VOYAGE TO ACRE.
1190
The different names of Acre.--Order of St. John.--The
Hospitalers.--Knights of St. John.--Origin of the name of St.
Jean d'Acre.--The order.--A description of the town of
Acre.--Philip before Acre.--The siege.--Chasing a Saracen
vessel.--Desperation.--The terrible Greek fire which the Saracens
used.--The ship is taken.--A massacre.--Richard's defense.--King
Richard's cupidity.--The sinking ship.
The great landing-point for expeditions of Crusaders to the Holy Land
was Acre, or Akka, as it is often written. The town was originally
known as Ptolemais, and the situation of it may be found designated on
ancient maps under that name. The Turks called it Akka, which name the
French call Acre. It was also, after a certain time, called St. Jean
d'Acre. It received this name from a famous military order that was
founded in the Holy Land in the Middle Ages, called the Knights of St.
John.
The origin of the order was as follows: About a hundred years before
the time of Richard's crusade, a company of pious merchants from
Naples, who went to Jerusalem, took pity, while they were there, on
the pilgrims who came there to visit the Holy Sepulchre, and who,
being poor, and very insufficiently provided for the journey, suffered
a great many privations and hardships. These merchants accordingly
built and endowed a monastery, and made it the duty of the monks to
receive and take care of a certain number of these pilgrims.
They named the establishment the Monastery of St. John, and the monks
themselves were called Hospitalers, their business being to receive
and show hospitality to the pilgrims. So the monks were sometimes
designated as the Hospitalers and sometimes the Brothers of St. John.
Other travelers, who came to Jerusalem from time to time, seeing this
monastery, and observing the good which it was the means of effecting
for the poor pilgrims, became interested in its welfare, and made
grants and donations to it, by which, in the course of fifty years, it
became much enlarged. At length, in process of time, a _military_
order was connected with it. The pilgrims needed protection in going
to and fro, as well as food, shelter, and rest at the end of their
journey, and the military order was formed to furnish this protection.
The knights of this order were called Knights Hospitalers, and
sometimes Knights of St. John. The institution continued to grow, and
finally the seat of it was transferred to Acre, which was a much more
convenient place for giving succor to the pilgrims, and also for
fighting the Saracens, who were the great enemies that the pilgrims
had to fear. From this time the institution was called St. John of
Acre, as it was before St. John of Jerusalem, and finally its power
and influence became so predominant in the town that the town itself
was generally designated by the name of the institution, and it has
been called St. Jean d'Acre to this day.
The order became at last very numerous. Great numbers of persons
joined it from all the nations of Europe. They organized a regular
government. They held fortresses and towns, and other territorial
possessions of considerable value. They had a fleet, and an army, and
a rich treasury. In a word, they became, as it were, a government and
a nation.
The persons belonging to the order were divided into three classes:
1. _Knights._--These were the armed men. They fought the
battles, defended the pilgrims, managed the government, and
performed all other similar functions.
2. _Chaplains._--These were the priests and monks. They
conducted worship, and attended, in general, to all the
duties of devotion. They were the scholars, too, and acted
as secretaries and readers, whenever such duties were
required.
3. _Servitors._--The duty of the servitors was, as their
name imports, to take charge of the buildings and grounds
belonging to the order, to wait upon the sick, and accompany
pilgrims, and to perform, in general, all other duties
pertaining to their station.
[Illustration: THE RAMPARTS OF ACRE.]
The town of Acre stood on the shore of the sea, and was very strongly
fortified. The walls and ramparts were very massive--altogether too
thick and high to be demolished or scaled by any means of attack known
in those days. The place had been in possession of the Knights of St.
John, but in the course of the wars between the Saracens and the
Crusaders that had prevailed before Richard came, it had fallen into
the hands of the Saracens, and now the Crusaders were besieging it, in
hopes to recover possession. They were encamped in thousands on a
plain outside the town, in a beautiful situation overlooking the sea.
Still farther back among the mountains were immense hordes of
Saracens, watching an opportunity to come down upon the plain and
overwhelm the Christian armies, while they, on the other hand, were
making continued assaults upon the town, in hopes of carrying it
by storm, before their enemies on the mountains could attack them. Of
course, the Crusaders were extremely anxious to have Richard arrive,
for they knew that he was bringing with him an immense re-enforcement.
Philip, the French king, had already arrived, and he exerted himself
to the utmost to take the town before Richard should come. But he
could not succeed. The town resisted all the attempts he could make to
storm it, and, in the mean time, his position and that of the other
Crusaders in the camp was becoming very critical, on account of the
immense numbers of Saracens in the mountains behind them, who were
gradually advancing their posts and threatening to surround the
Christians entirely. Philip, therefore, and the forces joined with
him, were beginning to feel very anxious to see Richard's ships
drawing near, and from their encampment on the plain they looked out
over the sea, and watched day after day, earnestly in hopes that they
might see the advanced ships of Richard's fleet coming into view in
the offing.
In the mean time, Richard, having sailed from Cyprus, was coming on,
though he was delayed on his way by an occurrence which he greatly
gloried in, deeming it doubtless a very brilliant exploit. The case
was this:
In sailing along with his squadron between Cyprus and the main land,
he suddenly fell in with a ship of very large size. At first Richard
and his men wondered what ship it could be. It was soon evident that,
whatever she was, she was endeavoring to escape. Richard ordered his
galleys to press on, and he soon found that the strange ship was full
of Saracens. He immediately ordered his men to advance and board her,
and he declared to his seamen that if they allowed her to escape he
would crucify them.
The Saracens, seeing that there was no possibility of escape, and
having no hope of mercy if they fell into Richard's hands, determined
to scuttle the ship, and to sink themselves and the vessel together.
They accordingly cut holes through the bottom as well as they could
with hatchets, and the water began to pour in. In the mean time,
Richard's galleys had surrounded the vessel, and a dreadful combat
ensued. Both parties fought like tigers. The Crusaders were furious to
get on board before the ship should go down, and the Saracens, though
they had no expectation of finally defending themselves against their
enemies, still hoped to keep them back until it should be too late for
them to obtain any advantage from their victory.
For a time they were quite successful in their resistance, chiefly by
means of what was called Greek fire. This Greek fire was a celebrated
means of warfare in those days, and was very terrible in its nature
and effects. It is not known precisely what it was, or how it was
made. It was an exceedingly combustible substance, and was to be
thrown, on fire, at the enemy; and such was its nature, that when once
in flames nothing could extinguish it; and, besides the heat and
burning that it produced, it threw out great volumes of poisonous and
stifling vapors, which suffocated all that came near. The men threw it
sometimes in balls, sometimes on the ends of darts and arrows, where
it was enveloped in flax or tow to keep it in its place. It burned
fiercely and furiously wherever it fell. Even water did not extinguish
it, and it was said that in this combat the sea all around the
Saracens' ship seemed on fire, and the decks of the galleys that
attacked them were blazing with it in every direction. Great numbers
of Richard's men were killed by it.
But the superiority of numbers on Richard's side was too great, and
after a time the Saracens were subdued, before the ship had admitted
water enough through the scuttlings to carry her down. Richard's men
poured in on board of her in great numbers. They immediately proceeded
to massacre or throw overboard the men as fast as possible, and to
seize the stores and transfer them to their own ships. They also did
all they could to stop the leaks, so as to delay the sinking of the
ship as long as possible. They had time to transfer to their own
vessels nearly all the valuable part of the cargo, and to kill and
drown all the men. Out of twelve or fifteen hundred, only about
thirty-five were spared.
When, afterward, public sentiment seemed inclined to condemn this
terrible and inexcusable massacre, Richard defended himself by saying
that he found on board the vessel a number of jars containing certain
poisonous reptiles, which he alleged the Saracens were going to take
to Acre, and there let them loose near the Crusaders' camp to bite the
soldiers, and that men who could resort to so barbarous a mode of
warfare as this deserved no quarter. However this may be, the poor
Saracens received no quarter. It might be supposed that Richard
deserved some credit for his humanity in saving the thirty-five. But
his object in saving these was not to show mercy, but to gain
ransom-money. These thirty-five were the _emirs_, or other officers of
the Saracens, or persons who looked as if they might be rich or have
rich friends. When they reached the shore, Richard fixed upon a
certain sum of money for each of them, and allowed them to send word
to their friends that if they would raise that money and send it to
Richard, he would set them at liberty. A great proportion of them were
thus afterward ransomed, and Richard realized from this source quite a
large sum.
When Richard's soldiers found that the time for the captured ship to
sink was drawing nigh, they abandoned her, leaving on board every
thing that they had not been able to save, and, withdrawing to a safe
distance, they saw her go down. The sea all around her was covered
with the bodies of the dead and dying, and also with bales of
merchandise, broken weapons, fragments of the wreck, and with the
flickering and exhausted remnants of the Greek fire.
The fleet then got under way again, and pursued its course to Acre.