Original subtitles

The Summer of 1189,

the Jordan Valley in Palestine.

In the Battle of Hattin, Muslim troops slaughter

16,000 Christian knights and soldiers.

Europe's Kingdom of Jerusalem,

the most sacred territory in Christendom,

falls into the hands

of a new charismatic Muslim leader, Saladin.

The Pope, Urban III, as soon as he heard the news,

dropped dead from a heart attack.

They saw Saladin as the son of Satan.

He was even depicted as the sixth

of the seven-headed beast of the apocalypse.

In Europe, tens of thousands of men

answered the Pope's call

and swore to reconquer the Holy Land.

Thus began the Third Crusade.

They fight in the name of faith,

they kill in the name of faith,

and in this, they understand each other very well.

On the other side,

they have exactly the same type of reasoning.

The crusade was led

by the greatest leaders of the Christian world,

the King of England, Richard the Lionheart,

and the King of France, Philip Augustus.

It was a titanic clash of arms

where all of the major figures in military history

fought, and lived, and died, in the same circumstances.

The epicenter of the conflict

is the fortress of St. John of Acre.

For two years, this port-city

on the shores of the Mediterranean

is the scene of one of the longest sieges

in medieval history.

Summer, 1189.

700 Frankish knights and 9,000 infantry

leave Tyre in modern Lebanon

and head for the south of Palestine.

At their head is Guy de Lusignan,

whose army was massacred at Hattin two years earlier.

Guy de Lusignan is the King of Jerusalem,

but he no longer has possession of Jerusalem.

In fact, he no longer has possession

of any major piece of territory in the Old Kingdom.

And so, to get back his territory,

to get back his prestige,

he's almost forced to begin the campaign,

begin the counter-offensive against the Muslim force.

The Pope has called for more Crusaders to come,

but for now, Guy is on his own.

His first destination is the strategic port-city of Acre.

If he wants to reconquer his kingdom,

he'll have to set siege to it.

In the 12th century,

the city of Acre is a beautiful commercial port.

This is the center of the Kingdom of Jerusalem

in an economic sense.

For that reason, it was a crucial strategic target.

It was very, very important to hold this arterial route

back to Western Europe.

Supplies, pilgrims, reinforcements,

could come and go out of this port.

On the 28th of August,

Guy arrives at the gates of the city.

It's built on a peninsula

bordered to the west by the Mediterranean

and to the south by the Bay of Haifa.

Its lofty ramparts are protected by a wide moat

that extends to the north for over 3,280 feet,

and to the east for 1,148 feet.

It's residential districts marks it's masts

spread over 290,000 square yards,

and they're defended by a garrison of 20,000 troops,

more than twice Guy's numbers.

When Guy arrived at Acre,

he would've had a great knowledge of the city itself.

He had spent time there,

he had spent numerous meetings there,

he would've been very well acquainted with the defenses

as well as the topography around the city.

He knows only a siege will take Acre.

And so, when he gets to Acre,

his first consideration is, where can I be safe?

Where can I put myself in a position to survive

until reinforcements arrive?

Guy and his Crusaders,

they set themselves up on a small hill called the Toron,

which is about 35 meters high

just to the southeast of the city.

And that may not sound much,

but actually, it's quite a steep hill

and a really good defensive position.

He must dig in quickly

because not far away, another army is preparing for battle

and it's led by one of the most legendary warlords

the Muslim world has ever known, Saladin,

the first Sultan of the Ayyubid Dynasty.

Saladin was the leader

of the Muslim Near East at the time.

He positioned himself as the the hero of Sunni Islam,

he'd removed the Shia from control of Egypt,

and he dissembled an empire of Egypt,

and modern term Syria, and Northern Iraq.

And that enabled him to unify

all these Amirs, these sultans,

who'd all been fighting each other

and whose divisions had led them to collaborate

with the Westerners

who'd settled in the Holy Land since the First Crusade.

On the 28th of August,

Saladin deploys his forces,

an allied army of fighters from Syria,

Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Maghreb.

They form a front from the shores of the Mediterranean

all the way around to the Belos River,

right behind Guy's army.

Guy's decision to besiege them

is a very, very bold one

because he knows that Saladin is likely to besiege him.

And as one of the Muslim commentators right,

it's as if the Crusaders placed themselves

between the hammer and the anvil,

and I think that's a really powerful image

and a self-choice to put yourself

in the middle of these two powerful forces.

And so, we have something

that is almost unique in the annals of siege warfare,

a double siege.

With the battle lines drawn,

on the plane of Acre,

tens of thousands of Christian and Muslim soldiers

prepare to fight and die for their faith.

None of them knows that this siege is destined to be

one of the longest in medieval warfare.

In September, 50 ships lay anchor in Haifa Bay.

Onboard are 14,000 German, Breton, and Flemish soldiers,

reinforcements from Christendom.

They join Guy de Lusignan's army

to form an impassable barrier

around three sides of the city.

But they still must cut the city off from the sea.

You can barricade a city on its landward side,

but if they're shipping in supplies from the sea,

then you can never really cut them off,

you can never put them under the kind of privation

that you'd like,

the kind where, now that their stomachs are empty

and hope is dwindling,

the decision may be made to surrender the city

instead of keep holding out.

The port is particularly well-defended

and protected by two breakwaters.

Standing on them at the entrance to the port,

two towers serve as a defensive position.

Between them, a heavy chain that once raised,

prohibits all access from the sea.

Guy knows that it will be difficult to capture it,

but he can surround it.

So the West's fleet will blockade the port.

We now have an amphibious siege

that will last until the end.

For two years,

that siege will continue both by land and by sea.

Held in a vice-like grip,

Acre is now cut off from the world.

In the Muslim camp,

Saladin summons his Amirs

and plans his first major offensive.

He knows that the garrison inside is trapped,

and so his first concern is to open up a corridor

to get into the city

so he can move supplies into the garrison.

And here, we're not only talking about

arms, and armor, and the stuff of war,

but also rudimentary things like food,

and cloth, textiles, the things that you'll need to survive.

In order to engage the entire Crusader army

as a whole, Saladin's men will be divided into three units.

The one on the left

will be positioned along the River Belos.

The one on the right will be under the command

of Saladin's nephew, General Taqi al-Din.

The one in the middle will be under his own command.

Saladin's formation at Acre

seems to mirror earlier practices.

The idea of having a strong center,

typically where the sovereign would sit,

as well as a right wing and a left wing.

And this was in part, inspired by the makeup

of armies at this time.

These were in the west, in a kind of futile sense,

where you had a different lord

controlling each contingent usually.

And there was a similar balance to that for Saladin,

who would entrust certain parts of his army

to those people who had helped to raise

those parts of the army.

At dawn on the 14th of September,

they launched their attack.

The infantry will be in the first row,

followed by the archers,

and then the cavalry.

But it's the cavalry that begins the attack.

The Muslim horseman charged the Crusaders at full gallop.

What you do tend to see though,

is a greater emphasis placed on the mobility

of Muslim cavalry.

They would charge forward,

they would harass the Crusaders,

and then as the fighting ensued,

appear to move backwards as if they are afraid of the rush.

It's designed to draw your enemy to abandon their discipline

and to depart their ranks and come after you.

And of course, that's what you want

because as soon as they charge,

they've left their strong lines,

now they're in the open field and they're vulnerable.

On the left flank,

the Crusaders are outnumbered and forced to retreat.

Saladin's forces push the Christians back

along the ramparts, opening a route to the city.

It all happens very fast.

The siege is broken.

To the north of the city,

he manages to establish a channel through

and is able to have a corridor

in which reinforcements and supplies can get into the city.

Saladin himself goes up on the wall

and surveys the Christian army.

So here is your main opponent,

you're now staring at him on the wall,

he has just defeated you in a sense,

and now he's looking down on you with contempt.

It's one of those horrible moments where as a Crusader,

you possibly lose heart and say,

"This sounded like a good idea.

I think we may have already lost scarcely after we began."

But Saladin then makes a curious move.

Convinced of his superiority

and that he can force open

a supply line to Acre at any time,

he returns that very evening to his camp,

giving back to the Crusaders the passage to Acre

that so many of his men just died for.

His pride is to cost him dearly.

Autumn, 1189. The 22nd day of the siege.

The Crusaders have suffered heavy losses,

but reinforcements have arrived,

answering the Pope's call to arms.

The Marquess, Conrad of Montferrat,

with a force of 1,000 knights and 20,000 infantry,

lands on the plane of Acre.

His arrival is timely,

but he gets a cool welcome from Guy de Lusignan.

Conrad de Montferrat is the largest rival

to Guy de Lusignan.

Conrad and Guy de Lusignan

both have the same aim,

to become King of Jerusalem.

There's only one throne though,

so the rivalry between the two men is extremely strong.

So what that means is,

on the Frankish Crusader side, you have two rivals,

both with their supporters and their adherence,

so that is, in some senses, going to split the focus

of the Frankish effort a little bit.

But for the time being,

they share a common enemy in Saladin.

They'll never be able to take Acre

as long as they have the Sultan on their backs.

They have to worry about Saladin,

but then they also have to attack this city

and get through its walls,

and you really can't do both at the same time.

Whenever the Franks try to attack

the walls of Acre, they get caught in the crossfire.

As soon as an attack on the city is imminent,

the garrison there sends word to Saladin.

So the moment the Franks launch their attack

on the walls, Saladin attacks their camp

and the attackers are forced to retreat

in order to defend themselves.

The double siege is becoming a war of attrition

the Christians cannot win.

On the evening of October 3rd,

Guy summons his barons to develop a plan of attack.

They thought that if Saladin was left there,

he would surely be their destruction,

and that their best opportunity was to charge

and bring him to battle,

hopefully either crush him or significantly defeat him

so that he might think twice and leave the area

and give them some breathing room.

On October 4th at 9:00 AM,

they launched their attack on Saladin's army behind them.

A swarm of crusaders falls on the Muslim vanguard

while Conrad and his cavalry manage to break through

Taqi al-Din's lines, killing nearly 500 of his men.

Saladin's nephew has no choice but to sound the retreat.

Saladin worries about his nephew

and sends men over to help him,

and in doing so, weakens the center of the Muslim line.

The Crusaders see this

and punch a hole through that central section,

right into Saladin's camp.

And then they stop.

Because they are so hungry,

they sit down inside their enemies tents

and they start to eat the food

that the Muslims had prepared.

And at that moment, they lose all of the initiative

of the operation.

Meanwhile, Saladin tries to save his army

that's in full route.

And for this, he relies on a powerful weapon.

Their faith.

Jihad is totally central

to Saladin's thinking.

Every time he feels the need to raise an army,

he does so in the name of religion

and he proclaims a jihad.

That is to say, that they fight in the name of faith,

that they kill in the name of faith,

and in this, they understand each other very well.

On the other side,

they have exactly the same type of reasoning.

While the Muslims are regrouping,

the Crusaders, sure now of victory,

continue their plundering

when a totally unpredictable event

changes the course of the battle,

a single Crusader loses his way.

There's a horse that turns around

and starts running back to the Crusader camp

in front of Acre,

and you can imagine its owner taking off after it,

"Come back! Come back!" Right?

Running after it, and he chases it,

but to the people on the further plane, as they see this,

it looks like several people running away

from the battle in fear.

And the moment starts to develop

and more people start running and following,

and pretty soon,

it looks like the Crusaders are on the retreat,

that they're being routed.

And of course, this happens at the exact wrong time,

the same time that Saladin is launching his counter attack.

Saladin registers this,

turns his own troops around,

pursues the Crusaders very, very hard.

There's a lot of fierce fighting,

the master of the Templars is killed.

The Muslims take a lot of casualties too,

some senior Amirs are lost.

So it's a pretty savage engagement.

For the Crusaders, the defeat is terrible.

7,000 warriors fallen in battle,

a third of the army's strength.

The smell of death hangs over the plane.

From his camp, Guy knows that trying another attack

could be fatal.

He needs to change tactics.

The Christians figure out

that they were in a horrible position,

trapped between the garrison in Acre

and Saladin's army,

and so they decide to build ramparts around themselves.

Guy orders his men to dig two ditches

facing both the city and the Sultan's armies.

They will fill them with razor sharp

pieces of wood and steel

to protect the camp from cavalry attacks.

Behind the ditches,

ramparts built with earth from the excavations

and topped with wooden palisades

will make the camp impenetrable.

It's exhausting work

and everyone, even the knights, lends a hand.

Now, that kind of work takes a lot of time.

It's not easy to go out with shovels

and dig massive ditches and pound up earth.

This is something that's going to take

a month, two months, three months,

and you're doing it at the coldest time of the year,

so you're entering into November,

December, January, February.

This is very, very difficult work,

particularly for a force that's not well-fed.

What's more,

it's not easy to find the materials they need

to build their defenses.

Because they were cut-off from the interior of Palestine,

they would've relied on very little of the local trees.

This would've been at most, just little orchards.

However, any larger defenses,

they would've had to construct

using timber salvaged from the ships that arrived.

Dozens of Christian ships

lie scrapped on the beach outside Acre.

From the ramparts,

the men of the garrison can only look on in frustration.

The Muslims see this, they see what they're doing,

they see them ensconcing themselves with defenses,

and again, there are some of the Amirs

that go to Saladin and say, "We must attack.

We have to destroy these guys

before they defend themselves."

But again, Saladin dithers.

If the Sultan hesitates,

it's because when he's alone in his tent,

he's fighting an evil that gnaws at him from the inside.

He suffers from what the chronicles describe as colic,

which seems to be this chronic stomach pain,

debilitating, excruciating stomach pain.

His immune system seems to pack up.

He gets terrible boils all over his legs.

He really does struggle very, very badly indeed,

which actually stops him riding,

stops him taking part in battles.

So Saladin's health is one of the major influences

on the Siege of Acre.

Unable to lead his troops into battle,

Saladin postpones his attack on the Christian camp.

And that ends up being

the most critical failure of the siege,

because once those defenses are in place,

you can no longer dislodge the Christians.

Saladin can no longer force open

a supply line to the city.

Surrounded by the fortified Christian camp,

Acre is now cut off from the world.

Now, everyone prepares for a war of attrition,

a cold war, whose goal is to force the other to surrender.

But for the time being, they just have to wait.

Because the Siege of Acre

stretches over the winter months,

it seems there's a period

in which there's very little fighting.

The mud is prohibitive to move through for horses and men,

the temperature is rain, cold,

so I think both sides need a rest, almost.

There's a sense of, almost a sort of an agreement

that we park this for a few months,

which sounds odd in a long seizure or military situation,

but that's simply the reality of it.

It's the calm before the storm.

Because 1,900 miles away,

two powerful new competents are about to join the Crusade.

Spring, 1190, the 205th day of the siege.

Led by Conrad of Montferrat,

dozens of war ships appear off Acre.

Saladin quickly responds.

Thousands of his men fill the port

and board a fleet of 50 Egyptian ships

waiting in the harbor.

They arrived from Alexandria just before winter.

Forming a row,

the Muslim ships set sail towards Conrad.

Conrad also prepares his fleet for battle,

except that his ships advance in a concave crescent line.

The idea is to almost lull the army into an envelopment.

If you have this concave,

the force sails towards you

and the back of your fleet bends,

which allows the two sides of your ships

to wrap around the enemy.

So it's a very useful technique, if it works.

The Egyptian fleet

sails straight into Conrad's trap.

Caught in a pincer grip,

they're unable to flee the deluge of arrows that rains down.

But the Muslims aren't finished yet,

for they have a secret weapon.

Because if you do get attacked on the seas,

you can respond with things like Greek fire

or what we call naphtha.

Naphtha, a mixture of petroleum,

sulfur and animal fat, is highly flammable.

This Greek fire

really scares the Westerners.

Not only does it come in terrifying, flaming projectiles,

but if you're hit with naphtha,

you can't get it off you

and it'll keep burning, even in the water.

Also fire, because of its burning,

because of the pain it provokes,

it reminds us of the hell of the eternal punishment.

So there's something terrifying about it,

especially at a time when Muslims are being demonized,

they're seen as Satan's minions.

The proof is that they use fire perfectly

against the Christians.

Once the Muslims had set fire

to Christian galleys,

the next step is to board them.

The man-to-man combat begins

with some unpredictable outcomes.

There is this comic scene

where the Christians manage to get on top of this vessel

and they seize part of the oars.

And you have Christians on one level rowing oars,

you have Muslims on another level rowing oars,

and they're going in opposite directions.

And so, as they're rowing against each other,

the boat is actually spinning in circles

and it doesn't stop

until one side can get enough skirmishers on the end

to kill some of these oarsmen,

and then finally, straighten the ship out.

The battle itself is turning too,

in the Christian's favor.

Conrad repeals the Egyptian fleet,

which takes refuge behind the heavy chain

of the Port of Acre.

The Christians quickly try to capitalize

on their victory at sea.

The Crusaders have spent the winter building siege engines

for their next assault on the city.

Among them, three towers financed by Guy de Lusignan

and Conrad de Montferrat.

These 89 foot high, five story rolling structures

can each transport up to 500 soldiers.

At their summits,

the large platforms feature mobile bridges

which the troops can use to get onto the city's ramparts.

Webs of ropes stretched across the front

will protect them from projectiles

fired from those ramparts.

The defenders inside Acre,

as well as Saladin looking from outside Acre,

recognize that this is a serious threat.

So you really need to deal with these constructions

to break them, to stop them getting up to the walls

in the first instance.

They're very worrying indeed.

The three towers start moving towards the city.

Because of their size,

they're moving very slowly

as they're being pushed on either logs or wheels

towards the city.

So it's like creeping death as it comes towards you slowly,

and you're shooting at it,

you're using catapults against them,

you're throwing stones,

you're attacking them, and nothing is stopping them,

they just get closer, and closer, and closer.

But there is still one obstacle in their path,

the ditches at the foot of Acre's ramparts.

The engines must cross them to get within reach.

Under a rain of arrows,

the Crusader infantry rushes Acre's walls.

We will see considerable efforts to fill in,

not all of the ditches, but certain points of the ditches

so as to bring in machinery.

We hear stories of throwing just about anything they can

into these ditch, including humans.

There's one story where

someone wants to be thrown into the ditch,

as their dying will.

From a defender's perspective,

clearing these ditches is very important

because if the ditch is compromised,

the city then gets into some serious trouble.

Muslim catapults

loaded with pitchers of naphtha,

make a desperate attempt to set fire

to the three terrible machines.

Unfortunately, the Crusaders had protected these things

very well, they had covered the siege towers

with animal skins,

and then splashed on those animal skins, vinegar,

which has a warding effect.

When the Greek fire would hit the vinegar,

it would sort of fizzle, it would put the fire out.

Stuck in his camp

on the other side of the Crusaders' fortified line,

Saladin and his army are unable to help the city.

When all hopes seems lost,

a man arrives asking to see the Sultan.

According to our Muslim sources,

we're told that the son of a damascene cauldron-maker

comes up with the idea, or promises,

that he's able to destroy these towers.

And people are a bit skeptical,

"Well, you know, we've tried this before,"

but he convinces Saladin that he can.

They smuggle him into the city

where he gets these enormous copper vats

and he makes up his special brew of Greek fire.

He fires a couple of sighting shots at the towers,

it doesn't really work, and the Crusaders laugh at him.

But then he fills up a really big vat,

lights the fuse, fires it,

and it explodes and engulfs this tower in flame.

And at that point, the garrison commanders,

they become believers of course,

and they mix up more of this stuff,

and one by one by one,

they completely emulate the siege towers.

They are burned to a crisp.

With the three towers destroyed,

all hope of a quick victory for the Christians is lost.

It's a hard blow, especially since, for the troops,

the siege has already gone on too long.

There's a sense in the camp

that nothing is being done, that we're wasting our time,

that our leaders have not

successfully prosecuted this siege.

And so, there is a movement to attack Saladin's army.

The men insist on launching an attack

to break the double siege, but Guy and Conrad refuse,

they say it would be suicidal.

But their men won't back down,

so they give in, but on one condition,

that it'll be without knights and cavalry.

And so, there's this great stirring of

10 to 12,000 of the regular soldiers, the infantry,

they line up in formation and they attack Saladin's army.

Taken by surprise, the Muslims retreat.

But very swiftly, Saladin organizes his response.

His horseman charge into the Christians' ranks

and crush them.

And the sad part of this story is

the knights and the counts see what is happening to them,

and most of them refuse to go and help.

They stay back behind their protective walls

and they essentially let their compatriots die.

It's almost one of those moments of,

"I told you so," right?

"I warned you not to do that, you didn't listen to me,

and so this is what happens."

It's a lesson that comes at a high price.

Between 4 and 8,000 Christian soldiers lie dead.

Their corpses, abandoned on the battlefield.

The dead are left to rot in the ditches,

they poison the water.

These harsh conditions mean that illness really kicks in.

We find throughout the whole Siege of Acre,

more people die of illness than they do in battle.

Westerners who come over are particularly susceptible

to new stomach bugs and often die of dysentery,

so it really is an incredibly tough environment to endure.

Without reinforcements,

Guy de Lusignan has reached a dead end.

The Third Crusade is slowly dying on the plane outside Acre,

but a new player is about to join the game.

Autumn 1190, the 395th day of the siege.

The Frenchman, Henri de Champagne,

Count of Turop, lands in Haifa Bay.

He's ready to take advantage of Guy and Conrad's failure

to take the city.

Henri of Champagne,

this is a senior Western figure,

a man with a great crusading ancestry,

a man of energy, authority,

money, and a good number of troops.

Henri is, curiously enough,

the nephew of both Richard the Lionheart

and Philip Augustus.

He's therefore, perfectly placed

to become King of Jerusalem.

He's an accomplished warrior,

and right now, has just one obsession,

to bring down Acre.

It's incredibly depressing for the Muslims

because every time they inflict a severe blow

against the Christians, fresh Crusaders seem to arrive.

And so, when Henri of Champagne arrives,

he arrives with numerous ships,

and supplies, and reinforcements.

And so, this is a major psychological blow.

Saladin knows that if he gives the city

no reason to hope and no supplies,

it will eventually surrender.

So to get around the Christians blockade of the port,

he shows considerable imagination.

The better method is to go incognito,

and so what they'll do is they'll take their vessels

and try to transform them into Western-looking ships.

They get their crew to shave their beards off,

they put Christian flags on top of the masts,

they even allow pigs to run around on the decks.

And so, as they sail past the Christian ships,

the alarm is not rung until it's too late.

But it's a very successful way of getting three large ships

and all their supplies into Acre.

Once again, the Crusaders' efforts

to starve the city have come to nothing.

Henri decides to try to take control of the port

once and for all.

Well, Henri of Champagne

decides to attack the Tower of Flies.

If you can take that tower,

you can control the entrance to the port.

The Tower of Flies

is the most imposing of the two towers

that defend the entrance to the port.

It's heavily defended and can only be approached by sea.

So to take control of it,

Henri has one of his galleys equipped with an assault tower,

a floating siege engine.

It was some kind of a maritime tower

built up from the deck of a ship

that had a bridge that was going to be used

to help to get to the top of the Tower of the Flies.

Henri's galley drops anchor

within range of the tower.

The Christian archers send up a rain of arrows

while the infantry men, equipped with two ladders,

set out to attack.

But from the top of their tower,

the defenders retaliate,

hurling large pieces of wood

that wipe out all the Christian soldiers in their path.

Finally, a Muslim soldier throws a jar of naphtha

at the ship.

It immediately bursts into flame.

Henri's attack has failed.

The siege has been going on for more than a year now,

and for the Crusaders, the bad news is piling up.

Europe's two most powerful kings,

England's Richard the Lionheart

and France's Philip Augustus, aren't coming.

They will spend the winter in Sicily,

entangled in endless political quarrels.

The long awaited reinforcements and supplies

won't arrive until the Spring of 1191.

When you think about having to feed

10,000 people, 15,000, 20,000,

that's an awful lot of mouths to feed,

and that's just for the soldiers.

When you start counting the camp followers,

the cooks, the laundresses,

everyone else who's involved,

it's an awful big crowd

and so they never seem to have enough food.

They're resorting to eating things like root vegetables,

and carob beans, and drinking wine,

and even eating grass to keep themselves alive.

Hunger and disease thin the Crusaders ranks.

All eyes are turned to the horizon

in the hope of finally seeing

the great leaders of the West appear.

Spring, 1191. The 596th day of the siege.

At last, Philip Augustus, King of France,

arrives on the plane of Acre.

He's only 26-years-old.

The arrival of Philip Augustus

is not really something that triggers great fear

amongst the Muslims.

They don't think of him as a very impressive figure.

Actually, I think they underestimated him a bit.

He's got some very senior commanders with him,

he has a lot of money and a lot of equipment.

As soon as he disembarks,

Philip inspects the camp and the state of the ramparts.

After almost two years of siege,

he's dismayed by what he sees.

He's very frustrated that the Crusaders have not been able

to take the City of Acre yet.

He lands and almost demands from them,

sort of, "What have you been doing in all this time?"

On the 30th of May,

Philip summons his barons to his tent.

He has determined that he, the King of France,

will bring down the city.

And for that, he has a plan.

They must focus all their efforts

on one strategic point of the ramparts,

the Accursed Tower.

It's located at the northeast corner of the city,

and offers its defenders an angle of fire of 270 degrees.

Its nickname was well-deserved,

from the Crusaders point of view.

This was by accounts,

a very large and a very strong tower,

and so it would have dominated

the landward defenses of the city.

By focusing on the Accursed Tower,

I think Philip was

not only trying to take the hardest part of the city,

in terms of its fortifications,

but I think that he realized that if

that salient were to be captured,

it was just very quickly, a matter of time,

before the rest of the city would fall along with it.

To destroy it,

Philip relies on a tried-and-trusted technique.

The other major part of siege technology

is mining, digging under the walls.

And you get an object called a cat,

which is a big wheeled screen

that your men can push up to the walls.

And then, while that's protecting you from people

raining down stones and molten liquid on your head,

you're trying to dig under the walls.

And while you're pulling out that material,

you prop up the wall above using wooden posts.

Those are then set on fire,

and these burnout

the posts that are holding up the wall above.

With nothing to support them, the wall comes crashing down.

This is the most effective method

of destroying a wall throughout the Medieval Period.

A whole section of the tower collapses

in a deafening din.

Immediately, the French launch their attack.

The problem is that as the wall collapsed,

it seemed to have left a great mound of stones.

So it's not like you can just walk into the city unopposed,

you have to climb up these rocks

and you have to get over them into the city.

And those rocks, as soon as the dust cleared,

are going to be heavily defended of course, by the Muslims.

And they managed to kill enough of them,

that the French hesitate.

The Crusaders failed to take the breach,

but for the first time,

the city's defenses have been weakened.

Three days later, King Richard the Lionheart himself,

arrives at the Crusader camp.

He's greeted by the sound of trumpets and a cheering crowd.

He's a flamboyant ostentatious character,

very much given to public display.

When he arrives in places, he wants a great fanfare.

He's all very ceremonial, very much about himself.

He's a man of great, great ego.

He's also a dashing warrior,

as a great strategist, as a chivalric knight.

He takes unprecedented risks in war.

When he was very young, barely 15,

he took a castle in the Duchy of Aquitaine,

which everyone thought was impregnable.

And so, the arrival of Richard in Acre

is a real game-changer.

He brings thousands of men with him,

an awful lot of supplies and equipment.

The Muslims are very, very worried.

"Their hearts were filled with dread," as one writer wrote.

Just like his French counterpart,

Richard studies the battlefield,

and especially how he can regain control

of the operations from Philip.

The two men are supposedly friends,

but in reality, are extremely competitive.

There's a fierce rivalry between the two.

Phillip had promised these knights

the wage of three gold bezants every month,

if they would fight in service of him at Acre.

Richard the Lionheart hears about this

and he ups the wage.

He goes to those knights and says,

"If you serve me, Philip is paying you three,

I will pay you four."

And so, they will come and join Richard's services instead,

and that's taken as a personal insult by Philip Augustus.

Richard doesn't stop there.

He wants to be certain of victory,

so he's brought his own war machines.

Having these impressive war machines

is a sign of power.

It's much admired to have the brightest,

the biggest, and the strongest.

This is as much an effort to demonstrate your prowess

as it is an effort to actually build effective siege engines

that are gonna help take this city.

This is a case of guys

wanting to show off their sports cars.

In this arms race,

Richard has a really bright and shiny new war machine.

A jewel of technology for its time, the trebuchet.

This is the period when we have the first evidence

for counterweight trebuchets though,

so those that are powered by a large, heavy counterpoise,

making use of gravity rather than pullers.

The potential with these engines is that they can throw

much larger and heavier projectiles.

And when Richard shows up,

he also takes what are identified as river stones.

My belief here is that these are

particularly hard stones from Sicily

that are going to be used with particular effect

against the very soft sandstone

that the walls of Acre are made of.

Starting on the 14th of June,

the English King unleashes his terrible machines

on the walls of Acre,

and they soon start to have their effect.

A whole section of the parapet collapses.

Saladin knows now, that the surrender of the city

is only a matter of days away.

He decides to go for broke.

After hesitating for two years,

he finally orders his men to storm the Christian camp.

In early July, Saladin tries to intensify the pressure

on the Crusader camp.

He leads from the front,

he's taking his men right up to the ditch

that protects the Crusaders,

and wants to fill it in so he can then move across.

But, his people won't come with him.

This is a really shocking moment.

The hero of Islam,

the man who has recovered Jerusalem for his people,

is just not getting the support, the reaction that he needs.

A real sign that morale has plummeted in the Muslim camp.

On July 11th,

the Accursed Tower,

subjected to intense bombardment and incessant undermining,

finally collapses completely.

For one last time, the Crusaders launch an attack.

The Crusaders are able to climb over the rubble

through the dust,

and it looks like they're about to break into the city.

There's a makeshift defense, it's established.

Once again,

the Muslims defend the breach in Acre's walls,

but now they know defeat is inevitable.

653rd day of the siege.

At the end of almost two years of fighting,

the Amirs of the city negotiate a surrender

with Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus.

They don't even notify Saladin.

And when, on the morning of the 12th of July,

somebody comes out of the city and informs him,

he's of course, shocked, angered, and horrified.

And within a couple of hours,

Christian banners appear on the walls

and the towers of the city.

A huge cheer comes up from the Crusader ranks.

Acre has fallen.

The Crusaders enter the city in triumph.

It's garrison is now held hostage.

They wait in anguish for their Sultan's response.

Tradition dictates an exchange of prisoners

and that the defeated have a price to pay.

Saladin is supposed to pay

an extraordinary sum of money to the Crusaders

in exchange for the release of the garrison.

200,000 dinars is an awful lot of money to get together,

and Saladin has spent a lot of money.

He struggles to gather that,

and it starts to infuriate Richard,

Richard the Strategist,

Richard the General.

He thinks Saladin is playing for time.

On the 20th of August,

Richard the Lionheart

gathers the 2,600 to 3,000 men of the garrison

in front of the walls of the city

and relentlessly, one after the other, they're executed.

Richard's execution of the Acre garrison

is easily the most controversial moment of the entire siege,

and probably one of the most controversial moments

during the entire period of the crusades.

Richard the Lionheart

has the attitude of the newcomer to the region

who simply acts on impulse,

who has little understanding of the local situation,

and who commits a huge blunder

that destroys any possibility of negotiation.

Now, it's all out and perpetual war

until the destruction of one of the parties.

In this case, it will be the Christian party.

After the fall of Acre,

Philip Augustus decides to return to his kingdom

to the great dismay of the Crusaders.

Richard the Lionheart and his army head for Jerusalem.

But with the Muslim's enmity hardened

by the slaughter of the garrison at Acre,

this time, the king fails to bring down the city.

Guy de Lusignan then loses what remains of his kingdom

to Conrad de Montferrat,

but the latter is assassinated one year later.

Henri of Champagne becomes the new king

of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

With the Holy City under Muslim control,

Acre would then become the new heart

of the Kingdom of Eastern Christianity

before falling a century later,

back into the hands of the Muslims.