The Siege of Acre, 1291 CE

On May 18, 1291, after 100 years of Crusader control, Acre was the last Crusader stronghold to be reconquered and destroyed by the Mamluks under Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil. A short excerpt:

"The Siege of Acre in 1291 CE was the final fatal blow to Christian Crusader ambitions in the Holy Land. Acre had always been the most important Christian-held port in the Levant, but when it finally fell on 18 May 1291 CE to the armies of the Mamluk Sultan Khalil, the Christians were forced to flee for good and seek refuge on Cyprus. The Fall of Acre, as the shocking defeat became widely known in the West, was the last chapter of the Crusade story in the Middle East.

The Mamluk Sultanate
The military disasters of the Seventh Crusade (1248-1254 CE) and the abandonment of the 1270 CE Eighth Crusade following the death of its leader Louis IX, king of France (r. 1226-1270 CE), had effectively sealed the fate of the Crusader-created states, the Latin East. The Christians of the Levant stood alone to face two enemies at once: the Muslims of the Mamluk Sultanate based in Egypt and the invading armies of the Mongol Empire. Now merely a handful of coastal cities and isolated castles with no hinterland to speak of, the Latin East was impoverished and near total extinction."