Richard I / Makers of History

by Jacob Abbott

The distress of the besieged city.
Famine.
Disappointed hopes.

Although the allies failed to reduce Acre by assault, the town was at last compelled to submit to them through the distress and misery to which the inhabitants and the garrison were finally reduced by famine. They bore these sufferings as long as they could, but the time arrived at last when they could be endured no longer. They hoped for some relief which was to have been sent to them by sea from Cairo, but it did not come. They also hoped, day after day, and week after week, that Saladin would be strong enough to come down from the mountains, and break through the camp of the Crusaders on the plain and rescue them. But they were disappointed. The Crusaders had fortified their camp in the strongest manner, and then they were so numerous and so fully armed that Saladin thought it useless to make any general attack upon them with the force that he had under his command.

The various methods of warfare.
Undermining the walls.
The effect on the walls.

The siege had continued two years when Philip and Richard arrived. They came early in the spring of 1191. Of course, their arrival greatly strengthened the camp of the besiegers, and went far to extinguish the remaining hopes of the garrison. The commanders, however, did not immediately give up, but held out some months longer, hoping every day for the arrival of the promised relief from Cairo. In the mean time, they continued to endure a succession of the most vigorous assaults from the Crusaders, of which very marvelous tales are told in the romantic narratives of those times. In these narratives we have accounts of the engines which Richard set up opposite the walls, and of the efforts made by the besieged to set them on fire; of Richard's working, himself, like any common soldier in putting these engines together, and in extinguishing the flames when they were set on fire; of a vast fire-proof shed which was at last contrived to cover and protect the engines—the covering of the roof being made fire-proof with green hides; and of a plan which was finally adopted, when it was found that the walls could not be beaten down by battering-rams, of undermining them with a view of making them tumble down by their own weight. In this case, the workmen who undermined the walls were protected at their work by sheds built over them, and, in order to prevent the walls from falling upon them while they were mining, they propped them up with great beams of wood, so placed that they could make fires under the beams when they were ready for the walls to fall, and then have time to retreat to a safe distance before they should be burned through. This plan, however, did not succeed; for the walls were so prodigiously thick, and the blocks of stone of which they were composed were so firmly bound together, that, instead of falling into a mass of ruins, as Richard had expected, when the props had been burned through, they only settled down bodily on one side into the excavation, and remained nearly as good, for all purposes of defense, as ever.

A spy in the city.
The letters which came on arrows.

It was said that during the siege Richard and Philip obtained a great deal of information in respect to the plans of the Saracens through the instrumentality of some secret friend within the city, who contrived to find means of continually sending them important intelligence. This intelligence related sometimes to the designs of the garrison in respect to sorties that they were going to make, or to the secret plans that they had formed for procuring supplies of provisions or other succor; at other times they related to the movements and designs of Saladin, who was outside among the mountains, and especially to the attacks that he was contemplating on the allied camp. This intelligence was communicated in various ways. The principal method was to send a letter by means of an arrow. An arrow frequently came down in some part of the allied camp, which, on being examined, was found to have a letter wound about the shaft. The letter was addressed to Richard, and was, of course, immediately carried to his tent. It was always found to contain very important information in respect to the condition or plans of the besieged. If a sortie was intended from the city, it stated the time and the place, and detailed all the arrangements, thus enabling Richard to be on his guard. So, if the Saracens were projecting an attack on the lines from within, the whole plan of it was fully explained, and, of course, it would then be very easy for Richard to frustrate it. The writer of the letters said that he was a Christian, but would not say who he was, and the mystery was never explained. It is quite possible that there is very little truth in the whole story.

A flag of truce.

At all events, though the assaults which the allies made against the walls and bulwarks of the town were none of them wholly successful, the general progress of the siege was altogether in their favor, and against the poor Saracens shut up within it. The last hope which they indulged was that some supplies would come to them by sea; but Richard's fleet, which remained at anchor off the town, blockaded the port so completely that there was no possibility that any thing could get in. The last lingering hope was, therefore, at length abandoned, and when the besieged found that they could endure their horrible misery no longer, they sent a flag of truce out to the camp of the besiegers, with a proposal to negotiate terms of surrender.

Terms proposed by the Saracens.
Richard's exactions and his threats.