The sultan of Cairo employed every means to throw succours into the city, and keep up the courage of the garrison and the inhabitants. Some Mussulman soldiers, taking advantage of the darkness of night, attempted to effect an entrance into the place; a few were able to gain and pass through the gates, but by far the greater number were surprised and massacred by the Crusaders, who kept constant and close watch around the walls.
The news which the sultan, Melic-Kamel, received from Damietta, became every day more alarming, the Mussulman army, not daring to succour the besieged, remained inactive, and confined themselves to the defence of their own intrenchments. Communication was soon entirely cut off between the place and the camp of the infidels; some divers crossed the Nile through the Christian fleet, attained Damietta, and returned to inform the sultan that pestilence, famine, and despair reigned throughout the city. The Mussulmans had recourse to all sorts of stratagems to convey food to the garrison; sometimes they filled leather sacks with provisions, which, being abandoned to the stream of the Nile, floated under the ramparts of the city; at others, they concealed loaves in the sheets that enveloped dead bodies, which, being borne on by the waters, were stopped in their course by the besieged. It was not long before these stratagems were discovered by the Christians, and then famine began to make horrible ravages; the soldiers, overcome by fatigue and weakened by hunger, had not the strength to fight or guard the towers and ramparts. The inhabitants, given up to despair, abandoned their houses, and fled from a city that presented nothing but images of death: many came to implore the pity of the Crusaders. The commander of Damietta, whose name history has not preserved, in vain endeavoured to keep up the courage of the people and the soldiers. To prevent desertion, he caused the gates of the city to be walled up; and from that period neither the sultan of Cairo nor the Crusaders were able to know what was passing in the besieged place, in which a dismal silence reigned, and which, according to the expression of an Arabian author, _was no longer anything but a closed sepulchre_.