In the ensuing months, Saladin took almost every crusader city on the Levantine coast, including the most important trading port of Acre. In October, he besieged Jerusalem itself, which was mostly defended by women and youths, because the garrison had been among the army that was wiped out at Hattin. After some token resistance, it surrendered. Saladin ostentatiously refused to allow his troops the pleasure of a massacre. But the shock still reverberated around the western world. And it prompted the last really serious crusade to the Latin kingdom: the Third Crusade. Preached with an urgency
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