Discretion suggested the retreat of the remnant of the crusaders to Damietta, but desperation took counsel only of its battle-heated blood. They determined to remain and hold the ground so dearly won. It was an unwise decision. While the human enemy was unable to resume the attack, a more fearful one stalked visibly among them. The multitude of dead bodies which covered the land and water quickly putrefied and bred pestilence. The picture of a knight walking days and nights along the canal, exposed to the fetid death-vapors while he searched among the corpses for his master, Robert d’Artois, might be an allegory of France itself as she moaned and waited for thousands of her sons who would never return. Those who survived were attacked by a virulent disease, which Joinville thus describes: “The flesh of our legs dried away to the bone, and our skins became of black or earth color, like an old saddle which has been a long time laid aside.” The fish of the Nile had become poisonous from feeding upon the dead bodies, and putrefied the mouths of those who ate them. “It became necessary for the barbers to cut out the swollen flesh of the gums of all who were afflicted with this disease so that they could not eat, but went about in the army crying and moaning.” So decimated were the ranks that grooms took the places of knights, not waiting for chivalric ceremonies, and put on the noble armor they had been accustomed to clean. There were not enough priests left alive to shrive the dying. King Louis gave himself up to nursing the sick and consoling their last hours until he himself was prostrated by the epidemic. The crusaders watched in anxiety by his cot what they feared would be the extinction of their last hope. The Moslems, keeping at a safe distance from this death-beleaguered camp, added famine to the other horrors by cutting off supplies. They lay in wait for vessels laden with provisions from Europe, and seized them as they were ascending the Nile. At length almost the entire Christian fleet was captured. Louis was thus reduced to making proposals to abandon Egypt on condition of the restoration of Jerusalem to Christian rule. The sultan agreed, provided the king himself should be surrendered to him as a hostage until the last European had left the country. Louis consented, but the warriors refused to accede to what they deemed the disgraceful terms of putting in pawn their king. Nothing remained but an attempt to return to Damietta.