So rich men sold their lands to buy horses and armour and to fit
themselves and their foot soldiers for the fray. Poor men came armed
with pike and helmet and leather jerkin. The knights wore a blood-red
cross on their white tunics. In thousands upon thousands, with John
of Brienne as their Commander-in-Chief (the brother of that Walter of
Brienne with whom, you remember, Francis had started for the wars as
a knight), they sailed the Mediterranean to fight for the Cross in
Egypt.

They attacked Egypt because the Sultan there ruled over Jerusalem and
they hoped by defeating him to free Jerusalem at the same time.

As Francis saw the knights going off to the Crusades in shining armour
with the trappings of their horses all a-glitter and a-jingle, and as
he thought of the lands where the people worshipped--not the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--but the "Sultan in the Sky," the
Allah of Mahomet, his spirit caught fire within him.

Francis had been a soldier and a knight only a few years before. He
could not but feel the stir of the Holy War in his veins,--the tingle
of the desire to be in it. He heard the stories of the daring of the
Crusaders; he heard of a great victory over the Saracens.

Francis, indeed, wanted Jesus Christ to conquer men more than he
wanted anything on earth; but he knew that men are only conquered by
Jesus Christ if their hearts are changed by Him.

"Even if the Saracens are put to the sword and overwhelmed, still they
are not saved," he said to himself.