This victory made Pelagius a dictator, and he insisted on an advance on the capital. John, and the grand masters of the military orders, pointed out the disaster which must follow, as it was July, and the Nile was rising. In a few weeks the country would be under water. Moreover, the fleet could not ascend the river, therefore the army must be isolated in the heart of a hostile country, and probably overwhelmed by superior numbers. Pelagius reviled them. He told them God loved not cowards, but champions who valued his glory more than they feared death. He threatened them with excommunication should they hang back. Near midsummer, 1221, the march began, and the pilgrims advanced to the apex of the delta, where they halted, with the enemy on the opposite shore. The river was level with its banks, the situation was desperate, and yet even then the sultan sent an embassy offering the whole of the Holy Land in exchange for the evacuation of Egypt. The soldiers of all nations were strenuously for peace, the priests as strenuously for war. They felt confident of repeating the sack of Constantinople at Cairo, nor can there be a greater contrast than Martin spurning the wealth of Constantinople as dross, and Pelagius rejecting the Sepulchre that he might glut himself with Egyptian wealth. But all history shows that the emotionalist cannot compete with the materialist upon his own ground. In the end, under free economic competition, he must be eliminated. Pelagius tarried idly in the jaws of death until the Nile rose and engulfed him. CHAPTER VI THE SUPPRESSION OF THE TEMPLE Physical weakness has always been the vulnerable point of the sacred caste, for priests have rarely been warriors, and faith has seldom been so profound as to guarantee ecclesiastics against attack. This difficulty was marked in the early Middle Ages, when, although disintegration so far prevailed as to threaten the very tradition of centralized power, a strong leaven of the ancient materialism remained. In the ninth century the trend toward decentralization was resistless. Although several of the descendants of Charlemagne were men of ability and energy, the defence was so superior to the attack that they could not coerce their vassals, and their domains melted away into independent sovereignties until the crown became elective, and the monarchy almost a tradition. During the tenth century it seems possible that the regal authority might have been obliterated, even to the last trace, had it not been for the Church, which was in sore need of a champion. The priesthood cared nothing for the legitimate line; what they sought was a protector, and accordingly they chose, not the descendant of Charlemagne, but him who, in the words of the Archbishop of Rheims, was “distinguished by his wisdom and who found support in the greatness of his soul.” Hugh Capet succeeded Louis V. because he was the best chief of police in France.