On August 28, 1189, Guy commenced the siege of the strong maritime fortress of Ptolemais (St. Jean d’Acre).  A fleet from Pisa had already joined the Sicilian one; in October there arrived twelve thousand Danes and Friesians, and in November a number of Flemings, under the Count of Avesnes, French knights under the Bishop of Beauvais, and Thuringians, under their landgrave, Louis.  Saladin, roused from his inactivity by these events, hastened to the spot with his army, and in his turn surrounded the Christian camp, which lay in a wide semicircle round Ptolemais, and was defended by strong intrenchments within and without.  It formed an iron ring round the besieged town, which Saladin, spite of all his efforts, could not break through.  Each wing of the position rested upon the sea, and was thus certain of its supplies, and able to protect the landing of reinforcements, which continually arrived in constantly increasing numbers—­Italians, French, English and Germans, Normans, and Swedes.  “If on one day we killed ten,” said the Arabs, “on the next, a hundred more arrived fresh from the West.”

The fighting was incessant by land and by sea, against the town and against the Sultan’s camp.  Sometimes the Egyptian fleet drove the Christian ships far out to sea; and Saladin could then succor the garrison with provisions and fresh troops, till new Frankish squadrons again surrounded the harbor, and only a few intrepid divers could steal through between the hostile ships.  On land, too, now one side and now the other was in danger.  One day the Sultan scaled the Christian intrenchments, and advanced close to the walls of the city, before the Franks rallied sufficiently to drive him back by a desperate attack; but they soon took their revenge in a night sortie, when they attacked the Sultan in his very tent, and he narrowly escaped by rapid flight.  Against the town their progress was very slow, as the garrison, under an able and energetic commander, Bohaeddin, showed itself resolute and indefatigable.  One week passed after another, and the condition of the Franks became painfully complicated.  They could go neither backward nor forward, they could make no impression on the walls; nor could they re-embark in the face of an active enemy.  There was no choice but to conquer or die; so preparations were made for a long sojourn; wooden barracks, and for the princes even stone houses were built, and a new hostile town arose all around Ptolemais.  In spite of this the winter brought innumerable hardships.  In that small space more than a hundred thousand men were crowded together, with insufficient shelter, and uncertain supplies of wretched food; pestilential diseases soon broke out, which swept away thousands, and were intensified by the exhalations from the heaps of dead.  Saladin retreated from their deadly vicinity to more airy quarters on the adjacent hills; his troops also suffered from the severe weather, but were far better supplied than the Christians with water, provisions, and other comforts, as the caravans from Cairo and Bagdad met in their camp, and numbers of merchants displayed in glittering booths all kinds of eastern wares.