The Accursed Tower

by Roger Crowley

  Meanwhile, a second operation was under way at the eastern end of the city. The mission was the same: to use fire to destroy wooden siege screens and trebuchets. This was a sector in which the emir al-Fakhri, Beaujeu’s informant, played a leading role. According to the Muslim account, he appeared to be expecting an attack. “He was riding with those with him standing outside the camp. When the Franks arrived and approached the camp, they wanted to throw the large consignment of Greek fire they had with them. They followed in the middle of the road until suddenly a cry arose from every side, and arrows rained down on them in the night, and they fled on their heels. No-one turned to look after those with them, and they left behind around twenty knights, and a troop went out and took them prisoner.”8 The Templar of Tyre, evidently not an eyewitness to this, remarked that “the Saracens were aware of them and were on guard, and charged the Christians so fiercely that they turned back without achieving anything.”9

  IT HAD PROVED to be a night of mixed fortunes. Each side counted its trophies and its dead. “When morning came al-Malik al-Muzaffar, the lord of Hama, hung a number of heads of Franks on the necks of the horses which the troops had taken from them, and brought them to the sultan.”10 Doubtless these heads were then mounted on poles in sight of the city. Meanwhile, the shields displayed on the walls of Acre were a visible countertaunt to the whole besieging army. Khalil was furious at this public display: such provocations were bad for morale. He “started to call the emirs and rebuke them for prolonging the siege, and they all agreed on [the need to guard] the catapults.”11 Under their sultan’s watchful gaze, the pressure was on to try harder.

  But from the defenders’ perspective, the fact remained that the sorties had failed to achieve anything substantive. And this raised questions. It seemed as if the enemy were awaiting them. The first cleverly conceived but unlucky amphibious attack had certainly made the Mamluks take notice. Khalil had prudently posted cavalry day and night against further sorties, either in line with the received wisdom that “the besieger of the enemy is also the besieged,” or he had been forewarned.12 Or both. And always, in these raids, the forces were mismatched.

  BOTH SIDES HAD concerns about morale, loyalty, and the leakage of information. Khalil could not be certain that all his emirs were supportive. He was particularly worried about the commander of the Syrian forces, the powerful emir Husam al-Din Lajin, governor of Damascus. In addition, Guillaume de Beaujeu, grand master of the Templars, had his own potential ally among the tents ranged outside: the informant al-Fakhri, a close attendant of Lajin, now stationed on the left wing of the Mamluk siege train. As well, al-Fakhri had become an object of the sultan’s suspicion; his resolute defense against the recent sortie was perhaps an attempt to demonstrate that his loyalty was not in question.

  In fact, Khalil was also receiving covert information from within the besieged city, and he had been forewarned. At about this time, an arrow was fired over the wall. Wrapped around it was a message written in Arabic that was taken to the sultan. It read:

  In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The blessings of God be upon our master Muhammad and his family. The only true faith in God’s sight is Islam. Oh, sultan of the Muslims, preserve your military from the raid tonight, for the people of Akka have agreed on that, and they intend to attack you, and take care also about your emirs, for they mentioned that some are corresponding against you.13

  The message was from a clandestine convert to Islam within Acre, and one who was evidently well informed. It heightened Khalil’s concern. “When the sultan turned his mind to it, he called his emirs Baydara and al-Shuja’i and read it to them. They all agreed that the orderlies and captains should circulate among the emirs and inform them about this matter as a secret among them. Each emir should keep his position.”14 At least for the moment. The aim was to let the emirs know they were under observation and either bind their loyalty or flush out the dissidents.

  It worked. Al-Fakhri had become uncomfortably aware of the sultan’s gaze. Either he had turned double agent or, now under suspicion from the letter, he was compelled to show exemplary loyalty by stoutly resisting the attack. His actions suggested complex loyalties. A few days later, feeling the heat, he abruptly left the siege and returned to Damascus. Khalil had much to concern him.

  AFTER THE AMBUSHES and the inability to surprise the enemy, the possibility that information was making its way over the wall was evidently also on the mind of Beaujeu and the city’s other leading figures. It was decided in confidential conclave that all the forces of Acre should make a further concerted attempt to destroy the tormenting trebuchets and damage enemy morale, this time at the vulnerable central section where the wall took a right-hand turn and command passed from the Syrian army to the sultan’s Egyptian army. The defense of this section of wall was entrusted to the Hospitallers, and it was they who were to lead the sortie, supported by the Templars. It took place on the night of April 18. Fearful of the leaking of information, none were to be told of the mission until the last moment. The night was favorably dark. The Templar of Tyre was on hand to relate what happened, though always with the tendency to inflate the numbers of the enemy:

  Then it was decided that all the lords and mounted forces of Acre should make a sortie in the middle of the night from St. Anthony Gate and fall on the Saracens unexpectedly. This was planned so secretly that no one knew about it until the command “To horse!”. And when our troops were mounted and galloped out of the gate, the moon was not shining at all. It was very dark. But the Saracens seemed to be forewarned and created such a blaze of lanterns that it was like daylight among their ranks, and such a detachment fell on our troops—there might well have been nearly ten thousand—and they charged us so fiercely hurling javelins as thickly as falling rain. Our men could not endure this and retreated into the city, with several knights wounded.15

  It was evident, one way or another, that the Mamluks, illuminating the dark night with bursts of fire, were now fully alert to these sorties.

  EASTER WAS APPROACHING and, in an attempt to raise morale before the holy day and aware that hunkering down behind the walls would lead inexorably to disaster, there was a plan to break the stranglehold on the city with a do-or-die attack. In an episode probably related by Othon de Grandson, it was decided on Good Friday to attempt a new strategy:

  When they saw that the enemy was conquering the walls and that it would be impossible to defend the city any longer, they decided by common consent to win God’s help with the arms of penance, and having confessed and communicated, to form ranks with the prisoners of war in front of them and to burst out of the city on the day of our common salvation and give their lives as the Author of life had imperilled His own. And when they had resolved with undaunted hearts and kindled spirits, they sent to the Patriarch, who was in the place, that they might accomplish under his authority, and with his blessing, the purpose which they had begun.16

  With the inspiration of the risen Christ, they would drive their Muslim slaves and prisoners before them as a human shield and make a concerted attack. However, the initiative was categorically banned by Nicolas de Hanapes the patriarch, who, “broken in spirit and depending on the advice of perfidious persons, replied that none should attempt this, nor open any of the city gates under pain of excommunication.”17

  This blame attributed to Hanapes by Grandson falls at an oblique angle to the generally positive accounts of the patriarch’s robust commitment to the defense of Acre. Possibly the use of a human shield on Good Friday was repulsive to holy writ. More likely, Hanapes was concerned that the sorties had proved a futile leaching of manpower, and he was determined to assert his papal authority over the various factions. The criticism says much for the level of discord at the center of the defense. Henceforth, there would be no more sorties. The defenders approached the Easter Day in sober mood. Khalil, meanwhile, had concerns about the security of his rule and the coalition of the emirs assembled for the siege, whom he castigate
d for insufficient effort.

  If the bombardment of the walls went on unabated, so did the work underground. The miners continued digging and propping their way toward the walls from openings shielded by the wooden barricades. Like the crusaders a century earlier, the target was the apex of the vulnerable salient where the Accursed Tower protected the heart of the city.

  Within the city, its defenders became increasingly aware of this activity and undertook measures to counter it. The defenders detected and located mining work under the tower of the Countess of Blois—either by the muffled clink of picks working nearby or by placing buckets of water on the ground and detecting vibrations from tell-tale ripples on the surface. They started to dig countermines to intercept the Aleppo miners. Bursting into the chambers, there was nightmarish fighting in the dark, pulling down pitprops to suffocate the invaders. “Our men countermined against them, and fought back fiercely,” the Templar of Tyre reported.18 Yet the work was exhausting and made considerable demands on skilled human labor. The Templar repeatedly emphasized the disparity of numbers. When it came to mining, the Saracens could rotate their men. Working in relays, they could construct more tunnels than the defenders could intercept. And there was danger, too, that the very activity of countermining could further weaken the foundations of the fortifications that the defenders were attempting to protect. Despite their best efforts, the mines advanced and shots continued to rain down.

  AS APRIL WORE on and apprehension grew, the people of Acre looked with increasing attention toward the sea. They were safe from maritime attacks. The Mamluks had no naval capacity of any note, and the main port of Cyprus, Famagusta, was just 170 miles away—two day’s sailing in favorable weather—so that ships could shuttle back and forth supplying the crusader states. There was keen expectation that Amalric’s brother Henry, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, would bring a relief force any day. Others, wealthy townspeople and some of the canny Italian merchants from Genoa, Venice, and Pisa, were sizing up the chance to pay their way out on passing vessels. Acre was the principal trading port of the Levantine coast, a regular destination for the seasonal trading fleets that came twice a year, in the spring and autumn, and the military orders owned their own vessels or chartered them to bring supplies and manpower across the Mediterranean as required.

  The spring sea, however, could be violent, and the port of Acre was less than ideal for sizeable ships, particularly in rough weather. The shelter for vessels consisted of a double harbor embraced by breakwaters. The entrance at its mouth was overlooked by a guard post, known as the Tower of Flies; it was positioned at the end of one breakwater and had a commanding view over the bay. Within the enclosing breakwaters, there was an outer harbor and a smaller inner one, protected by a chain “as thick of a man’s arm.”19 This defensive boom was itself a relic of crusader ventures. It had once closed the mouth of the Golden Horn at Constantinople and had been sent to Acre by the crusaders who disgracefully sacked the Christian city in 1204. It was in this small inner basin protected by the chain that goods to Acre had to be unloaded. Disembarking, all new arrivals passed into the city through the “Iron Gate,” where they paid their customs dues and had access to warehousing facilities. It was here, too, that Acre’s naval arsenal was located.

  Despite the security that the enclosed harbor provided, the sea run into Acre was tricky even on fair days. Ships approached from the west looking for the landmarks of the Templars’ castle and St. Andrew’s church, on past the city’s most southwesterly point, the ominously named Cape of Storms, and along the southern breakwater. They then had to make an awkwardly sharp turn to negotiate the entrance to the harbor, which was only ninety yards wide, passing under the gaze of the Tower of Flies to starboard.

  The reputation of Acre’s port was mixed. While the chronicler William of Tyre had praised the sheltering double harbor, which “lying both inside and outside the walls, offers a safe and tranquil anchorage to ships,”20 the maneuver to enter it was considered difficult and formed the subject of detailed advice in an Italian navigation manual of the period. While conceding that Acre was a good port, its advice, steering via the city landmarks, suggested caution:

  When you approach the said port, go a distance from the city, that is to say from the house of the Temple and from the church of St. Andrew four cables, because of the sandbank that is above St. Andrew, and when you have the house that was that of the constable to the right of the Tower of Flies, you can make your way straight to the port. And when you enter the port, go into it so that you have the city of Haifa on mid-poop to the east and the Tower of Flies on mid-prow, and so you turn into the port clear of the said sand-banks.21

  The problem was that when the sea was rough, this maneuver was risky. The pilgrim Theodoric, a century earlier, declared the approach “dangerous of access, when the wind blows from the south, and the shore troubled from the continual shocks which they receive from the waves.”22 Domenico Laffi, an Italian traveler three centuries later, thought the port “insecure and open to winds from the west, which often attain the violence of tempests.” The ships with which he was traveling preferred the harbor at Haifa, since it was sheltered from rough weather, “in contrast to that of Acre, the sea-floor of which is sown with rocks so sharp as to tear the cables however strong these may be.”23 The local conditions at Acre were such that the Venetians, ever prudent in matters of trade and navigation, had sent an extra thirty or forty iron anchors for their ships calling at Acre in 1288 as further precaution.

  In effect, when the sea was boisterous, it was difficult for ships to call at Acre, and the destruction of the Pisans’ ship-mounted trebuchet indicated the difficulties that unpredictable spring weather might bring to resupplying the city or evacuating civilians should the need arise. The inconveniences of its maritime situation were compounded by the comparatively small size of even the outer harbor, which meant that larger vessels preferred to anchor outside, so that goods and people had to be transferred to and fro via smaller vessels—a slow and inefficient process.

  All this was in mind during the second half of April as the mood darkened. It seems that supplies of food continued to reach Acre from Cyprus and that the imminent arrival of King Henry had been communicated to the city. But from the start of May, it appears that some of those who had the means to pay their passage on visiting ships were leaving on any that called in to trade. Early confidence had turned to anxiety. “Our people in the city of Acre were thus in great torment and a sorry state,” the Templar of Tyre concluded gloomily, “but there was reported to be news that King Henry was about to come from Cyprus bringing great help, and they expected him daily.”24 “They always turned their faces to the sea,” recalled Arsenius, a Greek monk, “watching to see if the west wind would carry the sails they were hoping for.”25

  11

  NEGOTIATIONS

  May 4–17, 1291

  ON FRIDAY, MAY 4, Henry’s fleet of forty ships, carrying the red lions and gold crosses of the regal banner, was finally spotted on the western horizon. Hope rose again. Henry II, the nominal overlord of the kingdom of Jerusalem, in fact had limited power over the interminable squabbles between the city’s factions, but he was greeted with rapturous joy. Bonfires, visible to the besieging army, were lit in the streets. There was feasting and the ringing of church bells. The king was twenty years old and epileptic; illness seems to have delayed his departure from Famagusta, but he came with all the troops he could muster and, for spiritual support, the bishop of Nicosia. His forces amounted to a small number of knights and foot soldiers—at the most seven hundred men, too few to materially alter the balance of power. He appraised the situation and injected new vigor into the defense, but any boost to morale was blunted by Khalil’s immediate response.

  Aware that the joyous clamor reaching his own troops over the wall could lower their own morale, the sultan intensified the bombardment. The crescendo of missiles—the gouts of Greek fire, the shattering of clay pots containing incendiary materi
al lobbed over the wall, the shower flights of arrows, the crashing of catapulted rocks against stone walls—continued unabated. The black bulls also hurled vessels filled with excrement, burning blocks of wood, and fire cauldrons. All the time, behind their protective screens, the Mamluks were getting closer, both below and above ground. The town was well supplied with food, but the defenders’ lack of large missiles with which to load their own trebuchets was noticeable, and they were compelled to repair the walls with timber and wads of cotton. Exhausted by the continuous bombardment, the attempts to rebuild walls, and the stamping out of fires, nerves were shredding. The chroniclers give variable accounts of the bickerings inside the city and the lack of coordinated action. They apportioned blame for the dissension in line with their own national and religious interests. From the safety of distance and with the luxury of retrospective blame, the Greek monk Arsenius reserved his fiercest criticism for the Italian merchants. “The Pisans and the assisting Venetians would not endure the religious authority [of the papal legate],” he maintained.1 While the Venetians almost certainly were less than wholehearted in their participation, the Pisans made unsparing efforts in the operation of their trebuchets. Few escaped Arsenius’s withering judgments. He conjured a febrile atmosphere of people dancing on the edge of an abyss. “The crusaders, while we hoped they would give up their souls for the victory of the cross, abandoned themselves to drinking and when the trumpets called people to arms, they were given over to indulgence, ignored the fighting, and did not release their breasts and arms from the embraces of Venus. And what was worse, the brothers of the Hospitallers and the Templars scorned to co-operate with one another, and to take turns [at guard duty] and bear the burdens of fighting.”2 Factually, though, they had at the very least undertaken joint night sorties. The divergence of subsequent accounts only reflected Acre’s partisan factions. Where Arsenius reserved his praise for “the illustrious King Henry,” the anonymous author of The Destruction of Acre heaped multiple accusations on him, and the German Ludolf von Suchem, writing well after the event, would only applaud his fellow countrymen, the Teutonic Knights.