A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (54 page)

There the citizens struggled
panic-stricken to reach the boats in the harbour. The Countess Lucia, with
Amalric of Cyprus and the two Marshals of the Orders, sailed safely away to
Cyprus. But the Commander of the Temple, Peter of Moncada, was slain, together
with Bartholomew Embriaco. Every man found by the Moslems was at once put to death,
and the women and children taken as slaves. A number of refugees managed to
cross in rowing-boats to the little island of Saint Thomas, just off the point.
But the Mameluk cavalry rode into the shallow water and swam across to it.
There followed similar scenes of massacre; and when the historian Abu’l Feda of
Hama tried to visit the island a few days later he was driven off by the stench
of decaying corpses.

When the massacre and pillage were ended,
Qalawun had the city razed to the ground, lest the Franks, with their command
of the sea, might try to recapture it. A new city was founded by his orders at
the foot of Mount Pilgrim, a few miles inland.

Mameluk troops went on to occupy Botrun
and Nephin. There was no attempt to defend them. Peter Embriaco, lord of
Jebail, offered his submission to the Sultan, and was allowed to keep his city,
under strict surveillance, for about another decade.

The fall of Tripoli came as a bitter shock
to the people of Acre. They had persuaded themselves for the last few years
that, so long as they were not aggressive, the Sultan really had no objection
to the continued existence of the Christian cities along the coast. He might
attack their castles, which were a potential danger to him. He might resent the
Military Orders whose business it was to fight for their faith, even though
Moslems as well as Christians employed the Templars as bankers. But the
merchants and shopkeepers of the seaports only wanted peace, and the
luxury-loving barons of Outremer had clearly no desire for the embarrassment of
a Crusade. Acre and her sister-ports were a commercial convenience for the
Moslems as well as for the Christians; and their citizens had shown their
good-will in refusing the Mongol alliance. The unprovoked attack on Tripoli showed
them how false were their calculations. They were forced to realize that a like
fate awaited Acre.

Three days after the fall of Tripoli King
Henry arrived at Acre. He found there an envoy from Qalawun, bearing a
complaint from his master that Henry and the Military Orders had broken their
truce with him by going to the aid of Tripoli. Henry replied that the truce
only applied to the kingdom of Jerusalem. If Tripoli were covered by it, the
Sultan should not have committed aggression there. The excuse was accepted by
the Moslems; and the truce was renewed, to cover the kingdoms of Jerusalem and
Cyprus for another ten years, ten months and ten days. The King of Armenia and
the Lady of Tyre hastened to follow this example. But Henry had little faith
now in the Sultan’s word. He could not venture to appeal to the Mongols; for
the Sultan would certainly have considered that a breach of the truce. But,
before he returned to Cyprus in September, leaving his brother as
bailli
at
Acre, he sent John of Grailly to Europe, to impress upon the Western potentates
how desperate was the situation.

1290: Crusaders from Northern Italy

The Western potentates too had been
shocked by the fate of Tripoli. But the Sicilian question still filled the
minds of all except Edward of England; and his Scottish problem was reaching a
crisis. Pope Nicholas IV received John of Grailly with sincere sympathy, and
wrote in earnest sorrow to the Kings of the West to beg them to send help. But
he himself was entangled in the Sicilian affair; he could do nothing more than
write letters and urge his clergy to preach the Crusade. The princes and lords
to whom he applied preferred to wait until King Edward made some move. He after
all had taken the Cross and had some experience of the East. But Edward made no
move. The Genoese republic, which had lost heavily by the loss of Tripoli, had
taken reprisals by capturing a large Egyptian merchant ship in the waters off
southern Anatolia and by raiding the undefended port of Tineh, in the Delta.
But when Qalawun closed Alexandria to them, they hastened to make their peace.
When the envoys came to Cairo, they found embassies from both the Greek and the
German emperors waiting upon the Sultan.

It was only in northern Italy that the
Pope’s appeal met with any response; and there it was answered not by any baron
but by a rabble of peasants and unemployed petty townsfolk from Lombardy and
Tuscany, eager for an adventure that would bring them merit and salvation and
probably some loot. The Pope was not quite happy about them, but he accepted
their help and put them under the command of the Bishop of Tripoli, who had
come as a refugee to Rome. He hoped that under the restraining hand of a
prelate that knew the East they would do nothing foolish. The Venetians, who had
not wept to see Genoa lose its base at Tripoli but felt differently about Acre
where they held the commercial hegemony, provided twenty galleys under the
command of the Doge’s son, Nicholas Tiepolo, assisted, at the Pope’s request,
by John of Grailly and Roux of Sully. Each of the three was entrusted with a
thousand pieces of gold from the Papal treasury. But there was a lack of
munitions. As the fleet sailed eastward it was joined by five galleys sent by
King James of Aragon, who, though he was at war with the Papacy and Venice, was
anxious to help.

The truce between King Henry and the
Sultan had restored some confidence at Acre. Trade recommenced. In the summer
of 1290 the merchants of Damascus began to send their caravans again to the
coast. There was a good harvest that year in Galilee, and the Moslem peasants
crowded with their produce to the markets of Acre. Never had the town been so
lively and active. In August, in the midst of this prosperity, the Italian
Crusaders arrived. From the moment of their landing they proved an
embarrassment to the authorities. They were disorderly, drunken and debauched.
Their commanders, who were unable to give them their regular pay, had no
control over them. They had come, they thought, to fight the infidel, so they began
to attack the peaceful Moslem merchants and peasants. One day, towards the end
of August, a riot flared up. Some said it began at a drinking bout where
Christians and Moslems both were present; others, that a Moslem merchant had
seduced a Christian lady, and her husband appealed to his neighbours for
vengeance. Suddenly the Crusader rabble rushed through the streets and out into
the suburbs, slaying every Moslem that they met; and as they decided that every
man wearing a beard was a Moslem, many local Christians also perished. The
barons of the city and the knights of the Orders were horrified; but all that
they could do was to rescue a few of the Moslems and take them to the safety of
the castle, and to arrest a few of the obvious ringleaders.

1290: Death of Qalawun

It was not long before the news of the
massacre reached the Sultan. His fury was well justified; and he decided that
the time had come to eradicate the Franks from Syrian soil. The government of
Acre hastened to send him apologies and excuses; but his envoys came to Acre
and insisted that the men guilty of the outrage should be handed over to him
for punishment. A council was called by the Constable Amalric. At it the Grand
Master of the Temple arose and advised that all the Christian criminals that
were then in the gaols of Acre should be delivered to the Sultan’s
representatives as the perpetrators of the crime. But public opinion would not
allow the dispatch of Christians to certain death at the hands of the infidel.
The Sultan’s ambassadors received no satisfaction. Instead, there was a
half-hearted attempt to prove that some of the Moslem merchants were guilty of
starting the riot and to fix the blame on them.

Qalawun’s answer was to resort to arms. A
debate between his lawyers satisfied him that he was legally justified in
breaking the truce. He kept his plans secret. While he mobilized the Egyptian
army, the Syrian army, under Rukn ad-Din Toqsu, Governor of Damascus, was
ordered to move to the coast of Palestine, near Caesarea, and to prepare
siege-engines. It was given out that the destination of the expedition was in
Africa. But once again the emir al-Fakhri warned William of Beaujeu and the
Templars of the Sultan’s real intentions. William passed on the warning, but,
as at Tripoli, no one was willing to believe him. He sent an envoy to Cairo on
his own initiative. Qalawun offered to spare the city in return for as many
Venetian sequins as there were inhabitants. But when William put this offer
before the High Court, it was scornfully rejected. William was accused of being
a traitor and was insulted by the crowd as he left the hall.

The complacency of the people of Acre rose
higher at the end of the year, when news came from Cairo that Qalawun was dead.
He had given up any attempt to hide his intention of marching on Acre. In a
letter to the King of Armenia he told of his vow not to leave a single
Christian alive in the city. On 4 November 1290, he set out from Cairo at the
head of his army. But no sooner had he started than he fell sick. Six days
later he died at Marjat at-Tin, only five miles from his capital. On his
death-bed he made his son, al-Ashraf Khalil, promise to continue the campaign.
He had been a great Sultan, as relentless and merciless as Baibars, but with a
finer sense of loyalty and honour.

Unlike Baibars, he left a worthy son to
succeed him. His death was followed by the usual palace plot. But al-Ashraf was
not taken unawares. He was able to arrest the ringleader, the emir Turuntai,
and to establish himself firmly on the throne. It was now too late in the year
to march against Acre. The campaign was postponed to the spring.

The government at Acre took advantage of
the respite to send one more embassy to Cairo. It was led by a notable of Acre,
Philip Mainboeuf, who was an accomplished Arabic scholar. With him was a
Templar knight, Bartholomew Pizan, a Hospitaller and a secretary called George.
The new Sultan refused to see them. They were thrown into prison, where they
did not long survive.

The Moslem army began to move in March,
1291. Al-Ashraf’s preparations were careful and complete. Siege-engines were
collected from all over his dominions. So heavily laden was the army from Hama
that it took a month, in the wet, muddy weather, to travel from Krak, where it
paused to collect a huge catapult, called the Victorious, down to Acre. Nearly
a hundred other machines had been constructed at Damascus and in Egypt. There
was a second great catapult, called the Furious, and lighter mangonels of a
particularly efficient type, known as the Black Oxen. On 6 March al-Ashraf left
Cairo for Damascus, where he deposited his harem. On April 5th he arrived
before Acre with all his vast forces. Men spoke of sixty thousand horsemen and
a hundred and sixty thousand infantrymen. However exaggerated those numbers may
be, his army far exceeded the forces that the Christians could muster.

1291: The Defenders of Acre

The news of the Sultan’s preparations had
at last brought the people of Acre to realize their plight. Earnest appeals had
been sent to Europe during the course of the winter, but with very little
result. A few isolated knights had arrived during the previous autumn. Amongst
them was the Swiss Otto of Grandson, with some Englishmen sent by Edward I. The
Temple and the Hospital gathered all their available men. The Grand Master of
the Teutonic Order, Burchard of Schwanden, made a bad impression by choosing to
resign his office at this very moment; but his successor, Conrad of
Feuchtwangen, summoned numbers of his fellow-knights from Europe. Henry of
Cyprus sent over Cypriot troops and his brother, Amalric, to command the
defence, and promised to follow himself with reinforcements. Every able-bodied
citizen of Acre was enlisted to play his part. But even so, the numbers were
small. The whole civilian population of Acre comprised thirty to forty thousand
souls. In addition there were less than a thousand knights or mounted sergeants
and about fourteen thousand foot-soldiers, including the Italian pilgrims. The
fortifications of the city were good, and they had recently been strengthened
by King Henry’s orders. There was now a double line of walls to protect the
peninsula on which the city and its northern suburb, Montmusart, were placed,
and a single wall separated Acre from Montmusart. The castle lay on this latter
wall, close to its junction with the double walls. There were twelve towers,
set at irregular intervals, along both the outer and the inner walls. Many of
them had been erected at the expense of some distinguished pilgrim, such as the
English Tower built by Edward I and the Tower of the Countess of Blois next to
it. At the angle where the walls turned from running northward from the Bay of
Acre to go westward towards the sea, there stood, on the outer wall, a great
tower recently rebuilt by King Henry II, opposite to the Accursed Tower on the
inner wall. In front of King Henry’s Tower was a barbican built by King Hugh. The
whole of this angle was considered the most vulnerable part of the defence. It
was therefore entrusted to the King’s own troops, under his brother, Amalric.
On his right were the French and English knights, under John of Grailly and
Otto of Grandson, then the troops of the Venetians and the Pisans and those of
the Commune of Acre. On his left, covering the walls of Montmusart, were first
the Hospitallers, then the Templars, each commanded by their Grand Master. The
Teutonic Knights supplemented the royal regiments by the Accursed Tower. On the
Moslem side, the army of Hama, with which the historian Abu’l Feda was present
in person, was stationed by the sea, opposite to the Templars; the army of
Damascus was opposite to the Hospitallers, and the Egyptian army stretched from
the end of the wall of Montmusart round to the bay of Acre. The Sultan’s tent
was pitched not far from the shore, opposite to the Tower of the Legate.

1291: Accusations of Cowardice

Later, when all was over and lost, anger
and grief gave rise to recriminations. The Christian chroniclers freely hurled
accusations of cowardice at the garrison. But in fact, at this supreme moment
of their fate, the defenders of Outremer showed a courage and a loyalty that
had been sadly absent in recent years. It may be that when shiploads of women,
old men and children were dispatched to Cyprus at the beginning of the siege,
some men of fighting age fled with them. It may be that some of the Italian
merchants showed a selfish anxiety about their own property. Genoa, indeed,
took no part in the struggle. She had been virtually excluded from Acre by the
Venetians and had made her own treaty with the Sultan. But the Venetians and
Pisans fought valiantly. The latter were responsible for the construction of a
great catapult that was the most effective of all the machines of the
Christians.

Map
4. Acre in 1291.

The siege began on 6 April. Day after day
the Sultan’s mangonels and catapults flung their stone or pottery containers
filled with an explosive mixture at the walls of the city or over them into the
town, and his archers poured their arrows in clouds against the defenders on
the galleries and tower-platforms, while his engineers prepared to move up to
mine the crucial defences. He was said to have a thousand engineers to use
against each tower. The Christians still had command of the sea, and provisions
of food were brought in regularly from Cyprus; but they were short of
armaments, and they began to realize that there were not enough soldiers to man
the walls adequately against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. But there
was no talk of surrender. One of their ships was fitted with a catapult which
did enormous damage in the Sultan’s camp. On the night of 15 April, when the
moon was bright in the sky, the Templars, aided by Otto of Grandson, made a
sortie right into the camp of the men of Hama. The Moslems were taken by
surprise. But many of the Templars tripped over the tent-cords in the
half-light and fell and were captured, and the others were driven back with
heavy losses into the town. Another sortie made by the Hospitallers a few
nights later in total darkness failed completely, as at once the Moslems lit
their torches and fires. After this second check it was decided that sorties
were too expensive in man-power. But the abandonment of aggressive enterprise
did harm to the Christian morale. The feeling of hopelessness grew amongst
them. Time was on the Moslems’ side.

On 4 May, nearly a month after the siege
began, King Henry arrived from Cyprus with the troops that he could muster, a
hundred horsemen and two thousand foot-soldiers, in forty ships. With him was
the Archbishop of Nicosia, John Turco of Ancona. It was probably because of
illness that he had not come sooner. He was received with joy. As soon as he
landed he took command and put new vigour into the defence. But it was soon
clear that these reinforcements were too few to make any difference to the
outcome.

1291: Last Attempt at Negotiations

In a last attempt to restore peace the
King sent two knights, the Templar William of Cafran and William of Villiers,
to the Sultan to ask why he had broken the truce and to promise to redress any
grievances. Al-Ashraf received them outside his tent, but before they could
deliver their message he asked them curtly if they had brought him the keys of
the city. On their denial he said that it was the place that he wanted; he was
not interested in the fate of its inhabitants, and, as a tribute to the King’s
courage in coming to fight when he was so young and ill, he would spare their
lives if they surrendered to him. The envoys had hardly replied that they would
be held as traitors if they promised capitulation when a catapult from the
walls hurled a stone into the fringe of the group. Al-Ashraf was furious and
drew his sword to slay the ambassadors, but the emir Shujai restrained him,
bidding him not to stain it with the blood of pigs. The knights were allowed to
return to their King.

The Sultan’s engineers were already
beginning to mine the towers. On 8 May the King’s men decided that the barbican
of King Hugh was no longer tenable. They set fire to it and left it to
collapse. In the course of the following week the towers of the English and of
the Countess of Blois were undermined, and the walls by Saint Anthony’s Gate
and by the tower of Saint Nicholas began to crumble. The new tower of Henry II
held out till 15 May, when part of its outer wall came down. Next morning the
Mameluks forced their way into the ruin, and the defence was forced back into
the inner line of walls. That same day there was a concentrated attack on Saint
Anthony’s Gate, and only the gallantry of the Templars and the Hospitallers
kept the enemy from passing into the city. The Marshal of the Hospital, Matthew
of Clermont, distinguished himself by his bravery.

During the next day the Moslems
strengthened their hold on the outer enceinte; and the Sultan ordered the
general assault for the morning of Friday, 18 May. The attack was launched on
the whole length of the walls from Saint Anthony’s Gate to the Patriarch’s
Tower by the Bay, but the main effort of the Moslems was against the Accursed
Tower at the angle of the salient. The Sultan threw all his resources into the
battle. His mangonels kept up an unceasing bombardment. The arrows of his
archers fell almost in a solid mass into the city; and regiment after regiment
rushed at the defences, led by white-turbaned emirs. The noise was appalling.
The assailants shouted their battle-cries, and trumpets and cymbals and the
drums of three hundred drummers on camel-back urged them on.

It was not long before the Mameluks forced
their way into the Accursed Tower. The Syrian and Cypriot knights that were its
garrison were pushed back westwards towards Saint Anthony’s Gate. There the
Templars and Hospitallers came to their assistance, fighting together as if
there had never been two centuries of rivalry between them. Matthew of Clermont
desperately tried to lead a counter-attack to recover the Tower, but though the
two Grand Masters both followed him, they could make no impression. Along the
eastern wall of the city John of Grailly and Otto of Grandson held their own
for some hours; but after the fall of the Accursed Tower the enemy was able to
pass along the crumbling walls and take possession of the Gate of Saint
Nicholas. The whole salient was lost, and the Moslems were well established
inside the city.

1291: The Flight from Acre

There was fierce fighting in the streets;
but nothing now could be done to save Acre. William of Beaujeu, Grand Master of
the Temple, was mortally wounded in the fruitless counter-attack against the
Accursed Tower. His followers carried him to the Temple building where he died.
Matthew of Clermont was with him, but returned to the battle and to his death.
The Grand Master of the Hospital, John of Villiers, was wounded, but his men
brought him down to the harbour and put him protesting on board a ship. The
young King and his brother Amalric had already embarked. King Henry was later
accused of cowardice in deserting the city; but there was nothing that he could
have done, and it was his duty to his kingdom to avoid capture. On the eastern
sector John of Grailly was wounded, but Otto of Grandson took control. He
commandeered as many Venetian ships as he could find and placed John of Grailly
and all soldiers that he could rescue on board, and himself was the last to
join them. There was ghastly confusion on the quays. Soldiers and civilians,
women and children amongst them, crowded into rowing boats, seeking to reach
the galleys that lay off the shore. The aged Patriarch, Nicholas of Hanape, who
had been slightly wounded, was placed by his faithful servants in a small
skiff; but out of charity he allowed so many refugees to climb in with him that
the boat sank with their weight and they were all drowned. There were some men
who had the presence of mind to snatch hold of a boat and charge exorbitant
fees from the desperate merchants and ladies on the quay. The Catalan
adventurer, Roger Flor, who had fought bravely as a Templar during the siege,
took command of a Templar galley and founded his great fortune on the blackmail
that he extorted from the noblewomen of Acre.

The ships were far too few to rescue the
fugitives. Soon the Moslem soldiers penetrated right through the city, slaying
everyone, old men, women and children alike. A few lucky citizens who stayed in
their houses were taken alive and sold as slaves, but not many were spared. No
one could tell the number of those that perished. The Orders and the great
merchant houses later tried to draw up lists of the survivors; but the fate of
most of their members was unknown. Subsequent travellers to the East spoke of
seeing renegade Templars living squalidly in Cairo and of other Templars
working as wood-cutters by the Dead Sea. Some prisoners were freed and returned
to Europe after nine or ten years of captivity. The slaves who had been knights
and their descendants were said to have been treated with some respect by their
masters. Many women and children disappeared for ever into the harems of
Mameluk emirs. Owing to the plentiful supply the price of a girl dropped to a
drachma apiece in the slave-market at Damascus. But the number of Christians
that were slain was greater still.

By the night of 8 May all Acre was in the
Sultan’s hands, except for the great building of the Templars jutting out into
the sea at the south-west point of the city. The surviving Templars had taken
refuge there, together with a number of citizens of both sexes. For several
days its huge walls defied the enemy; and ships that had landed refugees in
Cyprus came back to its aid. After nearly a week al-Ashraf offered the Marshal
of the Order, Peter of Sevrey, to allow him to embark to Cyprus with all the
people inside the fortress and with their possessions, if it were given up to
him. Peter accepted the terms; and an emir and a hundred Mameluks were admitted
into the fortress to supervise the arrangements, while the Sultan’s flag was
hoisted over the tower. But the Mameluks were out of hand and began to molest
and seize hold of the Christian women and boys. Furious at this, the knights
fell on the Moslems and slaughtered them, and pulled down the enemy flag, ready
to resist to the death. When night fell, Peter of Sevrey sent the treasury of
the Order with its Commander, Tibald Gaudin, and a few non-combatants, by boat
to the castle at Sidon. Next day al-Ashraf, seeing the strength of the castle
and the desperate courage of its garrison, offered the same honourable terms as
before. Peter and a few companions went out under a safe-conduct to discuss the
surrender. But as soon as they reached the Sultan’s tent they were seized and
bound and promptly beheaded. When the defenders on the wall saw what had
happened, they closed the gate again and fought on. But they could not prevent
the Moslem engineers from creeping up to the walls and digging a great mine
beneath them. On 18 May the whole landward side of the building begun to
crumble. Impatiently al-Ashraf threw two thousand Mameluks into the widening
breach. Their weight was too much for the sagging foundations. As they fought
their way in, the whole edifice came crashing down, killing defenders and
assailants alike in its vast ruin.