his Mamalukes; and the most daring of the assassins entered the chamber of the captive king, with drawn cimeters, and their hands imbrued in the blood of their sultan. The firmness of Louis commanded their respect; 99 their avarice prevailed over cruelty and zeal; the treaty was accomplished; and the king of France, with the relics of his army, was permitted to embark for Palestine. He wasted four years within the walls of Acre, unable to visit Jerusalem, and unwilling to return without glory to his native country. 96 (return) [ The last editors have enriched their Joinville with large and curious extracts from the Arabic historians, Macrizi, Abulfeda, &c. See likewise Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 322—325,) who calls him by the corrupt name of _Redefrans_. Matthew Paris (p. 683, 684) has described the rival folly of the French and English who fought and fell at Massoura.] 97 (return) [ Savary, in his agreeable Letters sur L’Egypte, has given a description of Damietta, (tom. i. lettre xxiii. p. 274—290,) and a narrative of the exposition of St. Louis, (xxv. p. 306—350.)] 98 (return) [ For the ransom of St. Louis, a million of byzants was asked and granted; but the sultan’s generosity reduced that sum to 800,000 byzants, which are valued by Joinville at 400,000 French livres of his own time, and expressed by Matthew Paris by 100,000 marks of silver, (Ducange, Dissertation xx. sur Joinville.)] 99 (return) [ The idea of the emirs to choose Louis for their sultan is seriously attested by Joinville, (p. 77, 78,) and does not appear to me so absurd as to M. de Voltaire, (Hist. Générale, tom. ii. p. 386, 387.) The Mamalukes themselves were strangers, rebels, and equals: they had felt his valor, they hoped his conversion; and such a motion, which was not seconded, might be made, perhaps by a secret Christian in their tumultuous assembly. * Note: * Wilken, vol. vii. p. 257, thinks the proposition could not have been made in earnest.—M.]