Saladin was unable to break through the ring of besiegers to relieve Acre. Volunteer swimmers carried messages from the city to the gathered emirs, pleading for help. A final appeal was sent out on July 7. Acre's defenders by then were too weak to man the breach made by Philip's sappers. They probably sensed they would all be massacred if the Christians were forced to take the city by storm. Against Saladin's wishes, the city surrendered to the Franks on July 12, 1191. The great Muslim leader, noted one chronicler, received the news 'like a mother who has lost her child.'

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The first siege of Acre had taken nearly two years and may have cost more than 100,000 Christian casualties. The tenacity of the opposing armies, coupled with the bloodletting and abominable living conditions, led at least one historian to liken the siege to the terrible Battle of Verdun in 1916. The final savagery of the siege took place after the city had fallen. Perhaps as revenge for Muslim atrocities against Christians-but more likely because a term of surrender involving the return of the true cross (which had been captured by Saladin at Haddin) and payment of 200,400 gold pieces was not being met-Richard I ordered 2,700 of the survivors from Acre's garrison executed.

Richard the Lion-Hearted then carried the Third Crusade deep into Palestine. Squabbles had already caused contact to be broken with Conrad of Montserrat and Philip Augustus, the latter returning to France, but the Franks still were strong enough to win stirring victories at Arsuf and Jaffa. The recapture of Jerusalem, however, was a goal not to be attained.

Acre knew relative peace and prosperity as a Christian city over the next century. The rise of the Mamelukes, ferocious slave-warriors from Egypt, in the mid- 13th century signaled an end to the Frankish states of the Levant. Under Sultan alMalik Baibars, the Mamelukes took Syria from the rising new Mongol powers. In 1268, Jaffa and Antioch, former Frankish strongholds, were captured. A series of truces kept the Mamelukes at bay until negotiations broke down in 1289. Tripoli was destroyed as the sultan Qalawan turned his attention to driving all Christians out of Palestine.

Acre, by then, had been heavily fortified with double walls and a string of 12 towers set at irregular intervals on both the inner and outer walls. The 14,000 defenders consisted of Acre's citizenry, Pisan and Venetian pilgrims to the Holy Land, a contingent of Cypriots, and a small group of English and Swiss knights. The bulk of the defense rested on the knights of the Teutonic, Templar and Hospitaler military orders.

AI-Ashraf Khalil, the Mamelukes' new sultan, had raised an army of more than 100,000 cavalry and foot. Among his huge siege weapons was a catapult dubbed 'Victorious,' which had to be transported in pieces on a train of specially constructed carts. 'The carts were so heavy,' noted Muslim chronicler Abu'l-Feda, 'that the trip took us more than a month, although in normal times eight days would have sufficed.'

On April 5, 1291, Khalil arrived before the walls of Acre. His siege engines rained stones and fire pots upon the city. A steady fire was returned by the city's mangonels and by a Frankish ship sporting a heavy catapult. The Mamelukes were also peppered with arrows, according to Abu'l-Feda, from 'Frankish boats topped by wooden-covered turrets lined with buffalo hide, from which the enemy fired at us with bows and crossbows.'

Khalil ordered a general assault on Acre on Friday, May 18. Driven by the boom and bang of 300 drums and cymbals, the white-turbaned Mamelukes rushed the walls as mangonels and archers kept up a blistering fusillade. They stormed the Accursed Tower, rebuilt after its destruction a century earlier. A furious counterattack led by Hospitaler Marshal Matthew of Clermont stymied the Mamelukes for a time, but their numbers were too great. Tower after tower fell. The Templars and Hospitalers died in bands, surrounded by the screaming Egyptians. Matthew of Clermont finally fell as the Mamelukes burst into the city streets.

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