Outremer
The Kingdom in the 1260s
Baibars
The Muslims had been utterly preoccupied with the Mongol advance. The Mongols had captured and looted Baghdad in February 1258, had captured Aleppo in 1259 and Damascus on 1 March 1260. The Sultan at Cairo, Qutuz, marched out to meet the enemy at Ain Jalud on 3 September and was triumphant. The Mongols were defeated and never again penetrated so far into the Middle East. Soon after this, the general Baibars murdered Qutuz and the reign of the Mameluks in Egypt began.
The Mongols were pulling back (the Great Khan had died and the princes were returning to dispute the succession), while at the same time a powerful new leader had emerged in Egypt and Damascus. Always before, either the two cities had been rivals, or else the Mongol threat trumped everything. But the Mongols had eliminated not only the power of Damascus but also the distant authority of Baghdad. Only once before had the Muslims of Syria and Egypt been united, and that had been under Saladin. It was an ominous development for the Christians.
This decade and the next were dominated by the Sultan Baibars. He began by concentrating on consolidating his power in the Islamic world, but he was determined to drive the Christians out of the Holy Land. He attacked Acre in 1263, but had to break off, and he captured Caesarea and the castle of Arsuf in 1265. The following year both Safed and Toron fell to him. In 1266, too, a Mameluk army defeated the Armenians and sacked Sis. It was reported that 40,000 slaves were carried away, and the Kingdom of Armenia was never again a factor. This made Antioch vulnerable.
Baibars made another attempt on Acre in 1267. In 1268 he captured Jaffa and carried off its marble to build a new mosque in Cairo. He captured Antioch in the same year. Everyone was killed except for a handful of slaves. The extent of the slaughter shocked even the Islamic world.
After Antioch, Baibars rested, mainly because it appeared that the Mongols were on the move again. He knew the Christians were no real threat to him any longer. At one negotiation between a Muslim ambassador and King Hugh III, the King paraded his army, hoping to impress and perhaps intimidate. The ambassador remarked that there were more Christians as prisoners back in Cairo than what he saw before him.
The Kingdom
In the face of these trials the Kingdom was almost powerless. A succession of regents and baillis ruled in theory from Acre, but the plain fact was that no one had the power to field an army of any consequence. The barons now stayed inside their fortified cities. A mere handful of castles stood in the countryside. As shown above, these were being picked off, one by one. The Military Orders could no longer mount any offensive other than raids, and they no longer had Muslim allies to count on.
Once in a while they scored a success. Baibars attacked Acre twice and failed both times. He attacked Athlit in 1265 and it resisted him. The combined Orders managed to capture the minor fortress of Lizon in 1264.
Even in the face of all these difficulties, the Italians managed to find time to squabble. On 16 August 1267, a Genoese fleet attacked Acre and won control of the harbor. They held it for a couple of weeks but were driven out with losses by a Venetian fleet. It might seem crazy, but the Italians regarded themselves as independent agents who just happened to be operating in a zone where other conflicts were also taking place. Those other conflicts had no bearing on their own disputes, which they would fight out where and when they pleased.
At least there was progress with respect to the formalities of the Kingdom. Conradin was killed in 1268, removing forever the Hohenstaufen claim. The ruler of Cyprus, Hugh of Lusignan, had at least some claim to be related to the royal house of Jerusalem. There were other claimants, and those claims dragged on for years, but Hugh himself was crowned in 1269 as King of Jerusalem. He also was able to settle the score between Tyre and Acre by marrying his sister to Philip of Montfort's son John. When, not long after, Philip's other son Humphrey married Eschiva of Ibelin, the old conflicts were pretty well laid to rest. Except for the Italians, naturally!