After the defeat at Gaza in November 1239 Thibaut withdrew to Acre. Meanwhile an-Nasir Da-ud of Kerak responded to the attack on the Muslim caravan by marching on Jerusalem, which he was able to occupy without difficulty, as it was almost completely undefended. The soldiers in the citadel held out for twenty-seven days but surrendered on 7 December 1239. An-Nasir destroyed the fortifications, razing the Tower of David to the ground, and retired to Kerak. Four years later, on 11 August 1244, the Khwarismians in turn swept into Jerusalem, sacking the city, slaughtering the Christian population and breaking into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where they slew some Latin priests who were celebrating Mass, tore the bones of the kings of Jerusalem from their tombs and set the church itself on fire. The Christian forces of Outremer, allied to Muslim armies under an-Nasir and al-Mansur against a common enemy, gathered to repel the Khwarismians under Baibars, who on October 17 crushed them at the disastrous battle at La Forbie (Harbiyah). ‘The Christian army was the largest that Outremer had put into the field since the fatal day of Hattin’: 600 knights, 300 Templars and Hospitallers, a contingent from the Teutonic Order, a proportionate number of sergeants and foot soldiers. Within a few hours the whole Frankish army was destroyed. Some 5,000 were dead; 800 prisoners were led off to Egypt. ‘Only at Hattin had the losses been greater.’ On 27 November the bishop of Beirut sailed from Acre to tell the princes of the West that ‘reinforcements must be sent if the whole kingdom were not to perish’.

The Occitan uprising of 1242

Meanwhile, those in the Languedoc suffering the consquences of the Albigensian Crusade had every reason to question the idea of crusading, and had indeed done so in the earlier stages of the French invasion. As a result of defeat in the Albigensian crusade, Raymond VII of Toulouse had been forced to accept the humiliating Treaty of Paris of 1229, which stipulated that if he produced no male heir all his lands would revert to the king of France through the marriage of Louis IX's brother Alphonse to Raymond's only daughter, Jeanne. For years the count sought to re-establish his position, hesitantly and unsuccessfully, by asserting his claims on Provence.