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From the beginning, the emirs and Mamelukes had looked with envy and suspicion on the favourites brought by Touran Chah from Mesopotamia; and such feelings had not died away.
Fear vanished from every face; and the Saracens gratefully extolled the courage of the Mamelukes, and of their chief, Bibars Bendocdar. At the same time, an arrival of great importance took place at Mansourah. While the battle was raging on the plain, Touran Chah, the new sultan, reached the city, and was received with acclamations by the populace.
The Crusaders, however, after remaining some days in their old camp, found that they were a prey to the worst calamities, and, no longer hesitating, decided on a day for returning to Damietta. Unfortunately for the armed pilgrims, their resolution was no secret to the Saracens, and when Touran Chah became aware of their intended movement down the Nile, he devised measures to intercept them.
WHILE the Crusaders were preparing to leave Damietta, march up the Nile, and attack Cairo, Melikul Salih, after struggling desperately with the great destroyer, yielded to his fate, and breathed his last at Mansourah. The death of the sultan was regarded by the emirs as most untimely; for his son, Touran Chah, was then in Mesopotamia, and they were apprehensive of the most serious troubles.
After some negotiations the terms were agreed to; and the sultan not only concluded the treaty joyfully, but expressed his admiration of the nobility of spirit which Louis had displayed. 'By my faith! said Touran Chah to the ambassador, 'this Frenchman is generous and noble, seeing that he does not condescend to bargain about so large a sum of money, but instantly complies with the first demand.
Nor did he make one request from his enemies for his own comfort; though Touran Chah, struck with his endurance, sent to him a present of fifty robes for himself and his nobles; but Louis refused them, considering that to wear the robes of the Saracen would compromise the dignity of his crown.
The King offered as his ransom, and that of his troops, the town of Damietta and a million of bezants; but the Sultan would not be contented without the cities of the Crusaders in Palestine, Louis replied that these were not his own; and when Touran Chah threatened him with torture or lifelong captivity, his only reply was, "I am his prisoner; he can do as he will with me."
Many of the favourites ere long were substituted for the ministers of the late sultan; and the emirs and Mamelukes not only complained loudly of this to Touran Chah, but reproached him bitterly for the way in which he disposed of the spoil of the Crusaders.
Already, while the sultan held his interview with the King of France and the Counts of Poictiers and Anjou, everything was prepared; and soon after Touran Chah had left Louis and his brothers shut up in the pavilion, they were roused by loud shouts of distress and a mighty tumult; and, while they breathlessly asked each other whether the French captives were being massacred or Damietta taken by storm, in rushed twenty Saracens, their swords red and reeking with blood, and spots of blood on their vestments and their faces, stamping, threatening furiously, and uttering fierce cries.
It was asserted that many of the emirs were doomed to die on a certain day; and that, in the midst of a nocturnal orgy, Touran Chah had cut off the tops of the flambeaux in his chamber, crying 'Thus shall fly the heads of all the Mamelukes. In order to avenge herself for the neglect to which she was exposed under the new reign, Chegger Edour, the sultana who had played so important a part in the last days of Melikul Salih, exerted her eloquence to stimulate the discontent; and the emirs and Mamelukes, having formed a conspiracy, only awaited a convenient opportunity to complete their projects of vengeance at a blow.
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