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'You ought to know Frenchmen better, exclaimed Geoffrey de Segrines, one of the commissioners; 'they would rather die than leave their king in pledge. After this, the negotiation was broken off; and the French prepared to cross the Achmoun by the bridge, and deliberate on the propriety of marching back to Damietta.
On that day also the King of France, leaving Geoffrey de Segrines with a hundred knights to aid in the defence of what remained of the once grand kingdom of Godfrey and the Baldwins, left the palace which he had occupied, and, attended by the papal legate, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Christian nobles and knights of Palestine, walked on foot to the port, amid an immense crowd assembled to witness his departure, who all, while lamenting his departure, applauded him as the Father of the Christians, and implored Heaven to shower blessings on his head.
As night advanced, Oliver de Thermes and all the Crusaders who had garrisoned Damietta embarked on the Nile, and Geoffrey de Segrines, having brought the keys to the emirs, the Saracens took possession. Next morning at daybreak the Moslem standards were floating over tower and turret.
WHEN King Louis was led away by the faithful Segrines, and when he was so exhausted that he had to be lifted from his steed and carried into a house, and when the Crusaders outside were in dismay and despair, Philip de Montfort entered the chamber where the saintly monarch was, and proposed to renew negotiations with the Saracens.
Naturally, however, there were striking exceptions; and none were more remarkable than Chatillon and Bisset; who, when Louis was conducted into Minieh, took up their post hard by an orange grove, and close to a wall at the entrance of the narrow street leading to the house into which Segrines had carried the king. Nothing could have exceeded Chatillon's fiery valour.
But by this time Louis was utterly exhausted; and Segrines, conducting him into the court, lifted him from his steed, and carried him, 'weak as a child in its mother's lap, into a house, expecting every moment to be his last. Nor did the prospects of the Crusaders outside improve in the king's absence.
While Chatillon and Bisset, now charging singly, now side by side, did wonders in keeping a space clear around the king and the royal standard, Geoffrey de Segrines, adhering to the side of Louis, wielded his sword with such effect that he drove off, one by one, the horsemen who darted forth from the Saracen ranks.
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