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When Saladin set out to recover the ports of Syria from the Christian nations and to cleanse Jerusalem of the abomination of unbelief and to rebuild it, one fleet of unbelievers after another came to the relief of the ports. The fleet of Alexandria could not stand up against them. The Christians had had the upper hand in the eastern Mediterranean for so long, and they had numerous fleets there. The Muslims on the other hand, had for a long time been too weak to offer them any resistance.
The fourteenth-century polymath Ibn Khaldun on the Muslim loss of control of the Mediterranean in the Crusades period.
The vast Crusader army of Emperor Barbarossa broke up upon his drowning in the Anatolian River Saleph in early June 1190, and only 5,000 Germans continued on to Tyre. Henry of Champagne also brought a large contingent of French troops to the siege but their battering ram was quickly destroyed by fire, perhaps by the ingenious hobbyist of Damascus.
The winter saw Saladin running out of money and suffering from repeated fevers. His emirs were complaining about the length of the siege and all communication with the garrison was now reduced to swimmers carrying messages, and pigeon post. The Crusader army was also desperate but Tyre, Tripoli and later Cyprus sat at the head of their supply chain, which was maintained by 500 Scandinavian ships, along with Italian squadrons.
Saladin attempted to evacuate the exhausted garrison and exchange them with fresh troops but Acre’s desperate civilians rushed to the little fleet he sent, and the transports were soon too full to accommodate any but a few of the weary troops.
French and English contingents of the Third Crusade had begun to arrive in April with Philip II of France. Richard the Lionheart arrived from Cyprus, which he had taken from the Byzantines, on 12 June 1191. This was arguably his greatest contribution to the survival of Outremer. He surprisingly requested an immediate parley with Saladin. This was refused on the grounds that commanders only meet after terms are agreed, but indirect negotiations took place over three days and produced nothing. King Philip of France then led an attack on Acre, but Saladin made a diversionary attack on the eastern end of the Crusader line and the Kurdish garrison sallied valiantly out of Acre to send Phillip’s men back beyond their own lines and to burn his siege engines.
Richard then brought up his siege engines, which included a gigantic mangonel named ‘God’s own catapult’. He began a systematic destruction of Acre’s towers. The Maledicta Tower came close to collapse on 2 July 1191 and this stirred Saladin to dispatch a force of cavalry to attempt a breakthrough to the garrison on the next day, but they were held by the Crusader infantry. Saladin then instructed the garrison to attempt a breakout on the night of the 4th. However, this also failed despite a diversionary attack by the whole army. On 5 July, Richard’s sappers brought the Maledicta Tower down. Unfortunately, the rubble of the tower prevented ingress into the walls and two Crusader attacks were beaten back over the next few days, but time was running out for the desperate garrison.
The garrison surrendered, and Saladin attempted to meet the obligations set by Richard – the return of the True Cross, 1,600 Crusader prisoners and a payment of 200,000 dinars – but could not. The deadline passed and rather than enslaving the prisoners, as was expected, Richard began a massacre. As many as 3,000 men were butchered. Many reasons have been given to explain the slaughter. One was that Richard killed them as a reprisal for prisoners killed by the Muslims, another was that the king had decided to march on Ascalon, and that he did not want to leave behind him these enemy soldiers. Whatever the case, another step down a very bloody path had been taken.