A.D. 1191.
The ill success of the first Crusades appeared to redouble the zeal of the Christians for the recovery of the Holy Land. Great misfortunes had attended many of the enterprises, but vast numbers had been enriched by the plunder of magnificent cities, and some of the leaders had acquired territorial possessions. Rome, whose policy it was to keep up the fanaticism, did all in its power to promote these wicked, senseless expeditions, and never ceased calling the attention of Europe to Jerusalem defiled by the infidels, and its holy places profaned. These touching pictures, accompanied by numerous promises of indulgence, had a prodigious effect: France and England for a moment laid aside their quarrels; and their kings, Philip and Richard, levied armies for the delivery of the Holy Land. This was the golden age for ambitious popes and greedy princes or adventurers. Whether Celestine urged Cœur de Lion to undertake a mad expedition to the East, or Innocent III. hounded on Simon de Montfort to his massacre and plunder of the Albigeois, the motives were the same—thirst of power and influence in the pontiffs, and solid gain of wealth in their tools.
Followed by their numerous battalions, accompanied by their most powerful vassals, the two kings embarked and met at Messina. The artful Tancred, king of Sicily, nearly succeeded in his attempt to embroil the two monarchs; but a religious moderation quieted the nascent storm. The French directed their course towards St. Jean d’Acre, which city, having an excellent port, was equally necessary to the Christians to preserve Tyre and Tripoli, as it was to the Saracens to secure a communication between Egypt and Syria. For more than two years, Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, had besieged this important place with forces much less numerous than were employed in defending it. With an army increased by torrents of Crusaders, with which the West constantly inundated the East, and the wreck of the army of the emperor Frederick, Guy ventured to march against Saladin, who was advancing to succour Acre. Never had the Christian legions evinced more ardour; the combat was bloody, but the success doubtful. Each claimed the honour of the victory; but certainly the loss was least on the part of the Crusaders; they resumed the siege, and the besieged continued to defend themselves with the same vigour, when Philip Augustus arrived in the camp. His presence added greatly to the hopes of the besiegers: the walls of Acre were fast falling beneath the attacks of its numerous assailants; the victorious soldiers would speedily have achieved the long-delayed conquest, if the king of the French had not checked their courage out of courtesy for the English monarch: he thus lost the great opportunity of which the infidels made good use; they repaired their breaches; and with the strength of their walls their spirits revived also. At length Richard arrived, dragging in his train, bound in chains of silver, Isaac Comnenus, king, or as he ostentatiously styled himself, emperor of Cyprus, which island he had conquered during his voyage. A happy harmony presided over the first proceedings of the kings of France and England, who shared by turns both honour and danger. The army calculated upon seeing Acre yield to the first general assault. When the French monarch attacked the city, Richard mounted the trenches. On the following day the king of England conducted the assault, and Philip in his turn provided for the safety of the besiegers. The emulation which prevailed between the two nations and their kings produced extraordinary acts of valour.
Ptolemaïs, or Acre, saw indeed beneath its walls all the illustrious captains and warriors that Europe could then boast, and that in an age excelling most others in chivalric bravery. The tents of the Franks covered a vast plain, and their army presented a noble aspect. A spectator, on glancing his eye along the shore at the towers of Acre and the camp of the Christians, in which they had built houses and traced streets, traversed incessantly by an immense crowd, might have imagined he saw two rival cities which were at war with each other. Each nation had its separate quarter, and so many languages were spoken by the Crusaders, that the Mussulmans could not find interpreters enough to enable them to understand the prisoners. In this confused multitude, each people had a different character, different manners, and different arms; but at the signal of battle, all were animated with the same zeal and the same ardour. The presence of the two monarchs had re-established discipline, and Acre must soon have surrendered, if discord, that eternal enemy of the Christians, had not entered their camp with Richard.
Conrad of Montferrat and Guy de Lusignan both claimed the poor honour of being king of Jerusalem; and the kings of England and France took opposite sides; indeed, it was impossible for the headstrong self-willed Richard and the astute politic Philip to remain long friends in the same camp. Whenever Philip took the field, Richard played Achilles, and sulked in his tent. The besieged had never more than one of the monarchs to contend with at a time; and the Christian army really became less redoubtable for its accession of strength. Amidst their disputes, both monarchs fell dangerously ill; and their hatred and suspicion were so great, that each accused the other with having made an attempt upon his life. As Saladin sent them refreshments and physicians, and as they addressed frequent messages to him, each monarch reproached the other with keeping up an impious understanding with the Saracens.
They, however, began to be convinced that such dissensions jeopardized the safety of the army and the interests of the cause; the Jerusalem monarchy was amicably arranged, and the siege was resumed with fresh vigour. But the besieged had taken advantage of the respite granted to them by the Christian cabals, and had strengthened their fortifications. The besiegers were astonished at the opposition they met with. We should have told our readers that Saladin, with a numerous army, was on the heights above Acre; so that the Christians were between the two fires of his forces and the garrison of the city. Whenever the Crusaders attacked Acre, Saladin made a skirmishing dash at their camp. Many battles were fought at the foot of the hills; but on the two occasions of general assaults on the city, the Christians were obliged to return precipitately to defend their tents.
But time must exhaust the resources of a city so strongly beleaguered: the walls began to crumble under incessant attacks, and war, famine, and disease weakened the garrison; there were not soldiers enough to defend the walls and move about the cumbrous machines; the place wanted provisions, munitions of war, and Greek fire. The troops and the people began to murmur against Saladin and the emirs; and the commander of the garrison at length proposed a capitulation to Philip Augustus; but he swore by the God of the Christians that he would not spare a single inhabitant of Ptolemaïs if the Mussulmans did not restore all the cities that had fallen into their power since the battle of Tiberias.
Irritated by this determination, the chief of the emirs retired, saying that he and his companions would rather bury themselves beneath the ruins of the city than listen to such terms, and that they would defend Acre as a lion defends his blood-stained lair. On his return into the place, he communicated his courage, or rather his despair, to every heart. When the Christians resumed their assaults, they were repulsed with a vigour that astonished them. “The tumultuous waves of the Franks,” says an Arabian author, “rolled towards the place with the rapidity of a torrent; they mounted the half-ruined walls as wild goats ascend the steepest rocks, whilst the Saracens precipitated themselves upon the besiegers like stones detached from the summits of mountains.” In one general assault a Florentine knight of the family of Buonaguisi, followed by a few of his men, fought his way into one of the towers of the infidels, and got possession of the Mussulman banner that floated from it. Overpowered by numbers and forced to retreat, he returned to the camp, bearing off the flag he had so heroically won. In the same assault, Alberic Clement, the first marshal of France of whom history makes mention, scaled the ramparts, and, sword in hand, penetrated into the city, where he found a glorious death. Stephen, count of Blois, and several knights were burnt by the Greek fire, the boiling oil, the melted lead, and heated sand which the besiegers poured down upon all who approached the walls.
The obstinate ardour of the Mussulmans was sustained during several days; but as they received no succour, many emirs, at length despairing of the safety of Ptolemaïs, threw themselves by night into a bark, to seek an asylum in the camp of Saladin, preferring to encounter the anger of the sultan to perishing by the swords of the Christians. This desertion, and the contemplation of their ruined towers, filled the Mussulmans with terror. Whilst pigeons and divers constantly announced to Saladin the horrible distresses of the besieged, the latter came to the resolution of leaving the city by night, and braving every peril to join the Saracen army. But their project being discovered by the Christians, they blocked up and guarded every passage by which the enemy could possibly escape. The emirs, the soldiers, and the inhabitants then became convinced that they had no hope but in the mercy of the Christian leaders, and promised, if they would grant them liberty and life, to give up sixteen hundred prisoners, together with the wood of the true cross. By the capitulation, they engaged to pay two hundred thousand byzants of gold, and the garrison, with the entire population, were to remain hostages for the execution of the treaty.
A Mussulman soldier was sent from the city to announce to Saladin that the garrison had been forced to capitulate. The sultan, who was preparing to make a last effort to save the place, learnt the news with deep regret. He summoned a council to know if they approved of the capitulation; but scarcely were the principal emirs assembled in his tent, when they saw the standards of the Crusaders floating over the walls of Ptolemaïs.
The terms of the capitulation remained unexecuted; Saladin, under various pretexts, deferring the payments. Richard, irritated by a delay which appeared to him a breach of faith, revenged himself upon his prisoners. Without pity for disarmed enemies, or regard for the Christians he exposed to sanguinary reprisals, he massacred five thousand Mussulmans before the city they had so bravely defended, and within sight of Saladin, who shared the disgrace of this barbarity by thus abandoning his bravest and most faithful warriors.
Such was the conclusion of this famous siege, which lasted nearly three years, in which the Crusaders shed more blood and exhibited more bravery than ought to have sufficed for the subjugation of the whole of Asia. More than a hundred skirmishes and nine great battles were fought before the walls of the city; several flourishing armies came to recruit armies nearly annihilated, and were in their turn replaced by fresh armies. The bravest nobility of Europe perished in this siege, swept away by sword or disease.
In this war, both sides exhibited their fanaticism to the utmost extent; bishops and imaums equally promising remission of sins and crowns of martyrdom. Whilst the king of Jerusalem caused the book of the Evangelists to be borne before him, Saladin would often pause on the field of battle to offer up a prayer, or read a chapter from the Koran. The Franks and the Christians mutually accused each other of ignorance of the true God, and of outraging him by their ceremonies. The Christians rushed upon their enemies, shouting Dieu le veut! Dieu le veut! and the Saracens as loudly responded by their war-cry of Islam! Islam!
As it has been our constant wish to scatter a few flowers among the melancholy scenes it is our task to paint, we cannot omit a celebrated story connected with the siege of Acre.
Among the bravest of the French knights was the all-accomplished Raoul de Coucy. He tenderly loved the fair Gabrielle de Vergy, and was by her as warmly loved in return. Fearing to augment the torments which his mistress underwent from the jealousy of her husband, the Seigneur Dufaiël, De Coucy enrolled himself among the heroes of the Cross. Mortally wounded before Acre, he called his faithful squire to his side, and charged him to convey to the lady Dufaiël, a letter from his own hand, together with the jewels he had received from her. On the point of death, he likewise made him promise, under the bond of an oath, to bear his heart to the lady for whom alone it had ever breathed a sigh. Raoul being dead, his faithful squire set out to execute his last wishes: he crossed the seas, and reached Vermandois, never, for a moment, abandoning the care of his precious but sad charge. Arriving in the neighbourhood of the castle of Dufaiël it was his ill fortune to meet with its stern master, the jealous tyrant of Gabrielle, by whom he was immediately recognised. When closely interrogated, he described the death of Raoul, and supposing with that all jealousy must be at an end, told him likewise of the subject of his mission. Dufaiël eagerly seized the fatal deposit; transported with jealousy, he returned to the castle, and caused the heart of the unfortunate De Coucy to be served up to his lady in a dish of hashed meat. She ate of it. “That dish,” said he, with a bitter smile, “must appear very delicious to you, for it is the heart of your lover.” At the same time he threw upon the table the box, the letter, and the jewels. At the sight of these, the lady Dufaiël, convinced of the death of her lover, and of the cruelty of her husband, fainted, and only recovered to swear that that food should be her last. A prey to the deepest despair, continually bathed in tears, she persistently refused all aliment: in a very few days, grief completed the sacrifice. Devoured by remorse, it is said that the barbarous Dufaiël survived her but a short time.
After the siege, Philip’s patience was exhausted by the haughty assumption, and his envy excited by the heroic exploits of Richard, and he returned to France, leaving a body of troops under the command of his rival. We will not venture into the wide field of Cœur de Lion’s miraculous feats on this scene of action. Two of the greatest heroes of history, Richard and Saladin, were matched against each other, and, notwithstanding the superior sagacity and self-command of Saladin, Richard’s extraordinary courage, strength, and prowess maintained for him the character of the bravest soldier of the age. But with all his valour and exertions, he failed in the ostensible object of his enterprise: circumstances of a various but imperative nature prevented his reaching Jerusalem; he reluctantly turned his back upon it, when within three leagues of it, and returned to Europe, after concluding a truce with Saladin for three years, three months, three weeks, three days, and three hours.