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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 Mahometan records of those times. After a most solemn covenant of truce, guaranteed, on the part of the Christians, by every consecrated pledge of honour and religion, they massacred, in one day, nineteen of the principal Saracen merchants; who, upon the faith of the treaty, resorted to Acre 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 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 its author, 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 tributariæ 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." Marin. Sanut. Secret. Fidel. Cruc. lib. iii. Pars xii. cap. 21.

(5) Historie of the Holy Warre, Camb. 1651. Fuller thus quaintly describes the preparations made in Acre to sustain the siege. "And now Ptolemaïs being to wrestle her last fall, stripped herself of all 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. 3 с

VOL. II.

CHAP. XII.,

CHAP. XII.

Remains

of Antient Building.

describing the state of the garrison previous to its last siege, gives us the following animated picture of its condition: "In it," says he', "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, malefactours 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 have 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 insinuates his own doubt as to the matter of fact. "Some say," observes Fuller, speaking of the conduct of the Sultan," he plowed 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 of a very considerable edifice exhibit a conspicuous appearance

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

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

among

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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 countrymen1, 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. Two lofty arches, and 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 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'; whereby it will appear, 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 this work will be here necessary, as many of the remains there mentioned escaped the observation of our

party,

(3) See the engraved View of Acre, taken from a Drawing made by the Author upon the deck of the Romulus frigate.

(4) "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,

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

CHAP. XII.

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