ACRE. 103 
times". After a most solemn covenant of truce, chap. 
guarantied, on the part of the Christians, by ^ y ^ 
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 y4cre for 
commercial purposes ^ 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 Mamtscript, which the author brought to England, of " Sheik- 
abheddin's History of the Reigns of Noureddin and Sulaheddin ," eom- 
mouly called Saladine, now deposited in the Bodleian Library at 
Oxford, might possibly afford information of this nature. 
(3) Marin. Sunut. lib. iii. Pars xii. c.21. 
(4) Sultan Serupha, 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 pre- 
served in the " Gesta Dei per Francos," (Hanov. 161 1.) are well worthy 
of notice. *' Undique erat tremor, et favor, et gemitiis mortis. Soldaniis 
quoque ad quatuor partes civitalis fecit ignes accendi, ut ferro et igne 
consumei-et universa. Nunc luit peccata, sed non ahluit civitas scelerata, 
gratiis divinis ingruta. Ad ipsam conjiuebant lieges et Principes terrcE; 
ud ipsam, mittebant succursum tributarue cimctce partes Occiduce; et nunc 
contra earn pugnant omnia elementa. Terra enim ejus sanguinem devorat 
qu<e CJiristiano sanguine tola madescit ; mare ahsorbet populum ; cdijtcia 
consumit ignis ; aSr fumoet caligine tenebratur." Marin. Sanut. Secret. 
Fidel. Cruc. lib. iii. Pars xii. cap. 21. 
(5) Historic of the Holy TVarre, Camb. 1651. Fuller thus quaintly 
describes the preparations made in Acre to sustain the siege. " And 
now Ptolema'is being to wrestle her last fall, stripped herself of all 
^'()L. IV. 11 tumbtrsomv 
