In the night, Gaudini, with a chosen band of his companions, collected together the treasure of the order, and the ornaments of the church, and sallying out of a secret postern of the Temple which communicated with the harbour, they got on board a small vessel, and escaped in safety to the island of Cyprus. The residue of the Templars retired into the large tower of the Temple, called “The Tower of the Master,” which they defended with desperate energy. The bravest of the Mamlooks were driven back in repeated assaults, and the little fortress was everywhere surrounded with heaps of the slain. The sultan, at last, despairing of taking the place by assault, ordered it to be undermined. As the workmen advanced, they propped the foundations with beams of wood, and when the excavation was completed, these wooden supports were consumed by fire; the huge tower then fell with a tremendous crash, and buried the brave Templars in its ruins. The sultan set fire to the town in four places; the walls, the towers, and the ramparts were demolished, and the last stronghold of the christian power in Palestine was speedily reduced to a smoking solitude.[140] A few years back, the ruins of the christian city of Acre were well worthy of the attention of the curious. You might still trace the remains of thirty churches; and the quarter occupied by the Knights Templars continued to present many interesting memorials of that proud and powerful order. “The carcass,” says Sandys, “shows that the body hath been strong, doubly immured; fortified with bulwarks and towers, to each wall a ditch lined with stone, and under those, divers secret posterns. You would think, by the ruins, that the city consisted of divers conjoining castles, which witness a notable defence, and an unequal assault; and that the rage of the conquerors extended beyond conquest; the huge walls and arches turned topsy-turvy, and lying like rocks upon the foundation.” At the period of Dr. Clarke’s visit to Acre, the ruins, with the exception of the cathedral, the arsenal, the convent of the knights, and the palace of the Grand Master, were so intermingled with modern buildings, and in such a state of utter subversion, that it was difficult to afford any satisfactory description of them. “Many superb remains were observed by us,” says he, “in the pasha’s palace, in the khan, the mosque, the public bath, the fountains, and other parts of the town, consisting of fragments of antique marble, the shafts and capitals of granite and marble pillars, masses of the verd antique breccia, of the ancient serpentine, and of the syenite and trap of Egypt. In the garden of Djezzar’s palace, leading to his summer apartment, we saw some pillars of variegated marble of extraordinary beauty.”