When Saladin reached Acre in early September 1189, the city was invested by Guy’s army and the Pisans. But in the aftermath of Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem, it was almost inevitable that the Frankish siege of this coastal port would become the central focus of Latin Europe’s retaliatory anger. During an inland siege, the king’s forces could have been readily isolated from supply and reinforcement, and Saladin’s circumspection would have made sense. At Acre, the Mediterranean acted like a pulsing, unstemmable artery, linking Palestine with the West, and while the sultan waited for his armies to assemble, ships began to arrive teeming with Christian troops to bolster the besieging host. Imad al-Din, then in Saladin’s camp, later described looking out over the coast to see a seemingly constant stream of Frankish ships arriving at Acre and a growing fleet moored by the shoreline ‘like tangled thickets’. This spectacle unnerved the Muslims inside and outside the port, and to boost morale Saladin apparently circulated a story that the Latins were actually sailing their ships away every night and ‘when it was light…[returning] as if they had just arrived’. In reality, the sultan’s prevarication gave Guy a desperately needed period of grace in which to amass manpower.²⁵

A significant group of reinforcements arrived around 10 September–a fleet of fifty ships, carrying some 12,000 Frisian and Danish crusaders as well as horses. The western sources describe its advent as a moment of salvation, a tipping point beyond which the Latin besiegers had at least some chance of survival. Among the new troops was James of Avesnes, a renowned warrior from Hainaut (a region on the modern border between France and Belgium). Likened by one contemporary to ‘Alexander, Hector and Achilles’, a skilled veteran in the art of war and the politics of power, James had been one of the first western knights to take the cross in November 1187.

In the course of September, crusaders continued to arrive, swelling the ranks of the Frankish army. Among their number were potentates drawn from the upper ranks of Europe’s aristocracy. Philip of Dreux, the bishop of Beauvais, said to be ‘a man more devoted to battles than books’, and his brother Robert of Dreux came from northern France, as did Everard, count of Brienne, and his brother Andrew. They were joined by Ludwig III of Thuringia, one of Germany’s most powerful nobles. By the end of the month even Conrad of Montferrat had decided, apparently at Ludwig’s insistence, to come south from Tyre to join the siege, bringing with him some 1,000 knights and 20,000 infantry.²⁶

Saladin too was receiving an influx of troops. By the second week of September the bulk of the forces summoned to Acre had arrived. Joined by al-Afdal, al-Zahir, Taqi al-Din and Keukburi, the sultan moved on to the plain of Acre, taking up position on an arcing line running from Tell al-Ayyadiya in the north, through Tell Kaisan (which later became known as the Toron of Saladin) to the Belus River in the south-west. Just as he settled into this new front, the Franks tried to throw a loose semi-circular cordon around Acre–running from the northern coast, through Mount Toron and across the Belus (which served as a water supply) to the sandy beach to the south. Saladin saw off this first Latin attempt at a blockade with relative ease. As yet, the crusaders lacked the resources to effectively seal off every approach to the city, and a combined assault by Acre’s garrison and a detachment of troops under Taqi al-Din broke the weakest part of their lines to the north, enabling a camel train of supplies to enter the city via St Anthony’s Gate on Saturday 16 September.

By mid-morning that day Saladin himself had entered Acre, climbing its walls to survey the enemy camp. Looking down from the battlements upon the thronged crusader host huddled on the plain below, now surrounded by a sea of Muslim warriors, he must have felt a sense of assurance. With the city saved, his patiently amassed army could turn to the task of annihilating the Franks who so arrogantly had thought to threaten Acre, and victory would be achieved. But the sultan had waited too long. For the next three days his troops repeatedly sought either to overrun the Latin positions or to draw the enemy into a decisive open battle, all to no avail. In the weeks since King Guy’s arrival the swelling crusader ranks had dug into their positions, and they now repulsed all attacks. One Muslim witness described them standing ‘like a wall behind their mantlets, shields and lances, with levelled crossbows’, refusing to break formation. As the Christians clung with stubborn tenacity to their foothold outside Acre, the strain of the situation began to tell on Saladin. One of his physicians revealed that the sultan was so racked with worry that he barely ate for days. Frankish indomitability soon prompted indecision and dissension within Saladin’s inner circle. With some advisers arguing that it would be better to await the arrival of the Egyptian fleet and others advocating that the approaching winter should be allowed to wreak its depredations upon the crusaders, the sultan wavered, and the attacks on the Christian lines ground to a halt. A letter to the caliph in Baghdad offered a positive summary of events–the Latins had arrived like a flood, but ‘a path had been cut to the city through their throats’ and they now were all but defeated–but in reality, Saladin must have begun to realise that the siege of Acre might prove difficult to lift.²⁷

The first battle

The weeks that followed saw intermittent skirmishing, while Frankish ships continued to bring more and more crusaders to the siege. By Wednesday 4 October 1189 the Christians were numerous enough to contemplate going on the offensive, launching an attack on Saladin’s camp in what was to be the first full-scale pitched battle of the Third Crusade. Leaving his brother Geoffrey to defend Mount Toron, King Guy amassed the bulk of the Frankish forces at the foot of the tell, carefully drawing up an extended battle line with the help of the Military Orders and potentates such as Everard of Brienne and Ludwig of Thuringia. With infantry and archers in the front ranks, screening the mounted knights, the Christians set out to cross the open plain towards the Muslims, marching in close order and at slow pace. This was to be no lightning attack, but, rather, a disciplined advance in which the crusaders tried to close with the enemy en masse, protected by their tightly controlled formation. Surveying the field from his vantage point atop Tell al-Ayyadiya, Saladin had ample time to arrange his own forces on the plain below, interspersing squadrons under trusted commanders like al-Mashtub and Taqi al-Din with relatively untested troops, such as those from Diyar Bakr on the Upper Tigris. Holding the centre with Isa, but looking to play a mobile command role, boosting morale and discipline where necessary, the sultan prepared to face the Franks.

The scene outside Acre at dawn that day was spectacular and unsettling. For more than two hours, thousands of crusaders in packed ranks, resplendent banners raised, advanced at walking pace, inching towards battle with Saladin’s men. Soldiers on both sides must have struggled to hold their nerve. Then at last, around mid-morning, fighting began as the Christians’ left flank reached the Muslim lines to the north, where Taqi al-Din was stationed. Hoping to lure the Franks into a formation-shattering charge, Taqi al-Din sent in skirmishers and then feigned a limited retreat. Unfortunately his manoeuvre was so convincing that Saladin believed his nephew was under real threat and dispatched troops from his centre to reinforce the north. This unbalancing of the line gave the crusaders an opportunity. Advancing with rigid discipline, they attacked the right of Saladin’s central division ‘as one man, horse and foot’, quickly sending the inexperienced Diyar Bakris stationed there into full flight. Panic spread and the right half of the sultan’s central division crumbled.