The Mussulmans, stricken with surprise as much as terror, abandoned the place; and when Fakr-Eddin, the commandant of the Turks, came before the Sultan of Egypt, Malek-Saleh, who was ill, and almost dying, "Couldst thou not have held out for at least an instant ?" said the sultan.
"What! not a single one of you got slain!" Having become masters of Damietta, St.Louis and the crusaders committed the same fault there as in the Isle of Cyprus: they halted there for an indefinite time.

They were expecting fresh crusaders; and they spent the time of expectation in quarrelling over the partition of the booty taken in the city.

They made away with it, they wasted it blindly.

"The barons," said Joinville, "took to giving grand banquets, with an excess of meats; and the people of the common sort took up with bad women." Louis saw and deplored these irregularities, without being in a condition to stop them.
At length, on the 20th of November, 1249, after more than five months' inactivity at Damietta, the crusaders put themselves once more in motion, with the determination of marching upon Babylon, that outskirt of Cairo, now called _Old Cairo,_ which the greater part of them, in their ignorance, mistook for the real Babylon, and where they flattered themselves they would find immense riches, and avenge the olden sufferings of the Hebrew captives.

The Mussulmans had found time to recover from their first fright, and to organize, at all points, a vigorous resistance.