The Glory of the Crusades (36 page)

In front came men carrying tall shields, and after them came men who threw Greek fire, and after them came men who hurled javelins and shot feathered arrows . . . At this the Saracens . . . took two routes, since they were between the two walls of the city . . . Some of them entered by a gate of that great tower called the Accursed Tower, and moved toward San Romano where the Pisans had their great engines. The others kept to the (main) road, going to St. Anthony’s Gate.
563

All remaining women and children fled to the harbor to board escape ships. Meanwhile, the Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights, and Templars continued the battle within the city. The fighting was intense, and casualties, both military and civilian, were high.

Eventually Christian resistance collapsed, and Muslim warriors rampaged through the city slaughtering everyone in their way. Jean de Villiers, the grand master of the Hospitallers, was gravely wounded from a spear that struck his back and he was carried from the scene by his confreres.
564
William of Beaujeu, the master of the Templars, was mortally wounded at the hour of mercy;
565
not in full battle armor at the time, he was struck by a spear.
566
The master and the order’s standard-bearer left the battlefield, which prompted shouts from the nearby troops who thought he was fleeing in the face of the enemy. He shouted to them, “I am not fleeing, I am slain: You can see the stroke!”
567

The entire city, except for the citadel and the fortified compounds of the military religious orders, was in Muslim hands. King Henry II and Jean de Villiers hurried to the harbor where they boarded ships. The patriarch of Jerusalem tried to leave as well but was drowned in the attempt. Several stories exist as to how he drowned. One version indicates he slipped trying to get into a boat; another is that out of pity for the fleeing inhabitants of the city he allowed too many to board his ship and the vessel capsized.
568

The last bastion of Christian resistance in Acre was now the Templar Tower, which was a heavily fortified castle at the end of the city. It was built on the tip of the landmass that jutted into the Mediterranean, “so close to the sea that the waves broke against it.”
569

The Muslims tried to force the Templars and refugees out of the Tower but to no avail. Ten days after the final assault, the Templars recognized the situation was hopeless and offered to surrender the citadel if the sultan granted them safe conduct out of the city. Khalil agreed and sent a unit of troops into the Tower to oversee the surrender of the Templars.

Once inside the compound the Muslim troops could not restrain themselves from harassing the Christian civilians who had sought refuge with the Templars. They tried to take possession of the men for slaves and of the women to satisfy their sexual desire. The Templars reacted by grabbing their weapons and slaughtering the sultan’s troops. They shut the gates to the citadel and made up their mind to fight to the death.

Khalil sent word to the Templars that he did not harbor ill will toward them for the death of his men since they had acted foolishly. He reiterated his terms and asked them to open the gates. Peter de Sevrey, the marshal of the order, and several other Templars left the fortress and walked toward the waiting sultan. They were apprehended and beheaded.

After Khalil’s treachery the remaining Templars and civilians in the tower once more pledged to fight to the end. But when the Muslims began a mining operation to destroy the tower and with no means available to stop it, the Christians realized they had no choice but to surrender.

Khalil sent a force of 2,000 cavalry into the tower to accept the Templars’ capitulation. While overseeing the withdrawal, the mine underneath gave way and the tower collapsed killing the remaining Templars and the Muslim cavalry.
570
It was a costly end to a costly siege that had killed nearly 30,000 Christians in five weeks.
571
Khalil, following the example set by Baybars, ordered the city razed. Acre had fallen, a hundred years to the day of its capture by the forces of the Third Crusade.

News of its fall prompted outbursts of shock and dismay in Europe. It was inconceivable that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was no more. Although there were small pockets of Christian territory remaining in Outrémer, they soon surrendered and by the end of the summer of 1291, the Crusader States were gone.

Changes in the Crusading Movement

By the end of the thirteenth century, the Crusades were not simply armed pilgrimages to the Holy Land. They had become a way of life that encompassed a worldview shaped by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Despite the eradication of the Crusader States, pilgrimages continued to the Holy Land and a Christian presence at the holy sites in Jerusalem was guaranteed by the Franciscans, who, by the mid-1330s, were granted a license by the Mamluks to oversee the Latin sectors within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Upper Room, and the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
572

The reign of the Crusader States was short, lasting less than 200 years. But although the fall of Acre meant the end of Christian control of Outrémer, it did not produce the decline of the Crusading movement. The Crusades continued, but their focus changed.
573
The movement received fresh impetus with the arrival of the Ottoman Turks, who in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries threatened the very existence of Christendom.

494
To his troops before the amphibious landing at Damietta, Egypt in 1249, in Pernoud,
The Crusaders,
301.

495
David Nicolle,
Acre 1291—Bloody Sunset of the Crusader States
(New York: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 89.

496
The story is recounted by John of Joinville in his
Histoire de Saint Louis
, 61–63. Jacques Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, trans. Gareth Evan Gollrad (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2009), 109.

497
The story is from Matthew Paris as quoted in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 112.

498
France at the time of St. Louis contained 10 million out of a total 60 million people in Christendom. (R. Fossier, “
Les campagnes au temps de Philippe Auguste: developpement demographique et transformations sociales dans le monde rural
,” in
La France de Philippe Auguste. Le Temps des mutations
(Paris: 1982), 628. In Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 33.) The royal capital of Paris contained 100,000 inhabitants (Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 33).

499
The term “perfect Crusader” is Pernoud’s. See Pernoud,
The Crusaders
, 294.

500
Le Goff refers to the thirteenth century as the century of St. Louis. Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, xx.

501
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, xxi.

502
Ibid., 74.

503
Joinville,
Histoire de Saint Louis
, 40–41, in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 6.

504
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 587.

505
Ibid., 205.

506
The Franciscans, especially the Poor Clares, have a special devotion to her. She is also one of the “incorruptibles,” or saints whose bodies have not decayed or decomposed since death.

507
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 204.

508
Ibid., 610.

509
Ibid., 630.

510
William of Saint-Pathus,
Vie de Saint Louis
, ed. Henri-François Delaborde (Paris: 1899), 123, in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 622.

511
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 625.

512
Previous Crusade historians numbered the two expeditions of Louis as the Seventh and Eighth Crusades but modern Crusade historians refer to them as the First and Second Crusades of St. Louis.

513
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 781.

514
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 126. According to Le Goff, fifteen of the twenty-eight royal investigators were mendicant friars: eight Dominicans and seven Franciscans. Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 613.

515
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 782.

516
W.C. Jordan,
Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 65–104, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 777.

517
Louis Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont,
Vie de Saint Louis
(Société de l’Histoire de France: 1847–1851), 3:177–78, in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 132.

518
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 66.

519
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 784.

520
Ibid., 788.

521
Gabrieli,
Arab Historians of the Crusades
(New York: Routledge, 1969), 90, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 792.

522
John France,
Western Warfare
, 109.

523
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 202.

524
Ibid., 225.

525
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 793.

526
Ibid., 795.

527
Ibid.

528
Ibid., 796.

529
William of Nangis,
Gesta Ludovici
IX
,
Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France
, vol. 20, ed. C.F. Daunou and J. Naudet (Paris: 1840), 381, in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 616.

530
Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 624.

531
William of Saint-Pathus,
Vie de Saint Louis
, 127–128, in Le Goff,
Saint Louis
, 624.