Page 200

 200 A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES IV 
harbor. A wide ditch isolates the castle on the south and west, on which
latter side it separates the castle from the town. Probably this is the Venetian
enlargement of a Frankish or earlier ditch, the southern arm of which would
have been continuous with that which ringed the town. 
 On the castle site the Lusignans took over an early Byzantine fortress,
originally an enclosure about 264 feet square with hollow angle-towers of
circular form, to which was added on the south a massive outer curtain with
solid pentagonal towers. Dating from the period of the Arab wars or earlier,
a considerable section of the pre-Frankish castle is still visible at the
south end of the present courtyard, where the outer Byzantine wall now serves
to retain the south and west ramparts on the inner side (fig. 10). An entrance
in the outer south curtain is flanked by two couchant lions in relief and
surmounted by a third, which, like the column drums and other blocks reused
in the extremely irregular masonry, may well be of earlier date. At the northwest
corner, reaching out toward the harbor, there seems to have been a salient
within which the chapel, later known as St. George of the Donjon, was erected,
probably in the twelfth century. The outer wall enclosing this salient probably
ran on southward to enclose an outer ward along the west wall, corresponding
to that on the south. We can hardly doubt that in the main it was this Byzantine
castle which Wilbrand of Oldenburg saw in 1211 and in which the imperial
faction were besieged in 1 228 and 1232. The earliest Frankish repairs and
improvements are, however, attributable to this period. Such are the upper
story of the original inner northwest tower and perhaps the vaulted undercroft
to the north of the gateway in the west range, built within the line of the
Byzantine curtain. 
 At a later date much more drastic improvements were undertaken in ashlar
masonry akin to thirteenth-century work on the Syrian mainland. These improvements
form a single conception but were executed piecemeal, and in part at least
must date from the turn of the century, when the kingdom's defenses were
strengthened upon the fall of Acre. At this stage the Byzantine walls on
the north and east were entirely replaced, the former by a high curtain with
two fighting galleries below the parapet and the latter by a similar curtain,
to judge from what remains of its fighting gallery at the courtyard level
and the ruins of an intermediate tower which had an upper story. The eastern
fighting gallery is backed by, but otherwise unconnected with, a lofty vaulted
range which was divided by wooden floors into an upper story of residential
chambers and a