Capture of Antioch

The "Siege of Antioch" may also refer to two battles in 1097 and 1098 during the First Crusade; see Siege of Antioch.

The Siege of Antioch occurred in 1268 when the Mamelukes under Baibars finally succeeded in capturing the city of Antioch. Prior to the siege, the Crusader Principality was oblivious to the loss of the city as demonstrated when Baibars sent negotiators to the leader of the former Crusader state and mocking his use of "Prince" in the title Prince of Antioch.

[edit] Prelude to the Siege

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In 1260 Baibars, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, began to threaten the crusader state of Antioch, which (as a vassal of the Armenians) had supported the Mongols, the traditional enemies of the Turks. In 1265, Baibars took Caesarea, Haifa and Arsuf and massacred the inhabitants. A year later, Baibars conquered Galilee and devastated Cilician Armenia.

[edit] Siege of Antioch

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In 1268 Baibars besieged the city of Antioch, capturing it on 18 May. Antioch had been weakened by its previous struggles with Armenia and internal power struggles, and Antioch's inhabitants were quick to agree to a surrender on the condition that the lives of the citizens within the walls would be spared. As soon as his troops were within the gates, Baibars ordered the gates shut and brutally massacred everyone in the city. Afterward, lamenting that Antioch's ruler had not been present either for the seige or the ransacking and murder, Baibars wrote a detailed letter describing exactly what had been done to the people, concluding the letter with the phrase, "Had you been there, you would have wished you had never been born."

With the fall of Antioch, the rest of Syria quickly fell and the influence of the Franks in Syria was at an end.

[edit] Aftermath

The Hospitaller fortress Krak des Chevaliers fell three years later. While Louis IX of France launched the Eighth Crusade ostensibly to reverse these setbacks, it went to Tunis, for reasons unclear, instead of Constantinople, as Louise brother Charles of Anjou had initially advised, though Charles I clearly benefited from the treaty between Antioch and Tunis that ultimately resulted from the Crusade.

By the time of his death in 1277, Baibars had forced the Crusaders to a few strongholds along the coast and the Crusaders were forced out of the Middle East by the beginning of the fourteenth century. The fall of Antioch was to prove as detrimental to the crusaders cause, as its capture was instrumental to the initial success of the first Crusade. The population of Antioch consisting primarily of Armenians was put to the sword. Later, the Mamelukes would repeat the same destruction in Acre where the massacre of the civilians there was fustrated by the evacuation attempts of the Templar Knights, whom managed to save a number of civilians to the relative safety of Cyprus.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

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