starvation, which a strict blockade
by sea and land was to cause in the town; but in June, 1188, the
Sicilian fleet appeared, gave the superiority by sea to the
Christians, and brought relief to Tyre. The Sultan retreated, and
marched through the defenceless provinces of Antioch and Tripoli, but
there too he left the capitals in peace upon the arrival of the
Sicilian fleet in their waters. The following summer he spent in
taking the Frankish fortresses in Arabia Petraea, the possession of
which was important to him in order to secure freedom of communication
between Egypt and Syria.

Meanwhile the reinforcements from the West were pouring into the
Christian seaport towns. In the first place, the two military and
religious orders, the Templars and the Knights of St. John, had
collected munitions of war of every kind from all their European
possessions, and increased the number of their mercenaries to fourteen
thousand men. King Guy[31] also had ransomed himself from captivity
and had gone to Tripoli, where by degrees the remnant of the Syrian
barons, and pilgrims of all nations, gathered round him. They took the
right resolution to remain no longer inactive, but with the gigantic
preparations in Europe in prospect, to begin the attack at once.

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