The new Sultan of Egypt and the Sultan of Damascus and Aleppo each invoked the aid of Louis against the other. Motives of vengeance would have inclined him to side with the latter, but dread for the fate of the French still left in Egypt, and regard for his treaty, hard as its terms had been, prevented this choice, except in the event of the Egyptians not speedily fulfilling their part of the contract in liberating the captives. The threat of such alliance brought from Egypt some instalments of prisoners. One band of two hundred knights carried with them to Acre, as their best contribution to the cause, the bones of several of their comrades for burial in the Holy Land. Louis was deeply afflicted by the news that many of his soldiers refused to return to him, having renounced the faith of Christ, who no longer extended to them His succor. Some of these renegades amassed wealth and rose to power in Egypt, but never, if we are to believe the Moslem writers, reached the confidence and respect of the true followers of the Prophet. This defection is hardly to be wondered at, since that age refused to believe the words of Christ, “My kingdom is not of this world, else would My servants fight.” The Christians partook too largely of the Moslem idea that religion would triumph by the sword; but they had not the reserve faith of the Mohammedans, which led them to take up the kismet, “It is decreed,” when they were forced to retreat. Europe sent an occasional knight to join the forlorn hope with Louis, but no organized force. The Pope exhausted his passion in pursuing with malediction the memory of Frederick II., who had just died. “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad,” he wrote to the people of Sicily upon the death of his old enemy. Against the new emperor, Conrad, he proclaimed a crusade, offering indulgence to the German mothers and fathers who would induce their sons to become traitors to their sovereign. The English King, Henry III., offered to take the cross for Palestine, but, having raised a large sum of money for the purpose of an expedition, found other uses for it. He forbade a large band of his people embarking for the Holy Land, guarding his ports against their departure. He even, as Matthew Paris says, “like a hurt or offended child, who runs to his mother with his complaints,” obtained a papal mandate enforcing obedience to his whim in this regard. Queen Blanche, the regent of France, did indeed send a ship laden with money to her son, but the vessel was sunk off the Syrian coast.