The Siege of Acre: The Last Battle of the Crusades

Summary

---

The Siege of Acre: The Last Battle of the Crusades

Dan Snow’s History Hit | 16 April 2026
Guest: Steve (historian, Crusades specialist)

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores the dramatic story of the Siege of Acre in 1291, marking the catastrophic end of the Crusader states in the Holy Land and the culmination of two centuries of conflict. Dan Snow and his guest, Steve, analyze the strategic, military, and human factors that made the siege the “end game” of the Crusades, resulting in a definitive shift in medieval history.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Final Act of the Crusades (00:44–04:16)

• Dan opens with a vivid depiction of the violence and desperation of the siege:
  “Catapults batter battlements. Flames of naphtha engulf screaming defenders… It is May 1291 and these are the besieged walls of Acre, the last great crusader stronghold in the Holy Land.” (00:44)
• Acre stands as the last major Crusader holdout after Muslims, specifically the Mamluks, reconquered nearly all Crusader territory.

2. Who Were the Mamluks? (05:03–09:36)

• Origins: Mamluks were professional slave-soldiers, recruited from as far away as the Turkic steppes and the Caucasus, raised as elite cavalry. Initially used to avoid risky local political alliances.
• “They were so professional, so good… There was a lot of truth behind the logic that if you get people who are devoted to that art and dislocated from their families, they devote themselves to it.” (06:09, Steve)
• Despite ethnic diversity, both Christian and Muslim societies at this time prioritized religious affiliation over ethnicity.
• The Mamluks overthrew their own masters and established a powerful, ruthlessly effective dynasty, even famously defeating the Mongols at Ain Jalut (1260).

3. Why Was Acre the Last Stand? (09:53–16:09)

• With Mongol threats abated and trade routes shifting north, Acre and remaining Crusader cities lost strategic and economic value.
• Acre’s Fortifications:
  “This is state of the art. This is like two aircraft carriers put together… a fabulous set of concentric walls.” (11:24, Steve)
• Defensive Weaknesses: Once-imposing, Acre’s defenses were now manned by only about 700 knights and 10–13,000 infantry—woefully insufficient given the task and enemy size.

4. Weakness and Disunity Among Crusaders (14:23–16:09)

• Crusader forces were fragmented along ethnic and political lines (Italians, Genoese, Venetians, etc.).
• Some factions, like the Genoese, declared neutrality to maintain commercial ties with Muslim powers:
  “Just before the siege started, [the Genoese] decided they didn’t want to join in … from a commercial perspective, it made sense.” (14:49, Steve)
• The nominal King of Jerusalem resided in Cyprus, further undermining leadership unity.

5. Overwhelming Mamluk Siege Preparation (16:15–20:05)

• Numbers: Estimates range up to half a million (exaggerated), but certainly tens of thousands of experienced, well-supplied soldiers, plus many volunteers.
• Professional logistics with months of supply planning.
• Crucial technological edge in artillery:
  “At the Siege of Tripoli … they’d used 17 of these big catapults… [at Acre] they had up to 70.” (17:58, Steve)

6. Siege Technology and Brutality of Warfare (20:45–23:21)

• How Catapults Really Worked:
  Rather than demolishing walls, “they were really about clearing the top of the walls rather than knocking them down … dominating the battlements.” (21:07, Steve)
• Mining: The decisive tactic—specialized teams from places like Aleppo and Khorasan physically undermined walls while catapults suppressed defenders.
• Notable Detail: Underground, defenders and besiegers engaged in savage, hand-to-hand combat as counter-mining efforts met below the walls.

7. The Fading Hope of Relief (26:05–29:12)

• No realistic expectation of reinforcements:
  “Europe is very divided. Everybody's got something better to do … it did kind of feel like the end of days.” (26:18–27:14, Steve)
• Crusader sorties targeted Mamluk artillery, but were repulsed easily and in small numbers.
• Sporadic seaborne reinforcements arrived but were negligible in scale.

8. The Assault and Collapse (29:12–36:32)

• Chronology of Disaster:
  • By mid-May, Mamluks concentrated bombards on two weak points: the Accursed Tower and the Gate of St. Anthony.
  • Mamluk miners and artillery simultaneously brought down outer walls and weakened inner ones.
  • Assault troops, using weapons like hand-thrown grenades filled with Greek fire, forced brutal close-quarter fighting.
  • Once breaches occurred, morale and order disintegrated; non-combatants fled to the port, and the wealthy had already begun slipping away.
  • “...it is game over. Once a huge army is broken in through the walls, you … it is game over.” (35:34, Steve)

Memorable Moment:

• The Death of the Templar Grand Master:
  “He gets killed by a javelin blow under his left armpit … Even then … he had somewhere between about 12 and 14 knights with him … counter-charging almost an infinite number of guys.” (34:53–35:29, Steve)

9. Aftermath and Legacy (36:32–39:27)

• “No quarter given”: Surrendered defenders were often killed or enslaved, treaties and safe conduct ignored after outbreaks of violence.
• “It's a very, very grim ending to a very grim siege, but it is so apocalyptic. It is a very definitive end to the Crusades.” (37:56, Steve)
• Systematic destruction: Mamluks destroyed Acre and other coastal settlements so no future Crusade could establish a foothold:
  “They made sure that the port was destroyed, the walls were taken down, the buildings were taken down… They deliberately created a wasteland.” (38:10, Steve)

---

Notable Quotes

• Dan: “This is total war. This is jihad. It is May 1291 and these are the besieged walls of Acre, the last great crusader stronghold in the Holy Land.” (00:59)
• Steve: “The Mamluks became this elite force in the Middle East of primarily cavalry. But the big difference between them and the Crusaders was … there were lots of them.” (06:09)
• Steve: “If Acre hadn't fallen in 1291, well, probably would have fallen in 1292. There’s that whole inevitability of it.” (27:14)
• Steve: “For a couple of days the hospital compounds and royal castle held out and then they surrendered under terms. But it looks like… the treaty wasn’t honored… It's a very, very grim ending to a very grim siege.” (36:32)
• Steve: “If you need a line in the sand, Siege of Acre is really it.” (37:56)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:44–04:16: Dramatic summary of the stakes and history leading up to the siege.
• 05:03–09:36: Deep dive on who the Mamluks were and why they were so formidable.
• 11:22–12:35: Acre’s fortifications, and what remained.
• 14:23–15:40: Internal disunity among Crusaders; Genoese neutrality.
• 16:15–20:05: Mamluk numbers, preparation, and overwhelming artillery.
• 20:45–23:21: How catapults and mining really won sieges—not by smashing walls, but through attrition, battlement clearing, and mining.
• 29:12–36:32: The collapse of Acre’s defense, desperate final fighting, flight, and massacres.
• 36:32–39:27: Aftermath—the razing of Acre, and why no Crusader holdout ever followed.

---

Tone & Narrative Highlights

• The conversation mixes vivid, cinematic description (“Greek fire … like something out of Game of Thrones”) with deep, scholarly context about Crusader and Mamluk societies.
• There’s a focus on the human realities and horrors of siege warfare—not just military technology but stress fractures in politics and morale.
• The tone often turns darkly ironic or wry in assessing Crusader failures and Mamluk ruthlessness (e.g., “votes of confidence when the king lives off the coast”).

---

Summary

This episode compellingly reconstructs the Siege of Acre as both a brutal physical struggle and a symbol of a world-historical turning point—the final, irreversible defeat of the Crusader dream in the Middle East. Through expert insight and gripping narrative, Dan Snow and Steve reveal the realities behind the myths: the professional brilliance of the Mamluks, the ethnic and political complexity of the Crusaders, the logistical and technological might that doomed Acre, and the reasons why this was truly the end of the Crusading era.

---

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Listen to this Acast show ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Snow]

It is the ultimate medieval siege.

Catapults batter battlements.

Flames of naphtha engulf screaming defenders. Walls are brought crashing down by miners

who fight savage hand to hand battles in underground tunnels.

There is no quarter given here. This is total war. This is jihad. It is May 1291 and these are the besieged walls of Acre, the last great crusader stronghold in the Holy Land. The forces of Al Ashraf Khalil, the Mamluk army commander Titan like a noose. The defenders Knights Templar knights Hospitaller alongside Teutonic knights. The they'll fight with a desperation of men who know there can be no surrender, no retreat. Men whose fate is martyrdom. This is not just a massive, closely contested siege. It is the end game of two centuries of conflict. It is the last battle for the

Holy Land, the last Crusade. Before we dive into this story, make sure you check out the first two episodes in our series on the complete

history of the Crusades and come back

here when you're done. Now let's get into it. Steve, great to have you on the podcast.

[Steve]

Lovely to be here.

[Dan Snow]

We have reached the grand finale of the Crusade. This is a big moment.

Not only is it the final, the

final moment of The Crusader states 100 years history, but it's also one of the great sieges of all time.

[Steve]

Yeah, this is a real culmination and I think there are many occasions when you could say, well, this siege was important, or that one was. But this one, you can't argue about it. This is the end of the Crusades.

[Dan Snow]

And also lots of sieges are sort of quite good and they break it off and go somewhere else or something. Everyone gets dysentery and goes home.

This is a proper siege, isn't it?

[Steve]

Very much so. This is no holds barred. It's the last big outing for the Crusaders. These are guys who haven't got anywhere else to go. These are people with their backs to the wall. On the one hand, from the, from the Crusader side, from the Mamluk side, the, these are the, this is the last kind of die hards of the infidels that are sort of like a little pimple on the, on the, on the backside of your empire.

[Dan Snow]

And you see all the techniques of that sort of classic medieval siege warfare that people be familiar with from movies, but this is, this is where you really see them in the historical record.

[Steve]

Absolutely. And the wonderful thing about this is that it really does act as a great case study for explaining how real siege warfare worked, not the Hollywood one. And it explains how things like catapults, you can really see catapults working in the way that they really did, rather than, you know, as you might think of them.

[Dan Snow]

Very much looking forward to hearing about it. Let's very quickly deal with the fact. There had been these Crusader states, there had been multiple Crusades, Christians heading out to the so called Holy Land, roughly speaking, bits of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, little teeny bits of Jordan, bits of Egypt.

[Steve]

That's.

[Dan Snow]

They've all, it's all been, it's all been conquered by Muslims, Reconquered, conquered by Muslims at this point.

[Steve]

Yes, indeed.

[Dan Snow]

Only one thing is left.

[Steve]

Yeah, basically there's a few, a few little seaside towns now there's a couple of big cities, Tyre and Acre, and a few castles like Sidon Atlet are still there.

[Dan Snow]

So. Right, right on the coast of Mediterranean.

[Steve]

Absolutely. This is not, this is supposedly what people would call the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, but that's way too grand. Basically, these are. You can't even ride down the road from one of these places to the other. These are just tiny little enclaves on the coastline of what is now Israel, Palestine. So everything is to play for here. All the settlers of the Crusades who haven't gone back to Europe are there. You know, these are people who, perhaps we think of them as being crusaders and foreigners, but in reality, you know, they, they will, many of them will have been there and their families for 200 years and they'll be a lot less foreign than say many of the Mamluks who are slaves from Turkic lands or the Caucasus.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, well, let's talk about the Mamluks, because they're the new superpower of the east, aren't they? Where have they, where have they come from? Who are they?

[Steve]

Yeah, so the Mamluks were effectively slave soldiers, as you can imagine, when you're in a very political situation and you're effectively running a family firm like many of these political entities were. What you want is people you can rely on because they've been slightly dislocated and they don't have family alliances. You know, these are people who you pay to do what you tell them to do. And if you think you're. If you're a normal kind of warlord, particularly say a Muslim warlord in this part of the world. World at this time, you're surrounded by your emirs who all, you know, they all have friends and family. Your cousins. Exactly. Who can you trust? So what you do is you end up with slaves who you train up as soldiers. They're far. You know, they could be a thousand miles away from their home. A lot of the Mamluks, slave soldiers were taken from the, you know, the Turkic steps or the Caucasus. So these are people who, in theory at least, have no other ties. So they can be tied to the people who pay them cash. In reality, of course, it's always more complicated, and it doesn't take that much time before people develop their own political alliances. But. But that is the theory of it. And the wonderful thing about the Mamluks was that they were so professional, so good. So there was a lot of truth behind the logic, you know, that if you get people who are devoted to that art and dislocated from their families, they devote themselves to that, you know, in the same way as, say, a Templar knight, you know, taken from his family and. And given just one job to do, which is, you know, learn how to charge properly. You know, is. Is elite. So the Mamluks became this elite force in the Middle east of primarily cavalry. But the big difference between them and the Crusaders was there were lots of them. There were tens of thousands of these guys, and they were superb and they were trained.

[Dan Snow]

And they could be from as far you mentioned. They could be from the steppe, the Asian steppe, they could be from Turkey. They could be from parts of Europe or somewhere.

[Steve]

Yeah, certainly. Yeah. Some eastern. Eastern parts of the eastern lands of Byzantium, really. I think one of the deep mythologies of the Crusades is that there's somehow a big kind of racist dimension to it, and it really couldn't be further from the truth. When you look at the documents of the Crusades, whether it's Europeans or locals, it's actually hard to tell what ethnicity people are because it's so unimportant. You know, most of the kings of Jerusalem were mixed race. Most of the guys on the ground were not really crusaders in the sense of somebody who's Just got off the boat from Donegal. It's like these are people who, you know, have been in the area for 200 years with seven or eight generations of Arab mothers and grandmothers. So although it might seem odd that these Mamluks are from different parts of the world, that is actually normative. People were much more obsessed with religion than they were with ethnicity, even though that's important to many people nowadays.

[Dan Snow]

And the Mamluks, so they begin as a slave army, but they take over and they establish their own empire. And so this is the Mamluks now as independent players.

[Steve]

Yeah, absolutely. That shows the fundamental flaw in the argument that these guys are not going to be interested in politics. Well, you know, duh, of course they are, because they're human beings. So you're absolutely right. Having defeated King Louis on crusade, the. The, the reward for the sultan who beat him was to be killed by his own Mamluks. And then the Mamluks took over, I mean, the most ruthless, ruthless way. I mean, it was very ferocious.

[Dan Snow]

Egypt and then took over much of what we now call the Middle East.

[Steve]

Absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

And we got to give it to Mamluks. I mean, they absolutely smoke the Mongols in battle, which is. There's a pretty short list of people that.

[Steve]

Oh, my word. Yes, absolutely. I mean, yeah, the Mongols are your. Your worst nightmare. You find in the run up to the Mongols meeting their defeat at 1260 in Anjalud, you know, you, you find Muslim chroniclers who are almost too scared to write about them. It is like Game of Thrones. When the Mongols approach, they. People are paralyzed. You know, these guys who were so remorseless, they, they're almost on unthinkable. So the idea that the Mamluks could face them and beat them was extraordinary. But it's a real testament to the Mamluks.

[Dan Snow]

You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We'll be back after this break. And so a decade or two later, having beaten. Beaten the Mongols. Yeah, they turn their attention on these little tiny pinpricks along the Mediterranean coast. So this is a, this is a big mismatch.

[Steve]

Yeah, it is. And actually, you know, just between us girls, I mean, I think the reason that those tiny little seaside states are still there is because everybody had something better to do. You know, the Mamluks had to worry about the Mongols. The Mamluks always had their own internal politics. There was, there was an economic benefit from having these ports, you know, and having a kind of an entrepreneurial route back to Europe. It facilitated trade up to a point, but I think by the mid 13th century, the trade routes were heading a bit north. As, as you know, we're talking about the end of the Silk Road. So you have to have a path for those goods to, to go on, either to Egypt or to Europe. And those paths were changing, so the kind of literal of, of, of Palestine was becoming less important. So what, what are you left with? You've got some kind of irritating infidels sticking out in a place that's of increasing irrelevance in terms of trade. You've got the Mongols, you've, you've, you've cleared your agenda. You know, your to do list has got shorter and, and you've scrolled up. And what now is top of the to do list for the first time is get rid of those irritating Crusaders.

[Dan Snow]

Right, and what, what do those Crusader defenses look like? Let's take, we're talking about Acre in particular. I mean, it is, but it's been in Crusader hands since Richard the Lionheart, presumably.

[Steve]

Yes, indeed, yeah. It was in Muslim hands for a very short period after the Battle of Hattin in 1187, but for most of the last 200 years, it's, it's been in Christian hands.

[Dan Snow]

And what are those fortifications like?

[Steve]

Oh, my God, they're enormous. I mean, this is state of the art. This is like two aircraft carriers put together. I mean, it's, it's a fabulous set of concentric walls. So I don't know if you've ever heard the term concentric castle, but basically it means two layers of walls or a series of layers of walls. And the wonderful thing about that is it imposes huge costs on the, on the attacker, and it allows the defender to fire from over, from one wall to the other. It also means that people who want quick plunder, which is like most people really are almost certainly going to be disappointed, you know, because if you've got two layers of walls, you, you push your way through at huge cost, huge risk, and at the end of it, you're faced with, you find yourself in the middle.

[Dan Snow]

You've actually. That was only the start of a tent.

[Steve]

Yeah, absolutely. And then you've got a citadel. Beyond that, in an acre, you have a series of castles within these layers of walls. I mean, it's absolutely stunkingly wonderful. I've been there many times. What you see now is not what was there at the time, but you can, you really can get a sense of it. It's called Akko now. Wonderful. Place. And it's still a beautiful place.

[Dan Snow]

Right, so. And, and defenders. Have they got enough defenders manning those walls?

[Steve]

That is the perennial problem with the Crusades. Basically everybody. It's always the worst kind of an away match. You know, they're. They're far from home, they're literally thousands of miles from home. They're at the end of a very long supply line. They've got almost no land, so people can't support themselves. You can't get lots of settlers out there. So you find that on a good day, they're hugely outnumbered. And by this point, at 12:91, the guys are just embarrassingly outnumbered. So we don't know any of the exact numbers for what we're talking about, but we think all in there may have been about 700 knights and many thousands of infantry, so maybe 10 to 13,000 infantry, but it's not, it's not anywhere near enough. You know, this is the big city, many walls. It's very difficult to defend with that number of guys. And of course, what. The other part of the equation is how, how big are the besiegers and what kind of equipment they've got?

[Dan Snow]

Well, I was about to ask.

[Steve]

It's. The news isn't good, Dan.

[Dan Snow]

It's.

[Steve]

It's pretty rough out there. So, yeah, the Mamluks are a wonderful force. They're super focused and they are professional in a way that the Crusaders aren't. The Crusaders are good individual fighters and some of them, like the Templars and the Hospitallers, are, you know, highly trained. Yes.

[Dan Snow]

So you've got these, these groups of Knights. Knights Templar. People have heard of Knights Hospitaller. These are sort of monastic orders of warrior. Warrior monks.

[Steve]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

So they would train together, they'd live together, they would. They got funds and recruits sent over in Europe. But. Right, but they're, but they're used. They're not necessarily used to working all with each other.

[Steve]

Not at all, no. And actually, you know, they are elite, but they're tiny even, Even in that group, they're tiny in number. And the, the big problem, I think, apart from lack of manpower, is that the Christian defenders were so fragmented. If you think they. There were several. Part of the community were Italians and there were, you know, there were peasants, there were Genoese, there were Phoenicians. They all hated each other.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Steve]

The Gen, just before the siege started, decided that they didn't want to join in and they, they declared themselves to be neutral because they were planning on doing world trade with the Sultan. So, you know, from A commercial perspective, it made sense from a historical perspective or from, you know, from, from the Vatican's point of view, it looks, you know, this is a real stab in the back.

[Dan Snow]

Did they get, Sorry, just quickly, did they get away with that or did the other Christians just. So what, they just sat in their houses, put a big G on the door and just.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, we're all right. Don't. Just don't come in here. Yeah, no, I don't know how it worked in practice or, you know, I mean, if you're in the midst of a, you know, an assault, whether people stop and think, oh, it's a G there. But, but, yeah, but that's what they tried to do. So you had, you had all of that. Then you have also the fact that the, the king, who's actually based in Cyprus, which again, is quite telling.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, the King of Jerusalem.

[Steve]

Yes, exactly. You know, that's a real, you know, votes of confidence when, when the king lives off, off the coast because he knows how risky it all is, you know, so he's not very highly, he doesn't wield very much power. There are different communities, people barely on speaking terms with each other. Plus you've got tiny numbers of guys relatively, and very limited prospect of relief. So, you know, grim sticky wicket.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, sticky wicket. Not, not super attractive. And on. So on the other side, though, thousand, plenty of soldiers.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Highly trained.

[Steve]

Absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

And talk to me about their siege equipment.

[Steve]

Yeah, they were, well, they were a very, very accomplished bunch. So we're talking about huge numbers. I mean, the, the estimates are up to half a million, which is a gross exaggeration. But we do know that the, the Mamluks had tens of thousands of top quality cavalry. And then when you get that number of cavalry, you also get, you know, a much larger number of infantry. And there were huge numbers of volunteers because this was seen as the last big push for jihad. You know, there are a lot of guys who would just come and fight for free for, for the prospect of plunder and piety. Really, the two, you know, can live quite, quite happily together. They were also fabulous at logistics. So when, you know, for instance, when part of the army set off from Egypt, they'd had months of setting up, you know, base camps and ammunition dumps and supply dumps all the way up the Palestinian coast, you know, and the Crusaders wouldn't have had that luxury at all. You know, this was a really professional army fighting against a tiny number of squabbling, squabbling largely commercial interests at this point. The other super weapon they had was artillery. You know, they had siege engines, catapults that were to die for, and they were superb at it. They. They had. For instance, they had at the Siege of Tripoli, which had taken place just a few years earlier, I think only two years earlier, they. They'd use 17 of these big catapults, and they'd taken the city quite easily. When it came to the siege of Acre, they had up to 70.

[Dan Snow]

Whoa. Yeah.

[Steve]

70 of these. These huge engines. And each one was. I don't know what the equivalent would be. I mean, it would be like, you know, an aircraft carrier in a fleet. You know, these are big, big items. And they would basically be of two kinds. As a. There's a kind of a slightly smaller one called attraction catapult. This is very complicated area, so I'm simplifying overly here, but for our purposes, there's something called a traction catapult, which is the one, you know, you see in manuscripts, where you get the guys hanging off the edge of the catapult, usually quite precariously, and this is a dangerous job. And that would be an engine where the force behind it would be propelled by a team of men, you know, quite a lot of men pulling it down and then letting go at the right point in the. The rock or whatever goes a long way. But then obviously, you're limited by, you know, human muscle and how many men you can actually attach to it. The other kind is a counterweight catapult, which is where you get a kind of a box, like a triangular box at one end of it where you would have had men. And in that box you have super heavy things. So you have several tons worth of weights, you know, rocks, lead or whatever in this. In this counterweight. And that allows you to. To throw even bigger stones, bigger rocks. Further, they take longer to assemble. They're more difficult to maneuver, they're longer to reload. But if you're on the receiving end of that, you really do know it. So these are guys. They're really state of the art. I mean, the Crusaders have had their own artillery, and there's a couple in particular that did some damage. But, you know, there's really like one or two pieces of artillery on the Crusader side that you hear of, whereas on the Muslim side, it was where you're Talking up to 70, sourced from all over the Middle East.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. And it's a. This is a period where Edward, the first king of England, was off at the same time. Smashing the Scots with these big artillery, with these big trebuchet as well, wasn't he? Yeah, he was called the War Wolf, I think. And did the. The Mamluks had names they like the Victorious.

[Steve]

Furious. Furious, yeah, It's. It sounds like Napoleonic English Navy, doesn't it? But, yeah, brilliant. No, they was. They were really important pieces. I always grew up thinking that catapults smashed walls. You know, you watch a Hollywood film and you see the catapults working and the walls shatter. In reality, that's not how they work. And they. They're not capable of doing that, by and large, and they're not meant to do that. When I was a PhD student, I was wandering around Israel and I found myself at the huge castle of Al Suf, which Baibars had besieged in the 1260s.

[Dan Snow]

The Mamluk. The Mamluk, indeed.

[Steve]

Sorry, the Sultan, yes, absolutely. And because it was the 1980s and the archaeologists hadn't got there in. In huge numbers, there were still the. The catapult stones were still there and the rocks, you could see where they bounced off the wall. So these were huge, huge rocks. I hope they're all in museums now, but in the, the mid-80s, they were all just lying on the ground. But you could see that these walls had not been touched in any serious way. Even though these were great siege engines with. With huge, huge ammunition. And what a lot of recent research is showing what, what they were really about, and what they were really about was clearing the top of the walls rather than knocking them down. So it was about dominating the battlements. You took away the protection at the top, you made it very difficult for people to stand on the top. And the other thing that the. The Mamelukes had was they had these tens of thousands of superb archers. And it meant that for every crusader crossbowman who was brave enough to try and, you know, just crouch below, whatever little cover was left after the catapults, you know, was then for every one of him, there were going to be 20 guys shooting arrows at him, who was superb in their own right. So it was almost like a, you know, a suicide mission, standing up there, firing down, and that way you could clear the battlements. And the other real reason for having catapults is that by doing that you allow mining to take place. And mining, I think, is the very unglamorous, kind of boring part of siege warfare. But it's the mining that actually does it. The thing that knocks the wall down is a team of miners operating underneath and it's not like the Great Escape where they're sort of, you know, going through 150 yards. You actually want to get your miners right to the base of the wall.

[Dan Snow]

Saves them having to dig too much.

[Steve]

Absolutely. And the, and the, and the Mamluk armies were superb. They had really, in the same way as they had specialist artillery units, they had specialist mining units, there were particular parts of the world where these guys were, came from and they had a real heritage. So Aleppo produced fabulous miners and there were a thousand Aleppo miners at the siege. And Khorasan was also great, great source of miners. And they could, these, these lads could really just literally undermine a wall very quickly. So the combination of those kind of colossal catapults destroying battlements, which means that your miners can then go to work without those irritating crusaders firing at them with crossbows, you know, you're almost unstoppable at that point.

[Dan Snow]

You are consuming Dan Snow's history.

Hit more after the break.

Missed calls and slow follow ups are silent killers. It's the kind of thing that doesn't make the history books, but it probably should. Entire empires have fallen because of poor communication. And your business, it's no different. Every missed message is a missed opportunity. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelt Q U O. The business communications system built so you never miss a call. With Quo, your whole team works from one shared number. Calls, texts, everything visible in a single thread so nothing slips through the cracks and customers actually feel looked after. And it's not just smart, it's intelligent. Quo's AI logs calls, summarizes conversations and flags next steps so you're always one move ahead, even after hours. It's simple, streamlined and keeps your business responsive when it matters most. Money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com snow that's q u o.com snow this episode is brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts. Spring break isn't what it used to be. And honestly, that's a good thing. These days it's less about chaos and crowds and more about taking a real breather. A chance to explore somewhere new, revisit somewhere familiar, or just slow down for a few days without over planning it to death. That's why I like Best Western for spring travel. It's easy and perfect for the kind of getaway that actually leaves you refreshed. Whether it's a road trip or a quiet city. Stay it just works. And right now, they're making it even better. This spring, stay three nights and you'll get a $50 Best Western gift card. No fuss, no pressure, just a well earned break. That feels worth it. Life's a trip. Make the most of it. At Best Western, visit BestWestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

[Tristan Hughes]

Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History hit twice a week. Join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans. And visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from history hit.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Hey, prime members, you can listen to this show ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

[Dan Snow]

What hope did it, what hope, if any, did these crusaders have? They try and sort of keep the siege going till the winter and hope that they would have the attackers have to go home or perhaps reinforcements arrived from Europe or what. What was the plan?

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah, the, the, the plan is difficult to find a good plan. You know, basically Europe is very divided. Everybody's got something better to do.

[Dan Snow]

Edward the first is beating up the Scots, as we said.

[Steve]

Yeah, he's, he's actually Edward the First. I don't mean this from a partisan point of view. He's probably the most prominent crusader at the time. He's the only European monarch who's actually been on crusade at that point. He's, you know, it's not on his agenda. Everybody else is fighting everybody else. There's a lot of infighting and, you know, Sicilian vespers and, you know, all of that, that there's, there's always a diversion. I think the other aspect that people were probably too shy to talk about was throwing good money after bad. You know, it did kind of feel like the end of days. The Crusades were, you know, grinding to an end. If Acre hadn't fallen in 1291, well, probably would have fallen in 1292. You know, there's that, that whole inevitability of it.

[Dan Snow]

Edward I should have sent his son. Edward ii.

[Steve]

That would have, that would have really worried.

[Dan Snow]

Got rid of the use.

[Steve]

Khalil. But, but I think to your other point, re. So reinforcements weren't really coming. The, the main opportunity they had was time. You know, there were a lot of volunteers in the Mamluk army who couldn't stay there forever because however pious they were, however committed, they've, you know, girls still got to eat and the man looks themselves, you know, they. They're great soldiers. They don't want to hang around. You know, the latrines get full. All sorts of ghastiness happens. You know, as usual, disease kills more people than crossbow bolts. So holding up for time would be helpful, I think, trying to get to what you find is the Crusaders do two or three sorties at the beginning of the siege, and every time they aim at the artillery, so they aim at the catapults. They know exactly what the priority is. You know, the catapults are protecting the miners, the miners are destroying the city. So if they can get to the catapults, they have a chance. And they keep trying to get to the catapults, but the trouble is, every time they come out, you know, there are a couple hundred guys fighting a camp that's got 40, 50, 60,000 people in it. You know, they are pushing against, you know, a lead wall and they fail. They keep bouncing off. So they did their best. They did try to get to the catapults. They did try to get reinforcements, and occasionally ships would come through. The king sent, I think it was 40 ships, but they had 700 men. You know, in the scheme of things, you know, whenever reinforcements came through a. There weren't many, you know, reinforcement attempts. But when they did come through, you're talking hundreds rather than tens of thousands. It's almost just putting more men in to be killed. And there is a point where people who you're asking for help are saying, you know, I'm gonna need my soldiers. They're all gonna die if I send them to you.

[Dan Snow]

So the crisis is reached in mid May.

[Steve]

Indeed, indeed. The siege starts in April, at the beginning of April. That's. And the point is, you know, up to that point, mid April, the sorties that we've just been talking about take place. The catapults are doing their damage. The Crusaders have proved they can't get to the catapults. So there is just, you know, there's a couple of weeks of just unremitting, remorseless pain being delivered on the walls. So first of all, the outer walls, and then, you know, obviously, once you've done that, you can get through to the inner walls. There are particular problems because every castle has a weakness. And in the case of Acre, there were two key weaknesses, really. One is there's a. There was a salient, which. Which is where. Where there was a Tower called the Accursed Tower, with a couple of barbicans on the outer wall. And, you know, medieval guys are so blunt, you know, it's a great name, Accursed Tower, you know, you know, it's not going to end well. So that's one very, very weak point that's very exposed.

[Dan Snow]

It bends out and it can be attacked on all sides.

[Steve]

Absolutely. It's kind of Battle of the Bulge for, For siege warfare there. And you find there's the opposite of a bulge, but another vulnerable point, because Acre used to be a much smaller city and they built a fortified suburb around it. And so there's a wall, an internal wall, going around the line of the old city walls, and when that meets as a kind of the opposite of a salient, but it's a weakness between where the three walls meet and there's a gate there. Gates obviously, also a weakness, and it's called the gate of St. Anthony.

[Dan Snow]

So.

[Steve]

So you had these two weak points, and the Muslim army under Khalil had enough men to totally man the siege walls, so they could make sure that every part of the wall had to be manned. But they focused the best machines, best artillery on those two weak points and it really showed.

[Dan Snow]

So we can imagine that the Accursed Tower and Santi's Gate, a lot of the masonry has been smashed. Very difficult to defend. Does an assault go in? Do they try and take them by storm?

[Steve]

Yeah. So by mid May, everything is really rough. There are big moats, but they've been gradually filled outside these places.

[Dan Snow]

So the Muslim troops have filled in these moats.

[Steve]

They can walk across them? Yeah, yeah. So at that point, then, you know, the miners can get straight to it, you're ready, and you've got your assault troops ready to go in. So the, the Accursed Tower is. Is in the inner layer of walls, but on the outer layer of walls protecting it, there's. There's an outwork which is the Barbican and there's another tower called the King's Tower. And over in that, during that fortnight, they've been pounded to pieces. And you just get to a point where, where the Accursed Tower has to be abandoned just because, you know, there's. It's so vulnerable, it's just about to fall down. And the. The Crusaders have put a kind of wooden structure behind it to try and shore it up. But, you know, things are approaching an end game at that point. If you're relying on bits of wood to kind of man things, and eventually you Just get to the point. Similarly, on the St Anthony's Gate, where the walls in front of it were being knocked down, the towers were falling down around all of the outer, outer walls, the towers have gradually collapsed.

[Dan Snow]

And because they're being undermined.

[Steve]

They're being undermined and the battlements are being swept by these 70 catapults. And because the Mamluks have so many men, they're able to do continual artillery bombardments. You know, because you, you can imagine, particularly with the. The traction engines, it's very wearing. You know, guys cannot do this 24 hours a day, but if you've got teams of guys and they're all waiting to do it, you can just keep a continual bombardment and it just exhausts everybody. You know, the masonry is coming down, the defenders are exhausted and, and they're hugely outnumbered. And at that point, you know, you've got mining going on, counter mining as well, which we know happened, which is where your own miners, the Crusader miners, tried to bury themselves underneath and fight off the. The Mamluk miners. And actually, even that is not helpful ultimately, because then you're undermining your own walls to get to them and that. And that causes problems.

[Dan Snow]

But there would have been fierce little battles underground when the two.

[Steve]

Yeah, horrific. Yeah, it is, you know, sort of birdsong, but with even. Even more ghastliness because it's also hand to hand. Yeah, yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And so mid May, the. They have to fall back basically, from those outer positions. Do they like the gate?

[Steve]

Yeah. So you find it. It's. You only need one. One point of entry, really. And, and the, The Mamluk assault troops are just fabulous.

[Dan Snow]

They've.

[Steve]

They're armed with, effectively, hand grenades that are of liquid fire naphtha, so they can throw those and they can be thrown on catapults as well. So you've got this horrific thing where you get this combination of mining, artillery, archery, crossbows, and then it's Greek fire. It is like something out of Game of Thrones. And the. And the guys eventually break through on the accursed tower. And once you've broken in through there and you've got guys through the inner walls, then you kind of know it's it's all, you know, it's all over and people start running to the, to the port to try and get on the last few ships. People have actually been leaving. The rich, rich people have been leaving for the last couple of weeks, which is not great for morale, but it's equally. It's entirely rational.

[Dan Snow]

But, but Once they're through that inner

[Steve]

wall, then it's, it's just, it's sort of game over. Yeah, the Templars and the Hospitallers both do good work at this point. So the, the master of the Templars, William of Beaujeu, hastily puts on his armor and charges out with his guys towards St. Anthony's Gate to try and stop the flow of assault troops coming in. But because he's been rushing into doing it, he hasn't got his, his armor on properly. He gets killed by a javelin blow under his left armpit and he's, he's carried off dying. Even then, just to give you a sense of the numbers, he had somewhere between about 12 and 14 nights with him and that, you know, they're counter charging almost an infinite number of guys coming through. It is, it's just a matter of buying time at this point. The Hospitallers did great work as well. Their marshal was very famous in the chronicles for what he was doing, and they were doing almost suicidal charges. But it's, you know, it's, it's good to go out in a blaze of glory, but it doesn't actually win the battle. You know, once, once a huge army is broken in through the walls, you, it is game over. And at that point, people either fled or down to the port or they went into the separate compounds and castles that there were within, within Acre, you know, and the Hospitallers had one of those. There was a royal castle. There was a very powerful Templar castle as well. And possibly there was a Genoese bit where there was a G on the, on the doors and everybody was just given a nice couple of cupcakes instead.

[Dan Snow]

But that stage, you're just isolated. It's a matter of time. I mean, you can't hold out.

[Steve]

Absolutely. And you find for a couple of days the hospital compounds in the royal castle held out and then they surrendered under terms. But it looks like the people who surrendered were then killed. The men were killed and the women were enslaved. So the, the treaty wasn't honored. The Templars held, had to, had a big compound, very crowded, and they held out for quite a while, a few days. And there were peace negotiations going on. But then. And there were some Mamluk troops inserted inside the castle to try and organize the, the refugees leaving the castle. But then things got out of hand. Some of the Mamluk troops sort of raped and murdered some of the younger, younger guys in there and, you know, raping boys and girls. And at that point they were butchered. So then the Mamluks obviously react very badly to their own guys being killed and talks break down and the Templar compound is eventually rushed and the tower collapses and kills even more people. It's a very, very grim ending to a. A very grim siege, but it is so apocalyptic. It is, you know, a very definitive end to the Crusades. I know people still talk about the Crusades afterwards, but if you need a line in the sand, Siege of Acre is really it.

[Dan Snow]

That's effectively it, yeah. And so if you lose Acre, you can't really mount another Crusade because you haven't got a beachhead, you haven't got a port that you can. So that there would. There would be no tenth Crusade.

[Steve]

You're absolutely right. And in fact, the mammals were very clever. You know, the temptation must have been to capture the city, nice buildings, nice port, and then reuse it. And they didn't take that opportunity. What they did was just trashed it. They made sure that the port was destroyed, the walls were taken down, the buildings were taken down. Even the villages, Even the villages around, you know, the trees were cut down. They deliberately created a wasteland, because what they didn't want was some. Some bright spark in Europe to think, oh, I know, lads, you know, we can. We can go back to Acre. All we have to do is capture that city or this city, and we can start again. So what they did is, by and large, they just destroyed the coastal ports all the way up and down, so there wasn't anything to come back to, which. Which made the planning, you know, the people, like the Templars were planning to launch huge amphibious landings and recapture the Holy Land. And it's like there was just so unrealistic, you know, they hadn't been able to save the Holy Land, even with huge castles. So what chance did they have coming from a, you know, from nowhere, with no real basis? I mean, realistically, none. So effectively, the Mamluks very cleverly undermined the idea of any future crusade at the same time as snuffing out all the old Crusader settlements. So, yeah, full marks to them is a very definitive ending.

[Dan Snow]

Well, that is also the end of this podcast. In that case, got nothing more to talk about. The end of crusade. Steve, thank you very much for coming on.

[Steve]

Thank you, Dan. It's been a pleasure.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Listen to this Acast show ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Snow]

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history?

Sign up to History and watch the

world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Other Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.