The first battle
The weeks that followed saw intermittent skirmishing, while Frankish ships continued to bring more and more crusaders to the siege. By Wednesday 4 October 1189 the Christians were numerous enough to contemplate going on the offensive, launching an attack on Saladin’s camp in what was to be the first full-scale pitched battle of the Third Crusade. Leaving his brother Geoffrey to defend Mount Toron, King Guy amassed the bulk of the Frankish forces at the foot of the tell, carefully drawing up an extended battle line with the help of the Military Orders and potentates such as Everard of Brienne and Ludwig of Thuringia. With infantry and archers in the front ranks, screening the mounted knights, the Christians set out to cross the open plain towards the Muslims, marching in close order and at slow pace. This was to be no lightning attack, but, rather, a disciplined advance in which the crusaders tried to close with the enemy en masse, protected by their tightly controlled formation. Surveying the field from his vantage point atop Tell al-Ayyadiya, Saladin had ample time to arrange his own forces on the plain below, interspersing squadrons under trusted commanders like al-Mashtub and Taqi al-Din with relatively untested troops, such as those from Diyar Bakr on the Upper Tigris. Holding the centre with Isa, but looking to play a mobile command role, boosting morale and discipline where necessary, the sultan prepared to face the Franks.
The scene outside Acre at dawn that day was spectacular and unsettling. For more than two hours, thousands of crusaders in packed ranks, resplendent banners raised, advanced at walking pace, inching towards battle with Saladin’s men. Soldiers on both sides must have struggled to hold their nerve. Then at last, around mid-morning, fighting began as the Christians’ left flank reached the Muslim lines to the north, where Taqi al-Din was stationed. Hoping to lure the Franks into a formation-shattering charge, Taqi al-Din sent in skirmishers and then feigned a limited retreat. Unfortunately his manoeuvre was so convincing that Saladin believed his nephew was under real threat and dispatched troops from his centre to reinforce the north. This unbalancing of the line gave the crusaders an opportunity. Advancing with rigid discipline, they attacked the right of Saladin’s central division ‘as one man, horse and foot’, quickly sending the inexperienced Diyar Bakris stationed there into full flight. Panic spread and the right half of the sultan’s central division crumbled.
For a moment, Saladin looked to be on the verge of defeat. With the way suddenly open to the Muslim camp on Tell al-Ayyadiya, Franks began racing up the hill. A detachment of crusaders actually reached the sultan’s personal tent, and one of Saladin’s wardrobe staff was among those killed. But the very lure of victory and, of course, of booty, brought a reversal of fortune. In the thrill of the moment, the crusaders’ formation, preserved until then with such care, broke apart: many turned to plundering, while the Templars doggedly pursued the retreating Muslims, only to discover that, unsupported, they had become separated from the main force. As they attempted a desperate withdrawal, Saladin rallied his troops. Accompanied by just five guards, he sped along the line, strengthening resolve and launching an attack on the retreating Templars. In the ensuing skirmish the brothers of that proud order were decimated. Their master, Gerard of Ridefort, the veteran of Hattin, was caught up in the midst of the fighting. With ‘his troops being slaughtered on all sides’, Gerard refused to flee to safety and was slain.
With the balance of the battle already shifting in Saladin’s favour, two events sealed the Christians’ fate. As combat raged on the plain between Mount Toron and Tell al-Ayyadiya, the Muslim garrison of Acre sallied out of the city, threatening both the crusaders’ camp and their field army’s rear. Sensing that they soon would be surrounded, struggling to maintain a semblance of formation, the Franks were close to panic. A small piece of misfortune pushed them over the edge. A group of Germans still engaged in pillaging Saladin’s camp lost control of one of their horses and, as the animal bolted back towards Acre, they gave chase. The sight of another crusader detachment seemingly in full flight threw the Christian host into disarray; as fear coursed down the ranks, a fully fledged rout began. With thousands now racing for the relative safety of the Latin entrenchments, hotly pursued by Saladin’s men, chaos reigned. ‘On and on went the killing’, wrote the eyewitness Baha al-Din, ‘until the fugitives that survived reached the enemy camp.’ Andrew of Brienne was cut to the ground while trying to halt the rout, and although he called out to his passing brother to save him, Count Everard was too terrified to stop. Elsewhere, James of Avesnes was unhorsed, but one of his knights gave up his own mount to enable James to escape and then turned to face his death. It even was said that King Guy rescued Conrad of Montferrat when the marquis became surrounded by Muslims.
Saladin proved unable to press home his advantage as the battle drew to a close. Latin troops stationed in the crusader camp fiercely resisted Muslim attempts to overrun their positions, and, perhaps more importantly, the sultan’s camp was still in a state of confusion. When the crusaders fought their way on to the slopes of Tell al-Ayyadiya, scores of servants in the Muslim army had decided to cut their losses, loot whatever they could and flee. Just when Saladin needed to direct the full weight of his military might against the retreating Franks, large swathes of his army were engaged in chasing their own thieving domestics.
Nonetheless, on the face of it, this was a victory for Islam. The Christians had come that morning seeking battle and had been defeated, leaving some 3,000 to 4,000 of their number dead or dying on the plains of Acre as darkness fell. The horror and humiliation of the day’s events were brought home to the crusader host when a mutilated, half-naked figure crawled into camp in the middle of the night. This poor wretch, a knight named Ferrand, maimed in the course of the fighting, had hidden among his fallen comrades only to be stripped and left for dead by Muslim pillagers. When he eventually reached the safety of the Frankish lines ‘he was so disfigured by his wounds that his people could not recognise him and he was barely able to persuade them to let him in’. The next morning Saladin chose to send his enemies a stark message: gathering the Christian dead, he pitched their remains into the Belus so that they floated downstream, into the Latin encampment. It was said that the stench from this mass of corpses lingered long after they were buried.28
Despite all this, the battle on 4 October did more lasting harm to Saladin’s prospects. In terms of Muslim dead and injured losses had been minimal, but those members of the sultan’s army that fled the field that day did not return–indeed, rumour had it that some of them did not stop running until they reached the Sea of Galilee–and they proved hard to replace. Worse still, the debacle in Saladin’s camp crushed morale and sowed distrust. Baha al-Din noted that in the looting ‘people lost vast sums’ and that ‘this was more disastrous than the rout itself’. Saladin made earnest attempts to recover as much lost property as possible, amassing a vast mound of plunder in his tent that could be reclaimed if people swore on oath that it was theirs, but the psychological damage had been done.
In the aftermath of the battle Saladin decided to review his strategy. After fifty days on the front line his troops were complaining of exhaustion, while he himself had begun to suffer from illness. Around 13 October his forces and baggage train began moving back from the contaminated battlefield to the more distant siege position of al-Kharruba to await the arrival of al-Adil. This was a tacit admission of failure; an acknowledgement that, in this first crucial phase of the siege, Saladin had been unable to dislodge the crusader force. By the logic of military science, the Franks had achieved the impossible–the successful establishment of an investment, deep in enemy territory, while facing an opposing field army. Historians have been consistently perplexed by this apparent anomaly. Yet the explanation is clear: the coastal nature of the siege certainly furnished the Franks with a vital lifeline, but, more significantly, the first exchanges of this conflict confirmed Saladin’s deepening crisis of manpower while exposing his own inability to command with resolute determination. Falling
back on his habitual avoidance of full-scale confrontation when lacking overwhelming military superiority, the sultan believed that he was steering the safest course. But at this critical juncture action, not caution, was needed. Committing to a frontal assault on the crusaders’ positions at the start of Acre’s siege would have been a gamble, but one that Saladin stood a good chance of winning, albeit at considerable cost. With the decision to step back from the line in October, the chance to snuff out the Christian threat before it became fully embedded slipped away. It was not to return.29
Capitalising on the welcome breathing space they had been afforded, the crusaders set about securing their positions outside Acre. In mid-September they had begun throwing up rudimentary earthwork defences. Now, with the threat of an immediate offensive slackened, they ‘heaped up turf ramparts and dug deep trenches from sea to sea to defend the tents’, creating an elaborate system of semi-circular fortifications that enclosed Acre and offered far greater protection from Muslim assault, whether from the city’s garrison or from Saladin. To hinder mounted attackers, the no-man’s-land beyond the trenches was peppered with the medieval equivalent of minefields–deep, spike-laden, concealed pits, designed to cripple horse and rider. Reflecting on these measures, Saladin’s sometime critic Ibn al-Athir sardonically observed: ‘Now it became clear how well advised Saladin had been to retire.’ At the same time, throughout October Muslim scouts reported the near-daily influx of Latin reinforcements, prompting Saladin to write to the caliph in Baghdad proclaiming that the Christians were being supplied by ships more numerous than the waves and bemoaning the fact that for every crusader killed 1,000 took his place.30
Hiatus
The coming of winter in December 1189 brought a further lull in the siege. Faced with roughening seas and lacking access to the safety of Acre’s inner harbour, the Latin fleet was forced to sail north to Tyre and beyond in search of shelter. Conrad of Montferrat also returned to Tyre. Worsening weather forced a lull in hostilities as rain turned the ground between the crusaders’ trenches and Saladin’s camp at al-Kharruba to mud, across which it was impractical to launch attacks. The sultan sent the bulk of his troops home, remaining in person, while the Franks hunkered down to wait out the season, hoping to survive the predations of disease and hunger, devoting their energy to the construction of siege engines.
According to his confidant, Baha al-Din, Saladin now recognised ‘how much importance the Franks…attached to Acre and how it was the target at which all their determined plans were directed’. The decision to winter outside the city indicates that the sultan now regarded it as the war’s critical battleground. He may have lacked the nerve for an all-out assault on the crusader camp earlier that autumn, but at least he did show a new, steadfast determination to persevere with the campaign. Having spent the two years that followed Hattin scooping up easy conquests, avoiding drawn-out confrontations, he evidently decided that a line must be drawn at Acre and the Latin advance into Palestine halted in its tracks.
Knowing full well the devastation that would be rained upon Acre come spring, the sultan set about ‘[pouring in] sufficient provisions, supplies, equipment and men to make him feel confident that it was secure’. It was probably at this point that Saladin installed Abu’l Haija the Fat as the city’s military commander, alongside Qaragush. Even the crusaders were impressed by these measures, with one later commenting that ‘never was there a castle nor city that had so many arms, such defence, such provision of food, at such expense’. Amid the flurry of activity, the sultan suffered a grave personal loss when his close friend and shrewd counsellor Isa died of illness on 19 December 1189.31
The long months of stalemate were not solely the domain of grim-eyed exchanges and frenetic preparation. The winter afforded the first opportunities for fraternisation and the blossoming of a familiarity that would remain an undercurrent of the campaign. One of the last Latin ships to arrive in 1189 had carried a different breed of reinforcement: ‘300 lovely Frankish women, full of youth and beauty, assembled from beyond the sea [to offer] themselves for sin’. Saladin’s secretary, Imad al-Din, took a certain scandalised pleasure in describing how these prostitutes, having set up shop outside Acre, ‘brought their silver anklets up to touch their golden earrings [and] made themselves targets for men’s darts’, but noted with evident disgust that some Muslims also ‘slipped away’ to partake of their charms.
Another Muslim eyewitness noted that the Christian and Muslim enemies eventually ‘got to know one another, in that both sides would converse and leave off fighting. At times people would sing and others would dance, so familiar had they become.’ In the later periods the sheer proximity of the two entrenched sides must have contributed to this familiarity, as the Muslims were said to be ‘face to face with the enemy…with both sets of camp fires visible to each other. We could hear the sound of their bells and they could hear our call to prayer.’ The city’s garrison, at least, earned the crusaders’ begrudging respect, with one commenting that ‘never was there a people as good in defence as these devil’s minions’. This image of burgeoning friendship and acquaintance should not be stretched too far. Recent scholarship has unearthed an intriguing Latin survey of the forces amassed by Saladin at Acre, quite probably written during the siege. Characterised by a mixture of patchy knowledge and animosity, this document offers up precise details of Muslim troop characteristics and armament, peppered by persistent defamation and fantasy. Arabs were said to ‘circumcise’ their ears, while Turks were apparently renowned for indulging in homosexuality and bestiality, all in accordance with the supposed precepts of Muhammad.
The informal ‘rules’ of engagement that gradually built up between these entrenched foes also were sometimes transgressed. An understanding appears to have existed that troops leaving the safety of their camp to relieve themselves would not be attacked. The crusaders were therefore appalled when, on one occasion, ‘[a knight] doing what everyone has to do…was bent over’ when a mounted Turk raced from his front line hoping to skewer him with his lance. Wholly unaware of the danger, the knight was warned in the nick of time by the shouts of ‘Run, sir, run’ from the trenches. He ‘got up with difficulty…his business finished’, just managing to dodge the first charge, and then, facing his enemy unarmed, felled the horseman with a well-thrown rock.32
THE STORM OF WAR
With the advent of ‘the soft season of spring’, open warfare returned, and the first battle to be fought was for dominion of the sea. In late March 1190, shortly after Easter, news reached Acre that fifty Latin ships were approaching from Tyre. In the course of the winter, Conrad had agreed a partial reconciliation with Guy, becoming the ‘king’s faithful man’ in return for rights to Tyre, Beirut and Sidon. The fleet he now led south sought to re-establish Christian control over the Mediterranean seaboard to reconnect the crusaders’ lifeline to the outside world. This was a struggle that Saladin could ill afford to lose, as perhaps his best hope of overall victory at Acre lay in isolating the Frankish besiegers. He resolved to resist the oncoming ships at all costs, prompting one of the twelfth century’s most spectacular naval engagements.
The battle for the sea
When the Latin fleet appeared, driven down the coast by a north wind, around fifty of Saladin’s ships sailed out of Acre’s harbour in pairs to meet it, flying green and gold banners. The Franks possessed two main types of vessel: ‘long, slender and low’ galleys, fixed with battering rams and powered by two banks of oars (one below and one on deck); and ‘galliots’, shorter, more manoeuvrable warships with a single bank of oars. As the fleet approached, shield walls were erected on decks and the Christian ships formed into a V-shaped wedge, with the galleys at its point. With a cacophony of trumpets sounding on both sides, the two forces ploughed into one another and battle was joined.
Sea-borne combat was still a relatively rudimentary affair in 1190. Larger ships might try to ram and sink enemy craft, but on the whole fighting took place at close quarters and
consisted of the exchange of short-range missiles and attempts to draw in opposing vessels with grappling hooks and board them. The greatest horror, as far as sailors were concerned, was Greek fire, because it could not be extinguished by water, and in this engagement both sides possessed supplies of this weapon. The Muslim fleet came close to gaining the upper hand on a number of occasions. One Frankish galley was bombarded with Greek fire and boarded, prompting its oarsmen to leap into the sea in terror. A small number of knights who were weighed down by their heavy armour, and who did not know how to swim anyway, chose to hold their ground ‘in sheer desperation’ and managed to win back control of the half-burnt vessel. In the end, neither side achieved an overwhelming victory, but the Muslim fleet came off the worst, being forced back behind Acre’s harbour chain. One of their galleys was driven ashore and ransacked, its crew dragged on to the beach and summarily butchered and beheaded by a merciless pack of knife-wielding Latin women. In a grim aside, a crusader later noted that ‘the women’s physical weakness prolonged the pain of death’ because it took them longer to decapitate their foes.
The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land Page 42