At last a start was made from Cyprus in May, 1249, and, in spite of violent gales of wind which dispersed a large number of vessels, they arrived on the 4th of June before Damietta.

The crusader-chiefs met on board the king’s ship, the Mountjoy; and one of those present, Guy, a knight in the train of the Count of Melun, in a letter to one of his friends; a student at Paris, reports to him the king’s address in the following terms:  “My friends and lieges, we shall be invincible if we be inseparable in brotherly love.  It was not without the will of God that we arrived here so speedily.  Descend we upon this land and occupy it in force.  I am not the King of France.  I am not Holy Church.  It is all ye who are King and Holy Church.  I am but a man whose life will pass away as that of any other man whenever it shall please God.  Any issue of our expedition is to usward good; if we be conquered we shall wing our way to heaven as martyrs; and if we be conquerors, men will celebrate the glory of the Lord; and that of France, and, what is more, that of Christendom, will grow thereby.  It were senseless to suppose that God, whose providence is over everything, raised me up for nought:  He will see in us His own, His mighty cause.  Fight we for Christ; it is Christ who will triumph in us, not for our own sake, but for the honor and blessedness of His name.”  It was determined to disembark the next day.  An army of Saracens lined the shore.  The galley which bore the oriflamme was one of the first to touch.  When the king heard tell that the banner of St. Denis was on shore, he, in spite of the pope’s legate, who was with him, would not leave it; he leaped into the 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