In 1234, at twenty, he was married in Sens Cathedral to a princess of the cultivated house of Provence; Dante has a line for the daughters of Raymond Berenger IV, patron of the troubadours: "Four daughters had he and each a queen."[93] Marguerite of Provence was somewhat overridden by the stronger personality of Blanche, her mother-in-law. For his valiant mother, Louis IX retained always a passionate admiration. On his first crusade he left his kingdom in her charge, which, however, he did not do for his queen, when he last went crusading. He had seen her sister, on the throne of England, tamper with that country's interests for the advancement of her own family, and he recognized in his Marguerite a strain of the same intriguing. She could rise to her lord's level, however, and was his faithful lifelong companion. A sublime word of hers has come down to us: they were sailing back to France after four years' sojourn in Palestine; off Cyprus the ship was well-nigh wrecked, and an attendant rushed to ask if he should awaken the royal children. "No," cried the queen, "let them go to God in their sleep." That a king whose forebears had fought in all the crusades should, in his turn, strike a blow for Christendom, was inevitable. Jerusalem had fallen in 1244, and the instinct of Europe felt the menace of the Mongol advance from the East. Was not the fate of Spain close at hand to prove the possibility of Oriental invasion? So St. Louis took the crusader's vow, and with him went the turbulent lords whose departure gave France some needed years of peace. He had in vain tried to negotiate peace between Papacy and Empire, in whose protracted duel he remained neutral. In Cyprus, in 1248, the crusaders paused before descending on Egypt, and there St. Louis and Joinville drew together. The hereditary seneschal of Champagne was a very great lord, his mother being of Burgundy's Capetian line, and his Joinville forebears notable crusaders.[94] The contingent which he provided for the holy wars consisted of nine knights and seven hundred men, but because of the long winter's halt in Cyprus he found himself in straits to meet their expenses. Louis IX, ten years his senior, came to his aid, although the ruler of Champagne and not the king of France was Joinville's suzerain. Side by side the two friends went through the disastrous campaign in Egypt--the delayed march on Cairo, which ended in Mansourah's defeat. Together they shared imprisonment, and the king's elevation of soul won the Mussulmans' respect. Then, their ransom paid, they sailed together for Palestine, and there, in the daily intimacy of years, the affection of these two loyal knights struck deep root. To Joinville the king intrusted his wife and children in the perilous overland journey in Syria, before they embarked for France.