The main armies of the Second Crusade began their journeys to the Levant in early summer 1147. Their intention was to recreate the glories of the First Crusade, travelling east overland through Byzantium and Asia Minor. After the ceremony at St Denis, Louis led the French from Metz; having assembled his German forces at Regensburg, Conrad III had set out in May. These staggered departures appear to have been purposefully coordinated, perhaps as a result of plans laid at Châlons-sur-Marne, the aim being to allow both contingents to follow the same route to Constantinople–through Germany and Hungary–without exhausting local resources. But despite this early promise of cooperation, and all the carefully nurtured dreams of reliving past exploits and achievements, the attempt to reach the Holy Land proved to be an almost unmitigated disaster.

In large part this was due to a failure to collaborate effectively with the Byzantine Empire. Half a century earlier, Alexius I Comnenus had helped to trigger the First Crusade and then succeeded in harnessing its strength to reconquer western Asia Minor. In 1147, the position and perspective of his grandson, Emperor Manuel, differed considerably. Manuel had had no interest in summoning this new Latin expedition and actually stood to lose power and influence now that it was in motion. In the West, Conrad III’s absence freed Roger of Sicily to attack Greek territory, and the prospect of two vast Frankish armies marching through the empire, and past Constantinople itself, filled Manuel with dread. To the east, meanwhile, the new crusade looked set to revitalise Outremer, stemming the recent resurgence of Byzantine authority in northern Syria; a concern that was only exacerbated by King Louis VII’s familial connections to Prince Raymond of Antioch. For Manuel, the Second Crusade was a worrisome threat. As the Frankish armies approached the empire the emperor’s concerns deepened to such an extent that he decided to secure his eastern frontier by agreeing a temporary truce with Ma‘sud, the Seljuq sultan of Anatolia. To the Greeks this was a logical step that allowed Manuel to focus upon the thousands of Latin troops nearing his western borders. But, when they learned of the deal, many crusaders saw it as an act of treachery.

Problems began almost as soon as the Franks crossed the Danube and entered the empire. Conrad’s large, unwieldy army conducted an ill-disciplined march south-east through Philippopolis and Adrianople, punctuated by outbreaks of looting and skirmishing with Greek troops. Desperate to safeguard his capital, Manuel hurriedly ushered the Germans across the Bosphorus. Initially, the smaller French contingent’s advance progressed more peacefully, but, once camped outside Constantinople, the Franks became increasingly belligerent. News of Manuel’s pact with Ma‘sud was greeted with horror, derision and deep-seated mistrust. Godfrey, bishop of Langres, one of the crusade’s leading churchmen, even sought to incite a direct attack on Constantinople, a scheme which King Louis rejected. The emperor did supply the crusaders with guides, but even they seem to have rendered only limited assistance.

Lacking the full support of Byzantium, the Latins needed, above all, to unite their own forces against Islam once in Asia Minor. Unfortunately, coordination between the French and German contingents broke down in autumn 1147. Conrad unwisely elected to forge ahead without Louis in late October, marching out from his staging post at Nicaea into an arid, inhospitable landscape that was controlled only loosely by the Greeks. The plan was, once again, to follow a similar route to that taken by the First Crusaders, but the Seljuqs of Anatolia were better prepared than they had been in 1097. The German column, unaccustomed to Muslim battle tactics, soon fell foul of repeated harrying attacks from elusive, fast-moving bands of Turkish horsemen. Limping their way eastwards past Dorylaeum, with losses mounting and supplies dwindling, the crusaders finally decided to turn back. By the time they had retraced their steps to Nicaea in early November, thousands had perished and even King Conrad had been wounded. Morale was shattered. Many of the bedraggled survivors cut their losses and set out on the return journey to Germany.

Chastened, Conrad joined forces with the French, who by now had crossed the Bosphorus, to attempt a second advance. They successfully traced a different route south towards the ancient Roman metropolis of Ephesus, where the onset of illness forced the German king to remain behind. In late December, with rain and snow falling, Louis left the coast, leading his army along the Meander valley towards the Anatolian uplands. At first, military discipline held and early waves of Seljuq attacks were repulsed, but around 6 January 1148 the crusaders lost formation while trying to cross the imposing physical obstacle of Mount Cadmus and suffered a searing Turkish assault. Losses were heavy and Louis himself was surrounded, narrowly avoiding capture by taking refuge in a tree. Shaken by the experience, the king now asked the force of Templar knights that had joined his army back in France to lead the survivors in a tightly controlled march south-east to the Greek-held port of Adalia–a decision illustrative both of the crusaders’ dire predicament and of the martial reputation already accrued by the Templar Order. Louis later sent a letter to the abbot of St Denis recalling these grim days: ‘There were constant ambushes from bandits, grave difficulties of travel, daily battles with the Turks…We ourselves were frequently in peril of our life; but thanks to God’s grace were freed from all these horrors and escaped.’ Exhausted and hungry, the French reached the coast around 20 January. Some thought was given to marching onwards, but eventually Louis decided to sail to Syria with a portion of his army. Those left behind were promised Byzantine support, but most died from starvation or were killed during Turkish attacks. The French king reached Antioch in March 1148. Meanwhile, having recuperated in Constantinople, Conrad likewise decided to complete his journey east by sea and sailed to Acre.

The Second Crusaders who took the land route to the Near East, proudly hoping to emulate the ‘heroism’ of their forebears, had been crushed; thousands were lost to combat, starvation and desertion. The expedition had been broken even before it reached the Holy Land. Many blamed the Greeks for this terrible reversal, levelling accusations of treachery and betrayal. But, although Manuel had indeed offered Louis and Conrad only limited support, it was the Latins’ own incaution in the face of heightened Turkish aggression that precipitated disaster. With both the Germans and French so roundly and ignominiously defeated, William of Tyre concluded that the crusaders’ once ‘glorious reputation [for] valour’ now lay in tatters. ‘Henceforward’, he wrote, ‘it was but a joke in the eyes of those unclean peoples to whom it had once been a terror.’ Louis and Conrad had finally reached the Levant; the question now was whether their greatly weakened forces could hope to achieve anything of substance and rekindle the crusading flame.¹⁰⁷

II

THE RESPONSE OF ISLAM

7

MUSLIM REVIVAL

The half-century since the advent of the First Crusade had seen little sign of a united or determined Islamic response to the Christian conquest of the Holy Land. Jerusalem–the most sacred city in the Muslim world after Mecca and Medina–remained in Latin hands. And the elemental division between Sunni Iraq and Syria and Shi‘ite Egypt endured. Barring occasional Muslim victories, most notably at the Field of Blood in 1119, the early twelfth century had been dominated by Frankish expansion and aggression. But in the 1140s it seemed as if the tide might be shifting, as Zangi, the atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo, and his family (the Zangid dynasty) took up the torch of jihad.