The fulfilment of the treaty was interrupted by a strange turn of affairs. The Sultan Almoadam, inflated with pride over his victories, had stirred the jealousy of the Mamelukes. Chegger-Eddour, the slave-woman who had risen to be the mistress of Egypt, turned also against the man whom as her husband she had raised to power. The sultan gave a banquet to his chief officers; at the end of the feast Bibars Bendoctar, the leader of the Mamelukes, approached him and aimed a blow with his dagger, which, however, inflicted but a slight wound. Almoadam fled to a tower; the Mamelukes fired the edifice; their victim threw himself through the smoke and flames from a window, his bruised body falling among his foes; Bibars smote him with a sabre. Bleeding and weak with terror, Almoadam flung himself into the Nile; the soldiers plunged after him and held him until dead beneath the water. The infuriated Mamelukes then assailed the galley in which Joinville and several leaders of the Christians were confined, and bade them prepare for death. There was but a single priest in the company and no time for shriving one by one, so they confessed to one another, Joinville, the layman, giving to Guy d’Ibelin, as he says, “such absolution as God had given me power to give.” Fortunately the rage of the Mamelukes was diverted elsewhere, and the “dead men came to life.” The Moslems, unable to secure a successor to Almoadam from among their warriors, gave the crown to the Sultana Chegger-Eddour, much to the disgust of the Mohammedan world. After great dissension and many threats the leaders of the Moslems proposed to carry out the treaty with the Franks which the unfortunate Almoadam had agreed to. They took an oath to observe its conditions and asked of Louis a similar pledge; this he rejected with scorn, assuming that the word of a French king needed no confirmation. The knights and lords of his party embarked on vessels and descended the Nile, the king marching with his Moslem guard along the shore. At Damietta he was joined by Queen Marguerite and her court.