The intelligence did not fail to reach Europe that the members of the Church in Palestine had been put to death or dispersed by the exiles of Karism. Pope Innocent the Fourth suggested the expediency of another Crusade, and even summoned all his faithful children to take arms. He wrote to Henry the Third, king of England, urging him to press on his subjects the necessity of punishing the Karismians. But the spirit of crusading was more active in France than in any other country of the West and it revived in all the vigour of its chivalrous piety in the reign of Louis the Ninth. Agreeably to the superstition of the times, he had vowed, while afflicted by a severe illness, that in case of recovery he would travel to the Holy Land. The Cross was likewise taken by the three royal brothers, the Counts of Artois, Poictiers, and Anjou, by the Duke of Burgundy, the Countess of Flanders and her two sons, together with many knights of high degree. But it was not till 1249 that the soldiers of Louis were mustered, and his ships prepared for sea; the former amounting to fifty thousand, while his vessels of all descriptions exceeded eighteen hundred. They set sail for Egypt; a storm separated the fleet; but the royal division, in which were nearly three thousand knights and their men-at-arms, arrived in the neighbourhood of Damietta. On the second day the king ordered the disembarkation; he himself leaped into the water; his warriors followed him to the shore; upon which the Saracens, panic-struck at their boldness and determination, made but a slight show of defence, and fled into the interior. Although Damietta was better prepared for a siege than at that period when it defied the arms of the Crusaders during eighteen months, yet the garrison were pleased to seek safety in the fleetness of their horses. Louis fixed his residence in the city; a Christian government was established; and the clergy, as they were wont on such occasions, proceeded to purify the mosques.