The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (49 page)

The recurrent issues of any protracted investment–starvation and disease–also cast their shadows over Acre in 1190. Hunger and discontent seem to have prompted poorer sections of the crusader host to launch an ill-disciplined and ultimately fruitless attack on Saladin’s camp in search of food on 25 July, at the cost of at least 5,000 lives. With their corpses rotting in the summer heat and great swarms of flies descending, making life unbearable in both camps, disease inevitably spread across the plains of Acre.

Saladin once again sought to cleanse the battlefield by throwing the remains of the Christian dead into the river, sending a gruesome mixture of ‘blood, bodies and grease’ downstream towards the crusaders. The tactic worked. One Latin described how ‘no small number of [crusaders] died soon after [they arrived] from the foul air, polluted with the stink of corpses, worn out by anxious nights spent on guard, and shattered by other hardships and needs’. The lethal combination of malnutrition and atrocious sanitary conditions poisoned the camp for the rest of the season, and the mortality rate rocketed. Losses among the poor were severe, but even nobles were not immune: Theobald of Blois ‘did not survive more than three months’, while his compatriot Stephen of Sancerre ‘also came and died without protection’. Ranulf of Glanville lasted just three weeks. Acre was fast becoming the graveyard of Europe’s aristocracy.
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The fate of the German crusade

Elsewhere in the Near East another death was to change the course of the crusade. In late March 1190 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa secured terms with the Byzantines and led the German crusade across the Hellespont to Asia Minor. The Germans forged a route south-east through Greek territory, crossing into Turkish Anatolia in late April. Internal power struggles within the Seljuq sultanate of Konya meant that Frederick’s earlier attempts to negotiate safe passage through to Syria had a limited impact on the ground, and the crusaders soon encountered concerted Muslim resistance. Despite supply shortages, Barbarossa managed to maintain discipline among his men–Muslim sources claimed that he threatened to cut the throat of any crusader deemed to have contravened orders–and the German marching column continued to make headway. On 14 May a major Turkish assault was beaten back and Frederick moved on to attack Konya itself, occupying the lower town of the Seljuq capital and forcing the Turks into temporary submission.

With the crossing of Asia Minor almost completed, Barbarossa pushed south towards the coast and the Christian territory of Cilician Armenia. The German crusade had suffered substantial losses in terms of men and horses, but all in all Frederick had achieved a striking success, prevailing where the crusades of 1101 and 1147 had failed. Then, just as the worst trials seemed to be over, disaster struck. Approaching Sifilke on 10 June 1190, the emperor impatiently decided to ford the River Saleph ahead of his troops. His horse lost its footing mid-stream, throwing Frederick into the river–on a scorching-hot day the water proved shockingly cold, and unable to swim, the German emperor drowned. His body was dragged ashore, but nothing could be done. Western Europe’s most powerful monarch, the mightiest ruler ever to take the cross, lay dead.

This sudden unheralded cataclysm stunned Latins and Muslims alike. One Frankish chronicler remarked that ‘Christendom suffered much harm by [Frederick’s] death’, while in Iraq another contemporary joyfully proclaimed that ‘God saved us from his evil’. The German crusaders were gripped by a crisis of leadership and morale. Barbarossa’s younger son Frederick of Swabia tried to salvage the expedition. Assuming command, he had the late emperor’s body wrapped and embalmed, and then he led the way into northern Syria. But en route ‘disease and death fell upon them [leaving them] looking as though they had been exhumed from their graves’. Thousands died, while others deserted. At Antioch, some of Barbarossa’s remains were buried in the Basilica of St Peter, beside the site of the Holy Lance’s discovery; his bones were then boiled and collected in a bag in the hope that they might be laid to rest in Jerusalem (as it was, they were eventually interred in the Church of St Mary in Tyre). Frederick of Swabia limped down the Syrian coast with what remained of the German army, facing attacks from Ayyubid troops stationed in the north.
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It is not clear precisely when news of Barbarossa’s death reached Saladin–according to Baha al-Din, he was informed of the event by a letter from Basil of Ani, head of the Armenian Christian Church, but no date was provided. The tidings certainly caused celebration among the Muslims. A crusader wrote that ‘inside Acre…there was dancing and playing of drums’, and recalled that members of the Ayyubid garrison gleefully climbed the battlements to shout ‘many times, in a loud voice…: “Your emperor has drowned.”’ Nonetheless, the sultan was still dispatching troops to defend Syria as late as 14 July 1190 and the full strength of his armies did not reassemble at Acre until early autumn. Thus, even though Barbarossa’s demise crippled the German crusade, Saladin still lost vital military resources that summer. Frederick of Swabia eventually reached Acre in early October 1190 in the company of perhaps 5,000 troops. Saladin seems to have expected that, in spite of all their losses, the Germans’ arrival would reinvigorate the crusader siege, but in real terms it did little to advance the Frankish cause.
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STALEMATE

In one sense the fighting season of 1190 had been a success for Saladin. Acre had shrugged off every Latin assault, its garrison countering the artifice of the Franks’ experimental military technology. The sultan had managed, albeit with some difficulty, to maintain channels of communication and resupply with the city, while deploying his own troops to harass and distract the besieging crusaders. After twelve months’ investment, Acre still held.

Nevertheless, in the wider scheme of things, Saladin had failed. Forced to redeploy his martial resources to meet the perceived threat of the German crusade, he lacked the manpower with which to seize the initiative at Acre. With armies at full strength, that summer he might have risked a concerted frontal assault on the Frankish positions and driven the crusaders from Palestine. As it was, by the time his troops had regrouped at Acre in early October, Saladin seems to have decided that, for now at least, the opportunity for decisive intervention had passed. This, combined with the onset of a ‘bilious fever’, prompted him to move his army back to a distant winter encampment at Saffaram (about ten miles south-east of Acre) in mid-October, effectively bringing the fighting season to a close. With his confidence evidently shaken, Saladin ordered the demolition of Caesarea, Arsuf and Jaffa–the key ports south of Acre–and even mandated the dismantling of Tiberias’ walls. In the months that followed, Saladin faced a constant struggle to maintain his forces in the field. Some, like the lords of Jazirat and Sinjar, repeatedly petitioned to return to their lands; others, like Keukburi, were dispatched to oversee the governance of the sultan’s neglected Mesopotamian interests and were lost to the
jihad
.
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In pulling back from the front line, just as he had a year earlier, Saladin was relying upon the ravages of nature to weaken his enemy, waiting to see if the crusaders could survive a second cruel winter huddled outside Acre. Before long the change of season began to bite. As in 1189, autumn’s end heralded the closing of long-distance sea routes and the effective isolation of the Frankish host. By November, the crusaders’ supplies were already running short, forcing them to attempt a foraging expedition south towards Haifa which was beaten back after just two days.

Ordeals

In late November Saladin at last disbanded his army for winter, once again remaining in person with only a small force to watch over Acre as the ‘sea became rough [and the rains] heavy and incessant’. From the Muslim perspective, the months that followed proved far harsher and more trying than the winter of 1189. The city’s garrison was faltering, while Saladin and his men were exhausted and ill-tempered. With supply lines stretched, there were widespread shortages of food and weapons, and too few doctors available to deal with the frequent outbreaks of illness. ‘Islam asks aid from you’, the sultan wrote in an imploring letter to the caliph, ‘as a drowning man cries for help.’ And yet, these problems were but a pale reflection of the torments faced by the crusaders. One Muslim eyewitness acknowledged this, writing that because ‘the plain [of Acre] became very unhealthy’ and ‘the sea was closed to them’, there ‘was great mortality amongst the enemy’ with 100 to 200 men perishing daily.

The Latins’ suffering may have been obvious to onlookers, but the view from inside the Christian camp was even more anguished. Cut off from the outside world, the crusaders’ stores of food simply ran out. By late December people had turned to skinning ‘fine horses’, eating their flesh and guts with gusto. As the famine intensified, one crusader wrote that there were ‘those who had lost their sense of shame through their hunger [who] fed in sight of everyone on abominable food which they happened to find, no matter how filthy, things which should not be spoken of. Their dire mouths devoured what humans are not permitted to eat as if it were delicious.’ This may be an indication that there were outbreaks of cannibalism.

Weakened by hunger, the Franks fell prey to illnesses such as scurvy and trench mouth:

The resultant mortality was on a scale not seen since the First Crusaders’ siege of Antioch. Thousands died, among them such potentates as Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, Theobald of Blois and even Frederick of Swabia. These dark days of winter witnessed a collapse in Christian morale. One crusader commented ‘there is no rage like that born of starvation’, observing that, in the midst of this horror, anger and despair caused a loss of faith and desertion. ‘Many of our people went to the Turks and turned renegade’, he wrote; ‘they denied [Christ], the Cross and baptism–everything.’ Receiving these apostates, Saladin must have hoped that the siege of Acre would soon falter.

But still the crusaders clung on. Some resorted to grazing on grass and herbs ‘like beasts’, others turned to eating unfamiliar ‘carob-beans’ indigenous to the area, which they found ‘sweet to eat’. Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, played a major role in restoring some semblance of order to the chaos-stricken camp, organising charitable collections from the rich so that food could be distributed to the poor. When scores of hungry crusaders sinned by eating what little meat they could find during Lent, Hubert enforced a penance upon them–three blows on their backs with a stick, administered by the bishop himself, ‘but not heavy blows’, as he ‘chastised like a father’. Finally, around late February or early March, the first small Christian supply ship bearing grain reached the camp to be greeted with great celebration, and with spring the crisis of supply ended. Having passed through a tempest of death and misery, the Franks were still thronged outside Acre.
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For Islam, the crusaders’ tenacity spelled disaster. As he had a year earlier, Saladin sought to use the winter season to strengthen Acre, but this time his efforts met with less success. Al-Adil was sent to organise a supply depot at Haifa from which resources could be ferried from Egypt up the coast to the garrison. On 31 December 1190 seven fully laden transport ships reached Acre’s harbour only to be dashed against the rocks and sunk by the treacherous seas. Food, weapons and money that could have sustained the city for months were lost. Then on 5 January 1191 an intense rainstorm caused a section of Acre’s outer wall to collapse, suddenly exposing the city to attack. Racked by starvation and illness, the crusaders were in no position to capitalise on this opportunity and Saladin’s men hurriedly filled the breach, but the omens for Islam were bleak. With a growing sense of apprehension, the sultan sought to reorganise Acre’s defences. Abu’l Haija the Fat was relieved of his military command of the port on 13 February, to be substituted by al-Mashtub, although Qaragush was left in his post as governor. The exhausted troops of the garrison were also replaced, but Saladin’s secretary Imad al-Din later criticised this measure, noting that a force of 20,000 men and sixty emirs was exchanged for just twenty emirs and far fewer troops because Saladin struggled to find volunteers willing to man the city.

The sultan’s frustration is apparent in a letter sent to the caliph that same month, in which he warned that the pope might be coming to lead the crusaders and bemoaned the fact that, when Muslim troops arrived at Acre from the far corners of the Near East, their commanders’ first question was when they could leave. At the same time, the manifold pressures of maintaining his enormous realm while locked in the struggle at Acre were beginning to tell. In March, Saladin begrudgingly assented to Taqi al-Din’s repeated demands to be made ruler of the north-eastern cities of Harran and Edessa. While the sultan could ill afford to lose his nephew from the
jihad
, he needed to safeguard his control over the Upper Euphrates or risk the unravelling of his empire.
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By April 1191 Saladin’s prospects, and those of Acre, seemed almost hopeless. For a year and a half the sultan had been immobilised by the crusaders’ siege of the city, unable to consolidate fully his victories of 1187, cowed into a strategy of reactive defence. He had sought to turn back the vengeful tide that had swept from western Europe onto the shores of Palestine, and he had failed. Frederick Barbarossa’s sudden death in June 1190 had been extraordinarily providential, but at Acre itself Saladin had been less fortunate, facing a seemingly indomitable Frankish enemy. Acre held, but so too did the Latin siege. Battered, but not broken, the crusaders had achieved a staggering feat of arms–the maintenance of a siege deep in enemy territory while beset by an opposing field army.