The sultan, like a new Pharaoh, may have laid it upon the strange preacher to prove his mission by miracles.

However this may be, Francis and his companions were treated with great consideration, a fact the more meritorious that hostilities were then at their height.
Returned to the Crusading camp, they remained there until after the taking of Damietta (November 5, 1219).

This time the Christians were victorious, but perhaps the heart of the _gospel man_ bled more for this victory than for the defeat of August 29th.

The shocking condition of the city, which the victors found piled with heaps of dead bodies, the quarrels over the sharing of booty, the sale of the wretched creatures who had not succumbed to the pestilence,[26] all these scenes of terror, cruelty, greed, caused him profound horror.

The "human beast" was let loose, the apostle's voice could no more make itself heard in the midst of the savage clamor than that of a life-saver over a raging ocean.
He set out for Syria[27] and the Holy Places.