Frankish fortunes continued to slide. Henry of Champagne’s heavy mangonets were destroyed in a Muslim sally from Acre’s gates in early September. On September 24, the Christian fleet attempted to destroy the Tower of Flies, which guarded the city’s harbor, by ramming vessels loaded with combustibles into it. At a critical moment the wind shifted, and the ships collided with one another and were badly damaged. A specially built Pisan vessel, resembling a floating castle and outfitted with mangonels, was set afire during a sortie from the harbor by a flotilla of small Muslim boats.

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Winter arrived early on the coast, temporarily putting an end to Christian naval supremacy. As the winter lengthened, plague and famine stalked the Crusaders’ camp. Thousands succumbed to an intestinal fever. Henry of Champagne hovered near death for many weeks. Frederick of Swabia, who had suffered through his father’s death and the terrible march from Germany, died in January 1191.

Food supplies had dwindled by early spring. In the Frankish camp, a silver penny bought a handful of beans or a single egg. A sack of corn cost 100 pieces of gold. The common soldier ate grass and chewed bare bones. Ambroise recorded that ‘a crowd gathered around whenever a horse was killed, and a dead horse sold for more than it had ever been worth alive. Even the entrails were eaten.’ So numerous were the dead that many bodies were carted to Acre’s moat to help fill it in.

April finally brought relief to the beleaguered Franks. A ship swollen with grain and corn arrived at the camp, followed on April 20 by King Philip Augustus of France in a fleet of ships crammed with soldiers and war engines. Seven weeks later, in June, King Richard I of England hove into view with 25 ships, fresh from his conquest of Cyprus. En route, they had overtaken a large Muslim supply ship loaded with 650 men for the relief of Acre. Richard’s vessel had rammed the enemy ship and sunk it with heavy loss of life. To the English soldiers now surveying the coast as they neared the Crusaders’ bay, the vista ahead seemed to promise an army of Muslims covering mountain and valley, hill and plain. Obvious and ominous, too, were the enemy’s multitudinous, brightly colored tents pitched everywhere.

The arrival of the new French and English Crusaders renewed Frankish hopes. Philip, eight years Richard’s senior, offered leadership based on his experience as French king. He preferred the intricacies of siege warfare as opposed to the hand-to-hand battle relished by Richard. Although the English king lacked ruling experience, he had gained renown as a fierce fighter endowed with great personal courage.

Richard, bearing the famous soubriquet ‘the Lion-Hearted,’ assumed command of the siegeworks. Attempts to scale the walls had failed, but Philip’s sappers had successfully tunneled beneath the Accursed Tower. The timbers supporting the mine shaft were then set on fire. Above ground, a ferocious mangonel bombardment further weakened the tower, which soon collapsed. Committing any able-bodied man who could bear arms to the breach, the Muslim defenders were barely able to fend off the attacking Franks.

Mighty siege engines continued to hurl heavy rocks and fire pots at the weakening city. French engineers constructed a stone-throwing catapult nicknamed the ‘Evil Neighbor’ and a huge mangonel dubbed ‘God’s Own Sling.’ Together these monstrous machines succeeded in fracturing Acre’s walls.

Italian merchant vessels plied the waters around Acre, delivering arms and armor while effectively sealing the city’s harbor. A Muslim chronicler bemoaned the fact that Acre’s garrison was running short of materiel, while the Franks were ‘clothed in a kind of thick felt, and coats of mail as ample as they were strong, which protected them against arrows.’

Sickness, however, struck both Philip and Richard, the latter seriously. Called leonardie by Ambroise, the disease resembled scurvy, with a wasting of body and loss of hair. Weakened, Richard nevertheless ordered that he be borne by litter to the siegeworks, both to inspect operations and to buoy the Crusaders’ spirits by his presence.

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