and it was strongly garrisoned and well provisioned when at the end of August 1189 King Guy of Jerusalem, having made his way down from Antioch, collecting forces as he went from among the natives of the land and the newly enlisted Crusaders who during the last year had been arriving in small parties at the few northern sea-ports still in Christian hands, set to [Sidenote: 1189 _Aug._] work to begin the re-conquest of his kingdom by laying siege to Acre with about ten thousand men.[646] It was a great venture of faith; and the faith was justified. Acre at once became the rallying-point for all the remaining forces of the realm and for the Crusaders who came pouring in from Europe during the next few months. Saladin on his part had immediately despatched a large army to occupy the hills which bordered the plain, some eight to ten miles wide, at the back of the town. The besiegers, in their entrenched camp outside the walls and fosse, found themselves practically besieged in their turn; and this double siege lasted, with many vicissitudes and very little real [Sidenote: 1191] progress on either side, till the spring of 1191. By the middle of April, when Philip Augustus arrived, the Christian host was sufficiently numerous to maintain a complete blockade of the city by land and entire control over the harbour, and thus to prevent the entrance of men and provisions, either by land or by sea. They had, however, little prospect of winning the place except by starvation; for they could not venture on attempting to capture it by a general assault, because their own encampment was in constant danger from a great host of fresh troops which Saladin had brought up to occupy the surrounding country as soon as the winter was over. Thus on the evening of Saturday, June 8,[647] “the valiant king, the Lion-heart,[648] saw before him Acre with its towers, and the flower of the world’s people seated round about it, and beyond them the hill-peaks and the mountains and the valleys and the plains, covered with the tents of Saladin and Safadin and their troops, pressing hard on our Christian host.”[649]