VI. was a work of difficulty, and showed the impossibility CHAP. of the army's even fighting its way back to Damietta, thinned as it was in numbers and prostrated by sickness. The French therefore tried to treat their offer was to surrender Damietta in exchange for Jerusalem, and withdraw from Egypt. The Saracens seemed not to decline these terms, but demanded the king's person as hostage, to which the nobles would not consent, offering to give the princes, his sons. These not being accepted as substitutes, the French recommenced the retreat, some in boats by the river, some by land. The king, suffering extremely from illness, refused to proceed in a boat or cease to share the perils of the greater part of his army. But he had not gone a day's journey when his attendants were obliged to lift him from his horse and lay him on the lap of a woman of the army, as they thought, to die. The Saracens at the same time rushed into the village, and cries were heard ordering the knights to cease defence or they would cause the king to be killed. The monarch, his brothers, and the surviving chiefs accordingly surrendered. The victors slew the wounded, as well as most persons of inferior rank, many-some of the men of Joinville amongst others-embracing Mohammedanism to escape death, a sad result of the crusade. There were about 10,000 captives. The Egyptians tried to make them surrender Rhodes or some strong place of Syria in return for their lives, but the nobles and the king separately denied their power to make any such stipulation. They then threatened to put the king in irons; his only reply was that, being in their power, they might treat him as they liked. At last they demanded a ransom of a million of bezants, equal to 500,000 livres. The king consented to pay this sum for the ransom of his army, and give up Damietta as the price of his own liberation, as one of his rank could not be valued for money. The Egyptians agreed at last to strike off a fifth of the sum. The treaty was scarcely concluded when the Hauleka, CHAP. a guard attached to the person of the Egyptian sultan, assassinated that monarch, and the French were obliged to negotiate with his murderers. These menaced and delayed, and at times showed an inclination to kill all the prisoners; but at last 200,000 livres were paid, the king and his followers embarked, and the Count of Poitou, who had remained as hostage, was restored. All then set sail for Acre, where it was stipulated that the remaining 200,000 livres should be paid. Louis had not long arrived at Acre, when he received letters from his mother, pressing his return. He summoned his knights to council; in which the voice of all was for returning home, there not being 100 left out of 2800 that had left France. Joinville was for remaining in order to secure the recovery of the captives, and the king followed his advice, dismissing his brothers and the greater number of his barons. Louis remained four years at Acre and other towns, fortifying them, receiving embassies, and negotiating with the several Mussulman chiefs. He thus effected the delivery of all the captives from Egypt, but he accomplished little else, not even, as he wished, visiting Jerusalem, suffering himself to be persuaded that to go there without liberating it would be unworthy of him. One cannot but feel surprised, that the king of a country so rich and powerful as France, could not muster an army or effect something worthy of his position and his name. It appears, however, that upon one occasion a large amount of treasure, sent him by Blanche, was lost at sea. The death of the Emperor Frederic the Second, which took place in 1250, aroused the Pope to return to Italy, as well as to excite all Europe against his son and successor Conrad. Whilst the king was at Cæsarea supplicating his mother for men and money, the Papal clergy, says Matthew Paris, were preaching throughout Flanders and Brabant a crusade against Conrad, and promising all who should join it, not VI. merely the remission of their own sins, but those of CHAP. their families. Blanche therefore summoned the nobles of the kingdom, and complained "that the Pope was exciting war between Christians, and preaching a crusade to augment his own dominions, whilst Louis in Palestine was forgotten." The crusade against Conrad then began to be preached in France; but Blanche soon put a stop to it, by seizing the property of all who assumed the cross for that purpose, saying, "that the Pope must pay his own soldiers." The barons treated their vassals in like manner, and told the monks who preached the crusade, that it was they, the proprietors of the country, who fed, clothed the monks, and built churches for them, whilst the Pope did nothing except make them odious to their benefactors. In fact, whilst St. Louis, his family and his noblesse were engaged in an enterprise too vast for them, the rescuing of the Holy Land, expending on it 1,500,000 livres, the Pope was absorbed in the policy of an Italian prince, moving heaven and earth to defeat and destroy the Hohenstauffen. The nobles and the Queen Regent of France were not the only persons or class that murmured against the selfishness and worldliness of the Church. The disasters of Louis, and of his army in Egypt, made naturally a deep impression upon the common people, and even they were struck with the powerlessness of the two great dominant classes to perform the important task of delivering the Holy Land. Similar failures at a later period gave birth to the mission of Jeanne d'Arc. In 1251 this eagerness of the poor and ignorant to try what their efforts could do to accomplish that which the great failed in accomplishing, produced the insurrection of the Pastoureaux. Some forty years previous a mania had seized children, who crowded in numbers, and set off southwards to the Holy Land, to perish of course ere they proceeded far. Some said, it was the CHAP. VI. same man who had then seduced children upon such an errand, that now succeeded in imposing upon the shepherds and poor people. He was an Hungarian, who had been a monk of Citeaux, that monastery from which had issued the Albigensian crusade. This old man, pale, and with a long beard, practising severe abstinence, knowing many languages, and possessor of great fluency of speech, declared that St. Louis could not be effectually aided and the Holy Land saved, except by the weakest and least esteemed of men. Shepherds flocked to his banner, from whence the name of Pastou reaux. But all the loose and dissolute soon swelled his band. The first town they invaded was Amiens, where they were well received, and where they began to perform the functions of clergy. Their leader in his discourses denounced the monks and ecclesiastics whom his followers made no scruple of slaying. They came to Paris, and were honourably entertained by Blanche, who thought they might have been sent by the Lord to rescue her son from the Saracens. The Master of Hungary, as the leader called himself, preached in St. Eustache, ordered two of the clergy to be killed, and was for treating the students of the university in the same manner. From Paris they went to Orleans, were guilty of the same excesses, and showed the same. enmity to clerics and scholars. Their conduct became intolerable by the time they reached Bourges. The archbishop ordered the gates to be shut against them, but the people admitted them. They were, however, guilty of such violence, and their leader of such absurdity, that the popular opinion turned against them, and the bailiff of the district was enabled to disperse them and to slay their chief. Henri Martin says, he was probably a Manichean from the Danube, who came to avenge upon the clergy the slaughter of the Albigenses. The tidings of the death of the Queen-Mother Blanche, towards the close of 1252, could not make the monarch decide to return, nor did he leave Palestine till the spring of 1254. The fleet had not long sailed, when the royal galley in a fog struck on the island of Cyprus. The king was instantly entreated to quit the vessel. He first asked the mariners, would they abandon her; they replied No; on which he determined to remain on board also. "There are five or six hundred persons with me," said Louis, "who, if I quit the ship will remain in Cyprus, and have no choice of returning to their country: I would rather endanger myself, wife, and children, than inflict such a fate upon so many.' The royal party landed safely at Hieres, after a stormy voyage of ten weeks. The monarch was no sooner on the Rhone, than he saw symptoms of the harsh rule of his brother. The people made numerous complaints, especially of a prohibition to export, which had rendered the wines of the country of no value. He therefore issued an ordinance restoring the right of exportation, and commanding that no such prohibition should on a future occasion be issued, without holding an assembly of the nobles, prelates, and citizens, by whose advice such prohibition should be given or withheld ; and once passed, no exception should be made, or favour shown to individual merchants. It was not merely in this one respect of prohibiting the south from exporting its produce, whilst favoured individuals were permitted to do so with great profit, that the malversation of the royal functionaries was manifested. When St. Louis asked Joinville to accompany him on his second crusade, that nobleman's reply was, "that when he was before beyond sea on the service of God, the officers of the King of France had so grievously oppressed his people, that they were in a state of destitution. Another crusade would totally ruin them." When such was the case with Joinville's estates, which were in Champagne, not very remote from the capital, CHAP. VI. |