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| Siege of Acre | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Crusades | |||||||
 A siege tower in action; French depiction of the 19th century | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Kingdom of Jerusalem | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Baldwin I | unknown | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 5,000 men | Unknown | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Unknown | |||||||
The siege of Acre took place in spring 1103 ( April 6 - May 16) by crusader forces against the Fatimid coastal city of Acre.
Baldwin's next target of conquest was Acre. In the spring of 1103, he began the siege of the city, which sits on a promontory on the northern edge of Haifa Bay. He was assisted by the remaining crews and passengers of the pilgrim fleet whose appearance had contributed decisively to the victory at the Battle of Jaffa the previous year. The Arab historian Ibn al-Athir reported on a naval blockade of Acre. However, the number of ships available on the Christian side was apparently not sufficient for a complete blockade, as subsequent events also showed. Also in the history of William of Tyre, the lack of ships was seen as decisive for the failure of the siege.
The besiegers, said to have numbered about 5,000 men, deployed catapults and a siege tower, which, after some prolonged fighting, eventually prompted the defenders to begin negotiations on the terms of the surrender. But shortly before the surrender of Acre, 12 Muslim galleys coming from Tyre and Sidon and a large transport ship with men and war material entered the city's harbor, in which these reinforcements revived the will to fight. The defenders did not only manage to defeat several of the siege engines, but also damaged the Crusader siege tower. King Baldwin then decided to break off the siege. The remaining siege engines were destroyed by the retreating Crusaders, and much of the orchards of Acre as well.
After the failure at Acre, King Baldwin made another advance into Mount Carmel to clear it of the gangs of bandits who were still making the traffic routes around Haifa unsafe from there. However, he was wounded in a skirmish, after which this endeavor had to be ended prematurely. [1]
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Baldwin I was the first count of Edessa from 1098 to 1100 and king of Jerusalem from 1100 to his death in 1118. He was the youngest son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, and Ida of Lorraine and married a Norman noblewoman, Godehilde of Tosny. He received the County of Verdun in 1096, but he soon joined the crusader army of his brother Godfrey of Bouillon and became one of the most successful commanders of the First Crusade.
Baldwin IV (1161–1185), known as the Leper King, was the king of Jerusalem from 1174 until his death in 1185. He was admired by his contemporaries and later historians for his willpower and dedication to the Latin Kingdom in the face of his debilitating leprosy. Choosing competent advisers, Baldwin ruled a thriving crusader state and succeeded in protecting it from the Muslim ruler Saladin.
Conrad of Montferrat was a nobleman, one of the major participants in the Third Crusade. He was the de facto King of Jerusalem by virtue of his marriage to Isabella I of Jerusalem from 24 November 1190, but officially elected only in 1192, days before his death. He was also the eighth Marquess of Montferrat from 1191.
Sibylla was Queen of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1190. She reigned alongside her husband Guy of Lusignan, to whom she was unwaveringly attached despite his unpopularity among the barons of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The siege of Acre was the first significant counterattack by Guy of Jerusalem against Saladin, leader of the Muslims in Syria and Egypt. This pivotal siege formed part of what later became known as the Third Crusade. The siege lasted from August 1189 until July 1191, in which time the city's coastal position meant the attacking Latin force were unable to fully invest the city and Saladin was unable to fully relieve it with both sides receiving supplies and resources by sea. Finally, it was a key victory for the Crusaders and a serious setback for Saladin's ambition to destroy the Crusader states.
Pons was count of Tripoli from 1112 to 1137. He was a minor when his father, Bertrand, died in 1112. He swore fealty to the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in the presence of a Byzantine embassy. His advisors sent him to Antioch to be educated in the court of Tancred of Antioch, ending the hostilities between the two crusader states. Tancred granted four important fortresses to Pons in the Principality of Antioch. Since Pons held his inherited lands in fief of the kings of Jerusalem, Tancred's grant strengthened the autonomy of the County of Tripoli. On his deathbed, Tancred also arranged the marriage of his wife, Cecile of France, to Pons.
The siege of Antioch took place during the First Crusade in 1097 and 1098, on the crusaders' way to Jerusalem through Syria. Two sieges took place in succession. The first siege, by the crusaders against the city held by the Seljuk Empire, lasted from 20 October 1097 to 3 June 1098. The second siege, of the crusader-held city by a Seljuk relieving army, lasted three weeks in June 1098, leading to the Battle of Antioch in which the crusaders defeated the relieving army led by Kerbogha. The crusaders then established the Principality of Antioch, ruled by Bohemond of Taranto.
The siege of Damascus took place between 24 and 28 July 1148, during the Second Crusade. It ended in a crusader defeat and led to the disintegration of the crusade. The two main Christian forces that marched to the Holy Land in response to Pope Eugene III and Bernard of Clairvaux's call for the Second Crusade were led by Kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. Both faced disastrous marches across Anatolia in the months that followed, with most of their armies being destroyed. The original focus of the crusade was Edessa (Urfa), but in Jerusalem, the preferred target of King Baldwin III and the Knights Templar was Damascus. At the Council of Acre, magnates from France, Germany, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem decided to divert the crusade to Damascus.
The siege of Jerusalem lasted from 20 September to 2 October 1187, when Balian of Ibelin surrendered the city to Saladin. Earlier that summer, Saladin had defeated the kingdom's army and conquered several cities. Balian was charged with organizing a defense. The city was full of refugees but had few soldiers. Despite this fact the defenders managed to repulse several attempts by Saladin's army to take the city by storm. Balian bargained with Saladin to buy safe passage for many, and the city was peacefully surrendered with limited bloodshed. Though Jerusalem fell, it was not the end of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as the capital shifted first to Tyre and later to Acre after the Third Crusade. Latin Christians responded in 1189 by launching the Third Crusade led by Richard the Lionheart, Philip Augustus, and Frederick Barbarossa separately. In Jerusalem, Saladin restored Muslim holy sites and generally showed tolerance towards Christians; he allowed Orthodox and Eastern Christian pilgrims to visit the holy sites freely—though Frankish pilgrims were required to pay a fee for entry. The control of Christian affairs in the city was handed over to the patriarch of Constantinople.
The siege of Ascalon took place from 25 January to 22 August 1153, in the time period between the Second and Third Crusades, and resulted in the capture of the Fatimid Egyptian fortress by the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Ascalon was an important castle that was used by the Fatimids to launch raids into the Crusader kingdom's territory, and by 1153 it was the last coastal city in Palestine that was not controlled by the Crusaders.
The siege of Acre took place in 1291 and resulted in the Crusaders' losing control of Acre to the Mamluks. It is considered one of the most important battles of the period. Although the crusading movement continued for several more centuries, the capture of the city marked the end of further crusades to the Levant. When Acre fell, the Crusaders lost their last major stronghold of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. They still maintained a fortress at the northern city of Tartus, engaged in some coastal raids, and attempted an incursion from the tiny island of Ruad; but, when they lost that, too, in a siege in 1302, the Crusaders no longer controlled any part of the Holy Land.
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 that had the objective of reconquering Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule after the region had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate centuries earlier. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organised, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century.
The siege of Sidon was an event in the aftermath of the First Crusade. The coastal city of Sidon was captured by the forces of Baldwin I of Jerusalem and Sigurd I of Norway, with assistance from the Ordelafo Faliero, Doge of Venice.
The siege of Tyre took place from 12 November 1187 to 1 January 1188. An Ayyubid army commanded by Saladin made an amphibious assault on the city, defended by Conrad of Montferrat. After two months of continuous struggle, Saladin dismissed his army and retreated to Acre.
The Venetian Crusade of 1122–1124 was an expedition to the Holy Land launched by the Republic of Venice that succeeded in capturing Tyre. It was an important victory at the start of a period when the Kingdom of Jerusalem would expand to its greatest extent under Baldwin II of Jerusalem. The Venetians gained valuable trading concessions in Tyre. Through raids on Byzantine territory both on the way to the Holy Land and on the return journey, the Venetians forced the Byzantines to confirm, as well as extend, their trading privileges with the empire.
The first siege of Arsuf, originally Apollonia, took place in 1099, just after the First Crusade. It was carried out by Godfrey of Bouillon after the city failed to pay a previously agreed tribute. The attempt to capture the city failed for want of ships.
The siege of Acre took place in May 1104. It was of great importance for the consolidation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been founded only a few years earlier. With the help of a Genoese fleet, King Baldwin I forced the surrender of the important port city after a siege that lasted only twenty days. Although all defenders and residents wishing to leave the city had been assured by the king that they would be free to leave, taking their chattels with them, many of them had been massacred by the Genoese as they left the city. Moreover, the attackers sacked the city itself.
The siege of Beirut was an event in the aftermath of the First Crusade. The coastal city of Beirut was captured from the Fatimids by the forces of Baldwin I of Jerusalem on 13 May 1110, with the assistance of Bertrand of Toulouse and a Genoese fleet.
The siege of Tyre took place from 29 November 1111 to 10 April 1112 when the coastal city of Tyre, in what is now Lebanon and was then in the hands of the Fatimid Caliphate, was besieged by the Crusader King Baldwin I of Jerusalem. In the previous years, Baldwin had taken the cities of Acre, Tripoli, Sidon and Beirut from the Fatimids. Tyre was besieged by land, leaving the sea open as Baldwin lacked a fleet. Although the Fatimid navy failed to help the city, the siege was relieved by the Turkoman ruler of Damascus, Toghtekin. Toghtekin installed his own governor in the city, which however remained nominally under Fatimid sovereignty. Fatimid rule was restored in 1122, but finally the city was lost to the Crusaders in 1124.