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Pope Innocent III spent most of his papacy preaching a Crusade. When he started, he was trying to mobilize a crusade to recover Jerusalem after the Third Crusade failed. The Fourth Crusade had failed miserably. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, Pope Innocent III tried to start another crusade, but by this time he was getting old and died in 1216 before seeing any results.
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Three days after his Pope Honorius III was named. He took up where Innocent III left off. He wrote letters to all of the monarchs in Europe, however, only a few responded and those that did only sent small armies. The response was better from France and Germany and they all met in Italy in 1217. They decided it would be in their best interests to attack Egypt. King John of Jerusalem didn’t think there was any point in attack Jerusalem with Egypt being so strong, but if Egypt was brought under Latin control, then the Muslims could not hold Jerusalem very long. Egypt was very wealthy and this was a major attraction in the decision to attack it.
The most influential and significant figure in the Fifth Crusade was Cardinal Pelagius, a papal representative. Honorius agreed with Innocent that a crusade would only be successful if it were led by the Church rather than by lay lords, so he sent a strong and forceful representative in Pelagius.
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He was not a tactful man but he was a determined man. He enforced strict discipline and handed out severe punishment for shirking duties. Despite this determination, however, he was unable to lead the army on any meaningful fights. Part of his problem was due to the fact that he was a cleric, not a baron, and had no directly authority.
Despite this, the army set out on July 17, 1217. It is estimated that five thousand knights, forty thousand foot soldiers plus archers and a large number of unarmed pilgrims came to fight for the crusade, one of the largest ever. The Egyptians had advanced to meet the Christians, but retreated when they saw the size of the army. The Christians followed them and set up their camp behind the river Bahr as-Saghir, which runs into the Nile.
What the Christians did not realize, however, was that they were in a death trap. When they set up camp, they had crossed a dry canal. There were locals who had joined the Crusades and tried to tell Pelagius of the problem, but he would not listen to them. It was August by this time and the Nile was rising every day. Before long, the water flowed into the canal and flowed it, cutting off the Christians from retreat and from being re-supplied. They had enough food only for twenty days. Many of the soldiers wanted to retreat before the situation grew worse, but Pelagius would not immediately agree with them. They did retreat, however, on August 26 without ever having fought a battle.
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Before the soldiers retreated, however, they got drunk and set fire to all of their remaining supplies. The Egyptians were alerted to the fact that the Christians were retreated because of the flames and cut off their only avenue of retreat. The Christians put up a valiant effort, but very few escaped.
The Fifth Crusade accomplished almost nothing. It was the last general crusade Europe had. Plenty of crusades followed, but they were lead by individuals and financed out of national treasures. It was not so much that the Fifth Crusade had ended dismally so much as it appeared that Europeans had finally worn themselves out with crusading.