre. Thereupon the cardinal relented, declaring that he would permit the king to be the temporal ruler until the coming of Frederick II, the Hohenstaufen and Holy Roman Emperor, who was believed to be planning a great expedition to the East for a final confrontation with Islam. But Frederick delayed and the confrontation between the Holy Roman emperor and the sultan of Egypt was indefinitely postponed.
In Palestine things were going a little better, although al-Mu'azzam attacked Caesareaâmost of its inhabitants escapedâand he went on to attack the great fortress of Chastel Pèlerin, again without success. The walls of Jerusalem were torn down, evidence that the Saracens believed the Christians might recover it. Acre was in danger, and for a while King John of Brienne abandoned the canals and waterways of Egypt to superintend its fortifications. In November al-Mu'azzam retired to Damascus to watch the events in Egypt from afar.
Soon after the fall of Damietta, the Christians captured Tanis, an important town a few miles to the east. The castle of Tanis was protected by a double moat and seven strong towers, but when the defenders saw the army coming, they panicked. Although there were only a thousand troops, the garrison at Tanis thought they were only the vanguard of the main army. The Egyptians may have shown weakness by fleeing from the castle of Tanis, but they possessed hidden reserves of strength. Peter of Montague, writing after the fall of Damietta and Tanis, was well aware of the dangers of the Egyptian adventure.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM PETER OF MONTAGUE, MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, TO THE BISHOP OF ELY, FROM ACRE, OCTOBER 1220.
BROTHER PETER OF MONTAGU, Master of the Knights of the Temple, to the reverend brother in Christ, N, by the grace of God Bishop of Ely, salvation!
. . . The Sultan of Egypt is encamped at a short distance from Damietta at the head of a vast army, and he has recently built bridges across both branches of the Nile, to impede the progress of the Christian army. He remains there, quietly awaiting our approach; and his soldiers are so numerous that the faithful cannot leave their trenches around Damietta without great danger. Meanwhile we have surrounded the town and the two camps with deep trenches and we have strongly fortified both banks of the river as far as the seacoast, hoping that the Lord will console and comfort us with speedy aid.
The Saracens have perceived our weakness. . . . Be it known to you that Coradin, Sultan of Damascus, has gathered a large army of Saracens and attacked Tyre and Acre. As the garrisons of these places were weakened in order to strengthen our forces in Egypt, they can with difficulty sustain themselves against his attacks. Coradin has also pitched his tents before the fortress called Chastel Pèlerin, and has put us to enormous expense to defend this place. He has besieged and captured the castle of Caesarea.
For a long time now we have been expecting the arrival of the Emperor and all those other noble personages who have assumed the Cross and by whose aid we hope to be relieved from our dangers and difficulties and to bring our exertions to happy fruition. If we are disappointed of the aid we expect next summer (which God forbid), all our newly acquired conquests together with the places we have held for ages past will be left in a very dubious state. We ourselves, and others in these parts, are so impoverished by the heavy expenses we have incurred in prosecuting the affairs of Jesus Christ that we shall be unable to contribute the necessary funds, unless we speedily receive succour and subsidies from the faithful.
Such letters, sent from the master of the Temple in Acre, were dispatched throughout Europe. They were not universally welcomed. Rumor pointed to an increasing misuse of the money sent to the Crusaders. The pope came to know about it, and he set up an inquiry. He wrote to Pelagius, the Papal Legate, and to the patriarch of Jerusalem, and the masters of the Temple, the Hospital, and the Teutonic Knights. He received, as might be expected, a ringing refutation of the calumnies heaped upon the financial agents of the Crusaders. There had been no embezzlement: every penny sent to the Holy Land could be accounted for. To the bishops of France, England, and Sicilyâthe countries where the rumor was widespreadâthe pope wrote vehemently that the military orders in the Holy Land were financially respectable and were incapable of committing financial crimes. But he provided no accounting of the enormous cost of the Crusade.
Peter of Montague had written the letters at a particularly bad time. It was a period of stalemate. The loss of Caesarea had disheartened many of the Crusaders; some knights had been withdrawn from Damietta and sent to stiffen the resistance at Chastel Pèlerin, which remained unconquered. But the army at Damietta could not afford the loss of a single man. Yet throughout this time knights were continually abandoning the battlefield and returning home to manage their own affairs. They were free agents; they could not be compelled to stay; like King Andrew of Hungary they could simply leave.
The stalemate, the diminishing number of knights, and the presence of
Pelagius all contributed to making life intolerable for the Christian army. And Frederick II deeply affected the atmosphere of the times: his repeated promises that he was about to come to the East finally wore people down. They lost hope. The pope also lost hope. Frederick had been crowned by the pope in Rome in November and had promised to embark on a new Crusade in the spring, but he was still busy suppressing uprisings in Germany. He would come in his own good time.
Little known, and not yet perceived as a great and towering force, was the Mongol leader Genghis Khan, who swept into Azerbaijan in that same year. There he destroyed an army led by King George of Georgia, thereby reducing the military power of the Christian state to zero. Eventually, the Mongols would ally themselves with the Christians, but that was yet to come.
At this time, if Cardinal Pelagius had ordered an attack on Cairo after Damietta and Tanis had been captured, he might have won a great victory, for al-Kamil was in a mood of despair. The longer the stalemate continued, the more eagerly did al-Kamil prepare his defenses, recruit more soldiers, and build more ships. The cardinal raged against the inertia and drunkenness of his own soldiers, but could do nothing. There were frequent skirmishes, small towns changed hands, the Christians learned to maneuver among the canals, and a number of strange, prophetical books appeared. These books, perhaps manufactured in the feverish court of Frederick II, were full of prophecies about a great king coming from the West and meeting another great king from the East, who was perhaps King David, the son or nephew of Prester John, the mysterious Christian emperor believed to be lurking in central Asia or Ethiopia. These apocalyptic prophecies, based on Revelation, were too precise to be ignored. Letters from King David also appeared, promising succor to the Christians. In the light of these letters and prophecies the cardinal saw himself as the forerunner of the kings of the East and West.
Toward the end of July 1221, the cardinal decided to throw his whole force against the sultan. Reinforcements had arrived from Genoa and Apulia. Matthew, Count of Apulia, the viceroy ruling over Frederick II's territories in southern Italy, came with eight galleys. Hundreds of pilgrims had also arrived, and they could be used as laborers and water-carriers. King John of Brienne, who disputed the cardinal's generalship and who had returned to Acre, was summoned to take command of the army. He did so reluctantly, quarreling with the cardinal to the very end. By July 20 the Christians were in Sharimshah, a city halfway between Damietta and Mansourah, which had been abandoned by the enemy: the sultan had given orders that his own palace in Sharimshah should be destroyed. The cardinal believed that the way was now open for the march on Cairo.
He could not have been more mistaken. Al-Kamil, too, had received reinforcements. A vast army of Nubians and the army of Syria had joined
his own forces. He did not really need them. He had a weapon denied to the Christians. He opened the sluices, and the Christians found themselves floundering in water up to their knees. Stores, baggage, horse-drawn carts, tents, and animals floated away in the night, while the enemy attempted to break up the army and send it into deeper water. Meanwhile the fighting went on. The Crusaders had sport with some of the untrained Nubians and made them “jump like frogs”; the Templars and Hospitallers attacked them on horseback and killed many of them. But it was all to no avail. The waters rose, food gave out, the road to Damietta was blocked, and soon the cardinal was forced to ask for terms of surrender.
Al-Kamil's terms were surprisingly lenient. In exchange for Damietta, he offered an eight-year truce and the return of the True Cross and all Christian prisoners. The army would be allowed to go free, and since most of its stores and provisions were lost, the sultan offered to feed them. While the agreement was being worked out, hostages were exchanged. King John of Brienne was entertained at a huge feast. Quite suddenly the Crusaders and the Muslims were at peace.
The Crusaders left Egypt, having accomplished nothing in their long months of fighting. Oliver of Paderborn attributed the defeat to mutiny, luxury, and ambition. There were other reasons: the cardinal's blundering, an uncertain knowledge of the topography, belief in high places in the validity of prophecies and letters from the mysterious King David. The True Cross, promised by al-Kamil, was never received: no one could find it.
According to Oliver of Paderborn the treaty concluded with al-Kamil contained the words, “This treaty will be observed unless the crowned king who is coming should wish to change it.” Al-Kamil appears to have accepted these words with good grace. He was in secret communication with Frederick II and knew what manner of man he was. They had much in common, the sultan of Egypt and the fiery Holy Roman emperor. They had taken each other's measure, and together, very briefly, they would establish a new direction in the wars between the Muslims and the Crusaders.