Frederick II's Crusade had been a military disaster followed up with an armistice deal that only Henry Kissinger could have loved. The Holy Roman Emperor in addition to many other outrages, crowned himself King of Jerusalem, pissed off nearly every baron in the Crusader States, and abandoned the mess he created in favor of fighting the Pope for the next 20 years over some
Guelph/Ghibelline thing.
Just like baseball needed a Babe Ruth after the shame of the 1919 World Series, Christendom in the mid-13th century needed a man who, despite personal failings and occasionally-spectacular defeats, would be all but sainted in his own lifetime. Though you are unlikely to encounter him in wingnut discussions of national military character, it was France that produced such a man at just this critical time. If you'd be so kind as to step into the Cave of the Moonbat, I'd like to introduce you to Louis IX, namesake of the largest city on the Missouri/Illinois border...
You think the politics of the Middle East are complicated now? Check out what was happening around/about the 1240's:
- Jerusalem, in Christian hands through a 10-year truce negotiated by Frederick II, was the indefensible centerpiece of the absentee king's claims in the Holy Land. It lay between...
- Damascus and Egypt, both Abbuyid kingdoms with royal bloodlines descended from Saladin himself, but between which relations were known to be of the shootin'-cousins variety. Both sides played politics with the various...
- Palestinian barons, who by this point were several generations established in a political landscape that included the Caliph of Baghdad, the cult of the Assassins, and slave armies, were quite accustomed to doing things their own way. Self-interested bickering among these Latin lords in the Holy Land did as much to accelerate the fall of Outremer as their neglect of its defenses, which they entrusted to...
- The Military Orders, led by the Grand Masters of the Temple, the Hospital, and the Tuetonic Knights. Never very large in numbers, they were nevertheless what today's military types call a "force multiplier." Of course, this also meant they suffered from an Achilles' Heel of the eggs-in-one-basket variety, a weakness that would be played upon by the...
- Kwarizmian Turks, a Persian group with Central Asian roots who were being pushed westward by the mightiest army the world had ever seen, which was presently bearing down upon their lands from the East. This great movement of people, while initially disastrous for the Christians of Outremer, wound up being another factor contributing to the Crusader States lasting as long as they did, for within 20 years, Islam would be fighting for its very existence against the approaching...
- Mongol Hordes, who had conquered Poland and Hungary by 1241 but settled in to content themselves with dominating Russia following the death of Ogadai Khan. During the period of Louis' crusade, the Mongol general Hulagu, brother of Khakhan Mongke, was assembling what was probably the largest Mongol army ever. It would have to be huge, for as Wikipedia indicates, the marching orders he would receive in 1255 would be quite broad in scope:
First, the subjugation of the Lurs, a people of southern Iran; second, the destruction of the sect of the Assassins; third, the submission or destruction of the Abbasid caliphate; the submission or destruction of the Ayyubid states in Syria, and finally, the submission or destruction of the Mamluk Sultanate of Eygpt. Mongke Khan had ordered Hulagu to treat kindly those who submitted, and utterly destroy those who did not. Hulagu certainly carried out the latter
As one might imagine, the imminent arrival of an army of freekin' Mongols diverted Muslim attention from the petty Christian lords and their patchwork of tiny baronies.
(This Episode's Bad Intel Moment: In 1221, the bishop of Acre came back from the Fifth Crusade saying something about a great Nestorian Christian king from east of India who had already conquered Persia and was fixated on linking up with the Christian states in the Holy Land. His intel was Colin Powell-at-the-UN bad: the approaching conqueror he'd heard about was none other than Genghis Khan.)
Alas, Jerusalem! We'd barely reoccupied ye!
In 1243, Frederick II was King of Jerusalem, but his hold on the crown ended with his son Conrad's 15th birthday (Frederick's claim was through his marriage to Conrad's mother, the long-dead Yolande, who had been Queen of Jerusalem by blood). The barons, ever the sticklers for custom and tradition - so long as custom and tradition didn't conflict with their interests - seized upon a technicality which said that Conrad actually had to be in Jerusalem to be crowned its king. Since he wasn't, the barons quickly declared the crown up for grabs, then made one of their own, Alice of Cyprus, Jerusalem's regent. Frederick's man-on-the-spot, a guy named Filangieri, instantly lost all legitimacy and was attacked, captured, and later imprisoned by Frederick for failing to protect the Emperor's claims.
The next year, open warfare broke out between Damascus and Cairo, and Outremer - sans imperial support - became a player in the shifting alliances of the Muslim power struggle. The barons threw in their lot with Damascus, which prompted the Sultan of Cairo to get in bed with the Kwarizmian Turks, who were currently marauding around Edessa. They gladly headed south to attack Jerusalem at Cairo's behest, and by the time folks in Jerusalem realized that there was an enormous army of extremely angry Turks headed their way, it was too late.
The Khwarismians drove about 6000 Christians from the city, then suckered some of the knights into returning by hoisting Frankish flags on the city walls. These were quickly dispatched by the mercenaries, who now swarmed and sacked the city. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was burned, the crypts of the Kings of Jerusalem were defiled, and yet another reason for vengeance-by-violence was added to the history of the Middle East.
La Forbie and the need for a new Crusade
Outremer threw everything it had at the Khwarismians, summoning virtually its entire contingent of knights to avenge the loss of Jerusalem. The Crusaders linked up with the Sultan of Damascus while the Khwarismians met up with their Egyptian buddies, and the four armies...
met at La Forbie, near Gaza, on 17 October 1244. Al-Mansur Ibrahim, of Damascus, counselled patience. Do not fight, he said, for the Khwarismians could not bear idleness and could not carry a fortified position. They would leave, and the Egyptians would never dare to fight alone.
Walter of Jaffa, however, scorned such caution. He wanted to attack at once. The barons supported him, of course. The Damascene-Latin army was larger, a rare event, and the opportunity to destroy the enemy should not be wasted. The decision was made to attack.
Source: Knox
You can probably guess what comes next:
The dead included the Grand Master and the Marshal of the Temple, the Archbishop of Tyre, and the Bishop of Ramleh. Taken prisoner were the Grand Master of the Hospital, the Constable of Tripoli, and the Count of Jaffa (the one who'd argued for an attack). At least five thousand were dead on the battlefield. Eight hundred were taken prisoner to Egypt. Of the Orders, three Teutonic Knights survived, twenty-six Hospitallers, and thirty-three Templars. It was the worst loss since Hattin, but the results were all the more profound because by this time the Orders were the principal line of defense, and they'd been almost completely destroyed.
ibid
Battle of Hattin Moonbatified here
In the same year as these Cheneyian events, back in France, King Louis IX was having his own brush with death. Like many who come very close to shaking the hand of St. Peter, Louis swore on his sickbed that, were God to aid his recovery, he would give thanks by leading a crusade. Part of what made him a saint was that he kept his word - apparently, such piousness in a leader was as rare then as it is now.
The Maddeningly Slow Pace of War
Two largely ineffectual crusades had been led by Count Thibaut of Champagne and Richard of Cornwall in 1237-1238, but nothing much had come of them. Thibaut was a boor who alienated most of the barons even as he returned to them a couple of castles, and Richard, though a skilled negotiator, was not a potent enough military threat to get anyone to really listen to him. Louis learned from both of these mistakes, and resolved to do things right now that he was going to lead a crusade.
First, he not only cut the Pope out of the planning loop, but he also declined to exempt the Church from paying the special crusade tax he levied. Next, he spent three years (1245-1248) assembling an army and trying to avoid getting entangled in the whole Genoa vs. Venice contest over which wealthy, well-navied city-state got to control the trade routes with the East (in the end, pissing off one or the other of these two was inevitable. Louis chose Genoa, thus making an adversary of Venice). Finally, he took his queen, a bunch of cousins, and two brothers along with about 20,000 troops (mostly French, but with a smattering of English and Scots) when he set sail for Cyprus in the late summer of 1248.
He was welcomed in Cyprus, but was unable to convince the barons and Grand Masters who had assembled to greet him to press on immediately. Instead, he wound up playing politics for the winter, as various groups try to gain his assistance in their own particular power struggles. The Latin lords of Constantinople were in trouble, Antioch needed help, and the Templars and Aleppo were hissing and spitting at one another. Meanwhile, Venice cut off its support entirely, and the army quickly started running out of food and going home.
(interesting historical sidenote: during this time, Louis dispatched a guy named William of Rubruck, who traveled to the court of the Great Khan 22 years before Marco Polo. Europeans at this point were still thinking of the Mongols in terms of Prestor John and Nestorian Christians, and William was not successful in converting the Mongols to the Lord's banner, but he did return with a truly excellent description of his journey that in many ways puts Polo's to shame.)
Exorcising the Damn Damietta Curse
Taking out Egypt was still judged by the Crusaders to be the key to hanging on to Jerusalem, so when Louis sailed with his diminished army in May, 1249, he headed for the Nile delta. A storm scattered his ships, but in early June, the Christians found themselves nearing the walls of Damietta - the same walls that had been so punishing to the Fifth Crusade (Moonbatified here) and which were now as then the first obstacle on the path to Cairo. We don't know if Louis was struggling with his conscience as he sailed up the mouth of the Nile, but...
CHEMICAL WEAPONS ALERT! EVERYBODY INTO THEIR MOPP GEAR! WMDs USED BY FUTURE SAINT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!
It's true: 750 years before gas, napalm, and Scuds launched at civilian targets, the precursors of those weapons were being used by both the Christians and the Saracens in the name of God. Here's an eyewitness account written by a Templar knight who was there. I'll go ahead and highlight the tactics of which our Attorney General would have okayed:
Our men, seeing the firmness of the king and his immovable resolution, prepared, according to his orders, for a naval combat. The king commanded to seize these mariners and all whom they met, and ordered us afterward to land and take possession of the country. We then, by means of our mangonels which hurled from a distance five or six stones at once, began to discharge at them fire¬darts, stones, and bottles filled with lime, made to be shot from a bow, or small sticks like arrows. The darts pierced the mariners and their vessels, the stones crushed them, the lime flying out of the broken bottles blinded them. Accordingly, three hostile galleys were soon sunk. We saved, however, a few enemies. The fourth galley got away very much damaged. By exquisite tortures we extracted the truth from the sailors who fell alive into our hands, and learned that the citizens of Damietta had left the city and awaited us at Alexandria.
I must not forget to say that the Saracens, after having determined to flee, hurled at us a great quantity of Greek fire, which was very injurious to us, because it was carried by a wind which blew from the city...
And so it was that Louis was able to occupy Damietta without long siege. As when it had been captured by Crusaders before, the Sultan of Cairo offered Jerusalem in return, but Louis smelled blood in the water and spurned the deal in favor of trying to conquer Egypt outright. In doing so, he repeated the crucial strategic error of the Fifth Crusade.
Moonbat's Booklist: There's a great book on the use of chemical and biological warfare in ancient times that's been making the historionerd rounds for the past few years, and I'd recommend it on the basis of the discussions of the moral implications of the use of such weapons alone. You oughta read Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World, by Adrienne Mayor (Overlook Duckworth, Woodstock, NY, 2003).
The Ripples Beneath the Surface
There were other lessons from the Fifth Crusade that Louis refused to repeat - setting out while the Nile was approaching flood stage, for example. Have seized Damietta in early summer, Louis waited until November 20, 1249, to set out toward Cairo, and though his army was now reinforced, it also meant that there were many more mouths to feed. Still, the delay worked in his favor (at least to a certain extant), as the aged, tuberculosis-ridden Sultan Ayub died on November 23rd. His wife, the sultana Shajar al-Durr, recalled her incompetent son Turanshah from Syria, and managed to successfully keep her people in the dark as to the actual health and welfare of their leader until Turanshah arrived (think of it as the "undisclosed secure location" of its time).
There were other problems in the Egyptian camp, and the majority of them were rooted in the Mamluks, the slaves who formed the bulk of the Egyptian army. Mamluks had served various sultans and caliphs since the 9th century, when non-Muslim Turks were first captured (or sold by impoverished steppe families) in the area north of the Black Sea. Converted to Islam as part of their training, this sort of slave army would exist in some form or another in Egypt until its conquest by Napoleon, and in the Ottoman Empire as the famed and feared Janissaries. In Cairo in 1249, Mamluks were a slave caste that had become an integral component of the power structure, but whose military prowess - and thus societal worth - was called into question after their retreat from Damietta.
The Egyptians massed at a town called al-Mansourah ("the Victorious"), which had been constructed upon the very site that al-Kamil had routed the Fifth Crusade 30 years before. By December 21, the Christians had encamped opposite Mansourah, on the banks of the Bahr as-Saghir (near the tributary's confluence with the main channel of the Nile), and both sides spent January, 1250, trying to find ways to attack one another. In early February, a Coptic Christian told the Crusaders of the location of a ford, and on the 8th, the Europeans began crossing the river.
Mansourah: A Battle Rife with Allegory
Robert was the king's brother, and he led a vanguard composed of his own and English knights, along with the Templars, onto the Muslim bank of the Bahr as-Saghir under strict orders from Louis not to attack until ordered to do so. Once he saw that the Muslims didn't even realize his forces were on their bank, however, his inner W spoke to him and he pressed his commanders to attack the Egyptian camp between the river and Mansourah proper.
The Egyptians were completely surprised (or shocked and awed, as it were) by the cavalcade of knights that descended upon them that morning. At least one account has Fakhr ad-Din, the Egyptian commander, fighting naked from his horse - sans saddle or reigns - as he had been attending to his bath when the crusaders stormed into the camp. He was killed, along with virtually every Mamluk who didn't flee.
The Duke of Artois now faced a momentous choice: If Mansourah could be taken by storm and surprise in the next few minutes, the path to Cairo would be laid open and his name would go down in history. His other option was to do what he'd been told and wait for his big brother. The Shinsekis of the day - Templar Grand Master William of Sonnac and the commander of the English contingent, the Earl of Salisbury - tried to urge caution, but Robert called them cowards and commanded the French onward toward Mansourah. Reluctantly, the smarter knights followed, knowing that Robert would not have a chance alone.
The knights charged into the town, driving the Mamluks in retreat before them, until they were deep within the narrow streets and twisting alleyways. The Mamluks and the Egyptians then turned, blocking off a southward escape, while the people of the town rose up in their own defense. Some of the crusaders, unable to turn their horses in the narrow streets, found themselves yanked out of their saddles by defenders in second-story windows, while others were trapped and bombarded with stones from the rooftops (think RPG ambushes). Very few survivors escaped back to the river, where King Louis was only now becoming aware of what had transpired.
Oh, Crap...
Louis quickly and correctly deduced that a counterattack would be in the offing, and he did what he could to organize his scattered army - much of which was still on the other side of the river - before the arrival of the Muslims. Though individual heroics on the part of Louis and many of his knights and soldiers saved the army from complete destruction, things didn't go so well for the Christians:
There Lord Hugh of Scots was wounded with three spear-wounds in his face, and Lord Ralph too; and Lord Frederick of Loupey was wounded with a spear between his shoulders, and the gash was so wide, that the blood spurted out of his body as through the tap of a cask. Lord Erard of Syverey got such a sword-cut across his face that his nose hung down onto his lip.
From the Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, 1996 tr. by Ethel Wedgwood
Louis learned of his brother's death after the fighting ended that day, and thought he cried tears of rage and sorrow, he was enough of a tactician to realize that he would not be avenging Robert's death anytime soon. The very actions that had gotten him killed had left Louis almost knight-less; as the Egyptian noose tightened in late February and March, it became apparent that the rest of this campaign would be about cutting and running back to Damietta.
(Optional Side Excursion: I found a pretty cool story from the period during which the crusaders were besieged on the riverbank, but this diary is already getting way too long, and there's a bunch of history left to tell. I'll post it in the Comments)
Stupidity's Fallout
The King tried to move his army out in the wee hours of April 5, 1250, retreating over a pontoon bridge that had been hastily constructed back on the day of the Battle of Mansourah. Regrettably, nobody told anybody that somebody was supposed to destroy the bridge behind them, and it didn't get done. The Egyptians swarmed over the bridge in hot pursuit, obligating Louis himself to spend the day fending off attacks with the rearguard.
Then the typhoid came. An outbreak swept through the Christian army on the evening of the 5th, and by the next morning, the king was unable to ride, much less fight, any longer. His army was unable to fight, and in a confusing mess of orders and counter-orders, simply surrendered en masse to the Muslims. Thus an entire Crusader army, complete with the most powerful king in Europe, fell captive to Turanshah and his increasingly independence-minded Mamluks.
With momentum now firmly on their side, the Egyptians moved toward Damietta, which was defended bunch a large group of Italian infantrymen, a handful of knights, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and a nine-months-pregnant Queen Margaret of France. She gave birth to a son, Jean Tristan (John Sorrow), three days after learning of her husband's capture, and from her bed cajoled the retreat-ready Italians into at least making a show of defending the town. She and the boy were then spirited off to Acre, but the Patriarch was able to use the morale boost Margaret's strength had given the men of Damietta to negotiate from a position other than one of unconditional surrender.
The Wheels Can Come Off Even When You're Winning
Every day for seven days, the Egyptians beheaded 300-400 of the weakest of the Europeans. The sultan had neither the logistics nor the inclination to nurse back to health a plague-ridden army, nor did he have enough troops to guard the immense numbers who had surrendered (al-Makrisi, who is cited below, also claims that the sultan was embarrassed by the number of captives he now held). It also seems that he had some internal political matters with which to contend...
Al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baibars al-Bunduqdari, a/k/a Baibars, was the Mamluk officer who had led the retreat from the camp outside Masourah. He had an interesting background: had he not been captured and sold by the Mongols, he would have grown up as a Crimean Tatar of Kipchac Turkic origins. Through several transactions, he came into the possession of the Egyptians, who made him a Mamluk, and eventually, a member of the Sultan's personal guard. He was said to be gigantically tall, extremely dark-skinned, and had a noticeable white splotch in one of his blue eyes. He also had a real inferiority complex about having been sold for cheap (he was blind in one eye), and he really, really hated Turanshah.
As the Patriarch was making his way down the Nile to bargain a king's ransom, Baibars was making his own move. Here's how things went down, according to The Road to Knowledge of the Return of Kings, a history of the Mamluks and the Abbuyids (descendents of Saladin) written by the historian Al-Makrisi about 150 years after the Crusade of St. Louis:
The gloomy and retired life the sultan led had irritated the minds of his people. He had no confidence but in a certain number of favourites, whom he had brought with him from Huns¬Keifa, and whom he had invested with the principal offices of the state, in the room of the ancient ministers of his father. Above all, he shewed a decided hatred to the Mamelukes, although they had contributed so greatly to the last victory. His debaucheries exhausted his revenue; and, to supply the deficiencies, he forced the sultana Chegeret¬Eddur to render him an account of the riches of his father. The sultana, in alarm, implored the protection of the Mamelukes, representing to them the services she had done the state in very difficult times, and the ingratitude of Touran¬Chah, who was indebted to her for the crown he wore. These slaves, already irritated against Touran¬Chah, did not hesitate to take the part of the sultana, and resolved to assassinate the prince. To execute this design, they fixed on the moment when he was at table; Bibars¬Elbondukdari gave him the first blow with his sabre, and, though he parried it with his hand, he lost his fingers. He then fled to the tower which he had built on the banks of the Nile, and which was but a short distance from his tent. The conspirators followed him, and, finding he had closed the door, set fire to it. The whole army saw what was passing; but, as he was a prince universally detested, no one came forward in his defence.
It was in vain he cried from the top of the tower, that he would abdicate his throne, and return to Huns¬Keifa; the assassins were inflexible. The flames at length gaining on the tower, he attempted to leap into the Nile; but his dress caught as he was falling, and he remained some time suspended in the air. In this state, he received many wounds from sabres, and then fell into the river, where he was drowned. Thus iron, fire, and water contributed to put an end to his life. His body continued three days on the bank of the Nile, without any one daring to give it sepulture. At length, the ambassador from the caliph of Baghdad obtained permission, and had it buried.
This cruel prince, when he ascended the throne, had his brother, Adil¬Chah, strangled. Four Mameluke slaves had been ordered to execute this; but the fratricide did not long remain unpunished, and these same four slaves were the most bitter in putting him to death. With this prince was extinguished the dynasty of the Ayyubids, who had governed Egypt eighty years, under eight different kings.
From Medieval Sourcebook
Although a puppet sultan would serve for the next few years, Baibars was now the de facto leader of Egypt. It was he who negotiated with the Patriarch the surrender of Damietta, the release of the king, and the payment of 400,000 livres of gold - basically all the money in Christian-held Egypt. The defeated army was then permitted to skulk back to Acre.
Well, At Least He Left a Decent Legacy...
The French king became the de facto ruler of Outremer after his arrival in Acre, gaining the respect of Christian barons and Muslim negotiators alike. He played impartial judge in many internal battles among the Palestinian lords, obtained the release of the remainder of the Christian prisoners, and managed to play Damascus and Cairo off against one another.
The Mamluk takeover had once again led to open warfare between the sultans, and though Louis wound up negotiating alliances with regard to this conflict, these came to an end when the usually-laissez-faire Caliph in Baghdad ordered the Muslims to put all internecine warfare to an end, turn east, and face the oncoming Mongol hordes.
Louis' mother, the formidable Blanche of Castile, died in 1252, and things in France quickly started coming apart. England was threatening war and various lords were in need of having their wings clipped in 1254, when Louis, his heart still heavy at the things left undone, departed the Holy Land.
His stay left Outremer in a slightly better political position than it had enjoyed before, but he also left a lot of corpses; indeed, while the Crusader States did manage to eke out an existence for another few decades, this was more due to the advance of the Mongols than anything else. As for the military orders, Louis' Crusade had cost them too dearly; they would never recover.
Louis attempted one last Crusade, at the end of his life in 1270. Here he allowed himself to be talked into attacking Tunis, and there he would die - preceded by his son Jean Tristan, the one who'd been born at Damietta.
Historiorant
Louis salvaged as much from the defeat at Mansourah as could have been salvaged, and in so doing saved the Crusader States for another one or two generations. He was venerated in his lifetime, and his corpse was a badly (if extremely reverently) treated as that of any great man of his era. He was sainted shortly after his death, in 1297, and is viewed as the ideal Christian monarch, Lieutenant of God on Earth, and guardian of the "eldest daughter of the Church" (the Frankish kingdoms that traced back to Charlamagne).
What can and might be salvaged from our own nation's Charge on Mansourah? I tried to point out a few lessons that might be picked out of the rubble - did you see any more?