The Story of the Fall of Acre
_"Because the chasuble is of red serge," said he, "that signifies that
this Crusade shall be of little profit."_
LE SIRE DE JOINVILLE: _Memoirs of St Louis._
During the interval between the Eighth and Ninth Crusades, affairs in
the Holy Land had gone from bad to worse.
The knights of the Hospital and Temple spent all their time in private
quarrels and combats, and the merchants of Genoa and Pisa followed
their evil example. The Moguls were continually harassing both
Saracens and Christians, and when they were driven out by the combined
forces of the two latter, the Sultan Bibars took the opportunity to
seize the few towns that were left when the Crusade was over.
Nazareth was almost destroyed, Cæsarea, Joppa and Antioch fell, Acre
was sorely threatened. In vain did Jerusalem call upon the Pope for
help; his attention was fixed, not on Palestine but on Constantinople,
where the Latin Empire had vanished, and a new Greek dynasty had been
set up under Michael Palæologus. Absorbed in his desire to gain
acknowledgment from this quarter, Clement IV. gave only half-hearted
encouragement to a Ninth Crusade, yet he did succeed in stirring up
enthusiasm in a somewhat unexpected quarter.
{252}
To England, still in the turmoil of the Baron's War, came the message
of Clement reminding Henry III. of his old promise to take up the
Cross; and the answer came, not from Henry, the inert and ineffective
king, but from young prince Edward, his eldest son, moved perhaps
rather by the expediency of employing his treasonable barons than by a
keen desire for the freedom of Jerusalem.
One there was, however, who needed no urging, and had no base motives
in his longing to start upon a Ninth Crusade. Saint Louis, as we have
seen, had left his heart behind him in the Holy Land, and when he
summoned all his barons to Paris in the Lent of 1267, it was not hard
to guess the reason.
Among those who responded to the call went the Sire de Joinville, and,
seeing how well he knew the mind of the king, it was no wonder that he
should dream on the night of his arrival that he saw Louis on his
knees, before an altar, whilst many prelates, duly vested, placed upon
his shoulders a red chasuble of Rheims serge. Calling his chaplain, a
very wise man, Joinville told him of the vision, and the priest at once
said:
"Lord, you will see that the king will take the Cross to-morrow."
Joinville asked why he thought so; and he answered that it was because
of the dream; for the chasuble of red serge signified the Cross; which
was red with the blood that Christ shed from His side and His feet and
His hands. "And because the chasuble is of Rheims serge," said he,
"that signifies that the Crusade shall be of little profit, as you
shall see if God gives you life," for Rheims serge was but poor and
common material, and worth but very little.
{253}
So Joinville went to the king's chapel, and heard two knights talking
there, one to the other. Then one said, "Never believe me if the king
is not going to take the Cross here!"
And the other made answer, "If the king takes the Cross, this will be
one of the most dolorous days that ever were in France. For if we do
not take the Cross we shall lose the king's favour; and if we take the
Cross we shall lose God's favour, because we shall not take it for His
sake but for the sake of the king."
"So," adds Joinville, tersely, "it happens that on the following day
the king took the Cross, and his three sons with him; and afterwards it
befell that the Crusade was of little profit, according to the prophecy
of my priest."
With this second expedition of Louis, Joinville himself had scant
sympathy. He refused to join it on the ground that he owed a higher
duty to his own poor and ruined people. And he held that those who
advised the King to go "seeing how weak he was of body, for he could
bear neither to drive nor to ride," were guilty of mortal sin.
"So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him in my arms
from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre, where I took leave of him, to
the abbey of the Franciscans. And yet, weak as he was, if he had
remained in France, he might have lived longer and done much good and
many good works."
However that might have been, Louis' work as a Crusader was well-nigh
over. He left France accompanied by the Kings of Navarre and Aragon,
and by many of his barons, and by sixty thousand of his men. Driven
{254} by a tempest to Sardinia, the leaders decided to turn aside to
Tunis, whose king was suspected of being willing to become a Christian.
Landing on the site of the ancient town of Carthage, they had but
pitched their tents when a plague of sickness broke out in the camp,
and the King and his son were the first to be struck down.
When he knew that his end drew very near, St Louis caused himself to be
laid upon a bed of ashes, in token of his penitence, and all through
that last night they heard him murmur at intervals, with longing in his
voice, "Jerusalem! Jerusalem!"
But resignation to the Will of God was not difficult to a man whose
character had been formed by a life of prayer and unselfish devotion.
"I will enter Thy house, O Lord, I will worship in Thy sanctuary," were
the words of joy upon his lips, as he breathed his last.
"And it was at the same hour that the Son of God died upon the Cross
for the world's salvation," says Joinville, who adds, moreover, the
following touching tribute to the good king.
"A piteous thing and worthy of tears is the death of this saintly
prince, who kept and guarded his realm so holily and loyally, and gave
alms there so largely, and set therein so many fair foundations. And,
like as the scribe who, writing his book, illuminates it with gold and
azure, so did the said king illuminate his realm with the fair abbeys
that he built, and the great number of alms-houses, and the houses for
preachers and Franciscans, and other religious orders. And his bones
were put in a casket and borne thence, and buried at St Denis, in
France, where he had chosen his place of burial."
{255}
With St Louis died the deep religious side of the Crusades. Other
kings had vague longings and desires, but none of them were driven to
take part in the Holy War by the same fervent wish to lay down their
lives for the Cause of God.
The work was now taken up by Edward, eldest son of the English King,
Henry III. With him marched the great English nobles who had so lately
been involved in the Barons' War; for Edward's main motive was to keep
them employed and deprive them of opportunities for further rebellion.
Edward reached Tunis about seven weeks after the death of Louis, and
found the camp in much disorder. The French barons were intent upon
forcing the King of Tunis to pay tribute to the Sicilian sovereign, son
of their late ruler, and were quite averse from proceeding at once on
the Crusade. They all decided at length to go to Sicily for the
winter, but the French Crusaders said openly that they wished the
expedition deferred for at least four years. The death of the king and
queen of Navarre and of the young queen of Louis' successor Philip the
Bold, threw a gloom over their retreat, and before long all the French
host returned to their native land.
Edward alone remained firm to his purpose, and in the following spring,
with his little force of seven thousand men, he landed in Palestine.
His first act was one of terrible revenge. Marching to Nazareth he
took the town and put the Saracen inhabitants to the sword.
He then returned to Acre, only just in time to save the city from a
Turkish raid; and there he seems to have had some curious intercourse
with the Emir of Joppa, who {256} pretended that he was anxious to
become converted to Christianity.
But sickness fell upon Edward, and as he lay upon his bed, an assassin,
sent as a bearer of letters from the Emir, gained admittance and struck
the prince in the shoulder with a poisoned dagger.
Weak as he was, Edward had enough strength in reserve to grapple with
the fellow, wrest the dagger from him and stab him to the heart.
Doubtless the skilful nursing of his devoted wife, Eleanor, restored
the prince to health, whether or no the story is true that she sucked
the poison from the wound at the risk of her own life. The chronicles
of the time give the credit to a clever young English doctor who cut
away the poisoned flesh, but, however that may be, Edward had seen
enough of the Holy Land to realise that his task was both dangerous and
hopeless. When, therefore, letters from England urged his return on
the score of his father's failing health, he hastened to make a ten
years' truce with the Sultan, and to set out upon his homeward journey.
After his departure the old state of things was revived in the Holy
Land. None knew who was in truth the rightful king, even in name, of
the ill-fated kingdom of Jerusalem. The two great military orders of
the Hospital and the Temple spent their time and energies in fighting
with one another over their supposed rights; and the commercial rivalry
of the Christian settlers from Genoa, Venice and Pisa, kept up a
constant state of civil war which left them at the mercy of their
enemies. In Acre, the one important town held by Christian rulers, so
much fighting went on between the Christian inhabitants that much of
the city had been quite destroyed.
{257}
Yet Acre was now the one hope, the one centre of Christianity in the
Holy Land. To her walls had fled all those who had managed to escape
when one town after another fell before the victorious march of the
Sultan.
And so it came about that the city was filled with a mixture of
nationalities, each of which claimed to be ruled by a separate
authority. It was at one time governed by no less than seventeen
rulers, "whence there sprang much confusion."
This wretched state of things did nothing more than stir up a feeling
of mild uneasiness in Europe. Pope Gregory X., indeed, did his best to
encourage a new Crusade, for he had been an eye-witness in Acre of the
need of some active measure of reform. But he died before anything
practical could be done. Some years later the Grand Master of the
Templars made his way to the footstool of Pope Nicholas IV., and
pleaded the cause of the hapless Christians.
The Pope, much moved, sent seventeen hundred mercenaries, or hired
soldiers, at his own cost, to the relief of Acre; but these men,
finding their wages were not paid, took to plundering the Saracen
traders during a time of truce, and so earned for the Christians a
worse reputation than ever.
These outrages, moreover, excited the indignation of the Egyptian
Sultan, who prepared to attack Acre in the following spring, and
meantime sent ambassadors to demand the surrender of the truce-breakers
"under pain of open war." The Master of the Temple would have yielded
to the justice of his demands, but the other political parties in the
city were against any such idea, saying that it had always been the
custom for the princes {258} of the West to disregard any truce that
might be of force in the East.
The views of the latter prevailed, and an embassy was sent to the
Sultan, offering compensation, and assuring him that the offenders
should be kept in prison till the truce had expired.
The Sultan Khalil listened in grim silence, and after a while replied
with much dignity, "Your words are as the honey and sugar used to
conceal the presence of a deadly poison. We have ourselves kept the
truce with loyal intent, but such an offence cannot be suffered to pass
unpunished. You may depart in full assurance that within the time
appointed I will come against your city with a mighty host and destroy
all, from the least to the greatest, by the sword."
Just before the return of the envoys with this threatening message, the
spirits of the citizens had been much revived by the arrival in
Palestine of Sir Otho de Grandison, the secretary and confidential
friend of Edward I., with a small force and the information that Edward
himself would shortly follow him.
The message of the envoys had filled the city with panic that was but
slightly leavened with hope. They saw at length that their one chance
lay in united action, and they determined to fight together for their
city to the last. "And surely the princes oversea will send us timely
help when they hear with what peril we are encompassed," was their cry.
Encouraged by their wish for unity the Patriarch sent them to their
homes with the charge, "Be ye therefore constant, and ye shall behold
the great help of the Lord come upon you."
So at length, when it was too late, all manner of {259} energies were
set to work. The city was refortified, a large store of arms was laid
in, help was sent from Cyprus and the Islands of the Sea, until a force
of nine hundred knights and eighteen thousand foot was within the
walls. The care of the walls themselves was divided between Otho de
Grandison, Henry, King of Cyprus, and the Master of the Teutonic
Knights and the Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, with whom
served the Masters of the Knights of the Sword and of the Knights of
the Holy Ghost.
"These are the men," says one of the narratives of the survivors, "by
whose prudence and counsel the city was to be governed. Had they been
of one heart and mind, Heaven is our witness, Acre would still rejoice
in the fulness of her strength." For alas, the old discord between the
Templars and the Hospitallers had broken out afresh, and there was
little hope of united action within the walls.
In the middle of March, the Saracens first appeared before Acre, "while
making the earth to tremble at the march of their mailed men and to
shake at the noise of their drums and cymbals; while the gilded shields
of the soldiers flashed as the rays of the sun across the hills and
their spearheads danced in the sunlight like stars in the midnight sky."
The din made before the walls was incessant. "They bellowed like
bulls; they barked like dogs; they roared like lions; and ever, as is
their wont, they drummed their huge tom-toms with their heavy-knotted
sticks."
Then the war-engines were set up "which poured by day and by night a
ceaseless hailstorm of stones upon the walls and city."
{260}
A partly successful sortie returned with some captives and the news
that "the arrows were flying thicker than the flakes of snow in
winter"; and on the Good Friday of the year 1291 Otho and the Templars
planned a more united attack upon the Saracen camp. But this the
Patriarch, acting on the advice of traitors, absolutely forbade, and so
the last chance of saving the ill-fated city disappeared.
Many of the citizens and some of the fighting men now fled from Acre
whenever they had the opportunity, but a considerable force yet
remained, quite enough indeed to hold the city had they been content to
work together. This, however, seemed impossible, and Khalil went
boldly on to undermine the walls. The first direct assault was aimed
at that section which was guarded by Henry of Cyprus, and only the
nightfall prevented the Saracens from forcing an entrance. During the
hours of darkness the King of Cyprus, with all his followers, crept to
the harbour and secretly sailed away to his own island. And this he
did, not so much in fear as in despair of ever accomplishing aught,
when the petty quarrels and rivalries within the city left him without
support.
This fatal policy of disunion was even more apparent during the last
four days of that terrible siege. The Templars would not lift a hand
to aid the Hospitallers; their bitter hostility made them more eager to
fight each other than the infidel.
Meantime the Saracens had bridged the moat, broken through the outer
walls, and driven the defenders to the inner part of the city. The
captains, who were sitting in council, hastily donned their armour and
rode forth into the midst of the panic-stricken crowd.
[Illustration: _The Fall of Acre_]
{263}
"Shame upon you!" they cried. "Fools! you are not hurt. To the battle
with you, by the faith of Christ," and with Matthew de Clermont at
their head, they charged upon the invaders and drove them out beyond
the breach.
For three days this sort of thing continued, the Crusaders patching up
the breach by night that had been broken in by day. But at daybreak of
Friday, May 18, Khalil made his final assault. In the midst of the
deafening noise made by his drummers mounted on three hundred camels,
an attack was made upon all parts of the wall at once. Within a few
hours the Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, rivals in life, were
united in death. Overwhelmed by their loss, the Christians gave way,
and though Otho de Grandison held out for awhile, it was soon clear
that further resistance was impossible.
In the midst of the horror and confusion of the onrush of the Saracens
through the doomed town, a terrific storm began to rage, while the sea
rose to such a height that it became almost impossible to launch a boat
or escape from the harbour.
The Patriarch had been carried aboard his own galley against his will,
and in his wish to save as many of his people as possible, he allowed
the vessel to be so overcrowded that she overturned, and all on board
were lost. Many, however, did escape by water, and only a few, who had
no desire save for righteousness, "remained behind to sell their lives
dearly or to bargain with Saracen prisoners for their own lives."
Others held out in the Temple Tower, and when at length it fell,
perished amid the ruins. Otho de {264} Grandison was among those who
managed to escape to Sidon, and afterwards to Cyprus.
So fell the last remnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, founded with such
pride and devotion nearly two hundred years before.
{265}