Following the decisive battle of Hattin in 1187, Sultan Saladin went on to conquer Jerusalem and most other Christian kingdoms, including coastal Acre.  Elated by his success, he vowed not only to eliminate all Crusaders from the Holy Land, but to invade Europe and “pursue the Franks there, so as to free the earth of anyone who does not believe in Allah, or die in the attempt.”

Before long, however, and due to its strategic location, Acre became the rallying point for the remaining Crusaders.  If only they could reclaim it, they could reconsolidate their power base and spread out again, including to Jerusalem. So they laid it to siege in the summer of 1189.  Famine, plague, and pestilence harried the Crusaders and countless thousands died while the Muslims continued to hold out in Acre.

The mood changed in the summer of 1191, when Philip II of France and especially Richard I of England—the Lionheart, whom most Crusaders looked to as the natural leader—arrived with their men to aid in the siege. 

Richard immediately ordered the construction of more war moveable towers; more ditches around Acre were filled, thereby allowing these new engines of war to encroach upon and bombard the city; and defensive trenches were dug around the Crusaders’ camp, to prevent sorties from Saladin’s marauding troops.

Soon all the engines of war rained down death dealing destruction. Massive boulders—some aflame and setting anything inside Acre not built of stone ablaze—rocked the city.  After the battle of Hattin, Saladin had ordered the ritual massacre of the military orders of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers. Now their brothers-in-arms made their presence felt: “the Templars’ stonethrower wreaked impressive devastation,” wrote a contemporary, “while the Hospitallers’ also never ceased hurling, to the terror of the Turks.”