Reconstruction of Acre
mid-Thirteenth Century
The naval engagement which took
place off Acre on or about 25 June 1258 clearly illustrates an indisputable
maxim endemic to all warfare: battles are usually complicated affairs in which
the outcome is often determined by factors other than numerical superiority.
When the Genoese admiral Rosso della Turca arrived at Tyre in the spring of
1258 he had with him his original complement of twenty-five galleys and four
navi, plus eight galleys that the commune had hastily added at the last moment
when it learned that Venice had sent reinforcements of its own to Oltremare.
Waiting for him in the harbour were enough remaining Genoese galleys to give
him a total of fifty. In the meanwhile La Serenissima had sent Andrea Zeno with
another thirteen galleys, followed by Lorenzo Barozzi with about ten more.
Three additional Venetian galleys came into Acre from Crete, giving Admiral
Lorenzo Tiepolo a fleet of about forty galleys, four large navi and perhaps ten
smaller vessels. So when the Genoese flotilla showed up outside Acre’s
breakwater in battle formation in late June, it appeared to enjoy a modest
numerical advantage. But, of course, that was not the whole story.
First of all, it seems the Genoese
crews were deficient in quality and perhaps even quantity. The Annales
Ianuenses indicated that Rosso della Turca’s fleet was hurriedly scraped
together only after the republic’s leaders had heard that Venice had already
dispatched naval reinforcements to Oltremare. This forced them to enlist
‘Lombards as soldiers [sailors], men who knew nothing of the sea’. In fact, the
last eight Genoese galleys were launched ‘sine munitione perfecta’ (‘without
being fully armed’ – meaning without a complete crew complement), ‘since in
Oltremare they lacked galleys more than men’. The obvious implication is that
Della Turca was expected to flesh out his crews with inexperienced Genoese
colonists upon his arrival in the Latin Kingdom with little or no time to train
them. It was a recipe for disaster – fully preparing a green crew for battle
would have taken several weeks, if not months.
Furthermore, the Venetians had a
vastly superior manpower pool from which to draw. It turns out that the Genoese
were singularly unpopular in the Latin Kingdom. The Pisans, the Provençals, the
Templars, the Teutonic Knights, most of the inhabitants of Acre and the
overwhelming majority of the kingdom’s nobility all lined up behind the
Venetians, while the Genoese could comfortably count on the support of only the
Hospitallers and Philip of Montfort, the lord of Tyre. This was, in part,
because the Genoese navigated the convoluted currents of Palestine’s politics
rather poorly. In February 1258 the very powerful prince of Antioch, Bohemond
VI, brought with him to Acre his sister, Queen Plaisance of Cyprus, along with
her young son Hugh II, so that they could bid the barony to pay homage to the
child ‘as the heir and lord of the kingdom of Jerusalem’. Almost all, including
the Venetians and Pisans, agreed, but the Genoese, backed by their Hospitaller
allies, refused. As a result, ‘the queen [Plaisance], on the advice of her
brother the prince [Bohemond VI],’ recounted the ‘Templar of Tyre’, ‘had all
the men of the lordship move to the aid – and into the pay – of the Pisans and
the Venetians, against the Genoese, strictly prohibiting them from taking pay
with the Genoese’. Bohemond even went so far as to hire ‘800 French troops’ at
his own expense ‘to harass’ the Hospitallers and Genoese.
More fundamentally, the Genoese in
Oltremare had apparently acquired the reputation of ‘not working and playing
well with others’, earning the enmity of almost everyone. Thus when the
Venetians and Pisans attempted to recruit others to their cause at the handsome
rate of ‘ten saracenate bezants for the day’, there was no shortage of takers.
‘As a result,’ reported the ‘Templar of Tyre’, ‘they had plenty of men, and
they boarded their galleys (forty in number), and equipped other barques,
parescalmes and panfiles [various smaller vessels] (of which there were more
than seventy), each of which had crossbowmen on board who did the Genoese a
great deal of damage and harm.’ In an era when missile exchanges and
hand-to-hand combat on the decks of engaged vessels were decisive in maritime
warfare, a surfeit of so-called supersalienti (marines) was a distinct
advantage.
Lastly there was the question of
leadership. The supervision of the Genoese fleet was manifestly wanting. The
commune had placed Rosso della Turca in overall command of the armada, but,
according to the Genoese annals, had sent with him his son Mirialdo, ‘a staunch
and upright man, so that in him, even more than in the father, faith was
placed, on account of the old age of the parent’. Clearly, the commune had
concerns about the elder Della Turca’s continued vigour. He had previously been
Capitano del Popolo and had been mentioned in the Genoese annals as early as
1214 (forty-four years earlier), meaning he was probably in his late sixties or
early seventies. Regrettably, Mirialdo died unexpectedly of unspecified natural
causes a few days after the fleet reached Tyre. Thus when Rosso della Turca
appeared before Acre with his armada that awful summer morning in June, he was
not only still recovering from the rigours of the voyage from Genoa at an advanced
age, but was also grieving over the loss of his son. He must have felt very old
indeed.
The basic plan of the Genoese and
their allies was sound. While the Genoese fleet sailed south from Tyre, Philip
of Montfort marched overland with eighty horsemen and thirty archers to a place
called La Vigne-Neuve, which must have been close enough to Acre to view the
oncoming naval engagement. He was to be met there by Brother William of
Châteauneuf, Master of the Hospitallers, with as many of his knights and Turcopoles
as he could muster. Once Rosso della Turca had drawn out the Venetian fleet and
destroyed it, Montfort and Châteauneuf were to penetrate the city through the
Hospitaller compound and assist their comrades in the Genoese quarter ‘seize
the two quarters of the Pisans and of the Venetians’.153 The two bands of
confederates did, in fact, join up at La Vigne-Neuve, but what they saw happen
out at sea was not what they had anticipated.
When the Genoese fleet first
appeared offshore, the Venetians and Pisans hesitated ‘for fear that the
Genoese on land would attack them, and that if they boarded their galleys and
the Genoese who were at sea landed, they would lose everything’. They
ultimately resolved the quandary by prevailing upon Brother Thomas Bérard,
Master of the Templars, to guard their enclaves with his mounted brethren and
Turcopoles. This accomplished, the Venetians and their allies boarded their
vessels and rowed out to confront their Ligurian adversaries. It was then that
the best opportunity for a Genoese victory occurred. A ‘contrary wind’
separated thirteen of the Venetian vessels from the rest as they emerged from
the narrow mouth of the harbour.
If Rosso della Turca had
positioned his fleet near the point of egress, he would have overwhelmed the
divided enemy fleet as surely as his counterpart, Lorenzo Tiepolo, had done to
Pasquetto Mallone’s flotilla at Tyre the year before. Instead of attacking,
however, Della Turca absurdly proceeded to ‘prandere’ – that is, ‘to take the
midday meal’. And, according to the Annales Ianuenses, he continued to do so
‘between Nones and Vespers’ – in other words, from about three in the afternoon
to sunset. This gave the Venetian admiral Lorenzo Tiepolo plenty of time to
safely egress his entire fleet and arrange it into battle formation with the
wind at his back. The consequences for the Genoese fleet during the subsequent
battle were nothing short of cataclysmic. Twenty-four of the fifty Genoese
galleys were captured and 1,700 of their mariners were either killed or taken
prisoner.
Exasperated, Philip of Montfort
returned to Tyre. William Châteauneuf, the distraught Master of the
Hospitallers, remained in Acre but perished of an un-disclosed illness within
months afterwards. The consequences for the Genoese colonists of Acre were,
perhaps, the most grievous. ‘When the Genoese, who were holding their quarter
and who had defended it for so long and suffered so much and endured such
shortages that an egg could hardly be found for a wounded man to eat, saw that
their galleys had been defeated,’ wrote the ‘Templar of Tyre’, ‘they abandoned
their quarter and took refuge in the Hospital.’ They eventually made their way
up to Tyre, which then became the main Genoese entrepot in the Latin Levant. As
for the Pisans and Venetians, they dismantled every edifice in the Genoese
quarter, including the great fortified tower. Lorenzo Tiepolo personally
transported the square pillars from the tower’s base back to Venice, where they
stand to this day outside the baptistery of St Mark’s Basilica.
