King Louis and the Seventh Crusade

Were the difficulties encountered, and the errors made
during Louis's invasion of Egypt (the Seventh Crusade) simply those that had
characterised the Fifth Crusade?
(c) Gordon Napier 2006.


The events of the Fifth Crusade in many respects were echoed two decades subsequently in the events of the Seventh. Both Crusades attacked Egypt, supposedly as a means of securing the restoration of Jerusalem. Both times the Crusaders nurtured false expectations of assistance from the rising Mongol power to the East. Both times Latin Palestine was left vulnerable to attack from Muslim Syria, while the armies of Christendom were preoccupied on the Nile. Both Crusades achieved initial success at Damietta. Both times the Crusaders seemed to have an opportunity to capitalise on the turbulence surrounding the death of a Sultan and the associated internal divisions among the Saracens. Both times Ayyubid proposals to return Jerusalem in exchange for Damietta were rejected by apparently over-confident or ambitious Crusade leasers, and both times this led to their undoing. Both times the expeditions ground to an ignominious halt at Mansourah. Both times the armies made to withdraw but were unable to escape. Both times they instead fell into captivity, existing thence at the mercy of the Muslims they had come to wage war against, and who had initially shown little desire for conflict. Both times the humiliated Crusaders were obliged to give up Damietta in return for their own release, and to abandon any hope of recovering Jerusalem by means of activity in Egypt. However though comparison is inevitable, it would seem simplistic to say that the difficulties faced by the two Crusades were entirely the same, because they took place in different times, with differing contexts. They had different participants who made different strategic mistakes for different reasons, which happened to lead to similarly unhappy outcomes for the Christians.


The circumstances in which the Fifth and Seventh Crusades were launched were comparable, in that the stated aim was the restoration of Jerusalem to the vestigial Latin Kingdom. The Fifth Crusade was launched in 1217 to reverse the verdict of the Third, which had failed to recoup the losses of the 1180s. These territories were gradually clawed back subsequently (thanks to the intervening Crusades of Frederick II and of the Barons) but were lost in 1244 after the Khoresmians's sack of Jerusalem and the Crusader-Syrian coalition's defeat by Egyptian forces at La Forbie. The battle incapacitated the residual Latin Kingdom militarily and rendered its situation almost as precarious as it had been after Saladin's triumph at Hattin.


The scheme of attacking Egypt in order to subdue the Ayyubid power (and thereby, supposedly, to safeguard the Christian Holy Land) had first been devised by the strategists of the Fourth Crusade. This notorious expedition had not managed to test the strategy, having deviated and broke up after taking Constantinople. The Egypt-focussed strategy, revised in 1218, had its merits if success could be achieved, but in the meantime it had major flaws. These flaws including the practical difficulties of conducting military operations in the Nile Delta. They also included the fact that while the armies of the Cross were thus engaged, the vestigial Kingdom of Jerusalem lay vulnerable to aggression from Damascus, then also in Ayyubid hands. It is true that Muslim sources confirm that the Egyptian campaigns seemed to bring Islam to the brink of collapse, but these could be exaggerated to magnify the eventual victory over the Christians. Success, if such was possible, would admittedly have brought the Latins control of Egypt's wealth (clearly an alluring prospect), but it would also have brought the burden of occupying a large Muslim country against its will, which would potentially have been more trouble than it was worth. Egypt was not like Palestine, a frontier zone used to domination by successive foreign invaders. It had millennia of history as what France was just becoming- a self-aware nation state.


The Egyptian (Coptic) Church was also established along nationalistic lines, and had an independent spirit, having long ago parted ways with Chalcedonian Christianity. Therefore the indigenous Christian minority might not have been enthusiastic about living under Latin rule, especially considering the intolerant nature of thirteenth- century Catholicism. Quite possibly the Inquisition would have followed in the wake of the Crusaders and would have started to condemn the Copts as heretics for their Monophysite tendencies. It is telling of the westerners' attitudes that only after deliberation did Louis's Crusaders deign to permit the Copts of Damietta to retain their property. The Crusades caused the Muslim authorities to react by subjecting the Eastern Christians to greater persecution, suspecting them of sympathy with their western co-religionists, but for the Copts the arrival of the Crusaders hardly amounted to liberation. It is possible to envisage the Crusaders winning the co-operation of other Christians in the twelfth century, but more difficult in the thirteenth after the events of Innocent III's pontificate. The high clergy and the Frankish elite had assumed a position of rigid orthodoxy in order to justify (if only to themselves) the assaults on Byzantium and the Languedoc. They had, as it were, to construct a God vehemently intolerant of theological dissent or disobedience to the papacy. If the Franks' prejudice created a barrier for the Fifth and Seventh Crusaders when it came to forging relationships with Eastern Christians, it also largely prohibited the Franks from dealing as equals with the Muslims (not that the Muslims themselves were ever free from religious arrogance, but it seemed slightly less in evidence at this time). In strategic terms, the Franks' attitude was perhaps a self-imposed handicap, disinclining them each time from negotiating over the fate of Damietta and Jerusalem while the going was good. (This ideological prejudice was a self-imposed burden that hampered the Crusaders in both 1217-23 and 1149-50. Frederick II in 1229 had disregarded it, tellingly, and by stark contrast had gained Jerusalem without bloodshed).


It seems that many participants of the Fifth and Seventh Crusaders thought that their objective was to take Damietta for use as a bargaining chip for Jerusalem. This could have worked. However on each occasion it was those that wanted to have their cake and eat it (i.e. to hold on to Damietta) who prevailed (in the case of the Fifth Crusade this was on the flimsy basis that while the restoration of Jerusalem, the True Cross and most of the lost kingdom was on offer, al-Kamil refused to yield the Transjordanian castles of Kerak and Montreal. On both occasions there were signs of high-level schemes for Latin colonisation of the Nile Delta and of laying the foundations for a permanent Frankish state and Latin diocese. These plans, conspicuously backed by the papal legates, belied the notion that the Egyptian campaign was a means towards the recovery of Jerusalem. (This realisation caused disillusionment during the Fifth Crusade and probably contributed to the desertion and decadent behaviour, which became a familiar problem). Settlement of Egypt was a controversial proposition. It would have been less viable than the Levantine colonisation, given the greater likelihood of a nationalist backlash and the lack of an established pilgrimage industry such as that which helped sustain the Frankish Palestinian settlement. Egypt proper, though not without its Biblical connections and early-Christian significance, was not generally considered part of the Holy Land, and was unlikely to become a major pilgrimage destination. Large-scale conversion of the Muslim inhabitants, if such was envisaged, was a pipe-dream, and relations with the Copts were unlikely to be too cordial. If Egypt did become a centre of Latin trade and settlement, meanwhile, this could have been to the initial detriment of the Holy Land, drawing merchants and baronial colonists away from Palestine, somewhat as Latin Greece had done. But Egypt could never have the same spiritual allure to the rank-and-file Crusaders, and this would be a consideration in terms of motivation and morale. Tellingly the earliest planners of the Egyptian missions felt the need to keep the intended destination secret, and to deceive the masses that would have wanted to go directly to Jerusalem. It was, moreover, harder to justify Crusading in Egypt along conventional lines, i.e. as the recovery of Christ's inheritance from infidel hands (which was, even so, the way the Seventh Crusade was presented). In short, the Egypt-focussed scheme was over-ambitious, uninspiring and fundamentally unwise. For reviving the basic strategy, Louis IX and his associates could be accused of repeating the elementary error of the Fifth Crusaders.


It is perhaps the more surprising that the Crusaders under the pious Louis in the late 1140s chose to resort once more to the strategy that had failed in the early 1120s; especially as intervening Crusading expeditions had shown that the Holy Places could be regained for Christendom by action limited to the Levant and involving judicious use of diplomacy. On some level, Louis's desire to make of Egypt a Capetian conquest must have over-ridden these considerations. (Louis's ambitions differed from those of his precursors in that he evidently envisaged Egypt becoming a French possession, and not as an annex to the Kingdom of Jerusalem). Louis only gave his final order to invade Egypt after his arrival in Cyprus, so sections of his army may have been kept under the illusion that they were going straight to shore-up the Holy Land rather than following the ill-starred path of the Fifth Crusade. Louis received pressing calls for aid from the Crusader States, especially Antioch, as a letter from Odo de Châteauroux, the Papal Legate, to his master Innocent IV reveals. There was also a corresponding desire among sections of the Crusader army on Cyprus, including the Viscount de Châteaudun, to proceed to the Holy Land. Louis, though, was reluctant to allow significant numbers to pass to the Levant, 'for fear that if the army broke up it would be impossible to reassemble it at the scheduled time'.



In terms of make-up, the two Crusades in question included contingents from the Latin East and the Military Orders, who participated in the Nile expeditions alongside western Crusaders. Both Crusades were to some extent restricted by having to compete with rival crusades in Europe, for which the papacy had seen fit to offer equivalent plenary indulgences, much to the dismay of those attached to the cause of the Holy Land. The Fifth Crusade had been obliged to get by without major French involvement because France's chivalry was preoccupied by the interminable Albigensian Crusades in the Languedoc and by wars with England. England hung aloof both times. In the turbulent later years of King John it had little ability or will to participate in a papal undertaking. John's successor Henry III, though ostensibly as pious as Louis, and though he himself had taken the cross, forbade English nobles from departing to join Louis' expedition. Perhaps he saw that if the Crusade succeeded it would only enhance the standing of his Capetian rivals, to England's disadvantage, whereas if it failed it would be ruinous for all concerned. As it was, only a small English contingent under the already exiled Earl of Salisbury, William Longespee, joined Louis in Egypt. (Matthew Paris's writing indicates an English feeling that Crusading had gone off the rails, exploited by the papacy in internal conflicts on the continent and by the Capetians in misguided Egyptian adventures. Perhaps it was better to watch from the sidelines and, as it were, let them get on with it.) With France and England preoccupied, the Fifth Crusade was largely a German and Hungarian effort, with significant Austrian and Italian involvement besides. The Seventh Crusade, by contrast, was largely a French affair, as a result of Germany being embroiled in the papal/imperial conflict, and Hungary contending with the Mongol onslaught.


The Mongol advance was a much more immediate concern in Eastern Europe and the Near East in the mid-late 1240s than it had been in the early 1220s. Back then Pelagius of Albano and Jacques de Vitry may have been able to imagine the mysterious conquerors pressing towards the Middle East as the forces of Prester John, the fantastical Christian emperor of 'India', coming as though to answer their prayers and render assistance against the Muslims. By the time of the Seventh Crusade the Mongols had smashed into Eastern Europe, gaining a bloody victory over Polish and German forces (including the Military Orders) at Liegnitz. The fantasy of Prester John was fading into the background. In 1244 Bohemond V of Antioch had appealed to Frederick II for assistance to defend the Principality from the approaching Horde. The Mongol threat would also be discussed at the Council of Lyons, after which Innocent IV dispatched a series of Friars as missionaries to the Mongol chiefs. One of these, John of Plano Carpini, heard it from the Khan's mouth that the Mongols would accept nothing but submission and also confirmed that they had western Christendom in their sights. He was in a position to inform Louis about this before Louis embarked on his Crusade, but neither this nor the memory of Liegnitz prevented Louis from repeating Pelagius's mistake in looking to the Mongols as potential allies.


Mongol ambassadors on Cyprus presented Louis with a letter from the warlord Eljigidei, containing cordial overtures and requests that Louis not discriminate between the different Christian denominations (who under the Mongols were afforded equal treatment). Meanwhile Louis was shown by the Count of Jaffa a letter from the Constable of Armenia concerning his experience of the Mongols. It mentioned their acts of terrible slaughter, but also offered false hope of an alliance. It also revealed the Mongols wish that Louis would invade Egypt and prevent Sultan as-Silah Ayyub's forces from assisting the Caliph, whose Baghdad-centred regime the Mongols were then busy besetting. This represents a new factor. For the Fifth Crusade the Mongols had represented a vague and distant hope, (tinged slightly by the knowledge that they were known also to have ravaged Georgia). By contrast the Seventh Crusade had nearly direct communication with the horde. It seems the Mongols sought to exploit the Crusade for their own advantage, and probably encouraged the King's delusion that they might be at least on the verge of becoming Christians. Louis dispatched Friars, including the Dominican Andrew of Longjumeau as envoys to them, with conversion and alliance in mind. This was a move Louis famously came to regret. It returned to haunt him when the Mongols demanded submission and tribute. The mistake of trusting the Mongols was not such a significant factor for the Fifth Crusade, and did not have immediate consequences. The Mongols' interest in Christianity was probably never much more than a ploy. Even so the missionaries may have made more headway but for the doctrine of papal supremacy, which was inimical to the Mongols' sensibilities. The churchmen's stubborn insistence on the universal primacy of the 'Vicar of Christ', though, was less a mistake of the Crusaders than a symptom of the institutional egocentricity gripping the medieval Catholic Church. It could be a liability when it came to the broader Christian cause.


The Fifth Crusade had arisen as much from papal schemes to promote Holy War under papal authority as it has from the needs of the Latin East. (Many of the Eastern Franks, indeed, might have preferred to preserve in the policy of making successive truces with Al-Adil, who exhibited no desire for war). The Fifth and Seventh Crusades suffered from clerical interference in strategy on the one hand. On the other hand they were hampered by popes simultaneously promoting competing crusades. Innocent IV evidently prioritised his Anti-Hohenstaufen campaign over Louis's Egyptian project. Matthew Paris has Louis responding to the Pope's refusal to reconcile with Frederick with the pious rebuke: 'I fear that, once I have gone [overseas] hostile moves will be made against the kingdom of France because of your inexorable obstinacy. If the business of the Holy Land is held up, it will be through your fault.' An additional rival crusade was also proclaimed at the Council of Lyons, meanwhile, to support the floundering Latin regime in Constantinople. Similarly Eugenius III had permitted half of crusade taxes on the French Church to be switched to support the Albigensian Crusade, hampering the Fifth Crusade's finances.


Though the Papal legate, Odo of Châteauroux, preached and accompanied the Seventh Crusade, he did not attempt to direct military affairs to quite the extent Pelagius of Albano had during the Fifth Crusade- although according to Matthew Paris, Odo stood in the way of a negotiated settlement after the second capture of Damietta, exactly as Pelagius had. So it seems that during both the Fifth and Seventh Crusade the Catholic establishment fell into the camp of those who wished to retain Damietta as a colony, rejecting peace with the Muslims. This seems to be the repetition of a critical strategic mistake. The identical long-term consequences of the repeated policy may seem the fitting reward of excessive rapaciousness and religious bigotry, and in the case of the Seventh Crusade for failing to learn from the past.

This aside, the Ecclesiastical involvement in Louis's enterprise seems to have been slightly less to the fore than it had been during the Fifth Crusade. The Seventh Crusade's preparation and execution seem to have relied primarily on the king's initiative and commitment, although new taxes on the French Clergy helped to fund the Crusade and the friars contributed actively to the fund raising effort. Louis indeed had taken the Cross without Papal prompting, afterecovering from a serious illness. Afterwards the Pope had appointed Odo to him in the role of 'angel of great council'. It could be that Matthew Paris overstated the churchman's influence in the decision not to negotiate with the Muslims regarding Damietta and Jerusalem. According to al-Maqrizi, Louis had written to the Sultan as-Silah Ayyub from Cyprus, making clear his determination not to compromise: '…If you swore a solemn oath of allegiance to me, coming before me surrounded by priests and monks and bearing in my presence candles as a token of your submission to the Cross, that should not deter me from advancing upon you and fighting you in your proudest regions.' The decision to reject negotiation proposals, if such proposals were indeed made, would have been Louis's.


Louis IX was an able administrator, but his zeal was not matched by military genius. Through meticulous preparations he ensured an adequate supply of manpower and money, evidently concerned to avoid the haphazard arrangements of the previous undertaking. Neither of the Crusades in question, though, had the benefit of a decisive and militarily gifted secular leader. At least the Seventh had an undisputed commander in Louis, though for all his qualities he was a mediocre general. At times he proved too easily influenced by the opinions of his brothers- especially Robert of Artois- and was also accused of an inability to stand up to his barons. The Fifth Crusade had commenced with three kings, those of Hungary, Cyprus and Jerusalem. Of these, the Cypriot died, the Hungarian quit after the abortive forays in Galilee with which the Crusade had started in 1217. John of Brienne, the titular King of Jerusalem was a similarly indifferent commander who, during the initial phase of the Crusade had failed to push the assault on the Muslim stronghold on Mt Tabor. His later quarrels with Pelagius in Egypt, and his caving in to the unwise decision to pass south from Damietta in the middle of the inundation season would be factors contributing to the Crusade's collapse. Another crowned head overshadowed both the crusades, namely Frederick II. He affected the Fifth Crusade in being the expected leader who never came, but later recovered Jerusalem by diplomacy. Part of Louis's commitment to his own Crusade may have arisen from a desire to outdo Frederick and supplant him as the lay leader of Christendom. Finally, though, the Fifth and Seventh Crusades were hampered by having leaders whose ambitions were unmatched by ability. To succeed they needed either the élan of a Richard or the pragmatism of a Frederick.

The first phase of the Seventh Crusade involved a voyage, mostly from Louis' port of Aigues Mortes, to Cyprus, where supplies had been stockpiled. The utilising of Cyprus indicates that Egypt was the most likely destination for the Crusade, however the fact that landing crafts were only prepared after the fleet's arrival at Cyprus makes this issue uncertain. The decision to use Cyprus was an innovation, as the Fifth Crusade had used Latin Palestine as its springboard against Egypt. It may have been the first mistake of the campaign, as Louis is said to have regretted not sailing directly to Egypt. In 1248 the Sultan had been absent feuding with his relations in Syria. By 1249 he had returned and, though ailing, had managed to coordinate some sort of defence. Even so, the delay in Cyprus allowed latecomers to the Crusade (notably the king's brother Alphonse of Poitiers) to join up with the main force for a united assault.


The easy capture of Damietta, 'the key of the Nile' in May 1249, was the result of its garrison abandoning the city in the night after offering only token resistance. This probably owed more to their commander Fakhr ad-Din's desire to be present further south at the royal court where the Sultan as-Silah Ayyub was dying and where power would be brokered than to fear of the invaders. Even so it was a gift to Louis, who was able to walk into Damietta. The city had only fallen to the Fifth Crusade after the Christians had besieged it fiercely for almost two years, facing major problems of attrition and desertion themselves, and gradually starving the city into submission. Now as-Silah, like al-Kamil before him, offered the Crusaders the restoration of 'the whole Kingdom of Jerusalem and more' as well as the release of all Christian slaves in return for the Crusaders' departure from Egypt. But these peace terms were, according to Matthew Paris, 'flatly rejected by the legate, acting on papal orders'. Paris evidently felt some dismay with his superiors in the Church, whose arrogance was leading to the repetition of old mistakes. The monk avoided implicating Louis in this decision, but evidently the King was of a like mind, preferring the prospect of conquest to peace. Perhaps his (mis)understanding with the Mongols was a factor in his reluctance to conclude the war in Egypt, even on these most favourable terms.


The rapid capture of Damietta seemed to bode well for the Seventh Crusaders, but it exposed their lack of preparation concerning what to do next. There immediately followed a heated debate as to whether to progress to Alexandria, to the west, or to pass south towards Cairo via Mansourah. The majority of barons, as Joinville recalled, led by 'the good Conte Pierre de Bretagne' advised Alexandria, for its useful harbour. Robert of Artois, though, insisted that he would never go anywhere but Cairo, because it was the capital, and that 'if you wished to kill the serpent, you must first of all crush its head'. The king rejected the barons' advice in favour of his brother's. So the decision was made to follow in the inauspicious footsteps of the Fifth Crusaders. The ensuing delay in Damietta until the winter represented a conscious effort to avoid the most major and elementary mistake made by the Fifth Crusaders, i.e. advancing south during the annual inundation of the Nile. In this respect the Seventh Crusaders cannot be said to have repeated the mistakes of their forebears. The flood season also held inert the Muslims camped with the ailing Sultan at Mansourah. The river created difficulties for Louis's passage, but not in the same way that it had for the previous generation of Crusaders. However old mistakes were repeated in that the river was not properly secured; supply dumps and protective, garrisoned bases were not established along the route. Louis did not even secure such outposts as Tannis, which the Fifth Crusaders had seen fit to before venturing south. Little or no contingency was made for having to withdraw north. Louis's force also moved much more slowly than their precursors had (covering in thirty two days what the earlier crusaders has covered in seven), hindered by the difficulty on bringing their heavy ships south against a strong contrary wind. However Louis took more supplies with him, including timbers used first in attempts to make fortified bridges, and then to make a camp opposite Mansourah. In this sense his forward- planning was superior.


Louis' Crusade reached as far as Mansourah, and avoided the traps the Fifth Crusaders had fallen into en route. The cavalry vanguard succeeded in fording the river and sweeping all before them in an attack on the Muslim camp before the town. Only when either the pride of the Templars (as Joinville has it) or the vainglory of Robert of Artois (as Matthew Paris has it) led to a disastrous charge into the town itself did things unravel. Louis followed too late to save his brother's force from massacre but was able to hold the position of the captured camp, and to weather withering assaults on it from the Mameluks. However as before the Muslims managed to cut off supply-lines to Damietta, bringing about the same difficulties. The Crusaders held on, as attrition and disease made their situation increasingly hopeless. Louis had no room for manoeuvre. After a hopeless bid to escape, the whole force fell into captivity. During the course of negotiations of a ransom and the surrender of Damietta, a Mameluk coup took place and the young sultan Turan-Shah was murdered. The new regime more-or-less honoured the arrangement, and let Louis and most of his company withdraw to Acre. Perhaps they thought he might be a useful ally against the other Ayyubid princes who would be outraged by the regicide. Louis commitment to the Christian east had not ended, but he had long lost his ability to wage effective warfare. His continuing financial support for the Holy Land probably did some good, but this was offset against the ransom paid to Christianity's enemies in Egypt. Louis emerged from the fiasco as a tragic hero, regarded sympathetically as a suffering servant of Christ. It was probably a matter of personality that he was not vilified in the way that those responsible for the failure of the fifth crusade were, even though he repeated their mistakes and their failure.




Bibliography:

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