St. Louis IX Ransoms Christian Captives

I stood knee-deep in the silted water where the Nile met the ruined fields outside Mansurah, the iron at my ankles biting each time the guard jerked the line. Around me other brothers in white habits with the red-and-blue cross on the breast waited without speaking, their faces gray from three nights without sleep. The king had been taken at first light, and with him the Master of our order. We had come as his chaplains because he kept a house for us at Fontainebleau and wanted men who knew how to count coin for captives.

The Egyptian officers counted heads twice before they marched us inland. Louis walked ahead of the column, his tall frame bent only by the weight of the rope around his neck. He turned once and asked whether any of our number had been left behind. When the answer came back that none had, he nodded and kept moving. The sun climbed. Flies settled on the fresh cuts along our wrists.

By midday the camp sat on a stretch of higher ground above the river. Tents of striped cloth stood in rows. We were herded into an open space between two of them and told to sit. A man in a green turban came with a scribe and began writing names. When he reached me I gave the name of the house at Cerfroid and said we were bound by rule to set aside one part of every receipt for the release of Christians. He looked at the cross on my habit and wrote something longer.

That night the king sent for the Master. They spoke inside a smaller tent while guards watched the flap. I waited outside with two other brothers. Through the cloth I heard Louis ask how much the sultan’s men had named for the whole party. The Master answered that the figure stood near eight hundred thousand bezants for the king alone. Louis said the sum would be found and that the money already collected for our work must be used first for the common soldiers.

Three days passed in that place. Each morning the officers returned with new demands. They wanted horses, armor, and the names of every French knight still free in Damietta. Louis refused the last request. He told them the city would be given only after every captive walked out. The Master stood beside him during these talks and translated when the Arabic grew too quick. At noon on the fourth day an agreement was reached on paper. The king signed it with the seal he still wore at his belt.

Payment began the next morning. Chests came down from the French ships that had been allowed to approach under flag. Our brothers opened each one and counted the coins in the presence of both sides. One third of what arrived was set aside at once, as our rule required, and marked for any Christians still held along the coast. The rest went to the ransom of the army. Louis watched the weighing from a stool near the tent door. He did not speak until the last chest was closed.

By the sixth day the first groups of men were led away. Knights who had fought at the bridge crossed the lines in pairs, their faces blank from hunger. Foot soldiers followed, some limping, some carried. We gave water to those who could not stand. The Master stayed with the king until the final sum was paid. Only then did the guards remove the ropes from Louis’s wrists.

We left the camp at dusk. The road back to the river ran between lines of Egyptian archers who watched without lowering their bows. Louis walked in the middle of the column with the Master on one side and the Duke of Burgundy on the other. No one cheered. The only sound was the slap of bare feet in the mud and the occasional clink of a freed man’s chain falling away.

At the river the boats waited. Sailors helped the weakest aboard first. One of our English brothers, the same who had gone to Morocco years before and brought back one hundred eighty-six men, stood at the gangplank counting heads again. Louis waited until every name on the list had answered. Only then did he step onto the deck.