Four Crusades had come and gone. Richard Coeur-de-Lion
was dead. But the passion for fighting against the Saracen was still
in the hearts of men.
"The tomb of our Lord in Jerusalem is in the hands of the Saracen,"
the cry went up over all Europe. "Followers of Jesus Christ are slain
by the scimitars of Islam. Let us go and wrest the Holy City from the
hands of the Saracen."
There was also the danger to Europe itself. The Mohammedans ruled in
Spain as well as in North Africa, in Egypt and in the Holy Land.
So rich men sold their lands to buy horses and armour and to fit
themselves and their foot soldiers for the fray. Poor men came armed
with pike and helmet and leather jerkin. The knights wore a blood-red
cross on their white tunics. In thousands upon thousands, with John
of Brienne as their Commander-in-Chief (the brother of that Walter of
Brienne with whom, you remember, Francis had started for the wars as
a knight), they sailed the Mediterranean to fight for the Cross in
Egypt.
They attacked Egypt because the Sultan there ruled over Jerusalem and
they hoped by defeating him to free Jerusalem at the same time.
As Francis saw the knights going off to the Crusades in shining armour
with the trappings of their horses all a-glitter and a-jingle, and as
he thought of the lands where the people worshipped--not the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--but the "Sultan in the Sky," the
Allah of Mahomet, his spirit caught fire within him.
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