The Accursed Tower

The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades

By: Roger Crowley

Narrated by: Matt Kugler

From a New York Times best-selling author, a stirring account of the siege of Acre in 1291, when the last Christian stronghold fell to the Muslim army

The 1291 siege of Acre was the Alamo of the Christian Crusades - the final bloody battle for the Holy Land. After a desperate six weeks, the beleaguered citadel surrendered to the Mamluks, bringing an end to Christendom's 200 year adventure in the Middle East.

In The Accursed Tower, Roger Crowley delivers a lively narrative of the lead-up to the siege and a vivid, blow-by-blow account of the climactic battle. Drawing on extant Arabic sources as well as untranslated Latin documents, he argues that Acre is notable for technical advances in military planning and siege warfare, and extraordinary for its individual heroism and savage slaughter. A gripping depiction of the crusader era told through its dramatic last moments, The Accursed Tower offers an essential new view on a crucial turning point in world history.

Longlisted for the Historical Writers Association Nonfiction Crown

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Roger Crowley (P)2019 Basic Books

Critic reviews

"Roger Crowley has once again found a subject worthy of his immense talent. In The Accursed Tower, he brings the climactic stages of the Crusades roaringly to life, as Popes, Kings, and Sultans-in-the-making lead holy warriors into battle alongside Mongols, Mamluks and Templars, fighting for supremacy in the holy land. Here are some of the last great battles of the pre-gunpowder era, marked by thumping cavalry charges and sword thrusts, ingenious siege engines and trebuchets, chain mail and lances, and the terrors of Greek fire. Crowley's gripping account of the fall of Acre is irresistible. It is the kind of book one does not want to end." (Sean McMeekin, author of The Russian Revolution)

A bracing work by a masterly historian whose great knowledge portrays the "dramatic symbolic significance" of this landmark event. (Kirkus Reviews)

"Crowley's enviable mastery of atmosphere and narrative are on full display in The Accursed Tower, transporting the reader to a Holy Land bursting with exotic and alien sights, smells, and sounds. His recounting of the siege and fall of Acre combines hair-raising action, ferocious savagery, and fascinating characters in an utterly compelling story. For my money, this is narrative history at its best: a living, breathing world full of real people struggling, living, and dying in an epic clash." (Patrick Wyman, PhD and host of Tides of History)

Crusader History

Brief book about crusader history. Easy read, slice of history with the familiar characters of the Crusades

If only--

If only the self-serving Genoese, Venetians, and Pisans weren’t always fighting each other and trading vital martial slaves and material to the Mamluks. If only the military orders (Templars and Hospitallers etc.) weren’t always treating each other like rivals. If only the heads of the Crusader states could all get on the same page. If only the European countries were not always at loggerheads with each other and or the different Popes. If only the Mamluks were (finally) less organized, less united, and less proficient at treaty loopholes, military logistics, and drum and trumpet walls of sound. Then maybe Acre might've carried on Christian for a few more years (but THEN what?).

The catchy main title of Roger Crowley’s The Accursed Tower: The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades (2019) conjures up images of repeated foiled Muslim attempts to take a particularly stubborn and vital tower, but actually the final siege of Acre, the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land does not really hinge on this one tower among the many defenses of the city, and the “accursed” appellation doesn’t really have any particular application to the history Crowley relates. Really the book is about its subtitle.

The first seven chapters—occurring from 1200 to 1290—set the historical and cultural context for the siege, including Crusader debacles in Egypt, the influential advent of the Mongols, and the increasing importance of the Mamluks of Egypt, with the Outremer Christian cities and castles getting captured or sacked one after the other in the thirteenth century, till the siege of Acre ends the two-hundred-or-so-year Crusader attempt to maintain a Western Christian presence in the Holy Land. The next six chapters relate the last siege of Acre led by the Mamluks from about April 10 till May 28 of 1291. The fourteenth chapter cleans up the last loose Crusader ends thereabouts, and the Epilogue gives a glimpse at the Acre of today superimposed over the Acre of a thousand and more years ago.

I found this book less suspenseful, absorbing, detailed, and informative than Ernle Bradford’s The Great Siege: Malta 1565 (1961), but I did get some interesting points from it:

--The disastrous disunity among the Christians. Through much Crusader history, the Muslims were not much more unified, but they got their act together in the latter half of the thirteenth century under Mamluk sultans like Baybars.

--The effective use by the Mamluks of religious fervor, booty lust, defenses mining, trebuchet engineering, Greek fire, kettle drums (mounted on camels!), and treaty loopholes.

--“A sixty-day siege [by an army of 25,000 men] would need the removal of a million gallons of human and animal waste and 4,000 tons of solid biological waste,” which is probably one reason the Mamluks catapulted their waste into Acre!

--The inherent unsustainability of Crusader satellite states so far away from Europe, and the precarious way they lasted as long as they did via trade with Muslim states.

I appreciated that Crowley quotes from a fair number of Muslim sources and seems even-handed in his depiction of the attackers and the defenders of Acre.

His Epilogue made me want some day to visit Acre (in today’s Israel…)

About the audiobook… If only a better reader than Matt Kugler read it! Although he reads clearly, he also reads like a sensational documentary narrator, too often overly dramatically emphasizing what he sees to be key words or syllables, such that he numbed me to the impact of the truly important key words:

“the Sultan’s SENior engineer” (why is it so important that we know this is “the Sultan’s SENior engineer”?)
“the equally imposing COMpound of the Knights Hospitallers.” (why is that syllable stressed so much there?)
Etc.

In short, Kugler is no Simon Vance! (Vance intelligently reads The Great Siege: Malta 1565, which must be one reason why I so prefer it to Crowley’s book.)

I’m not sorry to have listened to The Accursed Tower, but I didn’t learn enough or have a good enough time to recommend it highly, and probably other books by Crowley like 1453 and Empires of the Sea (read by better readers) would be better.

Not his best

I'm a big fan of Roger Crowley. There isn't as much narrative here as in his other works.

Very Interesting Period, cool book

This book is excellent in showing a process-view of the Levant in the 1200's.

Popular understanding is that the Crusader Kingdoms came and went very abruptly. Here we see that many dynasties and players were involved in a very long story.

(1) The players in 1291 were not Arabs vs Christians. It was Mamluks (Turk subgroup) vs Monastic Knights (mostly French Military Orders). Basically two forces with origins 1,000 of miles away wanted the Levant costal cities.
(2) The Mamluks were not Proto-Janissaries that were strategically installed in Egypt, they were actually warrior slaves sold to the Egyptian Sultan. The book explains how they took-over in Egypt.
(3) The Christian Levant of late 1200 were not the biggest existential threat to Islam, rather a remnant of the Crusade project of 200 years prior. The real threat were the Mongols, who had destroyed Baghdad and could return again in large numbers, if they wished.
(4) The commercial interests of Byzantine Constantinople, Venice, and Genoa were not in harmony with the Crusader Kingdoms. It was in the commercial interests of many to supply the Mamluks with material needed for war and even the slave soldiers.

This book was cool and I learned a great deal.

Gripping

From the start it was clear a critical part of our global history was being discussed, and the writer did a great job synthesizing the sources and working closely to what reasonable conclusions could be arrived at, while making sense of what is truly relevant in the story. War is ugly, but without a sense of the details and consequences we risk trivializing the achievements of those who fight. Insightful book, and one that gives me more footnotes to chase.

Excellent book

Really loved this book, it was a great narrative history of the siege of Acre and the fall of the crusader states. Only reason I knocked a star off is because I couldn’t get over the narrators pronunciation of Trebuchet (a hard T at the end instead of the ey.

Riveting account of 1291 siege of Acre

A riveting, exciting and well narrated account of the siege of Acre in 1291, when the last Christian crusader stronghold in the Holy Land fell to the Muslim army after two hundred years of Christian crusading in the Holy Land. Many references to first hand soursces both Christian and Arabic. Highly recommended

Bringing History to Life

I have read all of Roger Crowley’s books and this is the first I’ve listened to. He has a masterful style and truly brings history to life: the armies, arms, cities, etc… Matt Kugler does a great job with the narration even making a lengthy section on the mechanics of trebuchets bearable.

This is a fascinating story that too few know about. The popular understanding of the crusades is so marred by distortions and outdated assumptions about greedy second sons and ignorant fanatics, despite being thoroughly debunked by historians going on 40 years. Books like this shine light on the complexity of crusades history: the incredible mixing of cultures, technologies, religions, peace, war, etc…

I am anxiously waiting for the day Crowley’s works are finally turned into genre defying historical epic films.

short and sweet

I read Crowleys other books and couldn't resist another chance to learn from this most talented writer and historian. The book spends most of its time discussing the the background and run up to the siege which in the book, and reality, was short but brutal in it's execution. The background is enticing, and necessary to appreciate the gravity of the cities loss and the change it had on the geographic politics of the Middle East and Europe. The reader was adequate, and I mean no disrespect, but I prefer the narrator from his book "the fall of Constsntinople", but this is a personal preference.

Another great book by Roger Crowley

I had no particular interest in the crusades or that general time period before I stumbled upon Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley. Read that several years ago and have since read all of his
books - three times. He is just an excellent writer, makes history come alive. I have since read many other books regarding this time period, but Mr. Crowley is still one of my all time favorite authors. I would put this book in the same category.