Al-Kamil is by now able to ally…
August 1221 CE
Al-Kamil is by now able to ally with the other Ayyubids in Syria, who had defeated Kaykaus I.
The crusader march to Cairo is disastrous; the river Nile floods ahead of them, stopping the crusader advance.
A dry canal that had been previously crossed by the crusaders floods, thus blocking the crusader army's retreat.
With supplies dwindling, a forced retreat begins, culminating in a night time attack by Al-Kamil that results in a great number of crusader losses and eventually in the surrender of the army under Pelagio.
The terms of this surrender mean the relinquishing of Damietta to Al-Kamil in exchange for the release of the crusaders.
Al-Kamil agrees to an eight-year peace agreement with Europe, an exchange of prisoners, and to return a piece of the true cross.
(However, the cross will never be returned as Al-Kamil does not, in fact, have it.)
The humiliating terms are far less favorable than those Pelagio had previously rejected.
Disillusioned critics blame Emperor and Pope as well as Pelagio.
The failure of the Crusade, the last in which the papacy will take an active part, causes an outpouring of anti-papal sentiment from the Occitan poet Guilhem Figueira.
The more orthodox Gormonda de Monpeslier responds to Figueira's D'un sirventes far with a song of her own, Greu m'es a durar.
Instead of blaming Pelagio or the Papacy, she lays the blame on the "foolishness" of the wicked.