Third Crusade: The Brutal 2 Year Siege of Acre

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1:05That's growtherapy.com slash book now. growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. The year is 1190, and three European armies under three different kings are marching toward the Near East. It has been three years since 1187, when Saladin captured Jerusalem and took it from the Crusader States. The call for the Third Crusade has gone out across Western Europe, and now thousands of

1:38men and horses are marching east. The first of the three kings to answer the call is none other than the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa. And he leads one of the largest and best-disciplined armies ever to embark on Crusade. As he leaves the mainland of Europe and heads toward Constantinople on his way toward the Crusader Kingdoms and ultimately Jerusalem, word of his coming fans out ahead of him, filling the

2:10different rulers of the region with anxiety. First among them is the Emperor of Constantinople itself, the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. He is very worried about the consequences of this army crossing his empire, because Crusading armies in the past have had a terrible habit of taking chunks of land and building their own little Crusader kingdoms on it. So for him, the arrival of this army is not necessarily good news.

2:41And for the other rulers of the region, whose kingdoms will be crossed by this army, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, all of them wonder what damage Barbarossa's men might do in passing. But most of all, Saladin himself must have regarded the arrival of this army as a massing of thunderclouds on the horizon. He knows that they are arriving as a direct response to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem and his expansion in the region, and so it is for him that they are coming.

3:16But that storm would never break. This is because Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor at the head of this formidable army, would suddenly die in a freakish drowning accident while crossing a river in what is now Turkey. And when this happens, his massive army begins to fragment. Many of his nobles, leading their large contingents of infantrymen, simply turn around and go back home. This leaves a much smaller number of men to make their way on the road to Jerusalem, a far

3:52less significant force than it was before, nowhere near the army that had been rumored. One army has dissipated, but two more are still on the way. Richard, the King of England, and Philip, the King of France, each leading their own forces, are currently in Sicily, where they have spent the winter resting and are waiting for the first buds of springtime to signal a new campaigning season, at which point they and all of their men will take ships and head towards the Crusader Kingdoms, where the men there have been desperately

4:29awaiting their arrival. Richard the Lionheart and Saladin are about to meet in battle and begin the struggle that will define the Third Crusade. You are listening to Villains and Virgins podcast, and this is the third episode in a series we've been doing on the Third Crusade. In our first episode, Kingdom of Heaven, we've done a deep dive into Saladin and his meteoric rise as a military leader in the East. In our most recent episode, we've looked closely at Richard the Lionheart, the chaotic family politics

5:03he came from, and the constant feuding between England and France that he will carry with him into this crusade in his difficult relationship with Philip Augustus of France. If you'd like to know more about those details, you may want to check out those episodes, but if you want to get straight into the fighting, stay with me as we dive into it in today's story. And if you prefer to listen to your episodes ad-free, you can do that as a supporter of Villains and Virgins podcast on Patreon.

5:34Regular podcast episodes are continuously being loaded onto there so that supporters can enjoy them without all the ads. And in addition to that, there are many other stories that I don't even have time to tell you here today. Stories about the kings who ruled the Crusader state of Jerusalem, the legends that accompanied the origin of their families, rumors that medieval churchmen circulated about mating with the daughter of Satan to spawn the lines of families that would end up on the throne in Jerusalem and

6:07back in England. So if you're interested in even more of that kind of thing, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert and check it out. And if your experience in the medieval period isn't just academic or intellectual, but something you'd like to experience physically, you have an opportunity to do that in the spring of 2027, when I will be leading a tour in England and following one of the most famous pilgrimage routes from London to Canterbury, something that very many medieval people did.

6:41So if you're interested in any of that, check out the link in the description for today's episode, or head on over to geeknationtours.com and look up Eva Schubert for all the details on that tour. Finally, it wouldn't be possible for me to continue making these episodes as frequently as I do without the support of the wonderful people who go the extra mile and support this podcast at the very highest level on Patreon. And these excellent individuals include the following, Sir Larry Johnson,

7:15Sir Coy Heil, Sir Geoffrey Silverman, Sir Jim Jeffery, Sir Robert German, Sir Philip Barker, Sir John McCandless, Dame Agnes Viner, Sir John Lacasse, Sir James Brown, Sir Aaron Silverstein, Sir Rick Kane, Sir Gordon Carl, Sir Kenneth Jones, Sir Tim Williams, Sir Anthony Farnbach, and Sir Charles Vigneron.

7:47Thank you all. And I very much hope that as top tier Patreon supporters, you are enjoying your morning to your coffee from your customized Villains and Virgins coffee mug, which if it hasn't yet arrived in your mailbox, will do so very soon. And now, back to today's story. We left off our story in the Near East after Saladin destroyed the field army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. And in that battle, he captured a man called Guy de

8:20Luzignan, who was then the king of the Crusader state of Jerusalem. Now, having captured the king and destroyed the army, the field was then wide open for Saladin to go and take the city of Jerusalem himself, which he did only a few months later, also in the year 1187. The king of Jerusalem, Guy, who was now a prisoner of Saladin, was an opportunistic, deceitful man. And while he was the leader of the Crusader states, he didn't enjoy unanimous support. In fact, there were

8:56quite a few barons and nobles who resided in those Crusader states who had never wanted Guy to wear the crown at all. And they only felt vindicated by seeing the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Hattin. But that vindication was small comfort in the wake of the disaster that had ensued under Guy's leadership. And Guy only had a very tenuous claim to hold the crown of Jerusalem in the first place. He had acquired

9:27it by marrying Sibylla, who was a member of the family that had ruled Jerusalem for several generations. She was the sister of Baldwin the leper king, who we discussed in our previous episode on the kingdom of heaven. So when her brother Baldwin, the previous king, died, Sibylla was the person who conferred legitimacy on the next king. And she did so by marrying Guy and sharing her royal legitimacy with him. No one questioned the fact that Guy was a capable fighter and that he had the necessary amounts of

10:01aggression, but he was very unpopular amongst many of the families in the Crusader states who described him as soft-headed. And in fact, he already had a career in Europe before he arrived in the Near East and married Sibylla, which bears out this assessment. Back in an area that was now the south of France, in his family's home territories, Guy had tried to make a name for himself much earlier by attempting to kidnap none other than Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was at that point married to Henry II, the King of

10:36England. And this famous ambush and attempted kidnapping, which was orchestrated by this same Guy, was an event that led to heroic defense measures by a freshly minted young knight called William the Marshal, who we've also talked about more than once on this podcast. So Guy's attempt to kidnap the queen failed. He only managed to wound and capture young William the Marshal, which made William the Marshal's reputation as a knight who was courageous enough to put his own

11:07body in severe danger to protect his queen. But it gave Guy a somewhat less savory reputation, as a bit of a brigand and a kidnapper and someone who was trying to hold a queen for ransom. This was the man who had now come to the Crusader state of Jerusalem and managed to marry Sibylla and make himself king. So while nobody doubted Guy's capacity for violence, his ability to think strategically, to make wise decisions, and to exercise restraint was somewhat in question. And these

11:44were all qualities that the King of Jerusalem needed to have, especially at this most perilous moment in the Crusader Kingdom's history. Guy had none of those abilities, and he would continue demonstrating the lack of them, as we will see. Saladin eventually releases Guy from his custody in June of 1188. So this is now months after he has successfully taken Jerusalem and established his military control over the immediate area. Why would Saladin release the King of Jerusalem? It's an excellent question. One thing

12:21we do know is that Saladin required a promise from Guy. And that promise was that Guy would return to Western Europe, abandon the Near East, and never again raise swords against Saladin and his armies. And Guy makes this promise, and as a result of that, Saladin lets him go. He doesn't even hold him for ransom. Did Saladin believe that Guy was going to keep his word? Well, one hopes not, because it certainly doesn't seem to have been Guy's intention at any point. King Guy is reunited with Sibylla, his wife,

12:57at another Crusader city, and he turns around and finds a churchman willing to release him from this promise that he's made. And basically the churchman makes the argument that you're not required to keep promises made to infidels. So Saladin is not a Christian, whatever you promised him doesn't really matter, I absolve you, you have not sinned for breaking this oath, carry on. So with that done, Guy now turns his attention to the first of many problems he's going to face. The main problem that Guy had at

13:29this point was a serious rival for leadership. So while Guy had been Saladin's prisoner, another man had stepped into the breach and provided the leadership that was so desperately needed for the surviving Crusader cities and families in this difficult hour. And his name was Conrad, the Marquis du Montferrat. Now Conrad was originally born in Piedmont, which is in northern Italy, and in the 1100s that part of Italy was officially part of the Holy Roman Empire. So while he has a

14:02name that sounds French and a birthplace that sounds Italian, politically his family was aligned with the Holy Roman Empire, it gets very complicated. Welcome to the 1100s. But what we need to know for the purposes of this story is that Conrad is extremely well connected to other noble families back in Europe. He's a first cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor and also of the King of France, so he comes from very elevated noble stock indeed. Now like many another adventurous nobleman from Western Europe at this period, Conrad had made his way

14:40his way up to the East. And initially he went to Constantinople, the glorious imperial city which was still the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, the western half of that empire having collapsed some centuries before, but the Eastern half survived. And Conrad makes himself very useful to the Emperor of the East. He actually helps the Emperor put down a rebellion. And as a reward for this invaluable service, he is offered the hand of the Emperor's sister, Princess Theodora, and he marries her in an Orthodox

15:18Christian ceremony. So just as a note here, the Emperor and his family in Constantinople are at this point Eastern Orthodox Christians, or Greek Orthodox, you might say. Conrad and most of the people we're going to meet in the incoming Crusader armies from Western Europe are Latin Christians, what we would now call Roman Catholics. So they're both Christians, but at this point in history, Christianity has bifurcated into these two different traditions. So Conrad marries an Eastern Orthodox princess, which

15:53gives you a sense of how highly he was regarded in Constantinople. So Conrad is not just extremely well connected in terms of his family bloodlines and extremely useful in terms of putting down military rebellions. He gets his hands dirty and is involved in the actual fighting part of this. He's also supposed to be a very athletic and a very good-looking man. So a contemporary source, a Greek historian from the time by the name of Nikitas Konaates, whose name I'm probably butchering, I apologize to the Greeks,

16:26he says as follows, Conrad was, quote, of beautiful appearance, comely in life's springtime, exceptional and peerless in manly courage and intelligence, and in the flower of his body's strength, unquote.

16:45So Conrad is very smart, very strong, and very good-looking essentially, and even the Greeks think so, which wasn't a given. There's a long-standing history of Western Europeans, or Franks, as the Greeks called them, thinking that the Greeks were sort of effeminate, and Greeks thinking that the Franks were fearsome and good fighters, but kind of ugly. So this is not the impression that Conrad made, and that's interesting. So things appear to be going very well for Conrad in his career in Constantinople. He's

17:17married into the imperial family, he's proven his value by putting down a rebellion, and then he leaves very suddenly. And the circumstances under which he leaves Constantinople are not entirely clear. What we know is there was a palace coup, so somebody tried to overthrow the emperor, and Conrad is involved in, once again, fighting in defense of the emperor successfully. So the emperor is still on the throne, his name is Isaac Angelos. But Conrad decides that this is a good time to get out of town,

17:50and it might be that he'd realize that the politics of the imperial court were so convoluted that if he hung around much longer, he might get a knife in the ribs when he wasn't looking. So he decides to cut his losses, leave Constantinople, and in 1187, the very same year that Jerusalem falls, Conrad turns up in the near east, with a lot of money, a lot of military experience, and no wife. What exactly happened to his wife, Princess Theodora, isn't entirely clear. Maybe the marriage was annulled when

18:25she realized that he was never coming back, but Conrad shows up with a lot of money, a lot of military skills, and no wife. But he does have existing family connections in the near east already. His father has already taken up residence in the Crusader states, and was involved in fighting at the Battle of Hattin, and was one of the survivors. So Conrad walks into this very critical moment for these Crusader kingdoms, and he's reunited with his father. He realizes that the King of Jerusalem is in captivity,

18:58and there's a need for men just like him. So Tyre is a city on a peninsula jutting out into the Mediterranean, in what is now Lebanon. And it's one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It's a very ancient place. This city had been home to Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians, Macedonians. It had been part of the Eastern Roman Empire at one point. It had been held by Muslims, and now it was in the hands of the Crusader kingdoms. And it had become a rallying point,

19:31a place where the survivors of the Battle of Hattin fled to take shelter and to regroup, and a place where people in Jerusalem itself had fled to once that city was conquered, and those who were ransomed were allowed to leave. Tyre was the city where many of them arrived. So these are the people that Conrad is meeting when he arrives in this very important coastal port. So the stories going around the city are all about Saladin, his devastating victory at Hattin,

20:03the way he has complete control of Jerusalem, the way his armies are now fanning out and taking other little Crusader fortresses and castles and cities. And it seems hopeless. The city of Tyre itself is in the process of negotiating with some of Saladin's advanced messengers who have been sent to that city to say, let's make terms now. Do you really want a siege? Do you really want to fight? Because of course that's going to be much more costly for everybody, but especially for the residents of

20:35a city that loses that kind of fight. So this is the moment when Conrad arrives. A moment when the city of Tyre is in the process of negotiating with Saladin to surrender the city. If you thought there was no hope of withstanding a siege, then it was in your interest as a city to make terms before that army arrived. Because if the siege happened and the army has invested time and money and lives attacking, and then they win, the usual procedure was pillaging, raping, and murdering of the inhabitants. So unless you

21:12thought that you had an excellent chance of winning, it was definitely in your interest as a city to make terms so you could spare the lives of the inhabitants. And this is what Tyre is in the middle of doing. So Conrad arrives and he manages to turn the situation around. He says to the residents of Tyre, what are you talking about? This is a well-fortified city. If we just work on some of the defenses and dig some extra trenches, we can withstand a siege. What are you doing handing this over? And so he fills the

21:46residents of the city with hope and defiance. To the point that they turn Saladin's messengers away and they say actually we're not going to surrender the city. Which of course means inevitably that Saladin is going to show up with his army and surround it. So Saladin arrives, his army flushed from their recent victories. He surrounds the city and he's trying to persuade them to hand it over. Just surrender. Tell the garrison, the men manning the walls to lay down their arms and open the gates and you can all

22:19still live. And as part of the intimidation campaign, Saladin has managed to capture Conrad's father, who remember was already resident in the Crusader Kingdoms. So Saladin must have had good intelligence about Conrad's arrival in Tyre and he figures out that this would be a great way to exercise some personal persuasion on Conrad himself. So Saladin's forces parade Conrad's elderly father outside the

22:51walls of the city. And Saladin says, listen Conrad, this is directly to you. If you hand over the city, I will give you many beautiful gifts. You're going to be a rich man, I'll reward you well, you're going to spare the lives of everyone in the city. And if you don't, I have your father here and his life is in my hands. So think carefully about how you'd like to answer me. And apparently, Conrad's father, an elderly man at this point, is pretty defiant and yells at his son,

23:23don't you dare surrender, don't give him a single stone. And Conrad, as the story goes, yells back to Saladin that he will never surrender the city, that his father has lived a long and fruitful life, and that he himself will end his father's life before he hands over the city of Tyre to Saladin. And to underline this point, Conrad supposedly takes aim at his own father over the wall with a crossbow. So it's a tense moment where Conrad is basically saying,

23:56I'll kill my own father. You don't even have to do the job. That's how serious I am about keeping this city. So at this point, Saladin realizes this attack is not working. It's not, it's not persuading Conrad at all. So he whisks the elderly father away and the siege continues. Now, by the way, you might wonder what happened to Conrad's elderly father. Well, he was later released unharmed by Saladin, who was frequently quite generous. And this indicates that Saladin was not likely intending

24:27to actually kill Conrad's father. This was a bluff that he was using to try and exert pressure on Conrad. And when it didn't work, he just took the old man out of sight, later let him go without any difficulty. But Saladin's attempt to persuade Conrad using this hostage had failed. Conrad even manages to organize some significant counter-offensives. He actually sallies out of Acre with armed men and assaults some portion of Saladin's army. And so the result of all this is that Saladin's troops

25:02begin to get a little demoralized. Up to this point, they've had many very significant victories without heavy losses or extended sieges. So those victories have come easily. But Tyre is not coming easily. So Saladin's men begin to lose a bit of their enthusiasm when they realize that Tyre is not going to be an easy victory. Realizing that his men are restless, that he has his own problems maintaining

25:34the rank and file, and that Tyre is going to be a tough nut to crack, Saladin actually strikes the siege after a couple of months. He basically packs up his camp and he marches his armies away. So this doesn't count as a defeat of Saladin's army necessarily, but neither was it a loss of Tyre. And for a city that had thought they had no hope at all, it certainly felt like an incredible victory. So this is the Conrad who's now emerging as a new leader in the Crusader states, and someone that a lot of other fighters

26:10and noble families think would be a far better king than Guy ever was. After all, what does Guy have to his credit to his credit as a leader? A disastrous defeat at the Battle of Hattin, followed by the loss of Jerusalem itself. Whereas Conrad walks in in the dark hour for everybody and manages to keep Tyre in Crusader Kingdom hands. Between the two, Conrad's star is very much in the ascendant. So in April of 1189, Guy shows up at the city of Tyre and he wants Conrad to hand it over to him. He says,

26:47I'm the king. Tyre is now the de facto capital of the Crusader Kingdoms since Jerusalem is gone. So I should be running things from here. You should let me in and I should take over. And Conrad says, no, I don't think so. In Conrad's eyes and in the eyes of many of his supporters, Guy had lost the right to lead by losing Jerusalem and by becoming Saladin's prisoner. He'd created a vacuum that someone else had to step in and fill. His leadership had been a failure,

27:22whereas Conrad's had been a success. Why did you want to install the leader of a failed campaign in a city that had only been retained by someone who had much better strategic acumen? So Conrad says, nope, I'm not letting you in. I'm not handing over the city. I don't recognize your legitimacy as ruler at all. And I'm going to stay here until the kings of the Third Crusade arrive. Because the call in 1189 has gone out. And word has come back to the Crusader Kingdoms that there

27:55are armies on the way. It's going to take them a while to show up. But when they do, Conrad says, those kings, the kings of England and France can decide between you and me who has the right to wear the crown in Outremer, which is a term for the Crusader Kingdoms. So facing this serious crisis of support, Guy is determined to prove his worth. And in order to do that, he decides to take the men who are loyal to him and go besiege the coastal city of Acre. Now, Acre had been the main port in

28:32the Crusader Kingdoms. One of the biggest places where traffic went in and out, where supplies arrived, where men arrived. It was extremely strategic. And it was now in Muslim hands. It had recently fallen as part of Saladin's campaign. So Guy decides that to prove his worth as a leader, he's going to go attack Acre. The only problem is that Guy's forces are small. In fact, they're outnumbered by the men who are sitting in Acre defending it. So that's already not good odds. And to make matters worse,

29:09if Guy goes over there and starts trying to besiege Acre, it's only a matter of time before Saladin and his army will show up to relieve that city. Historian Stephen Runciman, who has built his career writing books on the Crusades, says the following. He says that this was, quote, a move of desperate foolhardiness, the decision of a brave but very unwise man, unquote. And I think that description, a brave but very unwise man, is a perfect sketch of Guy himself. And so Guy is going

29:44to make this rash decision, which is going to set up one of the most major conflicts of the Third Crusade itself, because it forces everybody else to take positions around him. So Guy sets up his troops and he makes camp on a hill near Acre, it's outside of Acre, in August of 1189. Three days later, he assaults the city and unsurprisingly fails to take it. The city is extremely well fortified, it's built to withstand attacks, and it's also extremely well supplied. So the defenders of that

30:20city know they have thick, high walls, they have lots of supplies, and they are well prepared to withstand a long siege. But Guy settles down to wait. He figures, well, me and my men couldn't get into the city in the three days that we attacked it, but more men will be arriving very soon. The armies of the Third Crusade are on their way from England and France, as well as from the Holy Roman Empire, presumably. And so when they arrive, Guy has already positioned himself as leading an aggressive campaign

30:54to retake a Muslim-held city. And that means that everyone else can sort of fall into position around him. So that's his plan. Now Acre is a port city, and it's important to keep this in mind, which means that while Guy and his men are on land trying to surround the city on the landward side, they're not really able to maintain a naval blockade at this point. And so Acre is still able to receive supplies by ship intermittently, and so that means they're really going to be able to hang on

31:24for quite a long time. Guy is going to need a lot more military help if he's going to be successful in forcing this city to its knees. So, as expected, Saladin and his armies eventually arrive to try and relieve the city of Acre. But they're unable to dislodge Guy and his men from the hilly fortification site that they have. So they've put themselves in a position which geographically is hard to attack. It puts the odds in their favour. And what we get at this point is a stalemate.

31:55So you have, imagine an onion. You have the city of Acre at the centre, and half of it is surrounded by water on sort of the left side. But the rest of it, there's a half circle where Guy's forces are trying to surround the city by land. But then there's another circle outside of Guy's forces, and those are the forces of Saladin. So the city of Acre is in the centre, Guy's forces are the first ring, and Saladin's forces are the outermost ring. So Guy is trying to put pressure on the city of Acre,

32:31but Saladin and his forces are putting pressure on Guy. Fairly soon, reinforcements begin arriving for Guy's men. And these are guys who are coming in as advance parties from Western Europe. So there are contingents of Danes, Flemings, Italians, even Germans, although they would have called themselves something else, Swabians or, you know, whatever duchy in the Holy Roman Empire they came from, but the area we now call Germany. And so they're beginning to stream in ahead of much larger forces

33:05on the way, and they're joining Guy's camp. So his forces are beginning to increase, and he has a strong expectation that they're going to increase much more in the near future. Now these reinforcements thicken Guy's lines and allow him to enforce a stronger land blockade on Acre. He still can't control the sea, though. So this means that this standoff, this siege of Acre, is going to go on much longer than it normally would, because Acre can still resupply itself. So the siege that Guy begins,

33:40in the summer of 1189, is going to go on for a staggering two years, until the main body of the armies of England and France arrive in the spring summer of 1191. Sustaining a siege as long as the one that Acre is going to be was extremely punishing for everybody involved. I mean, the people in the city itself are going to be dealing with extreme difficulty. Guy's forces as well, who are going

34:12to be camped out here for two years, and they're being encouraged by the arrival of fresh reinforcements. But still, it's a very long time. And for Saladin and his army, it's a really significant challenge. These men are not mercenaries. These men have their own territories that they govern and collect taxes from. So like any other medieval army, you would ride out for a campaign season, you know, during the months when the weather was best. But then you would expect to be able to go home, to rest and regroup,

34:45and go out again during campaign season the following year. So to keep an army in the field for months upon months upon months upon months, as one year turned into two years, no one is going home to rest and regroup. Business and problems are building up for these men as they're thinking about what's happening at home that they're not dealing with. So Saladin has a desertion problem. He has emirs, you can think of them as officers, or men who are leading contingents of other fighting men, who say,

35:18oh, you know, I just have to run home and check on something, and then not come back. So it's a punishing siege for Saladin's army as well. Just the challenge of keeping all these guys in one place, feeding them and keeping them from deserting. It's no small feat. And Saladin has also received word that there are much larger armies from England and France on the way. So he knows that he can't afford to just let this go. And at this point, there's a really

35:48interesting tactic that he tries. So over the last few years, as Saladin has been building his power militarily, he's begun to try and position himself as the champion of Islam. So basically using a title like this is a way of legitimizing his geopolitical conquests. And he'd begun by taking over in Egypt, and then spreading out into other areas that were controlled by other people, not crusaders.

36:21Saladin is first fighting against a bunch of other Muslims who ruled in Egypt. And these guys were Shia Muslims. They were under a dynasty called the Fatimids. So Saladin takes over there. And when he does that, he receives some praise from another Muslim leader, the Sunni caliph in Baghdad. So let me just pause here and mention what I'm talking about because Sunnis and Shias are very familiar to some people, but probably not at all to others. So briefly speaking, just as the Christian world has divided

36:58into Western or Latin Christians and Eastern Orthodox Christians, there are divisions in the Muslim world at this point as well. The majority of Muslims are Sunnis, and they sort of recognize the moral leadership of a caliph. The Sunni caliph lives in Baghdad, Iraq. But there are other Muslims who are Shia. And they have their own caliph, their own sort of moral leader. And that caliph was operating out of Cairo in Egypt.

37:32The caliphs in Muslim tradition in the Middle Ages work a little bit like the popes. In other words, the pope had a sort of religious role, a moral leadership role. He could inspire the Crusades and call the kings to go in one direction. But he also had his own lands and taxes in the papal states. And the Sunni caliph in Baghdad also has this kind of dual role. On the one hand, sort of like the pope, he's a moral leadership figure that many Sunni Muslims will at least pay lip service to. And they'll say,

38:07we recognize your leadership and your authority, even while we fight amongst ourselves.

38:13But he also has this smaller geopolitical role as an Abbasid ruler, as part of the dynasty that has its own territories in Iraq. So what's happening is kind of complicated because when Saladin initially takes over Shia Muslim Egypt, the Sunni caliph in Baghdad, as caliph, is very happy about that, weakening those Shias that Sunnis don't like, is good for his interest as caliph. He's getting rid of a rival attempt to lead the Muslim community. Great. So the Sunni caliph sends Saladin a letter of

38:51commendation after he takes over in Egypt. But when Saladin continues his campaigns and he takes over in Jerusalem, he's expecting more praise. After all, he's saying, here I am leading Muslim armies and fighting against these crusaders who've been causing so much trouble for us. And suddenly, he's getting very different messages from the Sunni caliph in Baghdad. Because now the Sunni caliph is putting on his regional ruler hat as an Abbasid and going, wait a second. This Saladin and his armies

39:23are taking over land everywhere. Maybe they're going to be taking over some of my land in Iraq, reducing my revenues and putting them into his own pocket. So at this point, the Sunni caliph sends Saladin some criticism and not support. So while Saladin tries to use this phrase, I'm the champion of Islam, it's not a statement of reality. It's not as though all the Muslims in the region said, oh, look, we finally have a leader. Let's all band together under his banners and go fight in the same direction.

39:56It's simply not the case. Saladin, at this point, when he's looking at the siege of Acre, sends word to the Sunni caliph in Baghdad. And he says, send me some help. Send me some military reinforcements. Because here I am fighting in the name of Islam against these infidels. You should be helping me. And the Abbasid caliph goes, nah, I don't think so. Not sending anybody. So next, Saladin writes to another Muslim group in Morocco, in North Africa. And these guys are

40:31the Almohads. So they are Sunni Muslims, like him, but they're ethnically Berber. And they're busy expanding all over North Africa and even up into the Iberian Peninsula at this point. So they are sending armies into what is now Spain and Portugal. So they're very busy with their own projects. And when Saladin sends them this message, he says, listen, the Christian kings of the West are banding together. I hear there's an army coming from England and France and the Holy Roman Emperor.

41:03They're all working together to come in here and try to retake Jerusalem. Shouldn't we as Muslims band together to fight them? And the Almohads don't think so. They don't send Saladin any help. So what we have here is a very complicated situation. And you have different ethnic groups, right? You have Seljuk Turks in the region that Saladin has been fighting, but they're Muslims. You have Arabs in Egypt that Saladin has been fighting. They're a different kind of Muslim.

41:38Saladin himself is a Kurd. Now he's talking to Berbers in North Africa. All of these people are Muslims. But they're also people who have their own geopolitical interests, their own little territories, their own expansion plans. And they're not all fighting together just because they happen to have a religion in common. Nor should we expect that they would. It's only if you have the lens that the Crusade was some sort of strictly religious war, where all the Muslims were fighting on one side,

42:10and all the Christians were fighting on the other, that you might have that expectation. But that is a gross distortion of the facts. So the Muslims themselves are far from united. And the Christians, as we're going to see, are not all on the same page either. But while Saladin likes to use this phrase, champion of Islam, to try and attract support and legitimize his military ambitions, it's not a statement necessarily of how other people, of how other Muslims, saw him. So Saladin's

42:44situation is that he's dealing with an army that's increasingly exhausted outside of Acre, men who want to go home. He's watching Guy's armies get bigger by the day. And while he's looking for a similar level of reinforcement, he's not getting it. But he does have assurance that there are much larger reinforcements coming for Guy very soon. So where exactly are those reinforcements? One might wonder. Why is it taking so long for the armies of England and France to finally show up at Acre?

43:17Well, let's go and take a look at what they've been up to. We left off in our previous episode with King Richard of England and King Philip Augustus of France overwintering in Sicily. So this was the winter of 1190. And it had taken them a very long time to get even that far, because they'd been so busy fighting each other. Even though the call for help from the Near East had arrived back in 1187, they were busy fighting each other for another two years before they finally

43:48managed to get their plans together and start marching in the same direction to fight somebody else instead. So they finally get down to Sicily in 1190, they overwinter there, they spend Christmas there. And they're waiting for the spring of 1191 to finally take boats over to Acre. During that long Italian interlude, they've managed to pick up two very significant women who are going to be joining them on their road to Acre. So the first of these very important women is Richard's sister. And she's

44:25sometimes called Joan and sometimes called Joanna, depending on how her name is rendered in the sources, but I'm going to call her Joanna. And Joanna was already living in Sicily when Richard shows up with his army. She was there because she was married to the King of Sicily, but he'd recently died, leaving Joanna a widow. And not only a widow, but a prisoner, because the guy who took over and seized the throne in Sicily locked Joanna up and kept the money that was supposed to be handed over to her

44:55to take care of her financially as a widow. So this usurper keeps that money. He keeps her locked up. And this is the situation that Richard walks into when he shows up conveniently with an army. So he sorts that out. He says, you're going to let my sister out. She's coming with me. And all that money, which is legally hers, based on the marriage negotiations that were signed when she got into this deal, that money needs to be handed over as well. The catch was this. The money was

45:26supposed to go to Joanna. It was money that was designed to support her when her husband was dead. Richard gets that money handed over, but instead of giving it to his sister, he puts it into his crusade purse. So that money is going to be available to him to spend as he deems fit to supply his troops on this campaign. So while it looks like he's taking care of his sister, it might not be that he cares for her as well as you might have hoped. But Joanna is now going to be travelling with her

45:57brother Richard as the army rolls out of Sicily and heads east. The second woman to join Richard's retinue was none other than Princess Berengaria of Navarre. And I roll the R because Navarre is in what is now Spain. So it was one of the medieval kingdoms that would eventually become the nation state of Spain. So Princess Berengaria is escorted by none other than Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine herself, King Richard's mother. And this is because Queen Eleanor knows that as the newly crowned King of

46:28England, her son Richard had better get on about the business of producing an heir. If he fails to do so, then civil unrest or even civil war could result if there's no one to wear the crown after Richard, you know, catches a crossbow bolt to the face or whatever might happen while he's fighting the Third Crusade. So his mother the Queen is literally swooping in before Richard gets within range of enemy strikes to say, okay, before anything else, you need to marry this woman and take her to bed

47:02and she's going to be traveling with you so that hopefully there's an heir to the throne of England produced in short order. Richard dutifully marries Princess Berengaria in Sicily in the spring of 1191, just before they leave southern Italy and head on to campaign. She's described by sources as as agreeable and virtuous, quiet, but nothing much else is said about her. And clearly Richard wasn't

47:32particularly impressed either, because in eight years of marriage to this woman, she never became pregnant even once. When Richard and Philip and their armies and these two royal women finally arrive in Acre in the spring of 1191, they're going to find a scene of utter filth. The siege trenches were filled with the decaying bodies of men and animals as well as a good deal of excrement generated by both. And you

48:04can imagine the stench and the filth and the sound of flies buzzing and landing on these decaying objects and then going and landing on the food that the men were eating. Because in the 1100s, men regarded flies as kind of a buzzing nuisance. They didn't understand the connection between the flies that were landing on a decaying corpse and then landing on their food and the men who soon became desperately ill as a result. But disease ran rampant through the army camps outside of Acre,

48:43and it had been doing so for months. Disease was made even more powerful by the fact that living in a siege camp for two years also involves really poor nutrition. There were times when Guise armies wasn't able to resupply itself very well because they had an army surrounding them, and so food ran short for the besiegers. So poor nutrition and poor hygiene are the perfect ingredients for

49:14horrifying epidemics of disease. And diseases in the camp had been killing people for months. They made no distinction between low-born people and the highest ranks of the nobility. So none other than Queen Sibylla herself, the queen of the Crusader states, died in the army camp at Acre. She was there with her husband, Guy, who was of course leading this whole military campaign. And so she was living in his tent and she was living in this army encampment for the entire time. And as waves of

49:49disease ravaged the people living at close quarters, she and her two young daughters both died. Now when Sibylla dies in the army camp, this creates a renewed crisis of leadership for Guy himself. Remember, there are many people who think that he shouldn't be king now anyway. He's lost too significantly and they favour Conrad instead. And Sibylla is Guy's only claim to having any legitimacy

50:19as a leader at all. That he's married into the royal family. So with her dead, he's lost that connection. And many of the other knights and noble families of the Crusader states think that the logical thing to do now would just be to marry another member of the same royal family to Conrad, who's the guy that they think ought to be king. And the next person in line in the royal family is Sibylla's younger sister,

50:50Isabella. There's just one small problem. Isabella is already married. She's actually married to a young nobleman who was born in Outremer, in what is now modern Syria. So he comes from a European family originally, but they've been in the Near East for a few generations. And so he's almost a native. In fact, his Arabic is so flawless that at one point when Saladin takes him prisoner, he's so charmed by this young man's manners and his perfect Arabic that he lets him go without even a ransom request.

51:23So Isabella is already married. But none of the barons of the Crusader kingdoms think that her husband is fit to do the job of king. He's deemed insufficiently aggressive. And one word that keeps coming up in the sources that describe him is the word effeminate. That they just thought that he didn't have what it took to lead men in the field. And the king of Jerusalem definitely needs to be somebody who can do that. So somehow we have to get Isabella unmarried from her unsuitable husband so that we can marry her to Conrad, who's the guy that everyone wants to be the new king.

52:00Now reportedly Isabella was quite fond of her young husband. He was affectionate. He treated her well. But nobody really asked Isabella what she thought. Her parents were busy negotiating with other powerful families about how to get done this marriage that needed to happen. So they found two obliging bishops to annul Isabella's existing marriage, which they did on November 19th, 1190. And five days later, on November 24th, they marry her to Conrad. Now divorce was not supposed to be

52:35allowed in the 1100s, even though it happened all the time. You couldn't just say, I want a divorce because I want one. So they had to come up with some reasons for annulling Isabella's existing marriage. And when I was looking at the different ones that were discussed in the sources, they get quite amusing. The first one, which shouldn't surprise anybody, would be the universal medieval marriage escape clause. And that is called consanguinity. So you basically find a churchman to

53:05discover suddenly that the person you're married to is more closely related to you than you realized. In fact, they're within the prohibited relationship circle that the church had drawn and said, don't marry anybody who's in this circle. If they're too closely related, you shouldn't be marrying them. So if you suddenly discovered that your spouse was in that prohibited circle, this was called consanguinity. And if you could prove that, then you could get your marriage nullified. So this is the first argument that's advanced by Isabella's family to say her first marriage

53:39should never have happened. Just get it annulled. But it's quite a farcical argument. And this is because there had already been so much intermarriage. This gets kind of complicated, but Conrad's older brother had already been married to Sibylla in a previous marriage before Guy. So their families were already related by marriage, Conrad's and Isabella's. So to say that Isabella's existing marriage was too closely related, but now she's effectively going to marry her brother-in-law

54:10by marriage, it would have been downright incestuous if you actually consulted church tables on prohibited degrees of relationship. So the consanguinity clause was invoked, but it was really a joke in this case. Now, the second reason that I've read is even more hilarious. Apparently, her parents argued that they realized that Isabella had been too young to give consent when she was previously married. And, you know, consent of women is important for the legitimacy of their marriages,

54:43apparently, suddenly. This is a matter of concern to nobody ever, because while consent was supposed to be important on paper, in practice, the number of medieval princesses who were married at the age of 8, 11, or 12 to men that their families deemed to be politically advantageous was a very high number. It was very common practice. So to say suddenly, oh no, we've realized that little Isabella was just too young to consent to that marriage, and so the marriage needs to be annulled. Well, if that argument

55:18had been carried to its logical conclusion, there would have been divorces all across Europe, right? So, again, it's very contrived. It's contrived to achieve a particular political goal, which is get rid of that first husband so we can use Isabella to make Conrad a legitimate contender for King of Jerusalem. There are no records of how Isabella felt about being separated from a young, charming, and affectionate husband, and thrown into bed five days later with a middle-aged man intent on making

55:50her pregnant as quickly as possible to secure his own claim to the crown. Once again, nobody asked her, but it must have been a sense of whiplash for her personally, and it certainly was for many of the people who observed this. Muslim sources at the time who heard about this marriage were scandalized at the speed with which Isabella was thrown from one man's bed into another.

56:18While this hasty divorce and remarriage certainly strengthened Conrad's position, it only deepened the division amongst the crusader families themselves at a moment when the kingdoms were fighting for their very survival. And so, the divisions between the partisans of Guy and the partisans of Conrad had, if anything, become even more pronounced. So, in addition to a filthy army camp, this political mess would also be waiting for King Richard of England and King Philip of France to sort out when

56:54they and their armies arrive at Acre. So, word had gone out amongst Guy's armies and Saladin's armies that these men and these kings from England and France were about to arrive, and after two years of siege, these men had gotten fairly familiar with each other. So, there's trash talking going on across the lines, and men in Guy's army are busy telling the guys in Saladin's army, just you wait, just you wait until the King of France arrives. He's going to come with his army,

57:25and he's going to absolutely crush you all. His arrival is imminent any day now. Accordingly, the Muslim soldiers awaited the arrival of King Philip of France with some degree of curiosity and perhaps even anxiety. So, King Philip of France arrives first. He arrives in April of 1191, which is many weeks before Richard and his army will arrive. He's the first on the scene. And when he does disembark from his boat and join Guy's armies at Acre, the men in Saladin's army must have breathed a

58:02sigh of relief. As one Muslim source from the time put it, quote, The Franks had wanted to frighten us by speaking of his coming and his violence, and had reported his terrifying threats to us. Upon his arrival, they said, he will command, consolidate, distribute the money he has brought. He will forge ahead. So that when he arrived, followed by a small number of men, and looking about feebly, his mediocrity gave us pleasure. In him, greatness and abasement were one

58:40in our eyes. And we said, his attack is not close to transpiring, nor his might close to enduring, unquote. So clearly, Philip Augustus of France did not live up to the rumors. At this point in his life, he was a young man, about 25 years old, with an unruly shock of hair. He didn't have the body of a fighter. He wasn't physically strong. And what if his eyes didn't even work properly? Which was probably why he was looking about feebly, as the Muslim chronicler put it. But what Philip did have

59:17was a keen political acumen and a strong sense of personal duty. He might not have been a great fighter physically, but he was by no means a man you want to underestimate. And other sources say that while he was willing to break political alliances and betray other nobles if it served his political interests, he was very generous to the poor in his own lands, and a good king. But the Muslim soldiers must have laughed into their sleeves at the sight of him. Seven weeks later, in early June, King Richard I,

59:52King of England arrives with his army. And he's arriving seven weeks later than Philip because he's been delayed by a bit of fighting in Cyprus against another Eastern Christian ruler. Once again, not all Christians were on the same side here. And so Richard had ended up taking Cyprus from the Eastern Christian guy who was running it. And he'd been delayed basically conquering that territory before he arrives in Acre. But when he disembarks, he makes a very different impression. So Richard, at this point,

1:00:28is in his 30s. And he's tall, he's strong, he's got very eye-catching red-gold hair and beard, and he's got handsome features. He also has a lot of the charm that comes from his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her family. So he's good at writing poetry, he can be charming in his conversation. But he has the physique of a fighter. And that is because Richard has spent much of the last decade on horseback with a sword in hand, putting down rebellious vassals in mainland Europe, in the south of France, as well as in

1:01:05England. So he's a seasoned fighter, and he looks like one. And as we saw in our last episode, he also has a certain sense of personal recklessness, and a strong sense of entitlement. I told you a story about Richard in southern Italy going into a peasant's house and essentially stealing a hawk, because in Richard's mind, a peasant had no business owning such a bird, which was reserved for nobles like himself. So here he is in someone else's country, invading somebody else's house

1:01:37to take stuff that he thinks, by rights, ought to belong to him. So unlike Philip, Richard has no reputation for treating poor people particularly well. But he certainly made the expected impression. To Saladin's men, Richard fits the frame of a fearsome foreign fighter. He has this exotic coloring, he's tall, he's clearly strong, he looks like a worthy opponent. Now while the kings of England

1:02:08and France are newly arrived in the siege camp at Acre, and they have more money than most of the other people there, they are not immune to the conditions that afflict everybody. So in short order, they too become quite ill. And scholars think that what afflicted them was a type of fever that was known as trench mouth, or possibly they had scurvy. There's some overlap between the symptoms. What we do have record of is their hair and nails falling out. So this is a pretty alarming set of

1:02:43symptoms. And that's just the beginning. Trench mouth today is called acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis. Those are four words you never want to hear together in the same sentence. So it's a really serious condition. It basically causes swollen or ulcerated gums. So the gums aren't just inflamed, but they actually are bleeding. There are open sores on them, teeth get loosened, there's uncontrollable drooling. So you can imagine how undignified a condition it must have been

1:03:19for King Philip of France and King Richard of England to be lying in bed with uncontrollable drooling and swollen mouths and hair that's falling out. So why is their hair falling out? Well, hair and nails are affected by anemia. And anemia is a related complication of this kind of malnutrition, which is causing trench mouth, scurvy, and these other horrifying symptoms. So at one point, Richard is so ill that people begin to fear for his life.

1:03:49And he sends messengers to Saladin's camp asking if he can purchase fruit and snow. And these are to relieve Richard's fever. It's amazing to me that they're selling snow outside of Acre, but this is what we have in the sources. And Saladin has fewer supply problems than the Crusader Kingdom army, which is kind of stuck between Saladin's forces and the coast. So Saladin has better supplies than Guy's forces

1:04:22and the camp that King Richard and King Philip are now staying in. So Richard's messengers go to their enemy's camp to ask Saladin if they can purchase these luxury items to relieve the illness of their king. And Saladin graciously allows it. He says, yes, here's some fruit, take the snow, take it back to your king. So why is this happening? It's happening because Saladin's reputation is already well known. And even though Richard hadn't met Saladin personally, he was aware of the track

1:04:56record. So if you listened to our previous episode on Saladin, Kingdom of Heaven, you'll remember things like Saladin providing an armed escort to Crusader noblewomen from the noble families in the Crusader Kingdoms to allow them to get where they needed to go after he took a city. Or even behaving courteously to a family that was holding a wedding in a fortress that he was surrounding and laying siege to. So he has a record of treating people from noble families well. And in this sense, he is very much

1:05:28aligned with codes of chivalry that would have been familiar to Richard and nobles from Western Europe, which is basically, you treat your enemies well if they're from noble families like you. And even if you defeat them in a joust or in a battle, there are certain codes of behaviour that ought to apply to men and women from noble families. So the fact that Saladin already has a record of behaving in this way is something that commands respect and even admiration from some of his Crusader opponents.

1:06:00So that's who they have in mind. They know who Saladin is when they send Richard's messengers to ask for these luxury items. Richard is actually quite curious about Saladin himself because of this reputation. And shortly after he arrives, and before he gets really, really ill, he wants to meet Saladin in person. And Saladin politely declines and he says, Kings shouldn't meet until a treaty has been agreed because it would be inappropriate for them to break bread together or share a meal together and then go back to trying to fight. So instead,

1:06:34you can meet with my brother, he'll be my representative and so on. So there are these codes of behaviour, but Saladin has a reputation that inspires curiosity and some degree of admiration. But Richard's condition begins to improve. He's not better, but he's no longer apparently at death's door. And so we have then records of Richard being carried out in a litter. So think of it like a stretcher, a bed that is basically carried on posts or poles that other men bear on their shoulders. And Richard

1:07:08wants to be carried to the front line so that he can direct the armies in their siege operations against the city of Acre. And in this, he demonstrates a very hands-on approach to running a campaign. You know, he's not content to lie back in his shaded pavilion and receive messengers coming back and forth to tell him what's going on. He wants to be there in the front row so he can see it with his own eyes and have a direct role in the strategies and the operations of the siege machines and the men in them.

1:07:39This is actually a trait that Richard and Saladin share, this very hands-on approach to leading men in the field. And because many of the struggles of the Third Crusade are going to play out like a battle between Richard and Saladin, it makes sense to sketch Saladin's leadership style here for a moment as well. So Saladin, at the time that the siege of Acre is going on, is an older man than either Philip or Richard. He's probably in his early 50s. And he's not an especially tall man, but he has the

1:08:12compact build of a man accustomed to physical discipline, which he certainly was. So we have many contemporary accounts of how Saladin behaved with his men on campaign before the siege of Acre, during it and afterwards, and they're quite consistent. So Saladin believed in leading men from the front, in being visible, in being available to his men. He knew that them seeing him in person was a major source of their inspiration and their motivation to continue. And so he made a point of being alongside them,

1:08:45even while doing fairly menial work that he surely could have delegated. Saladin would routinely become so focused on tasks during campaign that he would often forget to eat and drink, which was a matter of some irritation for his doctors, who were saying, well, how is he going to be taking the medicines or the potions that we've prescribed for him if he's running around out there on his horse and he's not even observing meal times? How are we supposed to keep this man in decent health? But that was who he was. When there was work going on, when there were tasks to be done, he was out there in the middle of

1:09:17things and he would exhaust himself running around doing this kind of work, even to the point of failing to eat properly. And one of the things that he did would be a personal review of men who were arriving as reinforcements. So if you had an emir who rolls up with a contingent of fresh soldiers, Saladin would himself walk up and down the lines and inspect them. He would welcome them. He would supervise the setup of their part of the camp and ensure that they all received a welcome meal. So this kind of personal

1:09:48touch did a lot to endear him to his men. And as a window into this, we actually have the words of a Muslim source from the period, a historian by the name of Abdul Latif al-Baghdadi, who knew Saladin personally and writes about how involved Saladin was in rebuilding the city of Jerusalem after he conquered it in 1187. Quote, he, meaning Saladin, he concerned himself with the building of the rampart and the digging of the moat. He took charge of them personally and transported the stones on his

1:10:22shoulder. Everyone imitated him, rich and poor, robust and weak, even the secretary Al-Imad and Qadi al-Fadl. To achieve this, he was on horseback before dawn and until noon. He then returned home to eat and rest. He mounted his horse again in the afternoon and came back only in the evening. He later spent the major part of the night planning what he would do in the next day. Unquote. So Saladin was very much a lead by example kind of a guy. Someone who was willing to literally get his

1:10:55hands dirty and carry stones around on his shoulder to lead others by personal example. And so when you have the Qadi, who is basically a legal expert, and your secretary who feel obliged to go carry stones after you, you can only imagine what an effect that had on the rank and file. We also have many reports that Saladin was a sincerely religious man. Someone who took his faith quite seriously. And we've seen records of how he could be generous in victory, even to his

1:11:26enemies, and even to Richard during the Siege of Acre. So at this point, the Siege of Acre is intensifying. We're moving toward the summer of 1191, the month of June. And at this point, the city of Acre is completely surrounded. On the sea side of the port, it is now full of crusader ships. And the armies of Guy, the contested king of Jerusalem, along with the armies of Richard of England and Philip of France, now completely encircle the city on the landward side. Their

1:12:02armies are in turn ringed by the forces of Saladin. And day and night, the siege machines are put into operation, battering the walls of the city. So you have to imagine mangonels and catapults, hurling stones from the crusading army camp toward the city of Acre. And then the building of siege towers, which are basically like rolling towers with multiple stories that would then be filled by men

1:12:33and covered with some sort of protective layer, some wood or some leather hide. And then men in these towers are being rolled towards the wall. The tower is intended to protect them from projectiles and other deterrents being thrown at them by the defenders and allow them to get close enough to the wall of the city to try and scale it from these fortified platforms. But of course, the defenders aren't just sitting there watching siege towers roll up. They're throwing projectiles of their own.

1:13:06Now, when you look at siege warfare back in mainland Europe, it was perfectly common for defenders to throw things like pitch or boiling oil over the walls at men who were attacking those walls. And the same things were going on here in Acre. But in the Near East, they had a weapon that some of the crusaders would never have seen before. And that was Greek fire. The actual ingredients of Greek fire have been wondered about and debated in all the centuries since. And we are not entirely certain to this day.

1:13:41We have a list of likely ingredients, including things like naphtha and turpentine and quicklime, but the exact proportions are not known with certainty. And even whether it was just a liquid or whether it also had a solid form is also something that is debated. We have reports of ships, Greek ships from Constantinople, using basically mounted flamethrowers on their ships. They would have the mouth of some kind of lion or other animal at the prow of the ship. And inside that mouth would be a spout. And at the

1:14:18right time, a stream of this Greek fire would emerge from that mouth with the effect of lighting up an enemy ship. Because on contact, this Greek fire would be burning and you couldn't put it out with water. So ships, which were normally made of wood, would be going up in flames in short order and there was just no way that you could extinguish it. Sources from the period suggest that vinegar or sand could be effective for putting out these types of flames. But you are not likely to have either of those

1:14:51ingredients handy in a ship. And certainly not if you were in a siege tower being trundled toward the walls of a city like Acre. So the way that Greek fire was used in this particular siege was likely it was fired in some kind of ceramic pot. So the Greek fire mixture would be put in these pots, the pots would be hurled over the wall, possibly by machines or other catapults. And on contact, they would burst into flame in a way that just could not be put out. So you can imagine the screaming

1:15:25of men caught in structures that were alight or who themselves had been spattered with some of this undowsable substance. We have an eyewitness of the siege of Acre who writes about Greek fire. So I'm going to give you the translation of that quote. He says, quote, It was thrown from a machine. It came forward as large as a barrel, with a tail of fire issuing from it as big as a great sword, making a noise in its passage like thunder, and seeming like a great

1:15:58dragon flying through the air. And from the great quantity of fire it threw out, giving such a light that one might see in the camp as if it had been day." Unquote. So you can imagine this kind of exchange going on throughout the days. There are catapults hurling stones toward the city walls from the crusader camp. There's Greek fire being hurled in barrels or other types of containers at the attacking forces. And this is going on above ground. But a critical part of the siege of Acre,

1:16:34as with many other sieges, was the battle that was going on below ground as well. So the crusading army at Acre employed sappers. And sappers were men who were trained to dig underground and undermine the city wall. This is literally where the word comes from, I suspect. Undermining. To dig underneath and structurally weaken something. And that's what these guys were doing. They were digging deep tunnels that would go toward the city wall that would need to go

1:17:07underneath the city wall. And as these men are digging the tunnels, they have to support them against the weight of ground that could collapse on them from above. So they'd use timber supports to keep the tunnel stable as they burrowed their way ever closer to the wall. And when they succeeded in tunneling under the wall, they would retreat from the tunnel, filling it with other flammable materials like brush or debris or dry wood. When they exited the tunnel, they would then light these materials

1:17:38on fire. And so they'd begin burning and they would burn even the supports of the tunnel. And that fire would run along the length of the tunnel underneath the wall itself and would cause the tunnel to collapse. And hopefully a section of the wall above it would collapse into that ground as well. That was the goal. So there are men who are working at this day and night and you can't see them above ground, but they're very eagerly doing this work. Now, the only way that you could effectively counteract the work

1:18:12of sappers, if you were a part of the defending garrison in a city like Acre, would be to dig your own counter tunnels. So if you suspected that sappers were building a tunnel toward your section of the wall, then you and your men would have to build your own tunnel proceeding out from underneath the wall, running parallel. And at some point you'd need to intersect that enemy sapper tunnel and then kill them. Now you can imagine that these miners or sappers are burrowing along underground and they

1:18:50probably can only light their way with torches. The same torches they're going to use to light the materials they leave behind them in the tunnel. Imagine the horror as your tunnel is suddenly invaded from some side point and filled with enemy soldiers. The torch gets knocked out and there's this desperate struggle in the pitch black where you can hardly see your hand in front of your face and you suddenly find yourself fighting for your life against other men who are just as desperately trying to kill you. These types of battles don't make it much into films because it's hard to film

1:19:28a struggle in the pitch black on camera very effectively. But this was also a critical part of medieval siege warfare and it was going on in Acre as well. And by the way, this tunneling to undermine enemy positions that was going on during the siege of Acre and many other medieval sieges has a very long history. It was used as recently as World War I. The difference here was that you would send your sappers to tunnel underneath enemy trenches and leave mines in those tunnels. So once your sappers

1:20:03withdrew, you could then detonate those mines and absolutely destroy your enemies in their trenches behind their own lines. And this was a tactic that was very actively engaged in by both Axis and Allied troops alike. In fact, at the height of World War I, the British army employed no less than 25,000 dedicated sappers and another 50,000 regular army guys who were there to support their work by doing things like ventilating the tunnels from above as they were proceeding. So it's a tactic that has a very long

1:20:39history indeed. In the case of Acre though, whenever the crusaders are launching a concerted assault on the walls of the city, Saladin, who's on the other side of them, will then respond by attacking their camp or attacking their rearguard, which would force the crusader army to divide and fight on two fronts simultaneously. Some of them attacking the city and the others turned the opposite direction, defending against the armies of Saladin. But at this point, even though the armies of England

1:21:11and France are recently arrived, everyone else has been there for months or years. The people in Acre have been doing this for two years. So they're reaching a point of complete exhaustion. Because the crusader kingdom armies are now much larger, they've been able to impose a complete blockade on the city. So food supplies inside are finally running very low. And that means that hunger is taking its toll on the inhabitants of the city and on the garrison of men who are dedicated to defending it. They've reached a

1:21:46point where they can't hold out much longer. And they're hoping that Saladin and his army will somehow break up the crusader army camp or decisively end this campaign. But so far, Saladin and his men have been unable to do that. The numbers of the renewed crusader army are just too large. But the endurance and resolve of the garrison-defending Acre, who've held out without reinforcements inside that city for

1:22:17nearly two years, has attracted admiration even from their enemies. So we have a crusader source from the siege who writes as follows, quote, What can we say of this race of infidels who thus defended their city? Never were there braver soldiers than these, the honor of their nation. If only they had been the reign of the true faith, it would not have been possible anywhere in the world to find men to

1:22:47surpass them, unquote. Nevertheless, although their struggle had impressed even their enemies, the garrison at Acre was now well and truly exhausted. Whenever the crusaders would attack a section of the wall, the defenders would beat their drums, and this was a signal for Saladin to mobilize his troops to then attack the crusaders. And this was going on, so there was some coordination between the city and Saladin, but they couldn't communicate directly except by the occasional

1:23:19carrier pigeon or swimmer who managed to elude the enemy lines in between them to carry a message. But this was very infrequent, and the garrison inside the city is reaching the end of their endurance. Eventually, in July of 1191, overcome by hunger and realizing that Saladin and his forces were unable to break the crusading army's assault on the city, the leaders inside Acre begin to negotiate for surrender. And so the deal they make through messages exchanged with the kings of England and France

1:23:52goes something like this. The lives of the people inside the city and the men in the garrison will be spared if the city surrenders, in exchange for a very hefty sum of 200,000 gold dinars, which will be payable to the kings of England and France, who are going to take the city. In addition, Saladin will be required to hand over some 1,500 Frankish prisoners. Frankish here is a term

1:24:23that just means anyone from Western Europe who's operating in the Near East. So Saladin has 1,500 Frankish, or Christian prisoners that he's taken in his various campaigns in the last few years. So he's going to be required to release them, as well as return a relic, which is particularly precious to the Crusader kingdoms. In this case, it was supposed to be a piece of the true cross, a piece of the cross on which Jesus had been crucified. So this is an object that's supposed to

1:24:54have had contact with Christ himself, and therefore it's given an enormous amount of respect and veneration, and it's believed to possess spiritual power. So ever since Saladin captured this relic at the Battle of Hattin, because the King of Jerusalem was carrying it along with him, hoping that it would transmit some spiritual power to him, Saladin wins that battle. He takes the king prisoner, he takes the relic, he takes a bunch of other prisoners. So the Crusader kingdoms want it

1:25:24back, and they put that into the deal. Now Saladin himself isn't directly involved in the negotiations. He's aware that they're going on, but the exact terms are announced to him after the deal is done, and apparently that's something that gives him some degree of alarm, because he must have said 200,000 gold dinars. Who has this kind of money? It's a staggering sum. And you might recall, if you listened to our episode on the Kingdom of Heaven, that this kind of a deal had been done before. It wasn't unusual. To spare the lives of the people defending the city, agreeing some amount

1:25:59of money or ransom payment was the same deal that Saladin had offered to the defenders of Jerusalem when he took it in 1187. And he had offered the deal of 100,000 dinars in exchange for all the population of the city. And the people in Jerusalem said, we don't have that kind of money. We just don't. So imagine how Saladin felt when that amount of money was twice as large, and he was now responsible for raising it. In any case, the deal is done. And so on July 12th, 1191, the city of Acre opens its

1:26:34gates, and the kings of England and France ride victoriously in with their armies. And when they do this, they place their banners on the walls of the city. This is a customary gesture. It means the city now belongs to us. We've taken it. It's under our control. And the banners of the conquerors go on the city, indicating that they have the right to the city and its contents. So the king of England puts his banner up, and the king of France puts his banner up. And then there was another guy who

1:27:04put his banner up. And this is going to create some problems. This other guy was Duke Leopold of Austria. And so you might wonder, who is this? And what is he doing putting his banner up on the wall? Richard of England had exactly the same question. So Duke Leopold was part of the army raised by Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor. And while most of that army had disintegrated, a remnant of that army had arrived in Acre, long before King Richard of England and

1:27:35King Philip of France had gotten there. Frederick Barbarossa had died by drowning. His son, who then took over leadership of that army, had also died a few months later of disease. And that left Duke Leopold, who was then the highest ranking nobleman still standing. And so he had assumed leadership of the small remnant of men who continued that crusade from the Holy Roman Empire. And therefore, as the commander of those men, a leader of what remained of one of those armies,

1:28:09he thought it was appropriate to place his banner on the wall as well. Now this wasn't just a statement of victory. It was also a claim to the spoils of the city. So if you put your banner up there, you were staking a claim for you and your men to a share of the financial proceeds of the city. So Acre isn't going to be a scene of massacre, which happened if a city didn't surrender. If the opposing army just flooded in and assaulted, they would be pillaging, robbing,

1:28:39raping, and killing, typically. But because Acre was a negotiated surrender, there wasn't going to be raping and killing. But there was going to be a seizure of property and a division of spoils. So when Duke Leopold puts his banner on the wall, he's saying, me and my men have a right to some of this stuff. Because we fought in this battle, and we fought in it for longer than some of you guys. Now King Richard and King Philip were probably barely aware of Duke Leopold's existence. And this is because they'd done the best they could

1:29:12to put all of the armies that were assembled at Acre under their own personal control when they arrived. And they did that through money. They basically said, oh, you're serving under this Duke or that count of wherever. Well, if you serve under my banner, I'll pay your wages and I'll give you a raise. So in this way, when the kings of England and France showed up, they effectively absorbed a lot of the men on the ground under their personal payroll and their banners. So these men who used to fight for other people in the Crusader kingdoms, but had now taken service, effectively, under the

1:29:46King of France and the King of England, could expect to be paid by them now that those banners were on the wall. Duke Leopold hadn't taken service with either of these kings, nor had the men who remained under his command. So what this meant was that they were going to be left out in the cold. What happened was King Richard's men took Leopold's banner and they threw it off the wall and down into the mud. And obviously they had to do this with Richard's knowledge and consent. So Richard had no respect

1:30:18for the claim of Duke Leopold, neither did his men. Leopold is, of course, insulted by seeing his banner mistreated in this way. It's a gesture of disrespect for him. But it's also a refusal of the financial claim that he's making. And that affects not just him personally, but all the men who are under his command. And the effect of that is essentially that these guys need to turn around and go home now. They can't continue the crusade. They've been stuck in front of Acre for months or

1:30:49even up to two years. And they've been spending their money to buy food and sustain themselves while they're in the field. So if they're not going to get any payment for being part of the successful conquest of Acre, they've effectively run out of funds. They have no choice but to return home. And they do so grumbling bitterly about the greed and the selfishness of these freshly arrived kings of England and France. And in the case of King Richard of England, this grave insult

1:31:23that he's given to what he thought was a nobody Duke of Austria is going to come back and have very serious consequences for him when the Third Crusade is done. But that's a story for another episode. For now, just remember that King Richard is behaving in his usual high-handed way. Those people who are going to serve him, he'll reward well. Who are you, you other guy? Throw your banner into the mud. That was Richard. So you can imagine King Philip of France and King Richard presiding over the

1:31:55Division of the Spoils. And they have this administrative role. There are crusader families who had lived in these kingdoms before Saladin took Acre who said, we used to have houses here, so our property should be returned to us. It shouldn't just be distributed amongst your armies now. So King Philip of France in particular has to field these claims. But for the rank and file, you can imagine them behaving quite differently. They've now flooded into this city and they're mixing with the inhabitants of this city. In particular, the prostitutes.

1:32:32We have actually the testimony of Saladin's own secretary, Imad al-Din, who was there. And he describes the prostitutes of Acre doing business with the Crusaders. I'm going to give you a translation of his words. They're very metaphorical in some ways, but perhaps you can catch his drift. Here we go. Quote, Tinted and painted, desirable and appetizing, bold and ardent, with nasal voices and fleshy thighs.

1:33:02The women offered their wares for enjoyment, brought their silver anklets up to touch their golden earrings, made themselves targets for men's darts, offered themselves to the lance's blows, made javelins rise toward shields. They interwove leg with leg, caught lizard after lizard in their holes, guided pens to inkwells, torrents to the valley bottom, swords to scabbards, firewood to stoves.

1:33:34And they maintained that this was an act of piety without equal, especially to those who were far from home and wives." Unquote. No doubt there were more than a few Crusaders who agreed with these women and approved of this act of generosity. But clearly Saladin's secretary did not, and Richard himself was extremely reluctant to allow women like these to follow the army out of Acre, as they were willing to do, since business was brisk. Now, I leave you to imagine the many stories that the average infantryman

1:34:11had, having survived the siege of Acre, made it into the city, and encountered these apparently exotic foreign women with anklets and amazing flexibility. But we have to turn our attention now to other matters. Now that the siege of Acre was over, there were a number of very dramatic things about to happen. The first order of business was the succession crisis. Remember, all this time there's been a contest between two men who both think they should be king of the Crusader states. Never mind the fact

1:34:44that most of the Crusader states have been taken by Saladin recently, but now that the armies of Philip and Richard are here, and seem likely to be able to recover a lot of that land, the competition over who's going to be left in charge of it is come to a head. So we have Guy, who was the former king of Jerusalem, and we have Conrad, who's just married Isabella, part of the royal family, and thereby increased his own claim to leadership. So now, King Richard of England and King Philip of France

1:35:19are being called in to adjudicate, essentially, between these two competitors for the crown of Outremer. And what they do ends up following the politics they've brought with them from back home, because both Guy and Conrad come from noble families that have lands back in what is now France, some of which belongs to Philip and some of which even belongs to Richard of England, because at that time the kings of England had parts of France under their control as well. So Conrad and Guy have family

1:35:52lands back there, which means that their families do homage to Philip and Richard as their feudal overlords. And as a result, Philip and Richard feel a sense of obligation to prefer the guy whose family is a vassal of their crown. So what this means is that Philip of France supports Conrad, because his family does homage to Philip. And Richard supports Guy, because the Lusignans live in a part of southern

1:36:27France that is under Richard's control, that does homage to him. Again, this doesn't necessarily make everyone in the Crusader states happy. Guy is pretty unpopular. But the kings of England and France negotiate a deal, and it's this. Guy can keep the title of king until he dies. But when he does, the crown will go to Conrad and Isabella and any children they might have. In the meantime, they draw up a deal about which cities are going to be under Guy's control and which cities will be

1:37:00under Conrad's control, which is important because there are financial revenues attached to all that kind of thing. So they make a deal that tries to please both sides and settle a succession dispute, which threatens to permanently divide the noble families inside the Crusader states. With that done, having settled the succession crisis, King Philip of France declares that he's done with crusading. He's had quite enough. The illness that he suffered in the Siege of Acre,

1:37:30including the loss of his hair and his nails, which he still hasn't recovered from, has really shaken him. And he said, I've had quite enough of this. It's time for me to turn around and go back home. Now, disease was no doubt a part of this decision, but there's another key piece of information that may also have stimulated the King of France's urgent need to return home. That other factor is that there's a prominent French nobleman, the Duke of Flanders, who has died in the Siege of Acre,

1:38:02of disease, like so many other people. And what that means is that because he has no direct heir, the land that he holds back in France is essentially up for grabs. And so King Philip has a strong incentive to get back home and assert his own control over that land before some other uppity vassal seizes it. And then he has to deal with that problem. So Flanders, which is the land that this Duke had, is a very wealthy and desirable duchy. And both Philip of France and Richard of England

1:38:39would be very happy to grab it. Richard would like to have that for himself. It would go nicely along the other lands that he already controls in Southern France, which are quite extensive. But Richard and the entire English army regard Philip's announcement that he's done with crusading and he's going home as treacherous. This is because the English and the French have been fighting each other for decades already. And Richard and Philip just kind of patched together an alliance right before

1:39:10leaving on this crusade. And the deal was, we're both going to go together on this crusade. We're going to be in the Near East for three years. During that time, we're going to treat each other like brothers and we're going to split all the spoils 50-50. The reason why it was important for them both to be on crusade at the same time was so that neither one could take advantage of the other's absence to snap up bits of land and increase his own territory at the expense of the other.

1:39:43So Richard reminds Philip of this. He says, what are you doing breaking this agreement? But ultimately, he can't force Philip to stay. King Philip finds an obliging churchman to release him of his crusader vow because he's not going to make it to Jerusalem now. He's turning around and going home and basically to absolve him from any blame for doing that due to his illness. And Richard is left to wonder what devious plans King Philip of France might get up to while he, Richard, is still tied up

1:40:14over here in the Near East. But in some other ways, it's good news for Richard because two kings being around makes it unclear who's really in charge. And the withdrawal of Philip from the field leaves Richard as the uncontested leader of the armies of the Third Crusade. And that is a position he likes very much. So King Philip has departed. We are some weeks after the surrender of Acre. And now we come

1:40:46to one of the darkest deeds of this crusade. So you'll remember that the deal that was made for the surrender of Acre was that the lives of the men who defended it would be spared in exchange for the very large amount of 200,000 gold dinars. Now, nobody had that kind of money just sitting around. Certainly Saladin didn't. Nor did Richard expect that he would. It was a very large amount of money. And so after that amount having been agreed by somebody other than Saladin, Saladin's left with

1:41:22the job of coming up with this cash. And so he communicates with Richard and says, look, can I pay this in installments? Because coming up with all of this as a lump sum is going to be pretty hard to do. And Richard apparently agrees to that. So they have some kind of arrangement where Saladin says, okay, the first installment is due about a month after the surrender of Acre. So I have to pay this money at that point. And at that time, Richard is supposed to release all the men of Acre

1:41:52and then await the other three installments from Saladin. So that was the original arrangement. The problem is that as the date for the first payment arrives, Saladin hasn't quite been able to come up with the full sum of the first installment. He has come up with some money, but it's not the full amount. And so he's forced to contact Richard again and say, look, I've got some money. It's not all the money you're expecting. Can I give you this money and then give

1:42:23you some other high value hostages as a promise that I am going to pay you the rest? And in exchange, you release the men of Acre as per our previous deal, and you await the other three payments. Here's where we run into problems. So Richard basically says, well, give me whatever money that you've gathered, give me your high value hostages, but I'm keeping all these other guys from Acre prisoner, and you'll just have to wait and accept my promise that I'll release them when I

1:42:59get the money. But you need to give me everything you have, and I'm going to give you essentially nothing except my word at this point. And Saladin gets cold feet. He says, ugh, I am not willing to extend myself that far where I'm giving you even more. I'm giving you all the money I've gathered. I'm giving you more hostages, and you're not even going to release some of the guys? You're just going to give me some words? Remember, Saladin has had words from crusaders before,

1:43:30like from Guy, the king of Jerusalem, who gave him words that said, I'm going to leave the crusader states and go back to Europe, which clearly didn't happen because Guy was now here in Acre. And Saladin had received words from Balian of Ibelin who said, please let me into Jerusalem and give me safe passage in and out. I promise I won't take up any weapons. And then turned out to lead the defense of Jerusalem. So you can understand Saladin feeling a little bit uncomfortable at being told that he

1:44:00should just accept Richard's word that these guys are going to be released. So what we have here is a breakdown in trust and a breakdown in negotiations. Saladin isn't willing to take Richard's terms. Richard isn't willing to release any prisoners. The time for the first installment has come and gone. And now Richard tightens the screws and he says, well, if you haven't come up with the full first installment and you're not going to give me anything else, then that means the deal is off.

1:44:32The lives of these prisoners, the men who defended Acre, are now forfeit. So unless you come up with the money, I can do whatever I want to these guys. I'm going to kill them all and I'll do it on August 20th. So we're now looking at just about five weeks after the surrender of the city and just about one week after the first payment should have arrived. Now Saladin probably thought that Richard was bluffing about this. After all, Saladin himself had done a similar thing by parading Conrad's father in front

1:45:08of the walls of Tyre and saying, unless you surrender the city, I'm going to kill your dad. But Saladin never had any intention of killing Conrad's father and let him go without any injury. So Saladin may have regarded Richard's threat to kill all the men of Acre as exactly this kind of a bluff, something intended to put pressure on Saladin to take a deal that he fundamentally did not trust. But the date of the 20th of August arrived, and Richard had all 2,700 men of the garrison of Acre

1:45:44marched out in front of the city walls in full view of Saladin and his army, and he killed every last one of them. Now these were unarmed men who had surrendered. They were powerless to defend themselves, and these were the very same men whose heroic defense of their city for two years had inspired admiration even from crusader fighters who had watched them. These are men who had believed that their lives were spared as part of this deal,

1:46:19but Richard ensures that every single one of them is killed. And there's an illustration of this moment in history. It comes from a 15th century book. Now obviously this manuscript was written several centuries after the fact, so we can't imagine that the artist was himself an eyewitness, but there's an illustration of this very moment. And the illustration is horrific. It shows Richard in some kind of a viewing balcony in the upper left of the picture, and he's watching as all of these soldiers of Acre are marched

1:46:56out in rows with their hands tied behind their backs and systematically taken up onto some kind of a platform or scaffold, blindfolded and beheaded. And there's a pile of corpses accumulating under that scaffold as this is going on. One can only wonder how long it took for this hideous massacre to be complete. How long does it take you to orderly march up and hack the heads off of nearly 3,000 men?

1:47:29And what kind of a man sits in a viewing balcony and watches? So while the artist who drew this illustration didn't personally witness the event, he very likely had access to the accounts of people who did. There is no historical debate about whether this happened. It did. It was well attested. This is not a question that this happened. And what it shows us is how easily human beings are capable of doing the most despicable things. Things that they themselves would have

1:48:03howled about for generations had they been done to their own people. But somehow doing it to those other guys is okay because these people are not humans like us. So there's a logic of dehumanization at work here that allows Richard to say that the men of Acre are infidels, enemies of God, pagans. They're not like us and their lives don't matter. And in this, Richard is drawing on a well-established line of

1:48:38thought that had been developed to support and enable the Crusades to begin with. He could have resorted to the words of no less admired a source than Bernard of Clairvaux himself, who was later made a saint. And Bernard of Clairvaux was instrumental in preaching the Second Crusade, which is the previous one, the one that Eleanor of Aquitaine had gone on, and also of giving people the logic of a holy war. The idea that violence against those people in those parts of the world over there is not just excusable,

1:49:14but actually pleasing to God. And this is not an interpretation I'm putting on Bernard of Clairvaux. I give you the man in his own words. He said, quote, The Christian glories in the death of the pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified. Unquote. By pagan here, Bernard just means anybody who's not a Christian like him. And Bernard's definition would most certainly have included all of these brave men who had defended the city of Acre.

1:49:47By Bernard's logic, and the logic that Richard is following, the people on the other side don't need to be treated with any level of humanity, because they are the enemies of God and doomed to hell anyway. This is the logic that permitted a massacre of this scale. And what's amazing is that you see this scene repeat itself again and again in history. Every time you have a massacre on this scale, something that we would rightly call an atrocity,

1:50:18it is always preceded by a logic of dehumanization. It's always preceded by many arguments and examples that are circulated to tell you that those people over there are somehow not human the way we are, and therefore can be treated in ways that we ourselves would regard as intolerable if it were done to us.