Louis IX Is Captured at Mansourah
The Seventh Crusade's king is taken prisoner in Egypt and ransomed for a fortune
Quick facts
- Crusade leader
- King Louis IX of France
- Damietta captured
- June 1249
- Defeat and capture
- Mansourah, 1250
- Outcome
- Louis ransomed; remained in the Levant until 1254
What happened
King Louis IX of France launched the Seventh Crusade in 1248 after Jerusalem had again fallen to Muslim forces in 1244. His army captured Damietta in June 1249 with surprising ease after an amphibious landing, but rather than press the advantage while the Egyptian sultan al-Salih lay dying, Louis waited for reinforcements led by his brother Alphonse, giving the Egyptians time to regroup under the Bahri Mamluk commander Fakhr al-Din. When Louis finally advanced toward Cairo in late 1249, the crusader army was routed at Mansourah in 1250. Louis himself was captured along with much of his remaining force and was eventually ransomed, along with the surrender of Damietta, for a vast sum. Despite the disaster, Louis remained in the Levant for four years afterward, refortifying key Latin strongholds including Acre before finally returning to France.
Why it matters
Louis's capture repeated, almost exactly, the earlier disaster of the Fifth Crusade at the same stretch of the Nile, underlining how consistently the strategy of attacking Egypt as the "soft underbelly" of Muslim power had failed for Christian armies over three decades.
How we know
The campaign and Louis's captivity are documented in the World History Encyclopedia's narrative account, which also notes his subsequent four-year residence in the Crusader States rebuilding their defenses.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Seventh Crusade · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Eighth Crusade · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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