revious engagements, and without compromising the fate of
the Christians still prisoners in Egypt, or living in the territories of
Aleppo and Damascus; but, during the negotiations entered upon with a
view to this end, the Mussulmans of Syria and Egypt suspended their
differences, and made common cause against the remnants of the Christian
crusaders; and all hope of re-entering Jerusalem by these means vanished
away. Another time, the Sultan of Damascus, touched by Louis's pious
perseverance, had word sent to him that he, if he wished, could go on a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and should find himself in perfect safety. "The
king," says Joinville, "held a great council; and none urged him to go.
It was shown unto him that if he, who was the greatest king in
Christendom, performed his pilgrimage without delivering the Holy City
from the enemies of God, all the other kings and other pilgrims who came
after him would hold themselves content with doing just as much, and
would trouble themselves no more about the deliverance of Jerusalem." He
was reminded of the example set by Richard Coeur de Lion, who, sixty
years before, had refused to cast even a look upon Jerusalem, when he was
unable to deliver her from her enemies. Louis, just as Richard had,
refused the incomplete satisfaction which had been offered him, and for
nearly four years, spent by him on the coasts of Palestine and Syria
since his departure from Damietta, from 1250 to 1254, he expended, in
small works of piety, sympathy, protection, and care for the future of
the Christian populations in Asia, his time, his strength, his pecuniary
resources, and the ardor of a soul which could not remain icily abandoned
to sorrowing over great desires unsatisfied.

An unexpected event occurred and brought about all at once a change in
his position and his plans. At the commencement of the year 1253, at
Sidon, the ramparts of which he was engaged in repairing, he heard that
his mother, Queen Blanche, had died at Paris on the 27th of November,
1252. "He made so great mourning thereat," says Joinville, "that for two
days no speech could be gotten of him. After that he sent a chamber-man
for to fetch me. When I carne before him, in his chamber where he was
alone, so soon as he got sight of me, he stretched forth his arms, and
said to me, 'O, seneschal, I have lost my mother!'" It was a great loss
both for the son and for the king. Imperious, exacting, jealous, and
often dis