Louis IX of France, a man of great piety and a strong pacifist in dealing with fellow Christians, is bitterly intolerant of heretics and non-Christians.

France is perhaps the strongest state in Europe at this time, as the Albigensian Crusade had brought Provence into Parisian control.

Poitou is ruled by Louis IX's brother Alphonse of Poitiers, who in 1245 had joined him on his crusade.

Another brother, Charles I of Anjou, had also joined Louis.

Louis has for the past three years collected an ecclesiastical tenth (mostly from church tithes), and he and his approximately fifteen thousand-strong army, which includes three thousand knights and five thousand crossbowmen, had on August 25, 1248, sailed on thirty-six ships from the ports of Aigues-Mortes, which had been specifically built to prepare for the crusade, and Marseille.

Louis IX's financial preparations for this expedition are comparatively well organized, and he has been able to raise approximately one million five hundred thousand livres tournois.

However, many nobles who join Louis on the expedition have had to borrow money from the royal treasury, and the crusade turns out to be very expensive.

Louis's wife and children accompany him, since he prefers not to leave the mother and daughter-in-law alone together.

Also joining Louis are his brothers Robert d'Artois and Charles d'Anjou, many distinguished French nobles, and a small contingent of English.

He leaves his capable mother, Blanche de Castile, to rule as regent; his favorite, twenty-four-year-old French chronicler Jean, sire de Joinville, accompanies him.

A man of great piety and a strong pacifist in dealing with fellow Christians, Louis is bitterly intolerant of heretics and non-Christians.

He tells Joinville, for example, that the only way in which a good Christian should argue with a Jew is by driving his sword up to the hilt in the Jew's entrails.

Louis's objective is simple: he intends to land in Egypt, seize the principal towns of the country, and use them as hostages to be exchanged for Syrian cities.