Acre 1291: Bloody sunset of the Crusader states

Osprey Campaign #154

by David Nicolle, Graham Turner (Illustrator)

Osprey's study of the battle at Acre, one of the last campaigns of the Crusages (1095-1291). In April 1291, a Mamluk army laid siege to Acre, the last great Crusader fortress in the Holy Land. For six weeks, the siege dragged on until the Mamluks took the outer wall, which had been breached in several places. The Military Orders drove back the Mamluks temporarily, but three days later the inner wall was breached. King Henry escaped, but the bulk of the defenders and most of the citizens perished in the fighting or were sold into slavery. The surviving knights fell back to their fortress, resisting for ten days, until the Mamluks broke through. This book depicts the dramatic collapse of this great fortress, whose demise marked the end of the Crusades in the Holy Land.

Genres: History, Military History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History, Middle East

96 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2005

About the author

David C. Nicolle is a British historian specialising in the military history of the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in the Middle East.

Reviews

[Elliott Bignell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the first of Osprey's "Campaign" series that I have read, and I must say that despite the mediocre star-rating I will certainly want to read a few more. The fall of Acre is a part of the history of the Crusades which, while pivotal, tends to receive comparatively little attention. This work deals with the event in a fair amount of detail, featuring author photos from the sites, contemporary artwork depicting the scenes and maps indicating the movements of the antagonistic forces. The review loses a star because I caught an outright error early on - Dante's "Commedia Divina" does not commit Muhammad to purgatory but rather subjects him to daily disembowelment in one of the deepest circles of Hell, deemed at the time in Christian ignorance of Islam to be a fitting fate for a Nestorian schismatic. But this is incidental to the subject matter.

Acre's garrison had been murdered down to the last child by Richard during the Third Crusade, save for a few valuable hostages, and it is notable that its liberation by the Mamluks did not feature any such wholesale butchery. However, most of the population withdrew by sea, so this may not be down to Muslim humanity so much as the absence of victims. However, it remains the fact that the Mamluk campaign was not "personal" or religious to the same degree as earlier campaigns. The primary enemy were the Mongols, and since the Latin and Levantine Christians had made the catastrophic mistake of supporting the Mongols and encouraging their genocide in Baghdad, the Mamluks in a position of dominance had to keep their rearguard clear. Hence, Outremer had to be neutralised. With Acre in their hands, a new Crusade could not be landed and the Mamluks could concentrate on a single front.

An interesting contrast is the position of the Byzantine Empire, which at the time enjoyed mainly positive mutual relations with Islam. Their experience of Latin rapacity, the increasing weakness of their position and the Mongol threat go a long way toward explaining this. At any rate, this was no general conflict of Christians versus Muslims, as the Byzantines kept out of the struggle and favoured good relations with their Muslim neighbours. The conflict did, however, spill out into Nubia along the Eastern Nile, where the Muslims consolidated control and effectively dispersed the Coptic Christian centres of power before moving North, although no genocide is described here, and Copts remain today in much of the Mamluks' historical territory, under renewed pressure due to the rise of Daesh.

The siege machinery marshalled by the Mamluks was prodigious, some of Lebanon's greatest trees being used to build mangonels and other machinery. The achievement of simply bringing them from the mountains to Acre is staggering. Apparently they could hurl a 30-40kg rock from a distance of close to 300m, out of range of defensive counter-artillery. The age of Frankish martial superiority was closing, and Islam was about to settle into undisputed mastery of the Levant and eventually Asia Minor, just as Venezia and Genova were beginning to rule the seas.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 2 out of 5]

This short book provides a rather helpful summary of the siege and fall of Acre in 1291. The maps and illustrations are especially useful, though zoomed a little too far out, and I appreciated the few quotes included from primary sources.

That said, the book is definitely written from a pro-Muslim perspective and as a result I am not sure how much of it to trust. For instance, Nicolle attributes Crusader honour of and care for lepers to Muslim influence--when Piers D Mitchell, in a convincingly-argued paper published in Bernard Hamilton's The Leper King and His Heirs, explains that medieval Christendom as a whole saw leprosy almost as a messianic symbol, owing to the Vulgate's wording of Isaiah 53. For another instance, he consistently misspells Amalric of Cyprus's name throughout the book (sometimes as Amalaric, sometimes as Almaric). And his close focus on Mameluke history and warfare at the expense of Christian history and warfare rendered the book of limited usefulness to me. In the end, the best thing I got from this book was a recommendation for a primary source--the anonymous Templar of Tyre.

[Shrike58 · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is actually rather less about the fall of Acre in this booklet than you might think, but that might be a commentary on the locality's relative irrelevance by 1291. What this book really deals with is the Mameluke state's wider diplomacy and strategy, as they cleaned up assorted loose ends in their greater conflict with their Mongol adversaries. The ongoing parallel war between Italian Angevins and Aragon was the main action in Christendom. Though the Christian "military" orders arguably never recovered their prestige in the wake of this defeat, and the Mameluke ascendance accelerated the diminution of Christian culture in the Levant and sub-Saharan Africa. As this work is almost a generation old there is a certain grim irony in reading about the opportunities for tourism in the region.

Originally written: July 13, 2020.