The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land

by Thomas Asbridge

  Qalawun and the Mamluk sultanate

  During his first years in office, Qalawun faced a quickening tide of Mongol aggression. The Ilkhan Abaqa took advantage of the disarray afflicting the Mamluks to send a sizeable raiding force into northern Syria in 1280, prompting the general evacuation of Aleppo. By 1281 it was clear that the full-scale invasion, always feared by Baybars, was soon to begin. This ominous spectre actually enabled Qalawun to enforce a greater degree of unity upon the Mamluk realm, but it also forced him to renew peace treaties with the Franks. The sultan even agreed terms with the Hospitallers in Marqab, in spite of the fact that they had used the opportunity of the Mongols’ 1280 offensive to pillage Muslim territory.

  With Mamluk agents embedded in the Persian Ilkhanate reporting that Abaqa was readying his host, Qalawun held his own troops at Damascus from spring 1281 onwards. A massive Ilkhanid army crossed the Euphrates that autumn–perhaps numbering in the region of 50,000 Mongols, plus a further 30,000 allied Georgian, Armenian and Seljuq Turkish soldiers. Even after putting almost every available Mamluk regiment into the field, Qalawun was probably outnumbered; nonetheless, a decision was taken to march north to Homs and confront the enemy. Battle was joined upon the plains north of the city on 29 October 1281. Drawing upon the fearsome discipline and skill-at-arms instilled in the Mamluk war machine by Baybars, Qalawun achieved a second historic victory over the Mongols–echoing the glories of Ayn Jalut–and the broken Ilkhanid horde limped back across the Euphrates. With Mamluk supremacy confirmed, the immediate danger of Mongol attack abated. Qalawun spent the next years consolidating his hold over the sultanate, but by the mid-1280s he was free to redirect his attention to Outremer’s annihilation.20

  Turning on Outremer

  In spite of recent Mamluk difficulties, the Levantine Franks remained in a vulnerable and disunited state. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was riven by leadership disputes that culminated in the likes of Beirut and Tyre declaring their independence. In the county of Tripoli, Bohemond VII (who succeeded upon his father’s death in 1275) was in open conflict with the Templars–nervous of the order’s excessive power at Tortosa–and faced a rebellion by the southern port of Jubail. Meanwhile, the Italian mercantile states were locked in yet another embittered trade war, this time involving Venice, Pisa and Genoa. By the 1280s, the Genoese were emerging from this fracas as the dominant force and began to establish a stranglehold over eastern Mediterranean commerce.

  The crusader states could also entertain little hope of receiving aid from the West. In the early 1270s, while Baybars was focusing his attention upon the Mongols, a new pope, Gregory X, was finally elected as Clement IV’s replacement. At the time of Lord Edward’s crusade and before his elevation to the papal throne, Gregory had visited Acre and was thus only too aware of Outremer’s problems. Once installed in Rome, he set out to energise the Latin West and to address the widespread criticisms levelled at crusading. These included the condemnation of crusades against Christians, cynicism over the redemption of the crusading vow in return for money and disquiet over the excessive burden of crusade taxation. In addition, some dissenting voices suggested that the Levantine Franks actually needed support from a permanent professional fighting force, paid for by the West, and not ill-defined, intermittent crusade expeditions. Pope Gregory instituted a number of enquiries into the state of the crusading movement, but he was also determined to aid the war effort in the Near East. Having convened the Second Council of Lyons in May 1274, Gregory announced plans for a new crusade to begin in 1278. Through force of will he secured the support of France, Germany and Aragon (in northern Spain), and proposed to fund the endeavour by taxing the Church a tenth for six years. But for all its vision, the pope’s grand scheme came to nothing. When Gregory died in 1276, the projected crusade collapsed and concerns about Outremer’s fate once again slipped into the background, amidst the tangled intrigues of western European political life.21

  Qalawun, therefore, was able to strike against the remaining Frankish outposts with relative impunity from the mid-1280s. Keen to exploit any opportunity to overturn the treaties earlier agreed with the Christians, the sultan condemned the Hospitallers for attacking Muslim lands and launched his own campaign against Marqab in May 1285. Mamluk sappers managed to collapse one of the stronghold’s towers, and the defenders duly surrendered their order’s second great Syrian castle. Just as at Krak des Chevaliers, Marqab was repaired and a Mamluk garrison installed. In April 1287 Qalawun maintained the pressure in the north by seizing Latakia, claiming that the ‘Antiochene’ port was not covered by his pact with Tripoli.

  That autumn Tripoli was weakened by its own succession crisis, following the death of Bohemond VII. A civil war broke out, in which the Genoese sought to assume control of the city and thereby establish a new commercial centre in Lebanon. This culminated in a rival group of Italians actually appealing to Qalawun for intervention. Happy to be presented with such a ready excuse both to invade Tripoli and to prevent Genoa from challenging Alexandria’s resurgent economic might, the sultan mustered his forces. The Franks continued with their petty squabbles, oblivious to the imminent danger. Only the master of the Templars, William of Beaujeu–who evidently had his own informers inside the Mamluk world–recognised that Qalawun was about to mount a major siege, but William’s warnings largely went ignored.

  The Mamluk host assembled at Krak des Chevaliers and then swooped down on Tripoli, initiating a siege on 25 March 1289. After a month of bombardment, the city was stormed on 27 April and a bloody sack began. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of men were massacred, while the women and children were taken captive. Some Latins escaped on ships down the coast. Others, on smaller craft, took refuge on the tiny island of St Thomas, just offshore, but were hotly pursued by Qalawun’s soldiers and soon butchered. Fighting within the Mamluk army, a noble from Hama named Abu’l Fida later wrote: ‘After looting [the city] I went by boat to this island, and found it heaped with putrefying corpses; it was impossible to land there because of the stench.’

  Upon Tripoli’s conquest, Qalawun ordered the city to be razed to the ground and a new settlement built nearby, a move perhaps designed to intimate his willingness to eradicate all memory of the Franks. In the weeks that followed, the last few outposts of the county of Tripoli fell in quick succession; the Latin governor of Jubail was allowed to remain, but only in return for paying a hefty tribute. Like Baybars before him, Qalawun had destroyed a crusader state. His gaze now turned south, to the last vestiges of Frankish settlement in Palestine–to the city of Acre–and preparations began for an all-out attack on the capital of Latin Outremer.22

  1291–THE SIEGE OF ACRE

  The shock of Tripoli’s collapse finally caused at least some Latin Christians to recognise that disaster was looming. In Europe, Pope Nicholas IV made strident efforts to rejuvenate Gregory X’s plans for a major crusade. Nicholas also sought to offer immediate aid, sending 4,000 livres tournois to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem and providing thirteen galleys to assist in Acre’s defence. In February 1290 the pope called for a new crusade that would, rather optimistically, aim to achieve the ‘total liberation of the Holy Land’. Banning all commercial contact with the Mamluks, Nicholas announced a departure date for the expedition of June 1293. In response, King James II of Aragon promised to send troops to the Levant, while Edward I, now king of England, sent a military contingent to Acre in 1290, under the command of Otho of Grandson, a veteran of Edward’s crusade in the early 1270s. Around Easter 1290 a contingent of some 3,500 Italian crusaders also set sail for Palestine. Alongside these signs of activity, however, other moves were afoot. Despite his assurances to the pope, James of Aragon negotiated a treaty with the Mamluks, pledging not to aid the crusade in return for promises that Aragonese pilgrims would be permitted to visit Jerusalem. Qalawun also reconciled with the Genoese.23

  By this stage, the Mamluks were busily readying themselves for the campaign, but Qalawun still sought a pretext on which to r
escind the standing treaty with Acre. This came in August 1290, when a number of the recently arrived Italian crusaders attacked a group of Muslim merchants in Acre. After the Franks refused to hand over the culprits for summary justice, the sultan declared war. That autumn the Mamluk host was about to march from Egypt when Qalawun fell ill and died on 10 November 1290. For once, his heir al-Ashraf Khalil was able to take power without great difficulty. After a brief interruption, Khalil set himself the task of completing the work begun by his father.

  The last battle

  Both Qalawun and Khalil recognised that the city of Acre–heavily fortified, with two lines of walls and numerous towers, and densely garrisoned–would be no easy target. The Muslim operation, therefore, was planned with great care and forethought. Mamluk strategy was founded on two principles: overwhelming numerical superiority, with tens of thousands of mamluk cavalry assisted by squadrons of infantry and specialist teams of sappers; and the deployment of the extraordinary arsenal of siege machinery built up since the days of Sultan Baybars. In the last days of winter 1291, Khalil ordered around one hundred ballistic engines to be brought to Acre from across the Mamluk Levant. Some of these weapons truly were monstrous in scale and power. Abu’l Fida was in the siege train of a hundred ox-drawn wagons transporting the pieces of one massive trebuchet nicknamed ‘Victorious’ from Krak des Chevaliers. He complained that, marching through rain and snow, the heavily laden column took a month to cover a distance that was usually an eight-day ride.

  On 5 April 1291 Sultan Khalil’s troops encircled Acre from the north shore above Montmusard to the coast south-east of the harbour, and the siege began. At this point, the city contained many members of the Military Orders–including the masters of the Temple and Hospital–and, in time, the severity of the threat now posed to Acre brought other reinforcements by sea, among them King Henry II (titular monarch of Jerusalem) with 200 knights and 500 infantry from Cyprus. Even so, the Christians were hopelessly outnumbered.

  Khalil set about the task of crushing Acre with methodical determination. With his forces ranged in a rough semi-circle around the city, an aerial barrage began. The largest trebuchets, like ‘Victorious’ and another known as ‘Furious’, had been reassembled and were now pummelling Acre’s battlements with massive boulders. Meanwhile, scores of smaller ballistic devices and squads of archers were deployed behind siege screens to shower the Franks with missiles. Mammoth in scale, unremitting in its intensity, this bombardment was unlike anything yet witnessed in the field of crusader warfare. Teams of Mamluk troopers worked in four carefully coordinated shifts, through day and night. And, each day, Khalil ordered his forces to make a short forward advance–gradually tightening the noose around Acre, until they reached its outer fosse. Eyewitness Latin testimony suggests that, as these efforts proceeded apace, possible terms of surrender were discussed. The sultan apparently offered to allow the Christians to depart with their movable property, so long as the city was left undamaged. But the Frankish envoys are said to have refused, concerned at the dishonour that would be suffered by King Henry through such an absolute concession of defeat.

  As the Mamluks pounded Acre, the Christians made some vain attempts to launch counter-attacks. Stationed on the northern shore, Abu’l Fida described how ‘a [Latin] ship came up with a catapult mounted on it that battered us and our tents from the sea’. William, master of the Templars, and Otho of Grandson also tried to prosecute a bold night-time sortie, hoping to wreak havoc within the enemy camp and torch one of the massive Mamluk trebuchets. The raid went awry when some of the Christians tripped over the guy ropes of the Muslim tents, raising a commotion. Thus alerted, scores of Mamluks rushed into the fray, routing the Franks and slaying eighteen knights. One unfortunate Latin ‘fell into the latrine trench of one of the emir’s detachments and was killed’. The next morning, the Muslims proudly presented the heads of their vanquished foes to the sultan.24

  By 8 May, Khalil’s inexorable advance had brought the Mamluk lines close enough to the city for sappers to be deployed on the outer walls. They quickly turned Acre’s advanced sewerage system to their advantage, using outflows to start their tunnels. Just as in the Third Crusaders’ siege of Acre in 1191, the work of undermining was focused particularly upon the city’s north-eastern corner, but with Acre now protected by double walls there were two lines of defence to breach. The first collapsed at the Tower of the King on Tuesday 15 May and, by the following morning, Khalil’s troops had taken control of this section of the outer battlements. With panic rising in the city, women and children began to evacuate by ship.

  The sultan now prepared the Mamluks for a full-strength frontal assault through the breached Tower of the King, towards the inner walls and the Accursed Tower. At dawn on Friday 18 May 1291, the signal for the attack began–the thunderous booming of war drums that created ‘a terrible, terrifying noise’–and thousands of Muslims began racing forward. Some threw flasks of Greek fire, while archers loosed arrows ‘in a thick cloud [that] seemed to fall like rain from the heavens’. Driven forward by the overwhelming force of this onslaught, the Mamluks broke through two gates near the Accursed Tower and began rushing into the city proper. With Acre’s defences punctured, the Franks tried to make a last desperate stand to contain the incursion, but one eyewitness admitted that attacking the Muslim horde was like trying to hurl oneself ‘against a stone wall’. In the thick of the fighting, the Templar Master William of Beaujeu was mortally wounded when a spear pierced his side. Elsewhere, John of Villiers, master of the Hospital, took a lance thrust between his shoulders. Grievously injured, he was dragged back from the walls.

  Before long, the Christian defenders were overrun and the sack of Acre began. One Latin, then in the city, wrote that the ‘day was terrible to behold. The [ordinary people of the city] came fleeing through the streets, their children in their arms, weeping and despairing, and fleeing to sailors to save them from death’, but hunted down, hundreds were slaughtered and abandoned infants were said to have been trampled under foot. Abu’l Fida confirmed that ‘the Muslims killed vast numbers of people and gathered immense [amounts of] plunder’ once Acre fell. As the Mamluks surged through the city, masses of desperate Latins tried to escape in any remaining boats, and there was utter chaos at the docks. Some got away, including King Henry and Otho of Grandson. Half dead, John of Villiers was carried to a boat and sailed to safety. But the Latin patriarch fell into the water and drowned when his overburdened craft became unstable. Elsewhere, some Latins chose to remain and face their fate. Khalil’s troops found a band of Dominican Friars singing ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’–the same crusader hymn intoned by Joinville in 1248–in their convent, and butchered them to a man.25

  Many Christians sought to take refuge in the fortified compounds of the three main Military Orders, and some managed to hold out for days. The robust Templar citadel was eventually undermined by sappers and collapsed on 28 May, killing the Templars within. Those sheltering in the Hospitallers’ quarter surrendered on promise of safe conduct from Khalil, but Muslim chronicles testify to the fact that the sultan deliberately broke this promise, leading his Christian prisoners out of the city and on to the surrounding plains. Almost exactly one hundred years earlier, Richard the Lionheart had violated his own pledge of clemency to Acre’s Ayyubid garrison, executing some 2,700 captives. Now, in 1291, Khalil herded the Latins into groups and ‘had them slaughtered as the Franks had done to the Muslims. Thus Almighty God was revenged on their descendants.’

  Acre’s fall was a final and fatal disaster for the Latin Christians of Outremer. Recalling the city’s sack, one Frankish eyewitness who fled by boat declared that ‘no one could adequately recount the tears and grief of that day’. The Hospitaller Master John of Villiers survived to pen a letter to Europe describing his experiences, although he admitted that his wound made it difficult to write:

  I and some of our brothers escaped, as it pleased God, most of whom were wounded and battered without hope of
cure, and we were taken to the island of Cyprus. On the day that this letter was written we were still there, in great sadness of heart, prisoners of overwhelming sorrow.

  For the Muslims, by contrast, the glorious victory at Acre affirmed the efficacy of their faith, sealing their triumph in the war for the Holy Land. One witness described in amazement how, ‘after the capture of Acre, God put despair into the hearts of the other Franks left in Palestine’. Christian resistance crumbled. Within a month, the last outposts at Tyre, Beirut and Sidon had been evacuated or abandoned by the Franks. That August, the Templars withdrew from their strongholds at Tortosa and Pilgrims’ Castle. With this, the days of Outremer–the crusader settlements on the mainland Levant–were brought to an end. Reflecting upon the wonder of this event, Abu’l Fida wrote:

  These conquests [meant that] the whole of Palestine was now in Muslim hands, a result that no one would have dared to hope for or to desire. Thus the [Holy Land was] purified of the Franks, who had once been on the point of conquering Egypt and subduing Damascus and other cities. Praise be to God!26

  CONCLUSION

  THE LEGACY OF THE CRUSADES

  With Acre’s fall and the loss of Outremer’s last remaining strongholds, Latin Christendom’s political and military presence on the mainland Levant came to a definitive end. The final conquest of the crusader states helped further to validate Mamluk authority, and the sultanate’s power in the Near East held for more than two centuries. In the West, however, the kingdom of Jerusalem’s collapse caused widespread shock and anxiety. Not surprisingly, explanations were sought and recriminations levelled. The Levantine Franks were derided for their sinfulness and propensity to factionalism, the Military Orders criticised for pursuing international interests rather than focusing upon the Holy Land’s defence.