Great balls of fire

Lionheart! Saladin! Massacre! There is no shortage of larger-than-life characters and drama in the epic, two-year siege of Acre, the great set-piece of the Third Crusade. But, as John Hosler relates in this accomplished study, there was so much more besides. Acre proved the strategic point for armies from across Europe, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Maghreb; and the siege provided a kaleidoscope of competing ambitions, objectives and self-serving manoeuvrings amid the most arduous conditions, in which Bedouins ‘exchanged the severed heads of their victims with Saladin in return for robes and gifts’.

The coastal city of Acre, in present-day Israel, was the first objective of the crusaders, as it would be their primary port for supplying the army. If their ultimate goal of Jerusalem were to be won again — it had fallen to Saladin in 1187 — Acre had to be taken.

The siege began in late August 1189, before the arrival of the crusade’s pre-eminent leaders: King Richard I of England, King Philip II of France and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Barbarossa never made it: preoccupied with a fear of drowning, he took the long land route to the Holy Land instead — and died in a river in Turkey. The crusaders were, at this stage, led by Guy de Lusignan, the King of Jerusalem, who had been lucky to escape execution when captured by Saladin at the battle of Hattin two years earlier.

Hosler, who shows a keen understanding of medieval warfare, relates the chaos of combat in gripping detail — the battles, artillery barrages, mining, ramming, attempts at escalade and numerous naval encounters. An attack on Saladin’s relief army was beaten off, and Saladin continued to harass the crusaders as they tried to press home the assault on the city.