This sudden unheralded cataclysm stunned Latins and Muslims alike. One Frankish chronicler remarked that ‘Christendom suffered much harm by [Frederick’s] death’, while in Iraq another contemporary joyfully proclaimed that ‘God saved us from his evil’. The German crusaders were gripped by a crisis of leadership and morale. Barbarossa’s younger son Frederick of Swabia tried to salvage the expedition. Assuming command, he had the late emperor’s body wrapped and embalmed, and then he led the way into northern Syria. But en route ‘disease and death fell upon them [leaving them] looking as though they had been exhumed from their graves’. Thousands died, while others deserted. At Antioch, some of Barbarossa’s remains were buried in the Basilica of St Peter, beside the site of the Holy Lance’s discovery; his bones were then boiled and collected in a bag in the hope that they might be laid to rest in Jerusalem (as it was, they were eventually interred in the Church of St Mary in Tyre). Frederick of Swabia limped down the Syrian coast with what remained of the German army, facing attacks from Ayyubid troops stationed in the north.40
It is not clear precisely when news of Barbarossa’s death reached Saladin–according to Baha al-Din, he was informed of the event by a letter from Basil of Ani, head of the Armenian Christian Church, but no date was provided. The tidings certainly caused celebration among the Muslims. A crusader wrote that ‘inside Acre…there was dancing and playing of drums’, and recalled that members of the Ayyubid garrison gleefully climbed the battlements to shout ‘many times, in a loud voice…: “Your emperor has drowned.”’ Nonetheless, the sultan was still dispatching troops to defend Syria as late as 14 July 1190 and the full strength of his armies did not reassemble at Acre until early autumn. Thus, even though Barbarossa’s demise crippled the German crusade, Saladin still lost vital military resources that summer. Frederick of Swabia eventually reached Acre in early October 1190 in the company of perhaps 5,000 troops. Saladin seems to have expected that, in spite of all their losses, the Germans’ arrival would reinvigorate the crusader siege, but in real terms it did little to advance the Frankish cause.41
STALEMATE
In one sense the fighting season of 1190 had been a success for Saladin. Acre had shrugged off every Latin assault, its garrison countering the artifice of the Franks’ experimental military technology. The sultan had managed, albeit with some difficulty, to maintain channels of communication and resupply with the city, while deploying his own troops to harass and distract the besieging crusaders. After twelve months’ investment, Acre still held.
Nevertheless, in the wider scheme of things, Saladin had failed. Forced to redeploy his martial resources to meet the perceived threat of the German crusade, he lacked the manpower with which to seize the initiative at Acre. With armies at full strength, that summer he might have risked a concerted frontal assault on the Frankish positions and driven the crusaders from Palestine. As it was, by the time his troops had regrouped at Acre in early October, Saladin seems to have decided that, for now at least, the opportunity for decisive intervention had passed. This, combined with the onset of a ‘bilious fever’, prompted him to move his army back to a distant winter encampment at Saffaram (about ten miles south-east of Acre) in mid-October, effectively bringing the fighting season to a close. With his confidence evidently shaken, Saladin ordered the demolition of Caesarea, Arsuf and Jaffa–the key ports south of Acre–and even mandated the dismantling of Tiberias’ walls. In the months that followed, Saladin faced a constant struggle to maintain his forces in the field. Some, like the lords of Jazirat and Sinjar, repeatedly petitioned to return to their lands; others, like Keukburi, were dispatched to oversee the governance of the sultan’s neglected Mesopotamian interests and were lost to the jihad.42
In pulling back from the front line, just as he had a year earlier, Saladin was relying upon the ravages of nature to weaken his enemy, waiting to see if the crusaders could survive a second cruel winter huddled outside Acre. Before long the change of season began to bite. As in 1189, autumn’s end heralded the closing of long-distance sea routes and the effective isolation of the Frankish host. By November, the crusaders’ supplies were already running short, forcing them to attempt a foraging expedition south towards Haifa which was beaten back after just two days.
Ordeals
In late November Saladin at last disbanded his army for winter, once again remaining in person with only a small force to watch over Acre as the ‘sea became rough [and the rains] heavy and incessant’. From the Muslim perspective, the months that followed proved far harsher and more trying than the winter of 1189. The city’s garrison was faltering, while Saladin and his men were exhausted and ill-tempered. With supply lines stretched, there were widespread shortages of food and weapons, and too few doctors available to deal with the frequent outbreaks of illness. ‘Islam asks aid from you’, the sultan wrote in an imploring letter to the caliph, ‘as a drowning man cries for help.’ And yet, these problems were but a pale reflection of the torments faced by the crusaders. One Muslim eyewitness acknowledged this, writing that because ‘the plain [of Acre] became very unhealthy’ and ‘the sea was closed to them’, there ‘was great mortality amongst the enemy’ with 100 to 200 men perishing daily.
The Latins’ suffering may have been obvious to onlookers, but the view from inside the Christian camp was even more anguished. Cut off from the outside world, the crusaders’ stores of food simply ran out. By late December people had turned to skinning ‘fine horses’, eating their flesh and guts with gusto. As the famine intensified, one crusader wrote that there were ‘those who had lost their sense of shame through their hunger [who] fed in sight of everyone on abominable food which they happened to find, no matter how filthy, things which should not be spoken of. Their dire mouths devoured what humans are not permitted to eat as if it were delicious.’ This may be an indication that there were outbreaks of cannibalism.
Weakened by hunger, the Franks fell prey to illnesses such as scurvy and trench mouth:
A disease ran through the army…the result of rains that poured down such as have never been before, so that the whole army was half-drowned. Everyone coughed and sounded hoarse; their legs and faces swelled up. On one day there were 1,000 [men on] biers; they had such swelling in the faces that the teeth fell from their mouths.
The resultant mortality was on a scale not seen since the First Crusaders’ siege of Antioch. Thousands died, among them such potentates as Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, Theobald of Blois and even Frederick of Swabia. These dark days of winter witnessed a collapse in Christian morale. One crusader commented ‘there is no rage like that born of starvation’, observing that, in the midst of this horror, anger and despair caused a loss of faith and desertion. ‘Many of our people went to the Turks and turned renegade’, he wrote; ‘they denied [Christ], the Cross and baptism–everything.’ Receiving these apostates, Saladin must have hoped that the siege of Acre would soon falter.
But still the crusaders clung on. Some resorted to grazing on grass and herbs ‘like beasts’, others turned to eating unfamiliar ‘carob-beans’ indigenous to the area, which they found ‘sweet to eat’. Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, played a major role in restoring some semblance of order to the chaos-stricken camp, organising charitable collections from the rich so that food could be distributed to the poor. When scores of hungry crusaders sinned by eating what little meat they could find during Lent, Hubert enforced a penance upon them–three blows on their backs with a stick, administered by the bishop himself, ‘but not heavy blows’, as he ‘chastised like a father’. Finally, around late February or early March, the first small Christian supply ship bearing grain reached the camp to be greeted with great celebration, and with spring the crisis of supply ended. Having passed through a tempest of death and misery, the Franks were still thronged outside Acre.43