CHAP. II.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

145

would obey no one. The king himself was but acipher. So the Earl of Salisbury (whose mother,when widow, became an Hospitalleress and Abbessof Lacock) surnamed Longsword, having receivedsome indignity from that hot-headed youth, andhaving complained in vain to St. Louis, said,“ You are no king then, since unable to renderjustice/’ and went away to Acre, nor returned tillafter repeated invitations from the monarch. Whyever return?

They were waiting the king’s youngest brother,the Count of Poitiers, with the heavy baggage, anda heel of the French van and some residue fromEngland; but at length he arrived—the money invast tuns, that took eleven waggons, with manyhorses each, to draw them. The queen was left tolie in at Damietta, and the ladies with a stronggarrison; whilst the.king and army, amounting totwenty thousand cavalry and sixty thousand foot,with every sort of stores, marched, whether forAlexandria or Cairo was debated, till Artois de-ciding for the capital, “ to kill a snake, crush itshead,” he cried; so for Cairo was their march. Onthe 7th of December, they encamped at abouttwenty miles south-west of Damietta. It was thevery road Brienne had taken; but what did theymind that ? Instead of instantly dying, the sultan