III.

CHAP. they might exercise towards their invaders, the provocation they had received was unexampled. The treachery and shameful conduct of the Christians, during their wars in the Holy Land, have seldom been surpassed. Every treaty was violated; and the most dishonourable practices were said to be justified by the interests of religion. The example offered by the Saracens was of a very different description. What a noble instance of integrity, and faithful observance of promise was that which the victorious Omar afforded at the conquest of Jerusalem! Wishing for a place where he might perform his devotions, he refused the offer of the Temple of the Resurrection made to him by the Patriarch; lest his followers might take it from the Christians, contrary to the treaty, and convert it into a mosque'. During the Crusades, for nearly two centuries, Acre was the principal theatre of the holy war; and it had been long memorable, on account of perfidies committed there by men who styled themselves its Heroes. The history of their enormities we derive from their own historians nor is it possible to imagine what the tale would be, if an Arabic writer were presented to us with the Moslem records of those

(1) Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol. 1, p. 226. Camb. 1757.

times. After a most solemn covenant of truce,
guarantied, on the part of the Christians, by
every consecrated pledge of honour and of
religion, they massacred, in one day, nineteen
of the principal Saracen merchants, who, upon
the faith of the treaty, resorted to Acre for
commercial purposes3.
And this, although it
led to the downfall of the place, was but a
specimen of transactions that had passed upon
many a former occasion.
Fuller, describing

(2) A Manuscript, which the author brought to England, of "Sheikabbeddin's History of the Reigns of Noureddin and Salaheddin," commonly called Saladine, now deposited in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, might possibly afford information of this nature.

(3) Marin. Sanut. lib. iii. Pars xii. c. 21.

(4) Sultan Serapha, indignant at this outrage, laid siege to Acre, with an army of 160,000 infantry, and 60,000 cavalry, and took the city A.D. 1291. This event took place upon the fifth of April, during so great a tempest, that the fugitives from the garrison, unable to reach the ships in the bay, perished in the waves. The spirited description of the confusion and slaughter that ensued upon the capture of the city, together with the moral reflections of the writer, as preserved in the "Gesta Dei per Francos," (Hanov. 1611.) are well worthy of notice. 'Undique erat tremor, et pavor et gemitus mortis. Soldanus quoque ad quatuor partes civitatis fecit ignes accendi, ut ferro, et igne consumeret universa. Nunc luit peccata, sed non abluit civitas scelerata, gratiis divinis ingrata. Ad ipsam confluebant Reges et Principes terræ ; ad ipsam mittebant succursum tributarie cunctæ partes Occiduæ ; et nunc contra eam pugnant omnia elementa. Terra enim ejus sanguinem devorat quæ Christiano sanguine tota madescit; mare absorbet populum; ædificia consumit ignis: aër fumo et caligine tenebratur.” Secret. Fidel. Cruc. lib. iii. Pars xii. cap. 21.

Marin. Sanut.

Fuller thus quaintly

"And

(5) Historie of the Holy Warre, Camb. 1651. describes the preparations made in Acre to sustain the siege, now Ptolemais being to wrestle her last fall, stripped herself of all

cumbersome

CHAP.

III.

CHAP.
III.

the state of the garrison previous to its last siege, gives us the following animated picture of its condition. "In it," says he1, "were some of all countreys; so that he who had lost his nation might find it here. Most of them had several courts to decide their causes in; and the plentie of judges caused the scarcitie of justice, malefactors appealing to a triall in the courts of their own countrey. It was sufficient innocencie for any offender in the Venetian court, that he was a Venetian. Personal acts were entituled nationall, and made the cause of the countrey. Outrages were everywhere practised, nowhere punished." If, upon the capture of the city, every building belonging to the Christians had been levelled with the earth, it is not more than might be expected in this enlightened age, from the retributive spirit of a victorious army, whose feelings had been similarly outraged. Fuller indeed asserts, that the conquerors, upon that occasion, "evened all to the ground, and (lest the Christians should ever after land here) demolished all buildings." But the same author, upon the testimony of Sandys, afterwards

cumbersome clothes: women, children, aged persons, weak folks, (all such hindering help, and mouthes without arms) were sent away, and twelve thousand remained, conceived competent to make good the place." Book IV. c. 33.

(1) Historie of the Holy Warre, B. IV. c. 32.

CHAP.

III.

insinuates his own doubt as to the matter of fact. "Some say," observes Fuller, speaking of the conduct of the Sultan, "he ploughed the ground whereon the citie stood, and sowed it with corn: but an eye-witnesse affirmeth that there remain magnificent ruines." The present view of Acre vouches for the accuracy of Sandys. The remains Remains of a very considerable edifice exhibit a conspi- of antient cuous appearance among the buildings upon the left of the Mosque towards the north side of the city. In this structure, the style of architecture, is of the kind we call Gothic. Perhaps it has on that account borne, among our countrymen3, the appellation of " King Richard's Palace;" although, in the period to which the tradition refers, the English were hardly capable of erecting palaces, or any other buildings of equal magnificence. Some pointed arches, and a part of the cornice, are all that now remain, to attest the former greatness of the superstructure. The cornice, ornamented with enormous stone busts, exhibiting a series of hideous distorted countenances, whose features are in no

(2) Sandys, p. 204. London, 1637.

(3)" There are," says Sandys, "the ruines of a Palace which yet doth acknowledge King Richard for the founder: confirmed likewise by the passant Lyon." This last observation may refer the origin of the building to the Genoese, who assisted Baldwin in the capture of Acre, A.D. 1104, and had “buildings and other immunities assigned them ;" the lion being a symbol of Genoa.

III.

CHAP. instances alike, may either have served as allusions to the decapitation of St. John, or were intended for a representation of the heads of Saracens, suspended as trophies upon the walls'. But there are other ruins in Acre, an account of which was published in the middle of the seventeenth century, by a French traveller. From his work it appears, that many edifices escaped the ravages of the Saracens, far surpassing all that Sandys has described, or Fuller believed to have existed: a reference to it will be here necessary, as many of the remains therein mentioned escaped the observation of our party, notwithstanding a very diligent inquiry after the antiquities of the place; and nothing can be more lamentably deficient than the accounts given of Acre by the different travellers who have visited this part of the

(1) Every person who has visited Roman Catholic countries knows that the representation of St. John's decollation are among the common ornaments of the Latin, as well as of the Greek and Armenian churches. But it is said, on the authority of William of Tyre, (lib. xviii. c. 5.) that St. John the Almsgiver, and not St. John the Baptist, was the patron of the Knights Hospitallers. Colonel Squire, who afterwards visited Acre in company with Mr. W. Hamilton and Major Leake of the artillery, describes this building, in his Journal, as "the beautiful remnant of a Gothic church, consisting of a high wall, with three Gothic arched windows, ornamented above with a rich frieze, and a line of human heads well sculptured and in good preservation."

(2) Voyage de la Terre Sainte, fait l'an 1652, par M. I. Doubdan. Paris, 1657.