Siege of Alexandria (1174)

Under the command of his cousin, Tancred of Lecce,^[8] William II sent out a fleet of 280 ships, 30,000 soldiers, and 1,500 knights.^[9][10][11] On July 28, they arrived in Alexandria. The garrison was caught completely off guard. The Normans began to attack the city walls with siege towers, mangonels, and catapults, and the defenders were forced to repel the attack until nightfall. The following day, the Normans moved their siege artillery closer to the city walls and continued the attack, but the defenders were able to repel it thanks to reinforcements from nearby villages.^[12]

After the defenders launched daring sorties on July 31 and August 1 that destroyed the Norman siege engines and killed many besiegers, the garrison withdrew inside the walls. Meanwhile,^[13] The Normans received word that Saladin was advancing on the city with his army to relieve it. These reports boosted the garrison's morale, and they mounted a nighttime sortie that drove the Normans to their ships and out to sea.^[14] The Normans left the city on August 2 and returned home.^[15][16]

• Stanley Lane-Poole, Saladin and the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
• Geoffrey Hindley, Saladin : hero of Islam.
• Michael S. Fulton, Artillery in the Era of the Crusades, Siege Warfare and the Development of Trebuchet Technology.
• Thomas F. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades.
• Hervin Fernández Aceves, County and Nobility in Norman Italy, Aristocratic Agency in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1130–1189.
• Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs, Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.