Seventh Crusade - Battlefield Belly Flop
Jerusalem was a hard prize to keep during The Crusades.
(this is part nine of twelve about The Crusades as a movie series)
At the end of the Sixth Crusade in 1229, Jerusalem had been returned to the Christians through negotiation with the Sultan of Egypt. In 1244, the kingdom of Jerusalem was defeated at the Battle of La Forbie. Over 1,000 knights were killed in the battle, and most of the rest were captured. Jerusalem was lost again.
Can you guess what that means? Did you guess a new crusade to win back Jerusalem? If so, give yourself a pat on the back. Just like clockwork, Pope Innocent IV called for a new crusade to retake it. The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) was more or less a redo of the Fifth Crusade because it planned to use the same strategy.
First, they’d conquer Egypt to grab its wealth and knock out the Egyptian army. Then onward to Jerusalem, bringing the holy city back under crusader control. Easy peasy. Although the Fifth Crusade had been a disaster, maybe the plan was sound, just poorly executed.
King Louis IX of France took up the cross in 1244 for three reasons: 1) devotion to God, 2) crushing family shame, and 3) to smite his enemies. Are there better reasons to do anything?
He was very pious and concerned about his immortal soul, and a crusade offered a plenary indulgence. His ancestors (Louis VII and Philip Augustus) had failed to gain Jerusalem in their crusades, and the family honor was besmirched. His barons were constantly feuding with him, but they could not legally attack him if he were on a crusade. Going on a crusade and retaking Jerusalem would solve all his problems.
King Louis IX went to work raising money for his crusade, and it would become the most well-funded expedition to the east. He gathered funds 1) by reaching deep into his own pocket, 2) by raising taxes on his people, his barons, and his clergy, and 3) by expelling all Jews from France and confiscating their property. Splurge, tax, steal. Cha-cha-cha-ching! Louis IX would be later canonized as Saint Louis in 1297.
The crusader ships sailed from France in August 1248 and met up in Cyprus. There they were joined by military orders based in the Levant, the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller, and Teutonic Knights.
They set sail for Egypt. This time, there would be no negotiation. Louis wanted to fight, writing this in a letter to the Sultan of Egypt:
“I will assault your territory, and even were you to swear allegiance to the cross, my mind would not be changed.”
In June 1249, Louis IX landed at Damietta. This time, instead of a year-and-a-half siege, the city surrendered immediately. Things were looking good for Louis. But the Sultan's main army was positioned a safe distance from Damietta. Both armies spent the next few months just waiting around while the Nile flooded.
In early 1250, the crusaders headed up the Nile River towards Cairo. Things were looking good for the crusaders. Now it was time to blow it, and they had just the guy: the king’s brother, Robert of Artois.
At Mansurah, a town along the river on the way to Cairo, Robert charged across the river with a small group of knights ahead of the main group so they could get all the glory. This was a mistake. Separated from the main force, Robert and his knights were surrounded and destroyed.
By the time Louis and the main force crossed the river, the battle was becoming a rout and the crusaders were cut off from their supply lines. Then the sultan’s son arrived at Mansourah loaded with supplies and reinforcements.
Louis and the crusaders were surrounded with no supplies and no way to retreat. They tried to hold out, but it was hopeless. On April 6, 1250, Louis IX surrendered.
The Seventh Crusade was over, and it was a bust. In May 1250, King Louis IX was returned for a literal king’s ransom of 400,000 gold pieces. Mark this one as a big fat “L” for the crusaders.
This crusade was not a remake, where the plot and characters are the same, just played by new actors with a reworked script. This was more like taking a plot line that worked in an early film and recycling it in a later film, but maybe with a larger budget for more special effects.
If your first film involves a giant spaceship being defeated by tiny spaceships flying into its center, that’s brilliant. Of course the mega spaceship’s designers and engineers wouldn’t consider these insignificant flies a threat to the mighty lion.
But once that spaceship has been blown up by the tiny spaceships, it strains credulity that the designers would build that same flaw AGAIN into the next giant spaceship when they rebuild it for a subsequent film in the series.
Is this just the screenwriters being lazy or did the studio executives cram this idea down after market research showed that audiences loved the David vs Goliath angle? If it happened today, might this repeat plot be because the algorithm showed higher audience engagement during that bit of runtime, so it was forced into the script?
If you’re betting on executive incompetence through meddling vs algorithmic data skewing, bet on executive folly every time. In this case, the star of the show wanted redemption for the flop, so King Louis IX signed on for yet another sequel…
