Siege of Acre (1291)

In the spring of 1291 the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, al-Ashraf Khalil, besieged and stormed Acre, the capital and last great stronghold of the crusaders' Kingdom of Jerusalem on the coast of the Levant. The city fell on 18 May after about six weeks, and its last fortress surrendered ten days later. Although crusading continued in other forms for centuries, the fall of Acre ended the crusader states in the Holy Land.

Saladin had taken Acre, together with Jerusalem, in 1187. Crusaders recovered it in 1191 during the Third Crusade, and it then served as the kingdom's capital and the headquarters of the military orders. From 1250 the crusaders faced a far more dangerous neighbour in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, whose victory over the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260 was a pivotal moment for the region. Sultan Baibars took Caesarea, Haifa and Arsuf in 1265 and Antioch in 1268, and Sultan Qalawun took Tripoli in 1289. Small expeditions from Europe brought little relief, and appeals for a major new crusade went unanswered.

After the loss of Tripoli, King Henry II of Jerusalem and Cyprus sent envoys to warn the rulers of Europe. The main response was a band of poorly disciplined and irregularly paid Italian volunteers who arrived in Acre by sea. In August 1290, according to the historian Steven Runciman, they attacked and killed Muslim merchants near the city. Qalawun demanded that the culprits be handed over; the city's council refused. The sultan broke the truce he had agreed in 1284 and began to mobilise, but he died in November 1290 and his son al-Ashraf Khalil took up the campaign.

Khalil left Cairo in March 1291 and reached Acre in early April, joined by contingents from Damascus, Hama, Tripoli and al-Karak. His army brought a large artillery train, including great catapults known as "the Victorious" and "the Furious". Figures for the Mamluk host run to well over 200,000 men, against perhaps 15,000 defenders, though such numbers are uncertain. The city was protected by a double wall with twelve towers. Its defenders made bold night sallies, one of them led by the Templars, but could not halt the mining and bombardment of the walls. King Henry arrived from Cyprus on 4 May with 700 men in 40 ships, and envoys sent to the sultan on 17 May failed to win terms.

Before dawn on 18 May the Mamluks attacked along the whole length of the walls, which had been weakened by mines. They seized the Accursed Tower, part of the inner defences, and the Grand Master of the Templars, Guillaume de Beaujeu, was mortally wounded at the Gate of St Anthony. Resistance collapsed, and soldiers and civilians fled to the harbour in panic, with the wealthy paying huge sums for places on ships. King Henry and the Grand Master of the Hospitallers escaped. By nightfall only the Templars' seaside fortress on the city's western point still held out. During the following days the defenders bargained and fought by turns, and a Templar delegation was killed on its way to negotiate. The last tower surrendered on 28 May and later collapsed after being undermined. Many of the Latin Christian inhabitants were killed or enslaved.

Khalil returned in triumph to Damascus and Cairo, taking the gate of Acre's Church of St Andrew to adorn a mosque. No effective crusade was ever raised again to recover the Holy Land. The Kingdom of Jerusalem survived only in name on Cyprus, whose kings dreamed in vain of reconquest. Later expeditions under the banner of the Crusades were aimed mainly at checking the Ottoman advance into Europe rather than at Jerusalem.

Our 1279 map shows the Mamluk Sultanate in the decade before the siege, and our 1300 map shows the Levant after the last crusader strongholds had fallen.