d all
the rear-guard were removed to Mansourah; the king by boat; and his two
brothers, the Counts of Anjou and Poitiers, and all the other crusaders,
drawn up in a body and shackled, followed on foot on the river bank. The
advance-guard, and all the rest of the army, soon met the same fate.

Ten thousand prisoners--this was all that remained of the crusade that
had started eighteen months before from Aigues-Mortes. Nevertheless the
lofty bearing and the piety of the king still inspired the Mussulmans
with great respect. A negotiation was opened between him and the Sultan
Malek-Moaddam, who, having previously freed him from his chains, had him
treated with a certain magnificence. As the price of a truce and of his
liberty, Louis received a demand for the immediate surrender of Damietta,
a heavy ransom, and the restitution of several places which the
Christians still held in Palestine. "I cannot dispose of those places,"
said Louis, "for they do not belong to me; the princes and the Christian
orders, in whose hands they are, can alone keep or surrender them." The
sultan, in anger, threatened to have the king put to the torture, or sent
to the Grand Khalif of Bagdad, who would detain him in prison for the
rest of his days. "I am your prisoner," said Louis; "you can do with me
what you will." "You call yourself our prisoner," said the Mussulman
negotiators, "and so, we believe you are; but you treat us as if you had
us in prison." The sultan perceived that he had to do with an
indomitable spirit; and he did not insist any longer upon more than the
surrender of Damietta, and on a ransom of five hundred thousand livres
(that is, about ten million one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs,
or four hundred and five thousand two hundred and eighty pounds, of
modern money, according to M. de Wailly, supposing, as is probable, that
livres of Tours are meant). "I will pay willingly five hundred thousand
livres for the deliverance of my people," said Louis, and I will give up
Damietta for the deliverance of my own person, for I am not a man who
ought to be bought and sold for money." "By my faith," said the sultan,
the Frank is liberal not to have haggled about so large a sum. Go tell
him that I will give him one hundred thousand livres to help towards
paying the ransom." The negotiation was concluded on this basis; and
victors and vanquished quitted Mansourah, and arrived, partly by land and
partly by the Nile, within