Seventh Crusade

The Seventh Crusade was led by Louis IX of France between 1248 and 1254.

Preparations

In 1244 the Korasmian Muslims allied with the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt al-Salih Ayyub overran Syria and Palestine and conquered and sacked Jerusalem after the ten-year truce that followed the Sixth Crusade. The city was the capital of the kingdom of the same name. In the same year, al-Salih and his Khurasm allies defeated the Christians of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, allied with their rival the Ayyubid Emir of Damascus, in the Battle of Gaza. On November 27, the Bishop of Beirut sailed for Europe to request relief to support the kingdom.

This fact did not cause the great impact that on previous occasions, because the West had already seen how Jerusalem changed hands on several occasions. The call to the crusade, therefore, was neither immediate nor generalized. European monarchs were busy with their internal affairs (such as Henry III of England, who was fighting the Scottish rebellions, and King Bela IV of Hungary, who was trying to maintain order and rebuild his kingdom almost from the ashes after the tragic and devastating Mongol invasion of 1241), and only the King of France, Louis IX (Saint Louis), declared his intention to take up the cross in December 1244:Louis IX attended the first Latin ecumenical council of Lyon (meeting in 1245 and presided over by Pope Innocent IV, expelled from Italy by Frederick II) which, in addition to deposing and excommunicating Emperor Frederick, called for a crusade (which would be the seventh) whose command was given to Louis IX. Louis had promised to undertake the crusade in December of the previous year when he was seriously ill with malaria, in exchange for his recovery.

The plan of the crusaders, mainly French, was to conquer Egypt or at least the Nile delta, either to settle in it or as a bargaining chip to recover Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories lost due to recent defeats.

Luis's preparations were long: it took him three years to be ready to start the campaign. He had to collect special taxes to pay for it —from which he did not exempt the clergy, much to their chagrin—; to organize the government of the kingdom during his absence - he delegated it to his mother, who had already ably served as regent during his minority; to ensure that the King of England kept the peace during his absence in the Holy Land and that Frederick, with whom relations were somewhat strained, collaborated to obtain permission from the King of Jerusalem—his son Conrad—to penetrate into his kingdom.There was also dealing with Genoa and Marseilles to obtain the necessary ships for the voyage to Levante; the pact with these worsened relations with Venice, which viewed with bad eyes a company that could harm the lucrative trade it had with Egypt.

Crossing to Levante

Finally, Louis left Paris on August 12, 1248, and sailed from Aigues-Mortes on the 25th of the same month. At that time, France was possibly the strongest state in Europe, and after three years of raising funds, a powerful army, estimated at some twenty thousand well-armed men, sailed from the ports of Marseilles and Aigues-Mortes in 1248. The king was accompanied by the queen, two of his brothers, two cousins, and other leading members of the French nobility.

The crusaders went first to Cyprus, where they arrived on September 17, docking in Limassol. The Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital attended, as well as various barons from Syria; all received the hospitality of the King of Cyprus. The Crusaders spent the winter on the island, negotiating with the Mongols an alliance against the Ayyubids, which did not come to fruition. The Mongol regent took the Crusaders' gifts not as incentives to arrange an alliance, but as a vassal's tribute, and ordered that they be paid to him annually. Thus, Louis's diplomatic efforts proved fruitless.

The Christian leaders decided that their objective would be Egypt, considering that it was the richest and most vulnerable province of the Ayyubid territories and that, if they conquered Damietta, perhaps they could exchange it for Jerusalem, as the sultan had already proposed during the fifth crusade. Louis wanted attack immediately, but the magnates of the region dissuaded him, citing the dangerous winter storms in the region and the difficulty of navigating in bad weather in the delta area, plagued by shoals. The local lords also wanted Luis to intervene in the regional disputes, which confronted different members of the Ayyubid family and in which the Christian chiefs participated, but they did not succeed.

Louis and his hosts could not reach the mainland until the end of May, when the fighting between the Pisans, Genoese and Venetians ceased and the king obtained the necessary ships for the journey to Egypt. The long and unforeseen stay on the island had serious consequences. military: Cypriot hospitality relaxed discipline and its length almost completely wiped out the supplies that had been prepared to sustain the army in Egypt. others of smaller size, although when the fleet sailed at the end of the month, a storm disrupted it, and only a quarter of the troops accompanied Louis. The rest gradually joined this group on the Egyptian coast.

Conquest of Damietta

As in the Fifth Crusade, the attack would first focus on the city of Damietta, which offered little resistance to the Europeans. The Crusaders reached the Egyptian shores on June 5, 1249 and conquered Damietta the following day, poorly defended by its Kurdish and Arab garrison. The first clash, which took place on the beaches, had, on the contrary, been fierce and had opted in favor of the crusaders for the discipline of the French troops, led by the king, and the bravery of the knights of the Levant. The head of the Ayyubid army, the elderly vizier Fajr ad-Din, had evacuated the city to the panic of the population and the discouragement of the garrison.As the garrison did not burn the pontoons that allowed access to the town as ordered, the Crusaders had no problem occupying it.

In April, the Egyptian sultan, al-Salih Ayyub, hastily returned from Syria and camped with his army at Mansoura, upon news of the approaching arrival of the Crusaders. By this time, al-Salih was seriously ill with tuberculosis, although for that reason he did not stop organizing the defense.

The floods of the Nile again intervened against the Westerners, forcing them to remain in the city until November 20. In September and October, the Nile reached its highest level, which would have complicated the Crusader advance if it had been Meanwhile, Louis transformed the conquered city, converting the mosque into a cathedral, assigning streets and markets to the Italian maritime republics, and dealing with the discouragement of the troops due to lack of action, the weather and the diseases that afflicted them. The king further rejected the dying sultan's proposal to exchange Damietta for Jerusalem. The Egyptians, for their part, increased their harassment of the crusaders, mounting attacks on soldiers moving away from the camp.​

However, when the enemy finally left Damietta for Cairo, they immediately suffered a serious setback: on 22 November the sultan died. The heir was away in al-Jazeera, and a junta seized power while that arrived in the region. Meanwhile, the junta decided to hide the death of the sultan.

On October 24, when the receding waters of the Nile were finally going to allow the Crusaders to advance, Alfonso de Poitou —the king's brother— arrived with reinforcements from France. Duke Pedro of Brittany, supported by the barons of Levant, proposed to conquer Alexandria to seize Egypt's Mediterranean coastline and force the sultan to agree, but Robert of Artois vehemently opposed this plan and the king ultimately chose to support his brother.

Advance towards Cairo, defeat and captivity

On November 20, Louis marched on Cairo, leaving a large garrison to protect Damietta. As the waters of the Nile were slow to recede and the terrain was riddled with canals and ditches, progress was slow. The Bedouins further harassed the hosts of the French king. Sultan al-Salih died on the 23rd. The Egyptian cavalry harassed the forces of King Louis, but could not stop them; on the 7th a battle favorable to the Crusaders was fought near Fariskur and on the 14th they reached Baramun. The bulk of the Egyptian forces remained at all times south of the main channel in the area, the Bahr as-Saghir, which it joins the great river with Lake Manzala.

On December 21, the crusaders had barely traveled a third of the distance from Damietta to Cairo and had reached the city of El Mansoura, although they were separated from it by the Ashmun canal (another name for the Bahr al-Saghir).). The Egyptian army, encamped around the fortified city, guarded the fords. The Franks repulsed an Egyptian attempt to attack them from the rear, but failed to build a dike across the canal due to continual harassment from the Egyptians. enemy, who used Greek fire.

On the night of February 7, 1250, however, a Crusader group led by the French king's brother, Robert I of Artois, managed to cross the canal at one of the fords worst defended by the Egyptians, near Salamun. Coptic of this locality had revealed to the crusaders its existence in exchange for a reward. The Duke of Burgundy remained guarding the camp while the king left to cross the channel. The vanguard of this column, composed of Robert's soldiers, the Templars and the English contingent that participated in the company, was commanded by his brother Roberto, who had orders not to attack the enemy without permission from the king.

Fearing discovery and despite admonitions from the Templars, who reminded him of his orders, Robert decided to immediately storm the unsuspecting enemy camp. The Crusaders fell by surprise on the Egyptian troops and killed the army chief, Fajr al- Din ibn al-Shaij and, without waiting for the arrival of reinforcements, rushed towards El Mansurá. Until then, luck had favored the count, who continued to disregard the advice in favor of prudence from the Templar and English leaders. The Crusaders managed to enter the city with ease, but once inside, the Bahri Mamelukes improvised a defense in the alleys; a large part of the crusaders, including the brother of the French sovereign, perished in these combats.Of the two hundred and ninety Templar knights that accompanied Roberto, only five survived the fray in the streets of El Mansurá.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the Crusader army also reached the south bank of the Nile, but found itself in a delicate situation: unable to take El Mansurá, it suffered supply problems due to the harassment that the Egyptian ships inflicted on its communications with the Crusader rearguard at Damietta. Louis managed to repulse the Egyptian assaults in a fierce battle and build a pontoon bridge to ease his last forces across the canal, but not take the city. By this time the Egyptian army had fully recovered from the surprise, and he faced the hosts of Luis in a battle of uncertain outcome on February 11.It was one of the fiercest fighting in the region at the time, and Louis had difficulty repelling the Egyptian onslaught, which included new forces from the south.

At the end of February, the new sultan, Turan Shah, arrived in Egypt and seized power, although by then the victory was attributed to the Bahri mamluks. Turan Shah ordered the construction of a flotilla to intercept the supplies that from Damietta they received the crusaders encamped in front of El Mansurá. The maneuver bore fruit: the Egyptians captured eighty enemy ships, thirty-two of them on March 16 alone. a crisis due to the death of the old sultan and maintained the siege for eight weeks.

On 5 April, the French monarch decided to order a retreat to Damietta. His forces had been decimated by famine, dysentery, and typhus. Belatedly, the king made up his mind to accept the late al-Salih's offer. which he had previously refused, but by then the Egyptians, aware of the enemy's weakness, refused. The king was ill and could not prevent one of his sergeants from giving the order to capitulate, almost as the enemy seized the flotilla carrying the wounded downstream.Louis and the bulk of his troops were taken captive. The king fell ill with dysentery. The two sides immediately began negotiations for the Crusaders to obtain their freedom in exchange for handing over Damietta and paying a heavy ransom. those poorer. Given their abundance and by order of the sultan, three hundred prisoners were beheaded for a week, to reduce their number. Levante, because they depended on his son Conrado.But Luis had to agree to pay a million bezantes and return Damieta on April 30 to regain his freedom. They had to convince the Italian representatives not to abandon Damietta, which she could not keep on her own, so that she could be used as a bargaining chip with the Egyptians.

On 2 May, the Bahri mamluks assassinated the sultan and part of the Egyptian army demanded that the crossed captives be handed over to arms. However, it was finally agreed that they be released in exchange for a ransom of one million dinars. and of Damietta's surrender. The original ransom was later reduced to four hundred thousand Tournese pounds, and Damietta surrendered to Egyptian units on the 6th. On the 7th of the month, Louis and the rest of his troops left Egypt, heading for Acre, capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (of what was left of it). After six days of crossing in inclement weather, they arrived at the city. The wounded that remained in Damietta since the Egyptians had promised to respect, were put to the weapons.

Final and return to France

Arrived in Acre, he consulted with the gentlemen who accompanied him about the advisability of continuing in the Holy Land or returning to France, from where his mother claimed him and disturbing news of English activity arrived. Finally, he decided to remain in the Levant, which he had lost much of his military forces in the disastrous Egyptian campaign. Most of the nobles who had come to the crusade, including the king's brothers, returned to Europe in mid-July. Only about a thousand remained with the French monarch. four hundred soldiers.In the absence of King Conrad, the death of the regent Alicia and the inclination to cede power to Luis of the new regent - Juan de Arsuf, brother of the king of Cyprus -, the French sovereign took over the government of the territory.

Louis's military weakness combined with the bitter Egyptian experience and the rivalry between the Egyptian Mamluks and the Syrian Ayyubids to impose a more moderate attitude towards diplomacy than military intervention in the affairs of the region. An-Nasir Yusuf, great-grandson of Saladin and lord of Homs and Aleppo, seized Damascus on July 9 and tried in vain to ally himself with the French king. As the failure of the Syrian invasion of Egypt in the winter of 1250–1251 led to After the Damascene sultan tried again to arrange with Louis, he used these contacts to obtain better terms from the Egyptian Mamluks, who were concerned.The French sovereign managed to get the Egyptians to release all the captives—more than three thousand—and promise to hand over the territories to the Jordan in exchange for three hundred Muslim prisoners and the alliance against the Ayyubids of Damascus. The last captives were released in March 1252.

The league between the Franks and the Mamluks, however, was of no consequence. The Damascenes sent forces to Gaza to prevent the union of the allied, and the Egyptians made no attempt to march north to join Louis. The latter, who had repaired the defenses of Caesarea, Haifa and Acre, he also renovated that of Jafa, where he stationed a contingent awaiting the arrival of the Egyptians from the south. Finally peace between the Egyptians and the Syrians, obtained through the mediation of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad and signed in April 1253, it ended the futile Franco-Mamluk alliance. In its retreat from Gaza to Damascus, the Syrian army plundered the countryside of the Jerusalemite kingdom and the city of Sidon, whose defenses were being rebuilt.Louis unsuccessfully counterattacked in Syrian territory.

At the same time, the French king devoted himself to trying to resolve the numerous quarrels that weakened the lordships of the Levant and to put his government in order. He handed over the government of the Principality of Antioch to Bohemond VI of Antioch, from whom he separated his mother Lucia of Segni in exchange for certain payments. He also paved the reconciliation between the court of Antioch and the Kingdom of Cilicia. The Armenians of this collaborated since then in the protection of Antioch.

Meanwhile, all hope of receiving reinforcements from Europe faded. The king of England had promised in 1250 to launch a new crusade, but he tried to delay it as much as possible. The French nobles criticized the pope, immersed in his conflict with the German emperor, but they did not send aid to Louis. The queen regent crushed a popular movement that had been sparked by news of Louis's defeat in Egypt and had become dangerous because of the disorders it caused. Deprived of European support, Louis strengthened ties with the Syrian assassins. At the same time and paradoxically since they were the main enemies of these, he tried to establish an alliance with the Mongols, to whom he sent two Dominican ambassadors.

The serious situation in France, exacerbated after the death of the regent Blanca de Castilla, forced Luis to return to his kingdom. Henry III of England maintained a hostile attitude and forgot his promises of crusade, the county of Flanders was plunged into a civil war and the king's vassals were more unruly every day. On April 24, 1254, he sailed from Acre and, after various incidents, reached France in July.

Although he strengthened the kingdom's defenses, the military losses of the crusade led by Louis weakened it. Shortly after his departure, a civil war broke out due mainly to the rivalry between the Italian republics in which the Levantine lords were involved.

With the return of the king to his lands, the crusade ended in failure for the Europeans, however the prestige of Luis increased. He would later star in a new attempt to retake the Holy Land (Eighth Crusade) that would also end in failure.