Joseph François Michaud - The History of the Crusades (Vol.1-3)

It was not long, however, before divisions arose between the general of Noureddin, who daily placed a more excessive price on his services, and the vizier, whom Chirkou accused of perfidy and ingratitude. Chaver desired in vain to send the Mussulmans back into Syria; they replied to him only by threats, and he was on the point of being besieged in Cairo by his own deliverers. All the Egyptians, particularly the people of the capital, were seized with trouble and consternation.

In the midst of so pressing a danger, the vizier Chaver placed his only hope in the Christian warriors, whose approach he had not long since so much dreaded. He made the king of Jerusalem the same promises that he had offered to Noureddin; and Amaury, who only wanted to enter Egypt, whatever might be the party that prevailed there, set out upon his march to defend Chaver with the very same army he had collected to fight against him. When arrived on the banks of the Nile, he united his troops with those of the vizier, and they sat down before the city of Bilbeis, into which Chirkou had retired. Noureddin’s general resisted during three months all the attacks of the Christians and Egyptians; and when the king of Jerusalem proposed peace to him, he demanded payment of the expenses of the war. After some negotiations, in which he displayed great haughtiness, he marched out of Bilbeis still threatening the Christians, and led back his army to Damascus, loaded with the spoils of his enemies.

Chirkou had beheld the riches of Egypt, and become acquainted with the weakness of its government; the first advice he offered to Noureddin, after his arrival, therefore, was to endeavour to unite this rich country to his own empire. The sultan of Syria sent ambassadors to the caliph of Bagdad, not to ask aid of him, but to give a religious colour to his enterprise. During several centuries, the caliphs of Bagdad and Cairo had been divided by an implacable hatred; each of them boasting of being the vicar of the Prophet, and considering his rival as the enemy of God. In the mosques of Bagdad, they cursed the caliphs of Egypt and their sectarians; in those of Cairo, they devoted to the infernal powers, the Abassides and their partisans.

The caliph of Bagdad did not hesitate to comply with the wishes of Noureddin. Whilst the sultan of Syria was solely occupied by his endeavours to extend his empire, the vicar of the Prophet was only ambitious to preside alone over the Mussulman religion. He commanded the Imans to preach a war against the Fatimites, and promised the delights of Paradise to all who should take up arms in the holy expedition. At the call of the caliph, a great number of faithful Mussulmans flocked to the standard of Noureddin, and Chirkou, by the order of the sultan, prepared to return into Egypt, at the head of a powerful army.

The fame of these preparations spread throughout the East, particularly in Egypt, where it created the most serious alarms. Amaury, who had returned to his own states, received ambassadors from Chaver, soliciting his help and alliance against the enterprise of Noureddin. The states of the kingdom of Jerusalem were assembled at Naplouse, and the king there exposed to them the advantages of another expedition into Egypt. An impost was levied to carry on a war from which the greatest hopes were entertained, and the Christian army soon set out from Gaza to fight with the troops of Noureddin on the banks of the Nile.

In the mean time Chirkou was crossing the desert, where he encountered the greatest dangers. A violent tempest surprised him on his march; all at once the heavens were darkened, and the earth, which was strewed with the prostrate Syrians, became like a stormy sea. Immense waves of sand were lifted by the winds, and rising into whirlwinds or forming moving mountains, scattered, bore away, or swallowed up men and horses. In this tempest the Syrian army abandoned its baggage and lost its provisions and arms, and when Chirkou arrived on the banks of the Nile, he had no means of defence left except the remembrance of his former victories. He took great care to conceal the losses he had experienced, and the wreck of an army dispersed by a fearful tempest proved sufficient to throw all the cities of Egypt into consternation.

The vizier Chaver, frightened at the approach of the Syrians, sent ambassadors to the Christians, to promise them immense riches, and press them to hasten their march. On his side, the king of Jerusalem deputed to the caliph of Egypt, Hugh of Cæsarea, and Foulcher, a knight of the Temple, to obtain the ratification of the treaty of alliance with the Egyptians. Amaury’s deputies were introduced into a palace in which no Christian had ever before been admitted. After having traversed several corridors filled with Moorish guards, and a vast number of apartments and courts in which glittered all the splendour of the East, they arrived in a hall, or rather a sanctuary, where the caliph awaited them, seated on a throne shining with gold and precious stones. Chaver, who conducted them, prostrated himself at the feet of his master, and supplicated him to accept the treaty of alliance with the king of Jerusalem. The prayer of the vizier was an imperious order, and the commander of the faithful, always docile to the will of the lowest of his slaves, made a sign of approbation, and stretched his uncovered hand out to the Christian deputies in presence of the officers of his court, whom so strange a spectacle filled with grief and surprise.

The army of the Franks was close to Cairo; but as the policy of Amaury was to lengthen the war, in order to prolong his stay in Egypt, he neglected opportunities of attacking the Syrians with advantage, and gave them time to recruit their strength. After having left them a long time in repose, he gave them battle in the isle of Maalle, and forced their intrenchments, but did not follow up his victory. Chirkou, in his retreat, endeavoured to reanimate the depressed courage of the soldiers of Noureddin, the latter not having yet forgotten the evils they had encountered in the passage over the desert. This calamity, still recent, together with the first victory of the Christians, destroyed the confidence they had in their arms and the protection of the Prophet. One of the lieutenants of Chirkou, upon witnessing their gloomy rage, cried out in the midst of the Mussulman army: “You who fear death or slavery, return into Syria; go and tell Noureddin that to repay him for the benefits with which he has loaded you, you abandon Egypt to the infidels, in order to shut yourselves up in your seraglios with women and children.”

These words reanimated the zeal and fanaticism of the Syrian warriors. The Franks and the Egyptians who pursued the army of Chirkou, were conquered in a battle, and forced to abandon in disorder the hills of Baben, [297]where they had pitched their tents. The general of Noureddin took all possible advantage of his victory; he passed as a conqueror along the fertile banks of the Nile; penetrated, without encountering an obstacle, into lower Egypt; placed a garrison in Alexandria; and returned to lay siege to the city of Koutz, the capital of the Thebais. The ability with which Chirkou had disciplined his army, and planned the last battle he had fought with his enemies; his marches and his counter-marches in the plains and valleys of Egypt, from the tropic to the sea, announced the progress of the Mussulmans in military tactics, and warned the Christians beforehand of the enemy that was destined to put an end to their victories and conquests.

The Turks defended themselves during several months in Alexandria, against the seditions of the inhabitants and the numerous assaults of the Christians. They at length obtained an honourable capitulation, and as their army was becoming weaker every day by famine and fatigue, they retired a second time to Damascus, after exacting very dear payment for the transient tranquillity in which they left the people of Egypt.