96 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [book ii.

spite of the existing treaties, Brienne led a forceagainst Jerusalem, and, upon discomfiture, deter-mined on taking the road by where its resourcescame from; nor can there be any doubt of hisbeing at Acre in the January of 1217, 1 andembarked for Egypt in the month of May, 1218,as the Islamites have it, whose authority as todates is reputed better than that of our chro-niclers. These differ a little, but those estimatethe crusaders as (what is probably an exaggeration)seventy thousand horse and four hundred thousandfoot, 2 and that while some of the fleet were onlytwo days on the. voyage from Jaffa to the Nile,others were an entire month ; which, whatever itcame from, it were wrong to attribute to nauticaldeficiency, since part of that same crusade leavingthe Meuse in June, 1218, and in its way touchingat ports on the south of England, and north ofFrance and Spain, entered that of Lisbon to-wards the middle of July 3 —very tolerable sailing. 4Four months hardly sufficed to take the firstof the outworks of Damietta,® the tower ofthe chain, which seemed so violent a loss to

1 Cod. Dipl. Geros., Hum. ccxi., i. 253 —Appendix, lxxxvi.

2 Arab. Chron., 388 3 Michaud: Hist, iii., 313.

4 Chron. Cologne.—Bib. Crois., iii. 20.

5 Michaud : Hist., iii. 319.—Arab. Chron., 392.