sea, which was up to his arm-pits, and went, shield on neck, helm on
head, and lance in hand, and joined his people on the sea-shore. When he
came to land, and perceived the Saracens, he asked what folk they were,
and it was told him that they were the Saracens; then he put his lance
beneath his arm and his shield in front of him, and would have charged
the Saracens, if his mighty men, who were with him, had suffered him.

This, from his very first outset, was Louis exactly, the most fervent of
Christians and the most splendid of knights, much rather than a general
and a king.

Such he appeared at the moment of landing, and such he was during the
whole duration, and throughout all the incidents of his campaign in
Egypt, from June, 1249, to May, 1250: ever admirable for his moral
greatness and knightly valor, but without foresight or consecutive plan
as a leader, without efficiency as a commander in action, and ever
decided or biassed either by his own momentary impressions or the fancies
of his comrades. He took Damietta without the least difficulty. The
Mussulmans, stricken with surprise as much as terror, abandoned the
place; and when Fakr-Eddin, the commandant of the Turks, came before the
Sultan of Egypt, Malek-Saleh, who was ill, and almost dying, "Couldst
thou not have held out for at least an instant?" said the sultan.
"What! not a single one of you got slain!" Having become masters of
Damietta, St. Louis and the crusaders committed the same fault there as
in the Isle of Cyprus: they halted there for an indefinite time. They
were expecting fresh crusaders; and they spent the time of expectation in
quarrelling over the partition of the booty taken in the city. They made
away with it, they wasted it blindly. "The barons," said Joinville,
"took to giving grand banquets, with an excess of meats; and the people
of the common sort took up with bad women." Louis saw and deplored these