Джеймс Миченер - The Source

When news of the massacre reached Cairo the Mamelukes refused even to discuss resumption of the truce; ambassadors sent from Acre with apologies were allowed to die in prison. Any possible reason for allowing Christians to remain in the Holy Land had been surrendered in the massacre, and St. Jean d’Acre must be finally eliminated. When this fiat reached the city the knights knew that barring a miracle their days in the Holy Land were ended. “Oh, God,” prayed the surviving priests, “why did those fateful ships not sink in the harbor before leaving Italy?” And all inside the walls made preparation for the final tragedy.

Count Volkmar, nursing a cut left arm which one of the new Crusaders had given him as he rescued Muzaffar, summoned his men and prepared for the doleful journey home, but before he left he felt that he must say good-bye to the tall Circassian girl, so he climbed the stairs of the Pisan caravanserai, but found there that the Italians had come upon this lively Christian as she wore a Circassian robe and had of course slaughtered her. Gravely he bowed to the other girls, then walked to the castle, where from the king’s general he obtained a basket of pigeons which he carried with him as he went to SS. Peter and Andrew for his final prayers. As the bells of the city pealed their litanies he led his men out through the walls of Acre, that cherished city, that strange abomination, and each man suspected that he would not again visit those walls, those gleaming turrets that so captivated the imagination.

At Ma Coeur, Volkmar and his knights launched a day-and-night activity. All peasants living outside the walls were ordered to make ready to move inside and to bring their beasts, and when this was done Volkmar told them, “If any are afraid, you may leave now.” A few Muslims headed south to join the Mamelukes; but where could the Christians go, even if they so desired?

The knights were perplexed when Volkmar paid considerable attention to brushwood, but without discovering his purpose they humored his whim and directed peasants to lug large piles of the brush inside the castle walls. Other men were let down on ropes to check the huge cisterns, thirty and forty feet deep, and they reported that thanks to the secret well, the castle had enough water to serve two thousand people for two years, should the siege last so long. Comparable supplies of food were also in storage: fruits, nuts, dried fish and meat, chickens, some pigs whose very shadows alarmed the Muslims, and immense stores of grain. Few castles in the Holy Land over the past two hundred years had escaped sieges, and some had held out for thirty or forty months unassailable behind their walls. But in those happier days there had always been the assurance that sooner or later relief would come from Antioch or Cyprus. But this time where would the rescuers be?

When supplies were checked Volkmar and his knights inspected the lines of defense. The outer wall of the town no longer seemed so stout as when Gunter of Cologne had built it two centuries before, but it was in good repair and was protected by the glacis; if properly defended this wall could frustrate an enemy for five or six days. The narrow alleys of the town also presented opportunities for defense, and the mosque and the three Christian churches would provide strong rallying points: indeed, the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene could be converted into a minor fortress which ought to hold for several weeks. The deep moat protecting the castle wall would be hard to cross, while the wall itself was surely impregnable. Behind it rose the castle, a self-contained unit with its own ponderous walls well able to withstand an enemy for months. And all was in repair.

Satisfied on these points Count Volkmar next turned to the most difficult question facing him: what to do with his wife and son? He assembled his knights and said, “If there is one who would prefer sailing from Acre, perhaps to Germany …” The discussion had gone no further. The countess said that she had been born in the Holy Land, that her father had withstood seven sieges, and she four. And her son said, “At Saphet I heard what the Mameluke captain said and at the Horns of Hattin young Volkmar stood with his father, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Volkmar replied. He then asked, “Do any of the knights prefer Acre?” None did, and the waiting began.

On a stormy morning in late February, 1291, the man on the watch-tower announced, not loudly nor with excitement, “They are coming.”

Dispassionately the knights lined the battlements to inspect the Mamelukes as they rode easily up from the southern plains. There was no great dust, no shouting. The vast columns moved slowly, for they felt no excitement; when they finished with Ma Coeur they would proceed to Acre and one siege was pretty much like another: generals stayed in the rear and half-naked foot soldiers went up against the walls. Any Ma Coeur peasants who happened to be working outside the town moved quietly within, except a handful who set off across the fields to join the Mamelukes. No one tried to prevent them.

By noon the purposeful column was nearing the walls of the town, but no one on either side fired arrows or launched spears. The impressive thing was that the columns kept coming forward in staggering numbers. “There must be fifty thousand people down there,” one of the knights calculated. The figure was not unreasonable.

As soon as the horde was sighted, Volkmar went to the quiet room where he and Muzaffar had dined at the beginning of the truce, and he wrote to Acre:A Mameluke army of considerable size is now approaching from the south. It seems to be accompanied by so many siege engines that I cannot believe they are all intended for Ma Coeur, so I suppose you must expect them next. All here is well, and we shall withstand until we have been slain on the last battlements. We shall send you the customary signals, but we do not expect your few knights to ride to our defense. To do so would be folly. May God bless us both in these hours of trial, and may He send divine rescue from some quarter that we cannot now perceive.

He carried the message to one of the keeps, where it was tied by a silken thread to the leg of a pigeon, which, as soon as it was released, circled higher and higher above the castle until it established a reckoning, then sped for Acre.

All during the day the columns moved forward, the largest army Count Volkmar had ever seen, and at dusk his knights agreed that it must number well over a hundred thousand—while Ma Coeur had only some sixty knights and a thousand unarmed peasants. He posted his sentries, then went to bed and slept well.

For two days nothing happened, except that the Mamelukes sent their slaves fanning out across the countryside, chopping down all trees except olives, stripping the trunks and moving into separate depots both the resulting posts and the broken branches. At the same time the soldiers pushed up from the rear the great wooden engines of war, creaking noisily and moving slowly: the monstrous ballistas which could be cranked tight, then sprung to arch rocks of two hundred pounds into the castle compound; lighter sheitanis, the Satanic ones, for lighter loads; enormous swaying towers with retractable drawbridges which would be dropped across the walls of Ma Coeur; wooden bridges to throw over the moat; rams with bulbous iron heads to smash down gateways; ladders, scaling hooks, grapples and buckets for burning pitch; next, the most effective weapon of all, the mangonel, a rope-wound bow which required three men to operate and which, when sprung, released an arrow capable of crashing through the strongest shield; and finally, the most frightening, the slow-moving turtle creeping steadily forward as if it had a life of its own. In the days ahead the men on the battlements would come to know each of these weapons well, and already they held them in respect.