NOW let us declare that God Almighty was very gracious to us when He preserved us from death and danger at the time of our disembarkation, seeing that we landed on foot and attacked an enemy on horseback. Our Lord also showed us great grace in delivering Damietta into our hands, for otherwise we could only have taken it by reducing the enemy to starvation. This we can regard as certain, for it was in that very way that King Jean (of Jerusalem) had taken this city a little more than a generation before.
Our Lord, however, can say of us, as He said of the children of Israel - et pro nihilo habuerunt tenant desiderabilem.1 And what does He say afterwards? He says that they forgot God their Saviour. And so did we forget Him, as I shall shortly tell you.
But first of all I will tell you how King Louis summoned his barons and asked them to help him decide how the booty taken in the city should be divided. The Patriarch was the first to speak. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘I think it would be well for you to keep control of the wheat, the barley, and the rice, and whatever is needed to sustain life, so that you may keep the city supplied with food. I think too that you should have it proclaimed throughout the army that all other goods are to be brought to the legate’s quarters, under pain of excommunication.’ This proposal received general assent. It so happened, however, that the total value of the goods brought to the legate’s quarters amounted to no more than six thousand livres.
After everything had been collected, the king and the barons sent for Jean de Valery, who was known as a wise and worthy man. ‘My lord of Valery,’ said the king, ‘we are all agreed that the legate should hand over these six thousand livres to you for you to apportion them as you think best.’ ‘Your Majesty does me great honour,’ replied the good man, ‘and I thank you heartily. But, please God, I cannot accept that honour, nor can I carry out your wishes. For if I did I should be acting contrary to the good custom of the Holy Land, by which, whenever a city belonging to the enemy is captured the king takes a third of all the goods found in it, and the other Crusaders two thirds. This custom was duly respected by King Jean when he took Damietta, and also, as old chroniclers tell us, by all the kings of Jerusalem before his day. If then it pleases you to hand over to me the two-thirds of the wheat, the barley, the rice, and the other provisions, I shall gladly undertake to share them out among the Crusaders.’ The king, however, did not decide to do this, and so matters remained where they were; but many people were displeased that his Majesty had chosen to ignore such a good old custom.
The king’s men, who ought to have kept on good terms with the merchants by treating them generously, made them pay, so it was said, the highest rents they could exact from them for the shops in which they sold their goods. The report of this spread to other districts, and in consequence many merchants gave up the idea of bringing supplies to the camp. The barons, who should have kept their money so as to spend it to the best advantage at a proper time and place, took to giving great banquets at which an excessive amount of food was consumed. As for the main mass of the troops, they took to consorting with prostitutes, and because of this it happened that, after their return from captivity, the king discharged a great number of his people. When I asked him why he had done this, he told me that he had found out for certain that those he had discharged from his army had gathered for their debauches at a place no more than a short stone’s throw from his own pavilion, and that at a time when the army as a whole was suffering the greatest distress and misery it had ever known.
I will now return to my main subject, and tell you how, shortly after we had taken Damietta all the sultan’s horsemen assembled before the camp and attacked it from the landward side. The king and all his knights armed themselves. I, for my part, after putting on my armour, went to speak to the king, and found him fully armed and sitting on a chair, with the good knights of his own division, also in full panoply of war, around him. I asked him if he wished me and my men to go and stand outside the camp, so as to prevent the Saracens from damaging our tents. On hearing my question, Jean de Beaumont called out to me at the top of his voice and commanded me, in the king’s name, not to leave my quarters till his Majesty ordered me to do so.
I have just spoken of the worthy knights who were with the king. They were eight in number, all good men who had won rewards for gallant conduct in the field, both in their own country and oversea. The names of those in special attendance on the king were as follows: Geoffroy de Sargines, Mathieu de Marly, Philippe de Nanteuil, and Imbert de Beaujeu, Constable of France. The last-named of these was not present on that occasion. He was at the moment outside the camp, with the captain of the king’s crossbowmen, and most of the king’s sergeants-at-arms, keeping guard so that the Turks should not do our tents and equipment any damage.
During this time Gautier d’Autrèche had got himself armed at all points in his pavilion. After mounting his horse, with his shield at his neck and his helmet on his head, he had the flaps of his pavilion lifted, and struck spurs into his horse to ride against the Turks. As he was going out of his pavilion, alone and unattended, all his men raised a loud cry and shouted ‘Chatillon!’ But it so happened that before he reached the Turks he fell; his horse leapt over his body and went careering forward, still covered with its master’s arms, right into the midst of our enemies. This was because the Saracens, for the most part, were mounted on mares, and the stallion was consequently attracted to their side.
Those who watched the incident told us that four Turks came rushing towards my lord Gautier as he lay on the ground, and aimed great blows with their maces at his body as they went by. The Constable of France and several of the king’s sergeants went and rescued him, and carried him back in their arms to his pavilion. When he arrived there he could not speak. Several of the army surgeons and physicians went to see him, and because he did not seem to them to be in danger of dying they bled him in both arms.
Very late that night Aubert de Narcy said to me that we ought to go and look in on him, for as yet we had not seen him, and besides he was a man of high repute and great valour. As we entered his pavilion his chamberlain came forward to meet us and asked us to move quietly, so as not to wake his master. We found him lying on a coverlet of miniver; we went up to him very softly, and saw that he was dead. When the king was told of this he remarked that he would not care to have a thousand men like Gautier, for they would want to go against his orders as this knight had done.
The Saracens came every night into our camp on foot, and killed our men where they found them sleeping. In this way they killed my lord of Courtenay’s sentinel, and after cutting off his head and taking it away with them, left his body lying on a table. They acted thus because the sultan gave a gold bezant for every Christian man’s head.
We had to endure this persecution because our battalions, as they took their turn at guarding the camp each night, made their rounds on horseback. When the Saracens wished to enter the camp they would wait until the mounted battalions had rattled past, and then creep into the camp behind the horses. So the king gave orders that, instead of keeping guard on horseback as they had been doing, the battalions should in future carry out this duty on foot. In consequence the whole camp was safely guarded by our men, who were spread out in such a way that each man was within arm’s length of his neighbour.
After this arrangement had been made the king decided not to leave Damietta till his brother, the Comte de Poitiers, had arrived with the reserves of the French army. Meanwhile, to prevent the Saracens from charging on horseback into our camp, his Majesty had deep trenches dug all round it, and posted crossbowmen and sergeants on guard over them each night. A similar guard was stationed at the entrance to the camp.
When the feast of Saint Remigius had passed and no news had come of the Comte de Poitiers – a thing which greatly worried the king and all his army, for they feared he might have met with some disaster – I reminded the legate how the Dean of Maurupt, while we were at sea, had got us to go in procession on three successive Saturdays, and how before the third Saturday arrived we had landed in Cyprus. The legate paid attention to what I said, and had it proclaimed throughout the camp that there would be a procession on each of the three following Saturdays.
The first procession started from the legate’s quarters and went to the church of our Lady in the city. This had formerly been a Saracen mosque, but the legate had now dedicated it in honour of the Mother of our Lord. On two successive Saturdays the legate preached the sermon, in the presence of the king and the chief men in the army, to all of whom he granted full indulgences.
Before the third Saturday came round the Comte de Poitiers arrived. It would not in fact have been much use if he had tried to come any earlier, for in the interval between the three Saturdays such a violent tempest had raged at sea just outside Damietta that at least twelve score ships, both great and small, had gone to pieces and been lost, and all the people in them drowned. So if the Comte de Poitiers had come any sooner, he and his men would have perished in the sea.
As soon as the count arrived the king summoned all the barons of the army to decide in what direction he should go, whether to Alexandria or to Cairo. The good Comte Pierre de Bretagne, as well as the majority of the barons, agreed in advising him to go and besiege Alexandria, because that city had a good harbour, where the ships bringing food for the army could land their supplies. But the Comte d’Artois was of a contrary opinion, maintaining that he would never agree to their going anywhere except to Cairo, because it was the chief city in the kingdom of Egypt, and 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.