Lionheart (29 page)

More to the point, the catapults and siege towers brought from England were causing so much damage to the walls that desperate people were throwing themselves off the battlements. Eight days after the failed French attack, Richard’s men made a breach and attacked, but were likewise driven off. By 4 July, when some spokesmen of Richard were in Saladin’s camp requesting fresh fruit, sherbets and snow to cool his drinks, the city of Acre had been cut off, except for the intermittent blockade-runners and one relief by land, for nearly two years. Its inhabitants were literally starving, infants and old people dying of thirst. When messages reached Saladin that the garrison could no longer hold and had made an offer of surrender, he wept bitter tears and sent heralds through his camp to summon his emirs for one final attack on the crusader army. The initiative came to nothing because they refused to take part, considering such an attack as a useless waste of life.
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Relations between the Plantagenet and French armies deteriorated still further. Philip adopted Conrad as a
curialis
– a member of his court – and possibly on his advice, dunned Richard for half of Cyprus in accordance with the pact they had sworn in France and renewed at Messina. After the death of Count Philip of Flanders, Richard retorted that, since the agreement covered all the gains of both kings during the crusade, he would expect in return half of Flanders and half of all the possessions of all Philip’s other vassals who had died on the expedition. To put an end to this pointless haggling where neither would give way, the masters of the Templars and Hospitallers were appointed to rule on the claims – and there the matter rested, in the hands of the lawyers, so to speak.
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In that age of superstition and ignorance, rumours were rife. One, which may have been true, was of a Christian spy living inside the city who wrote news of events there, the state of morale, food supplies and weapons, and gave warning of planned sorties. His letters were wrapped around arrows and fired over the walls to land in the siege camp, each bearing the authentication formula
In nomine patris et filii et spiritu santi
[sic] – in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Since his identity was never established before or after the siege ended, no one could say whether this was just a rumour or the work of a spy caught and executed by the garrison or killed by chance when the crusaders eventually entered the city.
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About the only thing on which Richard and Philip could now agree was that, when the English army was making a major attack on the walls, the French would guard the landward ditch against any incursion by Saladin’s investing army, and vice versa.

Superstition and ignorance also preyed heavily when a total solar eclipse on 23 June lasting three hours made the whole sky so dark that the stars were seen shining brightly. This was taken as an evil omen and caused great terror in the Christian camp, except by the teams of sappers labouring in the cramped tunnels beneath the walls of Acre, who were unaware of the event. Their technique was to excavate a tunnel to a spot exactly beneath the foundations of the walls and there hack out a large cavern whose roof was supported by beams and props. When this was considered sufficiently large, the props were liberally smeared with pitch. Pig carcases, barrels of oil and other inflammable material were hauled into the cavern and set alight. When the props burned through, the roof fell in, bringing down the wall above it. At least, that was the theory. The Saracens naturally suspected what was going on and dug counter-mines to break into the crusader tunnels and kill the sappers in them. In one case, when the counter-mine broke through, the crusader sappers were surprised to hear themselves addressed in
lingua franca
, for the ‘enemy’ were Christian prisoners labouring underground in fetters. Furious to find that these slaves had been helped to escape along the mine back to the crusader camp, the garrison then blocked both tunnels.
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After another team of sappers succeeded in undermining a significant section of wall near the Accursed Tower, Philip’s marshal Albéric Clément led many French knights into the assault, proclaiming, ‘
Aut hodie moriar, aut in Achon, Deo volente, ingrediar
.’ This day I shall perish, or, God willing, I shall enter Acre.
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Apparently, God was not willing. After Clément had climbed onto the damaged walls, his scaling ladder broke under the weight of the men following him, leaving him stranded alone, hacked to death by Saracens in full view of those below. Judged guilty of cowardice on this occasion for failing to go to the aid of the knights trapped between the walls, Conrad of Montferrat retired to Tyre in some opprobrium.

Because it was a generally observed custom for the people of a city that surrendered to be granted their lives, though not much else, whereas death was the penalty for fighting to the bitter end, the defenders again sued for terms on 4 July, offering Richard and Philip the city and all the weapons and treasure therein if they would grant the defenders the right to leave
cum vita et membris
– with life and limb intact. To this the kings replied with their terms: the return of all the lands recaptured by the Saracens since the time of Philip’s father, Louis VII, during the Second Crusade, plus the return of the True Cross and the liberation of all Christian captives.
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Saladin’s instructions to the garrison to hold out were at one point carried by a courier who swam under the blockading Christian ships at night. The following night his master launched an attack on the guards of the landward ditch in the hope that a mass sortie from the city could be made during this diversion. Roused from sleep, the crusaders rushed to the ditch, but the plan for the sortie was foiled by extra guards placed on it close to the walls, allegedly after a warning had been received from the mysterious archer-spy. The on-again off-again negotiations were complicated by the fact that there were three parties to the talks: the French and English kings in council with the other leaders of the national contingents; the garrison spokesmen; and Saladin’s envoys. The two last had different agendas.

On 5 July and the following night Richard’s siege engines succeeded in making a huge breach in the walls, through which a new attack was launched, with the result that on 6 July a new request for parley was received from the city. This time three commanders came out and were allowed to go to Saladin for orders, telling him that the walls and towers were now falling down and a third of their men had been killed so that the city could no longer be defended.

This produced an astonishing offer. Saladin proposed that the kings of England and France ally themselves with him for one year in a campaign beyond the Euphrates, and cede three named fortresses. In return, he would return to them the city of Jerusalem, the True Cross and all the disputed lands and places. Should the kings not be prepared to go with him, then he would accept instead one year’s service of 2,000 knights and 5,000 men-at-arms,
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the knights to be paid 46
bezants
a month and the men 15
bezants
a month – which was generous. There was even an assurance policy in the proposed deal: each Christian knight killed would be replaced by one of his knights and each man-at-arms killed would be replaced by one of his soldiers; all those taken prisoner would be ransomed. The negotiation came to nothing.

On Sunday 7 July all was as before: while the Plantagenet army tended the landward ditch, the French launched a violent attack on a narrow breach at the Accursed Tower, which came to nothing and cost the lives of forty-one of Philip’s knights. On 8 July, possibly as a diversion, Saladin put the nearby city of Caiaphus to the sack, laying waste the land around it. That night, to the other horrors of the siege suffered by the people inside Acre was added a violent earthquake that shook the city to its foundations, causing many casualties and terrifying everyone. With no or few buildings in the crusader camp, no casualties were recorded there; on the contrary, many swore that they had seen a vision of the Virgin Mary that night, by which they had been promised a swift end to the siege.

On 11 July Saladin demolished several nearby fortresses to make a wasteland for miles around Acre. Richard’s siege engines’ ceaseless battering of the walls having made a large breach, he sent in his army supported by Pisan allies, which led to a truce, the city begging terms again. On 12 July the surrender overtures led to an assembly in the Templars’ tent of both kings and all the bishops and barons in the combined crusader forces, with whom the Saracens finally agreed terms. They were to surrender the city of Acre with all the gold, silver, weapons and food in it and also all the galleys and other ships in the harbour, plus 300 Christian prisoners. Saladin also agreed to return the True Cross and liberate 1,500 Christian knights and 100 noble captives.
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As specific ransom for the garrison of 3,500 men and some 300 of their dependants a sum of 200,000 gold
bezants
was to be paid within forty days, although at least one chronicler believed the ransom money was to be paid in three monthly instalments. If the ransom were paid within the stipulated time, they would go free; if not, their lives would be at the mercy of the besiegers.
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The kings then sent detachments into the city with orders to lock up 100 of the Saracen commanders under special guard, while the other captives were driven into an empty place. Conditions in the city must have been appalling after two years’ destruction of walls, towers and dwellings and thousands of people having been killed there. Within hours the kings received reports that some of the captives had managed to escape under cover of night, so the remainder were locked up more securely in cellars, while the few who accepted Christian baptism were allowed to go free – until reports were received that many of these had gone out to Saladin’s camp and there renounced their baptism. From that time on, baptism was denied the captives.

Conrad of Montferrat had been recalled from Tyre at the request of Saladin to negotiate the surrender terms. The garrison disarmed, he entered the city with his banner and those of Philip and Richard, who claimed the royal palace as his quarters, Philip being allocated the former house of the Templars. The banners of other Christian leaders were also displayed on the battlements, as a sign not only of victory but also to mark their claims to the spoils of war while the artificers were still dismantling the petraries and other siege engines, which were then loaded onto the ships of the fleet for the next stage in the campaign.

It was also a time for civilities. Richard, feeling magnanimous in victory to the enemy he considered a worthy opponent, sent fine harriers and falcons of his own as presents to Saladin, who responded with costly gifts in return, but on the same day the two European monarchs found themselves in a Byzantine maze of treachery, when representatives of the lord against whom Saladin had sought their aid arrived with seductive promises, should the kings bring their armies to help him defeat Saladin. Aware of what was going on, Saladin made a better offer. Neither was accepted. This was on 16 July while the bishops were busy reconsecrating the churches of Acre, some of which had been used as mosques.

When Richard discovered that Leopold of Austria – whom he considered a mere honorary duke, although commanding the German contingent – had managed to find quarters as good as those of the king of England, he fell into a rage worthy of his father and had Leopold’s banner torn down from the battlements, hurled into the sewage-filled moat and trampled into the filth, as a sign that the Germans were not entitled to share in the spoils. Many of them had been there for up to two years and rightly considered that they deserved a fair share of the spoils. It was not only an ill-considered insult, but one that was to cost Richard’s subjects dearly. Many of the German knights actually sold everything except their personal weapons before abandoning the crusade for good and riding away to the north with Leopold, whose hatred of Richard embraced another insult to his family: Isaac Comnenus, still held in Margat Castle, was his mother’s first cousin.
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It is likely that the members of the surrendered garrison were used as forced labour because the city must have been cleansed of some of the filth and rubble accumulated during the two-year siege by 21 July, when Richard moved into the royal palace with Joanna, Berengaria and Isaac Comnenus’ daughter. Outside the palace, all was not peace. Apart from the incessant in-fighting between the various contingents, the surviving Pisan and Genoese merchants and nobility who had been based there before the Muslims drove them out now demanded the return of property and premises they claimed as formerly theirs. This hardly pleased exhausted, wounded and sick crusaders who had taken possession of those buildings after living so long in the appalling conditions of the siege camp. Conrad approached Philip on their behalf and it was left to him to negotiate the restitution of property, which strained even further his relations with the Plantagenet contingent and its king.
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