186	THE   KNIGHTS   TEMPLARS
blocked the streets and Robert of Artois and three hundred
knights were killed. The loss to the Temple was "full
fourteen score men-at-arms " and only three of the brethren
survived.
In the hope of saving his brother, Louis gave the order
for a general attack, and after a fierce battle the Christians
captured the Moslem camp outside Mansourah. The town
itself, however, held out against numerous attacks, in which
the Templars, who had asked and been given the honour
of leading the assault on several occasions, lost more than
half their men. William de Sonnac, the Grand Master, was '
one of the first to fall.
As the siege proceeded the supplies became exhausted and
the Christians had to depend upon food brought by ship
from Damietta. The Egyptians blocked the Nile and so
made navigation impossible, and famine appeared in the
Christian camp. When pestilence was added to famine, St.
Louis opened up negotiations with the Sultan, Turan Shah,
but the latter insisted that Louis himself must be hostage
before any terms could be discussed, and the French would
not deliver their king into the hands of the infidel. In
April, after four tragic months spent within sight of
Mansourah, Louis decided to lead his men back to Damietta.
It was the retreat of a plague-stricken army in which there
was little strength or will to resist attack, and the Christians
-were slaughtered mercilessly as they dragged themselves
along the river bank. Bibars boasted that thirty thousand
Christians were slain, and his prisoners included Louis and
the king's two brothers. The Sultan offered Louis his
freedom if he would surrender the castles held by the
Christians in Palestine, but the king refused the condition.
The castles, he said, were the property of the Temple or the
Hospital and in the care of knights sworn never to deliver
them up as the price of any man's deliverance, and he would
not ask them to break their oath.