The Accursed Tower Read online

  The first night they set up great barricades and wicker screens and ranged them against our walls. The second night they moved them forward; the third closer still. And so they advanced so far forward that they made it to the edge of the fosse. And behind these barricades they had armed men, dismounted from their horses with bows in hand. And if you want to know how they got so close it was impossible to prevent them, I’ll tell you why.

  These people had their horsemen fully armed, with their horses in protective armour, spread from one side of the city to the other, that is to say, from one side of the sea to the other, and there were more than 15,000 of them, and they rotated four shifts a day, so that no one was overworked. None of our men sallied out against those behind the screens, because those further back [behind the first enemy line] would have guarded and defended them, and if any of our men had gone out at any time to attack them, the horsemen would have protected them.

  So in the end they advanced to the edge of the fosse as I’ve told you, and those on horseback carried on the necks of their horses four or five bunches of brushwood, and threw them down behind the screens, and when night came they put them in front of the screens and bound them on top with a rope. This pile became like an impregnable wall that no catapult could damage. Some of our medium-sized machines shot and hit the tops of the screens but achieved nothing at all. The stones merely rebounded into the ditch.6

  The problem for the defenders attempting to destroy these barricades was that the enemy was now sufficiently close to the outer wall to make it impossible for the Christians to deploy their heavy counterweight trebuchets—the angle of trajectory was too great, and there was the chance of misfiring and possibly damaging the wall itself from the inside. Nestled in, these barricades were safe from the heaviest Christian artillery. Instead, from within the inner wall, the crusaders were compelled to use their lighter traction engines, evidently not powerful enough to destroy the invaders’ protective wooden wall. Now up to the edge of the fosse, no more than forty yards from the walls and protected by their rampart, the attackers prepared their next initiative:

  After this the enemy drew up their carabohas [black bulls], small Turkish catapults operated by hand, which can fire very fast, and these did more damage to our men than the larger engines, since in the sectors where the carabohas were firing, none dared to appeared in the open. And in front of the carabohas they had made barricades so strong and so high that no one could strike or shoot at those who were firing [the carabohas].7

  Khalil’s aim was to neutralize the defense so that the men would be crouching behind their battlements, unable to respond—or be driven off altogether. Particular attention was being paid to the Barbican and the vulnerable King’s Tower. Some of the catapults, according to one source, “hurled a bombardment of huge stones against the Tower of the King so that no one dared to remain on top of it.”8

  The defenders were further harassed by teams of archers, armed with their short, powerful composite bows, shooting clouds of “innumerable sharp arrows that came whistling through the air from all directions onto the defenders’ heads like heavy rain. These continuous volleys not only dealt death, they poisoned the very air of heaven. Well-armoured soldiers deployed along the ramparts to defend the city were being mortally wounded, while the unarmed were prevented from going to the walls at all.”9 In Christian rhetoric, even God’s celestial sphere was being contaminated. The density of this shower shooting, like a meteorological phenomenon, left a deep impression, as if the sky was darkened by such volleys. It was probably Othon de Grandson, fighting for Edward I on the wintry Scottish borders years later, who recalled a blizzard of “little arrows which they call locusts flying in the air thicker than snowflakes.”10 From outside the walls, Baybars al-Mansuri watched as “they sent against Acre stones like bolts of thunder and arrows like flashes of lightning.”11

  This horrible bombardment was part of a coordinated strategy. By keeping the defenders ducking for cover, it allowed the heavy counterweight trebuchets, with their slower rate of fire, to smash away at towers and walls uncontested and strip the ramparts of their battlements. The psychological toll of the heavy catapults was considerable; the impact of massive, carved limestone balls hitting the same spot again and again, “as if by thunderbolts falling from heaven,” tinged Christian accounts with the language of apocalypse.12 One writer ascribed to the Muslims as agents of the anti-Christ an apocryphal 666 siege engines—the number of the beast that comes out of the sea. They conjured similarly bestial images of the terror that their opponents inspired throughout the siege, describing them

  making sallies towards the city for six hours at a time, so that both day and night, there was scarcely any rest for the citizens… some bellowing like oxen, others barking like dogs, other voices roaring like lions emitting terrible sounds, as is their custom, and beating enormous drums with twisted sticks to frighten the enemy. Others threw javelins, others hurled stones, others fired arrows and quarrels from crossbows at the Christians who stood defending the weak points of the city’s defences.13

  For the defenders, it was critical to keep Khalil’s army well away from the walls, and in this they had already failed. The constant bombardment now enabled him to launch a covert second technique: mining.

  Unceasing bombardment: Islamic troops attack city walls with stone missiles and arrows. The horsetail emblem of Turkic tribal warriors protrudes from the trebuchet. (Oliver Poole, redrawn from The Illustrations to the World History of Rashid al-Din, Edinburgh, 1976)

  The work of tunneling was skilled, dangerous, and time consuming, but it was a critical ingredient of Islamic siege craft and more effective than bombardment in bringing down defenses. For the purpose, Khalil had requisitioned 1,000 miners from Aleppo with a range of specialist skills. This included tunnelers who excavated the mine, carpenters who propped the tunnel, laborers who removed spoil, and men expert in setting up and lighting fires to collapse the foundations. The work commenced under the cover of protecting shelters. The geology of Acre—porous beach rock—made tunneling relatively easy, but it brought its own problems. Careful propping was essential to prevent the tunnels caving in. The miners, armed with single-beaked picks, hacked away in the stifling dark or by the light of smoking torches, passing out excavated material to others behind. Overhead, the bombardment continued.

  The aim was to start a tunnel as close to the wall as possible and, in order to limit the work, to make it narrow, usually no more than five feet wide, just enough to allow two men to operate side by side. The tunnel’s function was simply to provide access to the exact spot under the edge of a tower or wall where an enlarged chamber would be made to light a fire.

  There is no detailed account of the tunneling at Acre in the spring of 1291, but the experience of the subterranean work being undertaken can be reconstructed from the description of a curious Muslim observer of the siege of a crusader fort in 1115:

  It occurred to me to enter the underground tunnel and inspect it. So, I went down in the trench, while the arrows and stones were falling on us like rain, and entered the tunnel. There I was struck with the great wisdom with which the digging was executed. The tunnel was dug from the trench to the bashurah [the outer wall]. On the sides of the tunnel were set up two pillars, across which stretched a plank to prevent the earth above it from falling down. The whole tunnel had such a framework of wood that extended as far as the foundations of the bashurah. Then the assailants dug under the wall of the bashurah, supported it in its place, and went as far as the foundation of the tower. The tunnel was narrow, it was nothing but a means to provide access to the tower. As soon as they got to the tower, they enlarged the tunnel in the wall of the tower, supported it on timbers and began to carry out, a little at a time, the bits of stone produced by boring. The floor of the tunnel was turned into mud because of the dust caused by the digging. Having made the inspection, I went on without the troops of Khurasan [the miners] recognizing me. Had they recognized me, they wou
ld not have let me off without the payment of a heavy fine.14

  Once the “room” under the target spot had been excavated, it was the turn of the fire setters to ignite combustible material to collapse the wall:

  They then began to cut dry wood and stuff the tunnel with it. Early the next morning they set it on fire. We had just at that time put on our arms and marched under a great shower of stones and arrows to the trench in order to attack the castle as soon as its tower tumbled over. As soon as the fire began to have its effect, the layers of mortar between the stones of the wall began to fall. Then a crack was made. The crack became wider and wider and the tower fell. We had assumed that when the tower fell we would be able to go in and reach the enemy. But only the outer face of the wall fell, while the inner wall remained intact. We stood there until the sun became too hot for us, and then returned to our tents after a great deal of damage had been inflicted on us by stones, which were hurled at us.15

  Despite the only partial success of this attempt, the effects of tunneling were potentially more dramatic than those of the trebuchets, as Fulcher of Chartres recounted in an attack on King Baldwin II holed up in a castle in 1123. The Muslim lord laying siege

  ordered the rock on which the castle was situated to be undermined and props to be placed along the tunnel to support the works above. Then he had wood carried in and fire introduced. When the props were burned the excavation suddenly fell in, and the tower which was nearest to the fire collapsed with a great noise. At first smoke rose together with the dust since the debris covered up the fire but when the fire ate through the material underneath and the flames began to be clearly visible, a stupor caused by the unexpected event seized the king.16

  Mining was hard to disguise—the erection of covering shelters, the removal of spoil—and vulnerable to sorties, so the barrage of rocks and missiles was essential to sweep the walls of returning fire. The tunnels that Khalil’s Aleppo miners were starting to dig were conducted against strategic towers and walls that had been identified at the outset; the corners of square towers were prime targets, considered to fall away more easily than circular towers when undermined. As well as the Barbican and the King’s Tower, it seems that Khalil had sufficient resources to snake tunnels outward to the adjacent tower of the Countess of Blois and that of St. Nicolas, and the walls close to St. Anthony’s Gate.

  IT WAS THE unrelenting nature of the attack that wore the defenders down, as it was intended to: the teams of men pulling on the traction trebuchets in unison, the dip and rear of the swinging beams, the crash of rocks into walls, the incessant noise, the whistling shower flights of arrows clouding the sky, the steady advance of the protective screens, the uncertainty about what might be happening underground. The psychological effects of bombardment and the continuous guard duties day and night along the whole length of the wall were attritional on energy and morale. There was to be no let up. Above all, it was about the numbers. The use of troops in disciplined relays allowed Khalil the luxury of applying incessant pressure. As the Templar of Tyre knew, “The Saracens came up every day, because they had so many men.”17 By mid-April, there was already a great deal to concern the defense. It was apparent that sitting tight behind Acre’s formidable walls was unlikely to save the city. They had to strike back.

  10

  SORTIES

  April 13–Early May 1291

  THE MAMLUKS HAD taken Acre by surprise. Their army had been so well organized, their progress so fast. Within two weeks, the failure of the city’s passive defense was clear to all. The ferocity of the bombardment, the menacing advance of the barricades up to the edge of the ditch, and the possibility that their opponents were already mining the walls now required an active response.

  The great catapults were irreplaceable. If they could be destroyed and the mantlets burned, this would alleviate the remorseless pummeling and allow their crossbowmen to start picking off the catapult crews and exposing the miners to attack. If nothing else, counterattacks could provide morale-raising release of pent-up frustration among the defenders. It seems that the leading figures in the city made a collective decision. They would take the fight to the enemy, along all sectors of the wall, to unsettle and demoralize their tormentors. One among this inner circle was Nicolas de Hanapes, patriarch of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. He was a commanding figure, resolutely committed to providing moral and spiritual encouragement to the defense of the city as the pope’s representative. Hanapes was about sixty-five, an old man by the standards of the times, with a lifetime’s service behind him. He was the author of a popular work of inspirational teaching, The Book of Examples from Sacred Scripture, that drew on the Bible for illustrations for the faithful on how to conduct oneself up to the moment of death. The patriarch was at the heart of the defenders’ psychological defense, stiffening their resistance with his unrelenting zeal to fight to the last, and he involved himself in strategic battle decisions too.

  It was decided to undertake a concerted series of sorties. The key element was surprise, and the first operation was so unexpected in its tactics that it took the Mamluks off guard. On the night of April 13, a small group of ships loaded with soldiers slipped anchor from the city’s harbor. These included a barge, a floating artillery platform armed with a traction trebuchet, which had to be towed. The flotilla circled the sea walls of Acre and closed in on the northern shore, outflanking the right wing of the Islamic army, where the Hama contingent was camped, as Abu al-Fida described it, “beside the sea, with the sea on our right as we faced Acre.”1 The ingenious ship battery had been constructed by the Pisans and was accompanied by a pulling team. Archers, crossbowmen, and foot soldiers filled the other ships, which had been protected against incendiary devices.

  The encampment was caught totally unprepared by this amphibious assault. “Ships with timber vaulting covered with ox-hides came to us firing arrows and quarrels,” al-Fida recalled. Landing parties came ashore and harassed the camp, whose defenses were orientated toward the city such that its own trebuchets, directed at the walls and which could not be quickly repositioned, were unable to respond. At the same time, a second sortie was launched from the gates. The right wing, unsettled, suddenly found itself under pressure from coordinated fire. Missiles rained onto their camp from all directions: bombardment by rocks from the trebuchet and arrows from both shore parties and from the ships. Al-Fida experienced “fighting in front of us from the direction of the city, and on our right from the sea. They brought up a ship carrying a mangonel which fired on us from the direction of the sea. This caused us distress.” Fortune, however, was not on the side of the Pisans. The spring sea was unpredictable in its moods. Al-Fida reported with relief that “there was a violent storm of wind, so that the vessel was tossed on the waves and the mangonel it was carrying broke. It smashed to pieces and was never set up again.”2 The ship-borne initiative had failed.

  Coordinated follow-up attacks were planned for both ends of the wall on the night of April 15. One was to be a repeat assault on the Hama contingent. This was to be a joint operation of the Templars led by Guillaume de Beaujeu, French troops under Jean de Grailly, and English ones led by Othon de Grandson. Three hundred men, heavily armed knights and foot soldiers, sallied out from the gate of St. Lazarus, close to the end of the wall. Their principal aim was to burn the great trebuchet, nicknamed “the Furious,” with Greek fire. Evidently, silencing it had become a priority. Despite bright moonlight, the element of surprise appeared initially to have been successful. The Templar of Tyre recalled what happened. “The master ordered a Provençal, who was the viscount of the bourg of Acre, to set fire to the frame of the sultan’s great engine. They went out that night to the apparatus and the man tasked with throwing the Greek fire was frightened when it came to it, and threw it so that it fell short and landed on the ground and burned out there. All the Saracens who were there were killed, both horsemen and those of foot.”3 Abu al-Fida recalled that the unexpected raid had initially put the sentries to
flight, but they rallied. Because of the failure of nerve, the attack had been botched; in the confusion, chaos broke out. The Templars, along with other horsemen, got carried away with the prospect of raiding the camp, “but our men, both brethren and secular knights, went in so far among the tents that their horses got their legs entangled in the guy ropes and went sprawling, and then the Saracens killed them.”4 One unfortunate knight “fell into an emir’s latrine and was killed there.”5 In this way, the Templar related,

  we lost eighteen horsemen that night—brothers of the Temple and secular knights—but we carried away several shields and Saracen bucklers, trumpets and drums. Then my lord and his men turned back to Acre. As they went they met some Saracens waiting in ambush, but they killed them all because the moon shone bright as day and they could see them very clearly. And as I have told you the lord of Hama was in that area. He rallied his men and they came and intercepted us along the sandy shore, hurling javelins at our men, and wounded some, but they did not dare to closely engage our troops. You should know that they seemed to have something like two thousand horsemen, while on our side of knights and others—brothers of the military orders, valés [pages] and turcopoles [local cavalry]—there were scarcely 300.6

  The Muslims gave other accounts. Abu al-Fida stated that the Franks were routed. In yet another, perhaps more credible, Arabic version, the ambush to trap the returning raiders under an emir called al-Halabi failed. The raiders evidently got wind of it and outwitted the emir: “They realised that al-Halabi had concealed himself and they avoided that route and took another. They found on their way some of al-Halabi’s kite shields and rectangular shields and took them.”7 Al-Halabi and his men waited patiently until the dawn broke. Then they heard mocking shouts coming from the walls and saw their stolen shields hanging there as trophies.