Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Damietta
The Teutonic Order’s first major military engagement outside the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was the crusade of 1218–1221, the so-called Fifth Crusade, in which a large Latin Christian army — including a Teutonic contingent under the regional leadership of the Order in the Holy Land — joined the forces of the Ayyubid pretender al-Kamil in the conquest of the Egyptian port of Damietta. The campaign was a tactical success, the city falling in November 1219, and a strategic disaster, the crusading army being forced to surrender in 1221 and to withdraw from Egypt in disgrace. The Teutonic Order’s participation in the campaign was a formative moment in the Order’s military identity.
The Background of the Fifth Crusade
The Fifth Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Innocent III in 1213, in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’s disastrous diversion to Constantinople. The Pope’s principal objective was the recovery of the Holy Land, which had been lost, in substantial part, to Saladin’s forces in 1187. The crusading army that eventually assembled at Acre in 1218 was a heterogeneous force, drawing on contingents from Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The crusaders’ target was Egypt. The reasoning was, in the strategic sense, simple: the Ayyubid possessions of Saladin’s heirs were concentrated in Egypt, and the conquest of Egypt would, it was hoped, compel the Muslim rulers of Syria to negotiate the return of the lost Latin territories. The principal objective was the port of Damietta, the gateway to the Nile delta and the principal fortress of the Ayyubid possessions in Egypt.
The Teutonic Contingent
The Teutonic Order’s contingent in the Fifth Crusade was, in numerical terms, modest. The Order had, by 1218, perhaps 200 to 300 knight-brothers in the Latin East, of whom a substantial proportion were required for the defence of the Order’s existing Levantine possessions. The Order’s contribution was, accordingly, in the order of 50 to 100 knight-brothers, supported by Turcopoles, lay brothers, sergeants, and camp followers.
The Teutonic contingent was, in the political sense, an instrument of the imperial faction within the crusading army. Hermann von Salza, the Order’s grand master, was a close associate of the Emperor Frederick II, and the Order’s presence in the crusade was, in part, a manifestation of the imperial interest in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Siege of Damietta
The crusading army arrived before Damietta in late May 1218. The first major operation was the construction of a siege tower on a ship, a vessel that the crusaders named the Cat. The Cat was used, in August 1218, in an assault on the principal chain-tower on the Nile, the Tower of the Chains. The assault was repulsed with heavy loss, and the Cat was largely destroyed.
The Teutonic contingent participated in a number of the early engagements of the siege, including the assault on the Tower of the Chains. The contingent was, however, distinguished less by spectacular exploits than by the discipline and the steady conduct of its members. The siege of Damietta lasted, with varying intensity, for eighteen months. The crusaders were reinforced by additional contingents from Western Christendom, and they gradually wore down the city’s defences. In November 1219, after a final assault in which the Templars and the Hospitallers played a major role, the city surrendered.
The Occupation and the Disaster of 1221
The fall of Damietta was a moment of triumph. The principal city of the Egyptian delta was in Christian hands, and the path to Cairo was, in principle, open. The crusaders, however, were unable to agree on the next step. The papal legate, Cardinal Pelagius, wished to press on to Cairo; King Andrew of Hungary decided to return home, taking a substantial proportion of the Hungarian contingent with him. Al-Kamil offered, in the summer of 1220, to negotiate a settlement by which the lost Latin territories would be returned in exchange for the surrender of Damietta. Cardinal Pelagius refused the offer, on the grounds that it did not include the city of Jerusalem itself.
The crusaders’ position in Egypt was, in the late summer of 1221, deteriorating. The papal legate, against the advice of his principal military commanders, decided to march on Cairo. The march began in late July 1221, and it was, from the outset, a disaster. The crusading army was surrounded, besieged, and forced to surrender. The terms of the surrender, signed on 8 September 1221, required the crusaders to surrender Damietta and to withdraw from Egypt in exchange for a Muslim undertaking to release the captive crusaders.
The Consequences of the Campaign
The campaign of 1218–1221 was, in the long perspective of the Teutonic Order’s history, a formative experience. The Order had established itself as a recognised participant in the major crusading enterprises of the age. The Order’s knight-brothers had demonstrated the discipline and the military competence that was to be a hallmark of the Order’s later operations in the Baltic.
The campaign was, however, also a warning. The crusading movement’s chronic political division, the unsuitability of Egypt as a theatre of operation for a Latin Christian army, the logistical problems of supplying a major army in the eastern Mediterranean, and the limited staying-power of the contingents from Western Christendom were all, in the campaign, made painfully obvious. The Teutonic Order was, in the following decades, to learn from these lessons: the Order’s Baltic enterprise was, in significant part, a product of the Order’s experience of the limitations of crusading in the eastern Mediterranean.
Sources
- Boockmann, Hartmut. Der Deutsche Orden: Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte. Munich: Beck, 1981.
- Forey, Alan. The Military Orders: From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992.
- Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades: A Short History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
Related Reading
For the wider context of the Order’s Levantine career, see the article on the Order’s crusades in the Holy Land and the article on the fall of Acre in 1291. For the founding context, see the article on Hermann von Salza and on the founding of the Order at Acre. For the parent context, see the History of the Teutonic Knights. The Order’s later military operations, in the Baltic theatre, are examined in the article on the Northern Crusades.