The king's two brothers embarked with a numerous retinue.

How many crusaders, knights, or men-at-arms, remained with Louis, there is nothing to show; but they were, assuredly, far from sufficient for the attainment of the twofold end he had in view, and even for insuring less grand results, such as the deliverance of the crusaders still remaining prisoners in the hands of the Mussulmans, and anything like an effectual protection for the Christians settled in Palestine and Syria.
Twice Louis believed he was on the point of accomplishing his desire.
Towards the end of 1250, and again in 1252, the Sultan of Aleppo and Damascus, and the Emirs of Egypt, being engaged in a violent struggle, made offers to him, by turns, of restoring the kingdom of Jerusalem if he would form an active alliance with one or the other party against its enemies.

Louis sought means of accepting either of these offers without neglecting his previous engagements, and without compromising the fate of the Christians still prisoners in Egypt, or living in the territories of Aleppo and Damascus; but, during the negotiations entered upon with a view to this end, the Mussulmans of Syria and Egypt suspended their differences, and made common cause against the remnants of the Christian crusaders; and all hope of re-entering Jerusalem by these means vanished away.

Another time, the Sultan of Damascus, touched by Louis's pious perseverance, had word sent to him that he, if he wished, could go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and should find himself in perfect safety.

"The king," says Joinville, "held a great council; and none urged him to go.
It was shown unto him that if he, who was the greatest king in Christendom, performed his pilgrimage without delivering the Holy City from the enemies of God, all the other kings and other pilgrims who came after him would hold themselves content with doing just as much, and would trouble themselves no more about the deliverance of Jerusalem." He was reminded of the example set by Richard Coeur de Lion, who, sixty years before, had refused to cast even a look upon Jerusalem, when he was unable to deliver her from her enemies.