Siege of Acre (1291)

The Siege of Acre took place in 1291 and resulted in the fall of Acre, the last territory of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The destruction of the remaining Crusader territories gathered pace after the rise of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt in 1250. Although initailly distracted by the war against the Mongol invasion of Syria in 1260, Mamluk forces eventually began attacking Crusader holding as early as 1261 under Sultan Baybars.

In 1265 Caesarea, Haifa, and Arsuf all fell to the Sultan. The following year saw the loss of all the important Latin holdings in Galilee. In 1268 Antioch was taken.

To help redress these losses, a number of minor Crusading expeditions left Europe for the East. The abortive Crusade of Louis IX of France to Tunis in 1270 was one such attempt. The minor Ninth Crusade of Prince Edward (later King Edward I) of England in 1271-1272 was another. Neither of these expeditions was capable of giving any sound assistance to the beleaguered Latin states. The forces involved were too small, the duration of the Crusades too short, the interests of the participants too diverse to allow of any solid accomplishment.

Pope Gregory X labored valiantly to excite some general enthusiasm for another great Crusade, but he labored in vain. The failure of his appeal was variously ascribed by the Pope's advisors to the laziness and vice of the European mobility and to clerical corruption. Though each of these factors may have been in part to blame, a more basic reason for the failure seems to have been the debasement of the ideal of the Crusade itself. The use by Gregory X's predecessors of the label and privileges of the Crusade to recruit armies which could fight the Papacy's European armies had done much to throw the whole movement into disrepute.

In any event, no Crusade of any major importance was forthcoming, despite the Pope's best efforts. Meanwhile the attacks on the Latin East continued, as did also the internal difficulties within what was left of the Latin Kingdom. By 1276 the situation of the Kingdom, both external and internal, had become so perilous that the "King of Jerusalem" Henry II withdrew from Palestine altogether to take up his abode on the Island of Cyprus.

The desperate plight of the Latin Kingdom worsened. In 1278 Lattakia fell. In 1289 Tripoli was lost, too. Frantic efforts once again to conclude an alliance between Europe and the Mongols failed.

Although a ten-year truce was signed with the Sultan Qalawun, the latter deemed the truce void following the killing of some Muslim merchants and peasants in Acre by Franks, in August of 1290. By October, Qalawun had ordered a general mobilization. Though the Sultan would die in November, he would be succeeded by his son Khalil, who would lead the forces in the war.

A crucial moment came when Guillaume de Beaujeu, Master of the Templar Order, dropped his sword and walked away from the walls. His knights remonstrated. Beaujeu replied: "Je ne m'enfuit pas; je suis mort. Voici le coup." ("I'm not running away; I am dead. Here is the blow.") He raised his arm to show off the mortal wound he had received.

The population of the Acre at the time was estimated to be 40,000, with troops levels being around 15,000, with an additional 2,000 troops coming on May 6 with Henry II from Cyprus. There are no reliable figures for the Mamluk army, though it was larger than the Crusader troops, with most of the force being volunteer siege workers.

The siege itself lasted only six weeks, beginning on April 6 and ending with the fall of the city on May 16, though the Templars would hold out in their headquarters until the 28th.

Within months, the remaining Crusader-held cities fell easily, including Sidon (July 14), Haifa (July 30), Beirut (July 31), Tartus (August 3), and Atlit (August 14). Only the small island of Arwad off the Syrian coast would hold out until 1302.

The fall of Acre closed an era. No effective Crusade was raised to recapture the Holy Land after Acre's fall, though talk of further Crusades was common enough. By 1291 other ideals had captured the interest and enthusiasm of the monarchs and nobility of Europe and even strenuous papal efforts to raise expeditions to liberate the Holy Land met with little response. The ideal of the Crusade was irretrievably tarnished.

The Latin Kingdom continued to exist, theoretically, on the Island of Cyprus. There the Latin Kings schemed and planned to recapture the mainland, but in vain. Money, men, and the will to do the task were all lacking. One last effort was made by King Peter I in 1365, when he successfully landed in Egypt and sacked Alexandria. Once the city was pillaged, however, the Crusaders returned as speedily as possible to Cyprus to divide their loot. As a Crusade, the episode was utterly futile.

The fourteenth century saw some other so-called Crusades organized, but these enterprises differed in many ways from the eleventh and twelfth century expeditions which are properly called Crusades. The "Crusades" of the fourteenth century aimed not at the recapture of Jerusalem and the Christian shrines of the Holy Land, but rather at checking the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe. While many of the "Crusaders" in these fourteenth century undertakings looked upon the defeat of the Ottomans as a preliminary to the ultimate recapture of the Holy Land, none of the later crusades attempted any direct attack upon Palestine or Syria.

Further reading

*Nicolle, David Acre 1291 (Osprey Campaign 154) Osprey, 2005.