Acre St

Acre, St. Jean d'Acre, or Accho, probably founded by Phoenicians, and known to the later Greeks as Ptolemais, is a fortified sea-port in Syria, situated on a projecting tongue of land that forms the N.E. limit of the Bay of Acre, the promontory of Mount Carmel being to the S.W. It was captured by the first crusaders, 1104, and again by Baldwin, 1110. Saladin retook it, 1187, but Richard Coeur de Leon and Philip Augustus won it back, 1191, and gave it to the Knights of St. John. In 1291 it again passed into Saracen hands, and gradually fell into decay. Towards the end of the 18th century Ahmed Djezzar, Pasha of Sidon, improved and fortified the place, and in 1799, with the help of Sir Sydney Smith, held it successfnlly against the French under Bonaparte. Ibrahim Pasha besieged it in 1832, and scarcely left a house standing. Another bombardment by the English and Austrian fleets under Sir R. Stopford occurred in 1840, when a magazine blew up that swept away two Egyptian regiments and completed the destruction of the town. Its great trade has melted away, and now solid fragments of masonry alone bear witness to its former strength and prosperity.