Siege of Damietta (1218–1219)

Also known as Fifth Crusade siege of Damietta, Siege of Dumyat

In May 1218 the vanguard of the Fifth Crusade sailed into the eastern mouth of the Nile and dropped anchor opposite Damietta — the Ayyubid port that controlled the approach to Cairo. The city was protected by a great chain-tower standing in midstream and a second iron chain anchored to the eastern bank. Frisian pilgrims and John of Brienne's knights spent three months building a floating siege engine — two round ships lashed together into a castle designed by the German chronicler Oliver of Paderborn — and on 24 August 1218 used it to scale and capture the chain-tower. Sultan al-Adil reportedly died of shock on hearing the news; his son al-Kamil inherited the war. The siege that followed lasted fifteen more months. Al-Kamil twice offered to return Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the whole Christian coast as far as the Jordan in exchange for a Crusader withdrawal. The papal legate Pelagius Galvani refused both offers over John of Brienne's furious objection, insisting on total victory. Disease, famine and a Nile flood that drowned the Christian camp thinned the besieging army through the winter; another famous visitor, a small Italian friar named Francis of Assisi, crossed the lines in September 1219 and spent several days unmolested in al-Kamil's tent attempting to convert him. On 5 November 1219 the garrison — reduced, by the crusaders' own count, from perhaps seventy thousand to around three thousand starving survivors — opened the gates, and the Franks found the streets lined with the unburied dead. The Fifth Crusade held the port for less than two years. An advance on Cairo in the summer of 1221 ended in catastrophe at al-Mansurah when al-Kamil opened the Nile sluices and trapped the Frankish army between the branches of the river; Damietta was surrendered back on 8 September 1221 as the price of Pelagius's release. The siege is remembered in the chronicles as the hinge of the Fifth Crusade — a year of engineering brilliance, two refused peace offers that would have restored Jerusalem without a blow, and the first recorded diplomatic encounter between a sitting sultan of Egypt and a Christian saint.

Coordinates: 31.4166°, 31.8133°

Read more on Wikipedia: English article