More problematic still was the issue of future strategy. The crusade had attacked Damietta as a means to an end, but intractable questions were now raised about the next step. Should the city be used as a bargaining chip to secure the return of the Holy Land on even more favourable terms than those already offered? Or might the Fifth Crusade consider a fully fledged assault on Egypt by marching up the Nile to crush al-Kamil and conquer Cairo?

To grasp victory

In an unprecedented feat of woeful indecision, the Fifth Crusade spent the next year and a half ensconced in Damietta considering these issues–ever haunted by the spectre of Frederick II’s promised arrival. John of Brienne left Egypt, in part to pursue a claim to the crown of Cilician Armenia following the death of King Leon I, but also to supervise Palestine’s defence against renewed attacks from al-Mu‘azzam. As the months passed, however, John began to face widespread criticism for his absence from the crusade.

Back in Damietta, Pelagius assumed control of the remaining Frankish armies and did his best to maintain order. It was around this time that the cardinal had a mysterious book in Arabic–supposedly shown to the crusaders by Syrian Christians–translated and read aloud to the host. The text was purportedly a collection of prophecies written in the ninth century, relating revelations from St Peter the Apostle. The book appeared to ‘predict’ the events of the Third Crusade, as well as the fall of Damietta. It also declared that the Fifth Crusade would be brought to victory under the leadership of ‘a great king from the West’. The whole episode might sound utterly fanciful, but Oliver of Paderborn and James of Vitry took the ‘predictions’ of this tome very seriously. Pelagius certainly used them to justify his continued refusal to negotiate with the Ayyubids and his determined patience in awaiting the advent of Frederick II.¹⁹

At last, on 22 November 1220, Pope Honorius III gave in to Frederick’s demands and anointed him as emperor of Germany. In return, Frederick renewed his crusading vow. The coming of spring in 1221, therefore, seemed to herald a new dawn for the Fifth Crusade. That May, the first wave of Hohenstaufen crusaders arrived under the command of Ludwig of Bavaria and, bolstered by these reinforcements, Pelagius finally made the decision to push south and attack al-Kamil’s now heavily fortified camp at Mansourah. Unfortunately for the Franks, the prosecution of this campaign was criminally inept. Even once the choice had been made, the Christians were slow to act, and the advance only began on 6 July 1221. The next day John of Brienne returned to Egypt and joined Pelagius’ and Ludwig’s force. A proportion of the crusader host was left to defend Damietta, but the Latins still mustered some 1,200 knights, around 4,000 archers and many other infantrymen. Their southward march down the east bank of the Nile was also shadowed by a sizeable Christian fleet.

The problem was that Pelagius had little knowledge of the terrain around Mansourah and seems to have been entirely ignorant of the Nile Delta’s hydrology. By contrast, al-Kamil had chosen the location of his new encampment with great care and foresight. Positioned just south of a junction between the Nile and a secondary tributary–the Tanis River–running to Lake Mansallah, the Ayyubid base was practically unassailable. In addition, any attacking army would find themselves penned between two watercourses. The annual Nile flood of August was also fast approaching. This meant that if the crusaders tarried, their assault might be blunted not by Muslim swords, but by the unstemmable waters of the great river.

It was perhaps with a view to engineering just such a delay that al-Kamil now renewed his offer of truce on the same terms advanced in 1219. The postponement of hostilities also served al-Kamil’s interests, because he was eagerly awaiting the arrival of reinforcements under both al-Ashraf and al-Mu‘azzam. But despite some debate–and warnings from the Templars and Hospitallers about the growing concentration of Ayyubid forces in Egypt–Pelagius again declined to negotiate and the crusaders pressed on. It is impossible to judge whether al-Kamil would have honoured any deal settled at this late stage.

By 24 July the Franks had reached the settlement of Sharamsah, just a few days from Mansourah. There they repulsed a Muslim attack and Christian morale seems to have been buoyant. But, because of the imminent flooding of the Nile, John of Brienne counselled an immediate withdrawal to Damietta. His advice was overruled by Pelagius, who now seems to have been convinced that the Latins could grasp victory. In fact, they were marching into a well-prepared trap.

Continuing south, the Franks ignored a small tributary entering the Nile from the west. This was a grave error. The seemingly innocuous ‘tributary’ was actually the Mahalla Canal, a watercourse that rejoined the Nile miles to the south of Mansourah. Once the crusaders’ army passed by with their fleet, al-Kamil sent a group of his own ships up the canal to enter the Nile and block any retreat, even sinking four vessels to ensure that the river was impassable. By 10 August the Christians had taken up a position in front of Mansourah, in the fork between the Nile and the Tanis. Around the same time, however, al-Ashraf and al-Mu‘azzam arrived in Egypt and moved their troops to the north-east, thus blocking any land retreat. Soon after, the Nile flood began.

The Fifth Crusaders’ position rapidly became untenable. With the swelling waters, their fleet proved impossible to control and overloaded ships began to sink. Some thought was given to making a fortified camp and waiting for reinforcement, but by the evening of 26 August the sheer desperation of the situation led to a sudden and chaotic retreat, with only the Templars in the rearguard holding discipline. At this point al-Kamil ordered the sluice gates used to moderate the Nile flood to be opened, inundating the fields and further isolating his enemy–the terrain became so muddy and waterlogged that the Franks were left wading up to their waists. After an agonising day spent trying to trudge their way north, Pelagius accepted the irretrievable reality of the Christian position and sued for terms of surrender on 28 August 1221.

Having twice been offered the Holy City of Jerusalem, the cardinal and his fellow crusaders now had to accept the humiliation of abject defeat. Al-Kamil treated the Franks with marked respect–keen to bring the whole sorry affair to a swift conclusion so that he could finally consolidate his hold over Egypt–but, nonetheless, he demanded the immediate return of Damietta and the release of all Muslim prisoners. The only concession was that the eight-year truce between Latin Christendom and the Ayyubids would not be extended to the newly anointed Emperor Frederick II. On 8 September, al-Kamil duly entered Damietta, reclaiming dominion of the Nile, and in the weeks that followed the Franks left Egypt empty-handed.

FREDERICK II’S CRUSADE

The crushing reversal of fortune suffered by the Fifth Crusaders sparked criticism across Latin Christendom in the early 1220s. Cardinal Pelagius stood accused of ineffectual and misguided leadership–to some his failures in Egypt proved the underlying folly of Innocent III’s idealised vision of a Church-directed crusade. John of Brienne was also censured for neglecting his role as a field commander and for allowing the crusade to languish immobile at Damietta through 1220 and beyond. But perhaps the most forceful attacks were levelled against Frederick II, the great emperor who never did arrive in North Africa, despite all his promises. Even in 1221 he again had delayed his departure–distracted by an outbreak of political unrest in Sicily–and by late summer, with the disaster on the Nile and the crusade’s end, the time for action had passed.²⁰