The sultan of Egypt sent an army to assist the city, which was augmented by the troops of Aleppo and of several of the principalities of Syria. The Carismians were conquered in two battles. After this double defeat, Oriental history scarcely mentions their name, or furnishes us with means of following their track. The greater part of those that escaped the sword perished with hunger and misery in the countries they had devastated; the most brave and the best disciplined went to seek an asylum in the states of the sultan of Iconium: and if faith can be given to the conjectures of some historians,[273] they were the obscure origin of the powerful dynasty of the Ottomans. The Christians of Palestine must have been grateful to Heaven for the destruction of the Carismians; but the loss of Jerusalem and the defeat of Gaza could not permit them to indulge in many joyful sensations. They had lost their allies, and could reckon upon nothing but enemies among the Mussulmans. The sultan of Egypt, whose alliance they had rejected, was extending his dominions in Syria, and his power became every day more formidable. The cities which the Christians still retained on the coasts of the sea were almost all without defenders. The orders of St. John and the Temple had offered the sultan of Cairo a considerable sum for the ransom of his prisoners; but the sultan refused to listen to their ambassadors, and threatened them with all the terrors of his wrath: these two bodies, formerly so much dreaded by the Mussulmans, were no longer able to serve the cause of the Christians with any advantage, and were compelled to wait, in a state of inaction, till the warlike nobility of Europe should come to replace the knights held in captivity by the infidels, or swept away on the field of battle. The emperor of Germany made not the least effort to save the wreck of his feeble kingdom; he had sent several warriors to protect his rights in Ptolemaïs; but as these rights were not recognised, the presence of the imperial troops only added to the other scourges that desolated the Holy Land, that of discord and civil war.