Note 28 — PART V.

There is only one reference to Acre in the Old Testament (Judges i, 31), and one in the New Testament (Acts xxi, 7), under the name of Ptolemais. It was taken by the Crusaders in A.D. 1102, and held till 1187, as a port of the Kings of Jerusalem. After a siege it was re-taken from Saladin in 1191, and held for a century. It was here that the Knights of St. John, after they had been driven from every other part of Palestine, prolonged for forty-three days their gallant resistance to the Sultan of Egypt and his immense host; 60,000 Christians were on that occasion slain or sold as slaves. Napoleon besieged Acre in 1799, but was prevented from taking it by the British under Sir William Sidney Smith. It was bombarded in 1840, by British and Turkish Fleets, when an explosion of a magazine destroyed the town.