The Fifth Crusade and the Siege of Damietta

I. Quia maior and the Fourth Lateran Council

After the failure of the Fourth Crusade to reach the Holy Land, Innocent III resolved to launch a new expedition under firmer papal control. In April 1213 he issued the bull Quia maior, which called for a general crusade and announced a council of the whole church. The bull made several innovations. It allowed anyone to take the cross, including those unfit to fight, who could then redeem the vow for money. It suspended the indulgences granted for crusades in Spain and southern France in favour of the eastern expedition. It ordered monthly processions and prayers throughout Christendom for the recovery of the Holy Land.

The Fourth Lateran Council, which met in Rome in November 1215 with over 400 bishops and 800 abbots and priors, was the largest council of the medieval church. Among its decrees was Ad liberandam, which set the departure of the crusade for 1 June 1217 from Brindisi and Messina, imposed a tax of a twentieth on clerical income for three years, forbade trade in arms and ships with Muslims, and declared a four-year peace among Christians. The same council imposed distinctive dress on Jews and Muslims living in Christian lands, defined the doctrine of transubstantiation, and required annual confession.

Innocent died in July 1216 at Perugia, before the crusade set out. His successor, Honorius III, an elderly and conscientious administrator, continued the preparations.

II. Preaching the Cross

The preaching of the Fifth Crusade was organised with unprecedented care. Innocent appointed teams of preachers for each province, and their sermons were supported by manuals and model sermons. In Germany Oliver, scholasticus of Cologne, who later wrote a history of the crusade, preached in the Low Countries and Frisia. In France the preaching was led by Robert of Courson, a cardinal and theologian, whose indiscriminate granting of the cross to women, the old and the sick caused complaints from the French nobility.

James of Vitry, a famous preacher who became bishop of Acre in 1216, preached in the west and in the east. His letters from the crusade army and his sermons to crusaders survive, and they show how the crusade was presented to the laity as a penitential pilgrimage that could win forgiveness of sins. His sermons stressed the sufferings of Christ and the obligation of Christians to avenge the injury done to him by the loss of the Holy Land.

The response was considerable, especially in Germany, the Low Countries, Hungary and Italy. The French and English nobility, involved in their own wars and in the Albigensian Crusade, contributed less.

III. The Hungarian Expedition

The first contingents to reach the east were led by King Andrew II of Hungary, who had long postponed a crusading vow inherited from his father, and Duke Leopold VI of Austria. They arrived in Acre in the autumn of 1217 together with King Hugh I of Cyprus. With John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, they made raids into Muslim territory, including an expedition to the Jordan valley and an unsuccessful attack on the fortress that the Ayyubids had built on Mount Tabor.

The campaign achieved little. Andrew, in poor health, returned home in January 1218, travelling overland through Armenia and Anatolia, and he was criticised for abandoning the crusade. His departure removed the largest contingent. Hugh of Cyprus died at Tripoli in the same month. The remaining crusaders, reinforced by Frisian and German fleets which arrived in the spring of 1218, decided to adopt the strategy that had been planned in 1201, an attack on Egypt.

IV. Why Egypt

The strategic reasoning was sound. Egypt was the wealthiest province of the Ayyubid state and the base of its fleet. Jerusalem itself was unwalled, since the Ayyubid ruler of Damascus, al-Mu'azzam, had dismantled its fortifications in 1219 for fear that the crusaders would take it and hold it. Even if Jerusalem could be recovered, it could not be held without control of the surrounding territory. The leaders reasoned that if Egypt could be conquered or seriously threatened, the sultan would be forced to surrender Jerusalem.

Damietta, at the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile, was the key to Egypt from the sea. It was a strongly fortified city with a triple wall on the land side and the river on the other, protected by a tower on an island in the river, from which a great chain was stretched across the stream to block ships. The army sailed from Acre in May 1218 and landed on the west bank of the Nile opposite Damietta.

V. The Chain Tower

The first task was to take the Chain Tower, which prevented the fleet from moving upriver. Several assaults failed. The solution was devised by Oliver of Cologne, who designed a siege tower mounted on two ships lashed together, covered with skins to protect it against Greek fire, with a scaling ladder that could be lowered onto the battlements. The cost was borne by the Germans and Frisians.

On 24 August 1218 the floating tower was brought against the Chain Tower. After a long fight, in which the ladder caught fire and was extinguished, the crusaders gained the battlements and took the tower. The chain was broken and the fleet could pass. News of the loss is said to have hastened the death of the sultan al-Adil, Saladin's brother, who died at the end of August. His son al-Kamil succeeded in Egypt, while another son, al-Mu'azzam, ruled Damascus.

VI. The Arrival of Pelagius

In September 1218 reinforcements arrived from the west, including the papal legate Cardinal Pelagius of Albano, a Spanish canonist. Pelagius claimed authority over the whole army as the representative of the pope. He clashed repeatedly with John of Brienne, who had been accepted as commander. The conflict between the legate and the king, between clerical and lay leadership, was to have serious consequences.

The winter of 1218–1219 was harsh. A great flood of the Nile in November swamped the crusader camp, destroying supplies and drowning horses. An epidemic, perhaps scurvy, killed many, including the Cardinal Robert of Courson. Al-Kamil's forces held the east bank, preventing the crusaders from crossing. In February 1219, however, a conspiracy against al-Kamil in his own camp caused him to withdraw, and the crusaders crossed the Nile and surrounded Damietta.

VII. The Siege of Damietta

The siege of Damietta lasted from February to November 1219. Al-Kamil, joined by his brother al-Mu'azzam, attacked the crusader camp repeatedly, and in July and August there were fierce battles on the ramparts. On 29 August 1219 the crusaders made an ill-advised attack on the Egyptian camp and were routed with heavy losses. Inside the city, famine and disease killed most of the population.

On 5 November 1219 the crusaders entered Damietta, finding only a few thousand survivors among the dead, who lay unburied in the streets and houses. Oliver of Cologne described the stench and the horror. The survivors were enslaved or ransomed, and the children were baptised. Pelagius and John disputed control of the city until John's claim was set aside in favour of the church. The plunder was divided amid accusations of concealment.

VIII. The Offer of Jerusalem

During the siege al-Kamil had made a remarkable offer. In return for the withdrawal of the crusaders from Egypt, he would surrender Jerusalem and most of the former kingdom of Jerusalem west of the Jordan, except for the castles of Kerak and Montreal in Transjordan, for which he would pay a tribute. He also offered to return the True Cross captured at Hattin.

The offer split the army. John of Brienne, the barons of the kingdom and the Teutonic Knights favoured accepting it, since it would achieve the purpose of the crusade without further bloodshed. Pelagius, the Templars, the Hospitallers and the Italians opposed it. The military orders argued that Jerusalem could not be defended without the castles of Transjordan, which controlled the route from Egypt to Syria. Pelagius believed that the conquest of Egypt was within reach, and he expected Frederick II to arrive with a large army. The offer was rejected, and a similar offer was rejected again after the fall of Damietta.

IX. Francis of Assisi and al-Kamil

In the summer of 1219 Francis of Assisi arrived in the crusader camp. He had already tried twice to travel to Muslim lands. According to James of Vitry, who was in the camp, Francis preached to the crusaders and then crossed the lines to the Egyptian camp with a companion, Illuminato. He was taken to the sultan, to whom he preached for several days. Al-Kamil heard him courteously and sent him back unharmed, asking him to pray that God would show him the faith most pleasing to him.

Later Franciscan accounts embellished the story, adding that Francis offered to walk through fire to prove the truth of his faith. Modern historians have debated what Francis intended. Some have seen the visit as a peace mission and a protest against the crusade, others as an attempt to convert the sultan or to win martyrdom. James of Vitry recorded that Francis warned the crusaders against attacking on 29 August, and they were defeated.

The episode is significant as an example of an attempt to approach Muslims with preaching rather than the sword. Jesus told his followers to make disciples of people of all the nations by teaching them (Matthew 28:19-20), and Paul wrote that the weapons of the Christian warfare are not fleshly (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

X. The Prophecies

During the long wait at Damietta, the army was encouraged by prophecies. A book in Arabic, said to be an ancient prophecy, predicted the conquest of Egypt and the fall of Islam. Another prophecy foretold the coming of a king from the east who would help the Christians. Reports reached the camp of a Christian king called David, said to be a descendant of the legendary Prester John, who was conquering the Muslim lands in Persia. In reality the reports were a distorted account of the conquests of Genghis Khan and the Mongols, who were destroying the Khwarazmian empire of Persia and Central Asia.

These prophecies strengthened Pelagius in his refusal of al-Kamil's offers and his determination to advance. They also illustrate the readiness of the crusaders to interpret events through apocalyptic speculation. Jesus warned his disciples that it did not belong to them to know the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction (Acts 1:6-7), and he warned against those who would say that the time is near (Luke 21:8).

XI. Waiting for Frederick

For eighteen months after the fall of Damietta, the crusade remained in the city. Frederick II, who had taken the cross at his coronation as king of Germany at Aachen in 1215, repeatedly postponed his departure. He sent troops under Duke Louis of Bavaria, who arrived in May 1221, with the message that the emperor himself would soon follow. John of Brienne left Damietta in 1220 to defend his kingdom against al-Mu'azzam and returned only in July 1221.

During this time the Ayyubid princes strengthened their position. Al-Kamil built a new camp at the point where the Nile divides south of Damietta, which became the city of al-Mansura, and he gathered troops from Syria. Many crusaders, their vows fulfilled, went home. The army that remained was weakened by sickness and quarrels, and its leaders were unable to agree on a strategy.

XII. The Advance on Cairo

In July 1221, against the advice of John of Brienne, Pelagius ordered an advance up the Nile towards Cairo. The army of perhaps 5,000 knights and many foot soldiers, accompanied by a fleet on the river, moved south and camped opposite al-Mansura, across a branch of the Nile. It was the season of the rising Nile.

Al-Kamil's forces then opened the sluices of the irrigation canals and flooded the land behind the crusader camp, while his ships cut off the crusader fleet. The crusaders tried to retreat on the night of 26 August, but they were trapped between the flooded fields and the Egyptian army. Their supplies were lost, and many men and horses drowned in the mud. On 28 August Pelagius was forced to ask for terms.

XIII. The Treaty of 1221

The terms were generous. The crusaders were allowed to withdraw in return for the surrender of Damietta and an eight-year truce. Prisoners would be exchanged, and al-Kamil again promised to return the True Cross, though it was never handed over. John of Brienne and other leaders were held as hostages until Damietta was surrendered. Ayyubid troops entered Damietta on 8 September 1221. A fleet sent by Frederick II arrived just in time to learn of the surrender.

The chroniclers record that al-Kamil fed the starving crusaders for several days, a gesture that impressed Oliver of Cologne, who wrote that the sultan had shown mercy to his enemies. The crusade had lasted four years and cost thousands of lives, and it had ended with nothing gained.

XIV. The Recriminations

The failure of the crusade led to bitter recriminations. Pelagius was blamed by many for rejecting al-Kamil's offers and for the advance on Cairo, while others blamed Frederick II for his failure to appear. Honorius III blamed Frederick and pressed him to fulfil his vow, which led to the Crusade of Frederick II and to Frederick's acquisition of Jerusalem by treaty in 1229, the very thing that al-Kamil had offered ten years before.

Troubadour poets and critics of the papacy attacked the leadership of clergy in war. The Provençal poet Guillem Figueira, in a poem against Rome, accused the papacy of having lost Damietta through bad leadership. The failure contributed to a growing scepticism about crusading among some sections of western society.

XV. The Military Orders at Damietta

The Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights played a major role in the crusade. The Teutonic Order, founded at Acre in 1190, received important grants for its services at Damietta and rose to prominence under its master Hermann of Salza, who became a trusted adviser of Frederick II. The Templars began the building of their great castle at Athlit, south of Haifa, known as Castle Pilgrim, during the crusade, using the labour of pilgrims. The orders were among those who opposed the acceptance of al-Kamil's offer, a decision based on military judgement that proved disastrous. The site's page on the Crusader States and Military Orders describes them further.

XVI. The Jews of Egypt

The Jewish communities of Egypt, documented in the records of the Cairo Genizah, lived through the crusade. Damietta had a Jewish community, and letters in the Genizah mention the fear caused by the crusader attack and the ransom of captives. The Ayyubid period was a time of relative stability for Egyptian Jews, and the descendants of Maimonides, who had died in 1204, led the community. His son Abraham Maimonides was head of the Jews of Egypt during the crusade. The site's page on the Jews of Cairo describes the community.

XVII. Clerical Leadership in War

The Fifth Crusade is often cited as an example of the dangers of clerical leadership in war. Pelagius was not a soldier, and he made decisions that experienced commanders opposed. But the problem ran deeper. The idea that clergy should direct armies and that warfare could be a form of penance had no basis in the teaching of Jesus, who told Pilate that his kingdom was no part of this world, otherwise his attendants would have fought (John 18:36). When Peter struck the slave of the high priest, Jesus told him to return his sword to its place (Matthew 26:52).

XVIII. Assessment

The Fifth Crusade was the most carefully planned of all the crusades, and it came closer than any other between the Third and the Sixth to achieving a major success. Twice it was offered Jerusalem, and twice it refused. Its failure was the result of divided leadership, overconfidence and reliance on prophecies and the expectation of help that never arrived. Yet al-Kamil's willingness to exchange Jerusalem for Damietta shows that the Ayyubids regarded the city as negotiable, a fact that Frederick II would exploit.

The crusade also showed the growing scale of papal organisation of crusading, the financing through clerical taxes, the redemption of vows for money and the systematic preaching, which would be applied to later crusades in the east and against the papacy's enemies in Europe.

XIX. The Ayyubid Family

The Ayyubid state founded by Saladin was not a single kingdom but a family confederation. On Saladin's death in 1193 his lands were divided among his sons and his brother al-Adil, who over the next decade made himself supreme, ruling as sultan from Cairo while his sons governed Damascus, Mesopotamia and other provinces. The system depended on the authority of the senior member of the family, and when al-Adil died in 1218 in the middle of the crusade, his sons al-Kamil in Egypt, al-Mu'azzam in Damascus and al-Ashraf in the Jazira were left to cooperate or compete.

The crusade tested this cooperation. Al-Mu'azzam came to his brother's aid in Egypt and dismantled the walls of Jerusalem to deny the city to the crusaders, an act that caused despair among the Muslim population, many of whom left the city. Al-Ashraf was slow to send help because he was occupied with threats in the north. In 1221, however, the brothers united, and their combined forces defeated the crusaders. After the crusade the rivalry between al-Kamil and al-Mu'azzam resumed, and it was this rivalry that led al-Kamil to seek an alliance with Frederick II and to offer him Jerusalem.

XX. Oliver of Cologne

Oliver, scholasticus of the cathedral school of Cologne, later bishop of Paderborn and cardinal, was both a preacher of the crusade and one of its most important historians. He had preached the cross in the Low Countries, where his preaching was accompanied by reports of crosses seen in the sky. He travelled with the Frisian and German contingents, and he designed the floating siege tower that took the Chain Tower at Damietta.

His Historia Damiatina, written soon after the events, is the most detailed western account of the crusade. It combines careful observation of military events with a strong theological interpretation, in which the successes of the crusaders were signs of divine favour and their failures punishment for sin. After the crusade Oliver wrote letters to al-Kamil and to the scholars of Egypt, arguing for the truth of Christianity and urging the sultan to convert. He praised al-Kamil's treatment of the defeated army as an example of mercy that put Christians to shame.

XXI. James of Vitry and the East

James of Vitry was a canon regular and a famous preacher who became bishop of Acre in 1216. His letters from Acre and Damietta are a valuable source for the crusade and for life in the crusader states. He was dismayed by the moral condition of the Latin population of Acre, which he described as corrupt and worldly, and by the variety of Christian communities in the east, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians and Maronites, whom he described in his Historia Orientalis.

James also gave an early account of the Franciscans and of the Beguines of the Low Countries, whose piety he admired. He preached to Muslims and claimed to have baptised Muslim children captured at Damietta. His writings reveal both the zeal of the crusade movement and its inability to understand the people of the east. He later resigned his see, became a cardinal and died in Rome in 1240.

XXII. The Frisians

The Frisians from the coastal lands of the northern Netherlands and Germany formed one of the most important contingents of the Fifth Crusade. They sailed in 1217 with a fleet of some eighty ships, stopping in Portugal, where they and other northern crusaders helped the Portuguese besiege and take the Muslim fortress of Alcácer do Sal, linking the crusade in the east with the Reconquista. They arrived at Acre in the spring of 1218.

The Frisians were free peasants and seafarers without great lords, and they were noted for their discipline and fierce fighting. They played a large role at the Chain Tower and in the siege of Damietta. But many of them, having fulfilled their vows, went home in 1219, as was the custom of crusaders who had served a set term. The constant coming and going of contingents meant that the army's strength fluctuated, which made long-term planning difficult.

XXIII. Money and the Redemption of Vows

The Fifth Crusade was financed on a scale never seen before. The clerical twentieth imposed by the Fourth Lateran Council produced large sums, collected by papal agents and transferred through the Templars and Italian bankers. Alms boxes were placed in churches throughout Christendom, and legacies were left for the crusade. Those who took the cross but could not go could redeem their vows by payment.

The system of redemption, which Innocent intended as a means of turning the enthusiasm of the unfit into useful money, later developed into the sale of indulgences that was so strongly criticised in the later Middle Ages. Critics complained that preachers sold the cross for money. The financing of war through spiritual rewards was far removed from the example of the apostles. When Simon of Samaria tried to buy the gift of the holy spirit, Peter told him that his silver should perish with him, because he thought to obtain the free gift of God through money (Acts 8:18-20).

XXIV. The Fall of the City and its People

The condition of Damietta when the crusaders entered it shocked even hardened soldiers. Of a population that the chroniclers estimated at tens of thousands, perhaps only three thousand remained alive, many of them sick. Oliver wrote that the dead were lying in the houses and streets, and that the living were too weak to bury them. Some of the survivors were sold as slaves, some held for ransom, and some of the children were given to the clergy for baptism.

The mosque was turned into a cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the city was divided among the national groups in the army. The Ayyubid world was shaken by the loss, and the poets of the time lamented it. The people of Damietta were Muslims, Christians and Jews, and the Coptic Christians of Egypt suffered both from the crusaders and from Muslim suspicion that they had collaborated with the invaders. The crusade worsened the position of the Copts, who were subjected to fines and restrictions by the Ayyubid authorities.

XXV. The Copts and the Crusade

The native Christians of Egypt, the Copts, belonged to a church which had separated from the Greek and Latin churches after the Council of Chalcedon in 451. They were a large minority in Egypt, often employed in the administration. The crusaders regarded them as heretics and made no distinction between them and the Muslims when Damietta was sacked. At the same time, the Ayyubid government suspected the Copts of sympathy with the crusaders, and they were heavily taxed to pay for the war.

The Coptic History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria records the sufferings of the Copts during the crusade, including the destruction of churches in Cairo by Muslim mobs and the imprisonment of Copts suspected of treachery. The experience shows how the crusades harmed the Christians of the east, who were caught between the invaders and their own rulers.

XXVI. Logistics on the Nile

The Nile shaped every stage of the campaign. Its annual flood, which reached its height in August and September, governed the agriculture of Egypt and made military movement difficult in late summer. The crusaders, unfamiliar with the river, were caught by the flood of 1218 and again, disastrously, in 1221. The Ayyubids understood the river perfectly and used its canals and sluices as weapons.

The crusade army depended on supplies brought from Acre and Cyprus by sea, and on the river for movement. Its ships were unsuited to the shallow channels of the delta, while the Egyptian galleys could move freely. When al-Kamil's ships entered the Mahalla canal and cut off the crusader fleet in 1221, the army was trapped. The leaders of the crusade had underestimated the difficulty of operating in a country so different from Syria and Europe, a mistake that Louis IX would repeat in 1250 on the same ground.

XXVII. The Mongol Rumours

The reports of King David that reached Damietta in 1221 reflected the first news in the west of the Mongols. Genghis Khan's armies had destroyed the Khwarazmian empire in 1219–1221, and a Mongol force raided Georgia and the Caucasus in 1221–1222. Eastern Christians, including the Nestorians, had spread through Central Asia, and some Mongol tribes included Christians. Western Christians, who had long believed in a Christian priest-king named Prester John ruling somewhere in Asia, interpreted the news as evidence that Prester John's descendant was coming to their aid.

The truth was very different. The Mongols were to invade Eastern Europe in 1241, devastating Poland and Hungary. The hope of a Mongol alliance against Islam persisted in the west for decades and influenced crusading strategy, but the Mongols had their own aims.

XXVIII. John of Brienne

John of Brienne was a younger son of a family from Champagne who had made a career as a knight and was chosen in 1210, at the age of about forty, to marry Maria, the heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem. After her death in 1212 he ruled as regent for their infant daughter Isabella II. He was an experienced soldier and the natural commander of the crusade, but as regent rather than king in his own right, and as a man of modest origins, his authority was limited.

His quarrel with Pelagius came to a head over control of Damietta. John claimed the city for the kingdom of Jerusalem, while Pelagius claimed it for the church and for the crusade as a whole. John left the army in 1220, partly to pursue a claim to the throne of Armenia through his second wife. He returned in time to share in the disaster of 1221, which he had warned against. In 1225 his daughter Isabella married Frederick II, who immediately took the title of king of Jerusalem from his father-in-law. John later became co-emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which he defended against the Greeks and Bulgarians until his death in 1237.

XXIX. Pelagius of Albano

Pelagius Galvani was a Spanish cardinal, probably from León, trained in canon law. Before the crusade he had served as papal legate in Constantinople, where he had tried to force the Greek clergy to accept Latin rites and had closed Greek churches, provoking such resistance that the Latin emperor Henry had to intervene. His conduct at Damietta showed the same uncompromising temperament.

Historians have been divided in their judgement of him. Older accounts made him the villain of the crusade, an arrogant cleric whose interference led to disaster. More recent historians, notably James Powell, have argued that he had good reasons for his decisions, that the military orders supported his rejection of al-Kamil's offers, and that the advance of 1221 was undertaken in expectation of Frederick's arrival. Nevertheless, the final decisions were his, and he bore the responsibility for them. He returned to Rome and died in 1230.

XXX. The Children's Crusade

The enthusiasm that preceded the Fifth Crusade had an earlier and stranger expression. In 1212 groups of young people and poor peasants in the Rhineland and northern France set out to recover Jerusalem, led by a boy named Nicholas from Cologne and a shepherd named Stephen of Cloyes. Many believed that the sea would part for them. The German group crossed the Alps to Italy, where it dispersed at Genoa and elsewhere, and many never returned home. Later legends added that some were sold into slavery. Innocent III is said to have remarked that these young people put the leaders of Christendom to shame. The movement showed how deeply the crusade had entered popular piety, and it helped prompt the pope's call of 1213.

XXXI. Chronology

In April 1213 Innocent III issued Quia maior. In November 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council met, and in July 1216 Innocent died. In the autumn of 1217 Andrew II reached Acre, and he left in January 1218. In May 1218 the army landed at Damietta. On 24 August 1218 the Chain Tower fell, and in August 1218 al-Adil died. In September 1218 Pelagius arrived. In February 1219 the crusaders crossed the Nile. In the summer of 1219 Francis visited al-Kamil. On 29 August 1219 an attack on the Egyptian camp failed. On 5 November 1219 Damietta fell.

In 1220 John of Brienne left Damietta. In May 1221 Louis of Bavaria arrived. In July 1221 the army advanced on Cairo. On 26–28 August 1221 the army was trapped by the flood and surrendered. On 8 September 1221 Damietta was handed over.

XXXII. Bibliography

The following studies, editions and reference works underlie this account.