AS THE NEWLY RECRUITED Knights Templar arrived in the Holy Land, most of them were assigned to Jerusalem, where there was more than enough room for all the men and horses at the base in the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. It was only natural for the Templars to acquire houses and stables in the other Christian cities, too, so they would have bases at both ends of the pilgrim roads they were dedicated to protecting. The major routes from the coast to Jerusalem, then on to the Jordan River and to the towns of Nazareth and Bethlehem, stretched for many miles through threatening countryside, but to the king of Jerusalem road protection was just a side issue, a service that did not address the sovereign’s dire need for military units that could take the field in war.
After his coronation as king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II had assigned his county of Edessa to his cousin and loyal vassal, Joscelin of Courtenay. As king, Baldwin had presumed that the Christian lords of Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli would naturally come together in cooperative efforts against Muslim incursions, based on their common Christianity. He was disappointed, as it grew obvious that the nobles’ individual determination to increase their own lands and power was much stronger than their love for Christ.
As Grand Master de Payens had prepared to seek papal approval in Rome for his Templar order, Baldwin II had urged him to plead with the monarchs and nobles of Europe to take the cross. Without them, the Latin kingdom probably could not survive. Many knights did take the Crusader vow but, as it turned out, not nearly enough. A strong new Muslim leader, Zengi, was on the rise. Zengi was positioned for power when the Seljuk sultan named him to be the atabeg (deputy) for the Kurdish city of Mosul. Zengi made a separate treaty of peace for Edessa with Joscelin of Courtenay, then proceeeded to take over the Syrian city-states of Aleppo, Shaizar, and Homs, adding their fighting forces to his own.
The heir to Bohemond, the original ruler of Antioch, came of age and sailed from Italy to the Holy Land to assume power as Prince Bohemond II. He soon took Alice, a daughter of Baldwin II, as his princess. For a couple of years Bohemond looked with avarice on some nearby lands in Armenia, and finally in the year 1130 he set out with an army to add those lands to his principality of Antioch.
He did not know that the king of Armenia, many of whose followers lived in Antioch, was aware of Bohemond’s plans and had prepared to meet the threat through an alliance with the Turks. As the inexperienced Bohemond marched confidently into Armenian territory, he was suddenly slammed by hordes of Turkish cavalry roaring at him from all sides. When the brief battle was over, the grossly outnumbered army of Antioch was sprawled dead on the field, since not even the wounded or the captives were allowed to live. Bohemond’s head was brought to the Turkish leader, who had it cleaned and pickled, then sent as a gift to the Sunni caliph at Baghdad.
The heiress to the throne of Antioch was Bohemond’s two-year-old infant daughter, named Constance. The child’s mother, Princess Alice, decided that she would put the child in a convent and rule the land herself. The nobles of Antioch were not happy with Alice’s moves to take control and sent for her father, King Baldwin II. In response, Alice dispatched an envoy to the Muslim atabeg Zengi. Incredibly, she offered that the Christian principality of Antioch would do homage to the Muslim ruler, if he would just confirm her power and protect her from the wrath of her father.
Unfortunately for her, Baldwin’s men intercepted Alice’s envoy to Zengi, learned of his mission, and hanged him without further ado. At the city walls, Baldwin found Antioch barred to him, but no fight was necessary as loyal nobles inside overpowered the guards and opened the gates. Alice feared for her life, but was merely exiled to nearby Lattakieh. Baldwin II made himself the regent of Antioch and went home to Jerusalem, where he began to suffer from increasing health problems, until his end appeared near. In midsummer of 1131 Baldwin assembled his court to tell them he was dying. He asked that all recognize the succession of his oldest daughter Melisende and her husband Fulk, and of their infant son, also named Baldwin. He said good-bye and abandoned his royal robes for the simple garb of a monk. He went through the ceremony to become a canon of the Holy Sepulcher and died about a week later.
The rulers of Antioch and Jerusalem were dead, and Joscelin of Courtenay, count of Edessa, would not survive them long. As Baldwin lay dying, Joscelin was besieging a castle in Syria. His engineers had dug a tunnel, apparently without proper concern for roof support. Joscelin was standing above the tunnel when it caved in, plunging him into a deep hole where he was crushed by falling rock. He was dug out still alive, but died a few weeks later.
One of King Fulk’s first problems was that, with Baldwin II dead, Count Pons of Tripoli, Princess Alice of Antioch, and young Joscelin II of Edessa all asserted their independence, recognizing no authority above their own. Fulk had to take an army to Tripoli and Antioch to bring them back into his kingdom.
Count Hugh of Jaffa went so far as to conspire against Jerusalem with agents of Egypt, to the point that one of his own stepsons publicly accused him of treason and challenged him to let God judge the issue in a trial by combat, a perfectly legal procedure of the day. Armed and mounted, Hugh’s stepson waited on the field at the appointed time, but for whatever reason, Hugh didn’t show up. A royal council declared him guilty by default. His punishment was a three-year exile. The punishment was unusually light, but there was a reason for that. King Fulk’s beautiful wife was totally in love with Hugh and not with Fulk, whom she had been ordered to marry by her father. Fulk was eager for her love, and so careful not to offend her.
As Hugh waited for the ship that was to take him into exile, passing the time in a dice game, a French knight came up behind him and stabbed him several times. The knight, obviously guilty, was captured immediately, but a rumor spread swiftly that King Fulk had instigated the attack. The knight confessed that the attack had been his own idea, and that he had hoped that the murder of the king’s enemy would win him some royal reward. Fulk’s actions as he attempted to clear his name with his subjects and with his wife must stand as extraordinarily barbarous, even in those barbarous times.
The guilty knight was taken to a public square. After confessing his own guilt and the king’s innocence, he was tied down so an executioner could chop off one of his legs with an ax. Assistants standing by quickly applied boiling pitch to the gaping wound, adding to the pain but preserving his life. With the first sign that the mutilated man had somewhat recovered, the other leg was struck off, with the same agonizing first aid. After a while, an arm was hacked off, then the other arm. When fully revived, the limbless trunk was propped up and prodded with hot irons to force the knight to scream out the king’s innocence. Then the last merciful stroke cut off his head.
Zengi’s Syrian vassals made several raids to take portions of Edessa and Antioch, but there was no outbreak yet of total war. As often happened, the threat from Egypt was temporarily relieved by the special brand of lunacy that thrived at the court in Cairo. The latest event was the reign of the vizier Hasan, the favorite son of the Shiite caliph. The young man’s blood-crazed defense of his own power led to frequent executions at all levels, resulting in open revolt after he had beheaded over forty emirs of the empire. Those that were left took up arms while there was still time. The caliph saved himself by murdering his own son and delivering the body to the angry emirs.
Fulk had no fears of the Egyptians to the southwest—the court was too disparate and disorganized to plan an attack on the Christians—but Zengi’s raids on the Crusader lands and those of his Syrian vassals kept him constantly in the field. Every Christian casualty in his tiny army was a serious loss. It was about this time that the new master of the Hospitallers, a French nobleman, decided that his order should emulate the Knights Templar, and take in knights that would fight for the Holy Land, but it would be a while before they had recruited enough men to make an army that could help the king.
Reviving a political problem that Fulk didn’t need, Princess Alice came back to Antioch and reasserted her right to rule. The answer was to find a husband for the rightful heir, the nine-year-old Princess Constance, so Fulk arranged her betrothal to Raymond, a younger son of the duke of Aquitaine. Since the arrival from Europe of such a lofty noble could not be kept secret, Princess Alice was told that Raymond had come to Antioch to press his suit with her. As she dressed for the occasion and sat with her assembled ladies to receive Raymond at her palace, he was in the cathedral being married to her daughter Constance. Raymond became the lawful prince of Antioch.
What Raymond found as he surveyed his new principality was an eastern frontier lost to Zengi, a castle lost to the sect of Assassins, and several towns taken by Prince Leo of Armenia. Raymond took to the field to recover some of these lands, expecting help from Joscelin, count of Edessa, against Leo of Armenia. Shocked and bewildered, he was beaten back by both Leo and Joscelin, who was Leo’s nephew. Joint efforts by Latin Christians were still out of the question.
Nor were the Muslims as yet unified. Zengi had added to his growing kingdom the city of Homs, which was the dowry of his new wife, the mother of the young ruler of Damascus. Perhaps the young man’s behavior became wilder as a result of his mother’s absence, but about a year after her departure he apparently had a set-to with three boys, sexual playthings officially known at court as “pages.” The three pages teamed up one night and murdered their master in his sleep, for which they were all publicly crucified.
Under King Fulk, the Knights Templar began turning away from their original purpose of protecting the routes of Christian pilgrims and started participating in Christian battles, but their first recorded engagement brought them no glory. They had evidently not yet learned the favorite Turkish battlefield move, the feigned retreat, employed to induce the enemy to give chase and be drawn into a trap. A company of inexperienced Templar knights was induced to chase after a band of “retreating” Muslim cavalry that led them straight into an ambush. They all died in a very important lesson learned the hard way.
Fulk was not a brilliant king, but he was holding his kingdom together with very limited resources, and he was succeeding only because of the constant wars between rival Muslim factions. Then, on a beautiful fall day in 1143, he decided to take a break from all the turmoil and spend a day of recreation in the country with his wife and children. Riding across a field, the party flushed a rabbit, and the king and his men galloped after it in a joyful chase. Fulk’s horse stepped in a hole and went down, taking the king with it. He died a few days later from the head wounds he sustained in the fall. Now the kingdom of Jerusalem would be ruled jointly by Queen Melisende and her thirteen-year-old son Baldwin. It was a great opportunity for Zengi, who over the next few months would deliver the most severe blows the Crusader states had yet taken.
Zengi had some of his troops make a feint at a vassal of Joscelin, which soon saw Joscelin leading the bulk of his army out of Edessa on a rescue mission. The way was open for Zengi to bring his main army up to the walls of Edessa. Behind the walls, Joscelin’s small army would have put up a strong defense, but in the open field they were well outnumbered by Zengi’s forces. Joscelin appealed to Raymond of Antioch to come help him save his capital city, but he was ignored. An appeal to Queen Melisende was more successful, but she took too long to assemble a relieving army.
With Joscelin and the leading soldiers outside the walls, leadership of the defense fell on the archbishop of Edessa, who had no military experience. Zengi had siege machines and miners, which the civilians in Edessa did not know how to combat. It took just four weeks for the Muslims to take down a section of the city wall, and the citizens inside could do nothing to stop the Syrians, Kurds, and Turks who came at them over the rubble of the breach. The Christians ran across the city to the protection of the citadel, but for some insane reason the archbishop had ordered the doors of the castle to be barred. The civilians, crowded together on the square in front of the citadel, were easy to kill, and by the time Zengi arrived to take personal control thousands had died, including the archbishop. Zengi had the remaining population sorted out, leaving alone the Armenian and Greek Christians. The Roman Christians were further sorted into two groups, the men separated from the women and children. The men were killed, while the women and children were spared for the slave market. Zengi re-formed his army, then set about capturing every city and town in the county of Edessa east of the Euphrates River. Joscelin was left with the smaller remnant on the west side of the river. The Muslims had taken back a substantial portion of the lands won by the Christians in the First Crusade.
Zengi moved his armies toward the south to take Damascus, but he never got there. On the campaign, he assailed a eunuch he had caught drinking from Zengi’s own glass. The furious eunuch waited until his master retired for the night, then murdered him in his sleep. Zengi’s oldest son galloped off to Mosul to take control there, while his younger son, Nur ed-Din, took over the Syrian lands, supported by his brilliant Kurdish general, Shirkuh, whose nephew would become the most memorable Muslim leader of the Middle Ages.
The county of Edessa had been a great shield for the kingdom of Jerusalem against the militant Turks and Persians to the north and east. Its loss threatened the continued existence of the Crusader states and the Christian control of the Holy Places of Jesus Christ.
In 1145, Queen Melisende of Jerusalem sent the bishop of Jabala to the new pope, Eugenius III, with a frantic appeal for help. The bishop was shocked to find the pope not at Rome but in exile at Viterbo. Angry at the government of the Church, a committee of powerful Roman citizens had driven the papal curia out of Rome, so Pope Eugenius had pressing problems of his own. He decided that he would call for a Crusade to save the Holy Land, but the call would have political considerations.
Conrad of Hohenstauffen, king of Germany, would not go, for he was the pope’s hope of retaking Rome and restoring it to papal control. Conrad would also be asked to hold back aggressive moves against papal authority coming from Roger II of Sicily. Roger, who had gained control of the Norman lands in Sicily and Italy, had challenged the authority of the Church when he had crowned himself king without seeking either the blessings or annointment of the Holy See.
Eugenius decided to turn to King Louis VII of France, who had already managed to alienate the papacy and was anxious to make amends. In armed conflict with the count of Champagne, he had attacked the castle at Vitry-sur-Marne, where his troops had set the castle ablaze, but so carelessly that the entire village caught fire. The frightened villagers crowded into their central church, which was soon also swept up in the blaze. The screaming occupants could not escape, and those who did not die from smoke inhalation met their end when the great roof crashed down on top of them. Louis VII had burned down a house of God, killing thirteen hundred Christians who had sought refuge there. The pope placed him under interdict, but that was not as threatening to the young king as the angry letters that reached him from the most influential man in France, if not in all of Europe. Louis VII had aroused the fury of Bernard of Clairvaux.
Bernard’s influence and reputation had grown since he had acted as sponsor for the order of the Knights Templar back in 1128. His every speech, his every letter, was taken as the voice of authority. Pope Eugenius III had started as a lowly member of Bernard’s Cistercian order and still looked to his former abbot for advice, which Bernard didn’t hesitate to offer. Louis VII, at risk of making an enemy of the most important churchman in Europe, made the sensible choice. He yielded to Bernard’s criticism and asked for guidance. His new guide was the most Crusade-oriented churchman of his time, so it is not surprising that Bernard suggested that Louis VII expunge his grievous sin by taking an army to the Holy Land.
Louis’s response was to call a meeting of his leading nobles at Bourges at the end of 1145. He told them of his decision to take the cross and to lead a French army to Jerusalem, then called on his vassals to take the Crusader vow with him. He got little response, and it appeared that there would be no Crusade. It was a situation that called for all the fire and organizing ability of a Bernard of Clairvaux. His friends the Templars, under the command of their French preceptor, Everard de Barres, were already recruiting and equipping men for the Crusade that Bernard had promised them. Bernard went to work on the French.
First, he caused a bull to be issued by Pope Eugenius, addressed primarily to the king and barons of France, exhorting them to take the cross. Next, a great assembly was called, to take place on Palm Sunday of the following spring at Vézélay. The principal speaker was to be Bernard of Clairvaux. Ample time was allowed for the bull’s distribution and for travel plans for those who would cover great distances to hear the famous speaker.
The assembly was well planned. As with the Council of Clermont that had called the First Crusade, the anticipated crowd would not fit in the cathedral, so a high platform was erected outside, from which Bernard would deliver his address. He was so confident that he could arouse men to take the Crusader vow that hundreds of red cloth crosses were sewn in advance to be distributed to those who would take the sacred oath.
As expected, the Palm Sunday gathering at the Vézélay was vast, and the crowds were not disappointed. Bernard was at his most eloquent, as he promised the favor of God, total absolution from sin, and an eternity of heavenly bliss for those who would risk their lives for Christ. The response was more than even Bernard had hoped for. When the ready-made supply of crosses ran out, he took off his own red cloak and ordered that it be cut into strips to make more on the spot. The Second Crusade was assured. It would leave for the Holy Land the following year.
Bernard himself was caught up in the frenzy he had created and was not modest about his achievement. To Pope Eugenius III he wrote, “I opened my mouth, I spoke, and at once the Crusaders have multiplied to infinity. Villages and towns are now deserted. You will scarcely find one man for every seven women. Everywhere you see widows whose husbands are still alive.” But he must have been aware of his gross exaggeration. Far from an “infinity” of Crusaders, there were nowhere near enough to make up an effective army, so he went on the road to make his boast a reality.
He preached his way successfully through Burgundy and Lorraine and into Flanders, where a message from the archbishop of Cologne caught up with him. A monastic fanatic named Rudolph was reported to be preaching his own maniacal answer to the call to Crusade, inciting the people to massacre the Jews living in their communities. Bloody mass murders had taken place in the archbishop’s own city of Cologne and in Strasburg, Worms, and Mainz. Since Rudolph was a member of Bernard’s own Cistercian order, the archbishop’s message begged the abbot of Clairvaux to stop the senseless slaughter.
Bernard hurried to Germany, where the situation quickly confirmed the truth of what he had been told. The anti-Semite Rudolph was ordered to return to his monastery and to stay there with his mouth shut. That put an end to the problem Bernard had come to solve, but since he was already in Germany, he decided to take this opportunity to exhort the German nobles to participate in the coming Crusade.
There was no enthusiasm for a Crusade among the German barons, who felt that they had their own crusade at home. For generations they had been fighting incessant wars against the pagan tribes on their eastern borders. They didn’t need to travel over a thousand miles to prove their love for Christ on foreign soil: Weren’t they already forcibly converting the heathens they subdued, and killing those who refused to accept Christ? Nor was King Conrad any more enthusiastic. Conrad had made a deal with Pope Eugenius in which he had agreed to drive the dissidents out of Rome, to return it to the papacy, and to keep Roger II in his place. In return, Eugenius would anoint Conrad as Holy Roman Emperor, placing him on a level higher than all the kings of Christendom. Conrad wanted nothing to interfere with that arrangement. Bernard found that out when he met with Conrad, who was unmoved by the abbot’s pleas for German help for the Second Crusade. But Bernard had a driving will and a reputation to uphold. Even though he had to ask the German bishops to provide interpreters, he made a preaching tour throughout Conrad’s lands. He met with enough success, especially among the commoners, that Conrad agreed to meet with him again at the end of the year. Bernard selected Christmas Day as the time to deliver his impassioned petition for Crusader support, but he got no response from the German king. In a fit of frustration, Bernard appeared at Conrad’s court again two days later. This time his sermon was angry. He turned on Conrad, describing the great benefits that had been bestowed on him by a generous God. Finally, Bernard had a question directly from Christ to put to the German king. “Man,” he thundered, “what ought I to have done for you that I have not done?” Conrad’s resistance collapsed, and the victory went to Bernard of Clairvaux. Now there would be a German army as part of this great Crusade.
Pope Eugenius had not received the news about Conrad by the time he left Viterbo for France in January of 1147. He still perceived the coming Crusade as a French operation, especially because of his own experience in trying to go back to Rome. He had gone there hoping to receive a warm welcome, but after a few days he had been forced to run for his life. He was still counting on Conrad to help restore the ancient papal seat, but arriving in Lyons in March, the pope got the news of what he considered to be Conrad’s defection. His plans to regain Rome were shattered by the German king’s decision to go to Jerusalem. When messengers from Conrad met him a few weeks later with Conrad’s request for a personal meeting, Eugenius flatly refused to meet with the German king who had betrayed him.
Proceeding toward the goal of his visit, the pope joined King Louis VII during Easter week at St. Denis. It was an event of great ceremony and pageantry, which included a force of three hundred Knights Templar in orderly ranks, most of them recently recruited, clad in their pure white robes and commanded by the French master who would lead them in the coming campaign. Abbot Suger, who was to act as regent of France during the Second Crusade, presented Louis VII with a magnificent scarlet and gold banner, the oriflamme of St. Denis, to be carried before the French host. Pope Eugenius III had a special presentation for his private army of Knights Templar.
This was a time when heraldry was taking hold, and nobles and kings were proud to display symbols of their rank and power. Monks, of course, did not require or even merit such devices, but the Knights Templar were different. They were all of knightly lineage, mixing in the secular world. As warriors for Christ, they had a right to be recognized at any time by any Christian, and a need to quickly recognize one another on the field of battle. The pope decreed that from this day forward the Knights Templar, and only the Knights Templar, would wear a special red cross with blunt wedge-shaped arms called the cross patée on the left breasts of their white robes. In addition, in what may have been the creation of the very first military shoulder patch, Eugenius decreed that a smaller version of the distinctive red cross would be worn on the Templars’ left shoulders.
For the young Templar recruits, the event strongly reinforced their decision to join the holy order. They had never expected to see a pope in their lifetime, yet here they were in the presence of the Holy Father, receiving his personal blessing. Not only had he prayed for them, but he had honored them with their own distinctive badge. In the days ahead, as each man had the red crosses added to his white robe, he would be infused with a new pride in his Templar vows.
He already had a difficult image to live up to, not an image as yet earned on the battlefield, but one fantasized by St. Bernard. Grand Master de Payens had several times asked Bernard for a definitive treatise on the aims and merits of the Templars that could be used for soliciting gifts and attracting recruits. Bernard had responded, “to brandish my pen at the foe in place of the lance I may not wield,” with De laude novae militae, a document that struggled to find more and more ways to praise the Templars, while working just as hard to level every demeaning accusation at the secular knights. It assumed a level of virtue, bravery, skill, and devotion that no man could live up to, but it did help to keep rich gifts flowing to the order.
Nor was the time wasted while the Templars waited for the long march to begin. The recruits had to learn attitudes totally new to them, like instant response to orders with no questions asked. They learned to inspect their horses and equipment on a daily basis, with punishments for those who didn’t. They learned to move and fight together. They went to bed when they were told and got up when they were told. The rewards of that discipline and training would become obvious to everyone on the journey ahead.
Conrad grew tired of waiting for the French Crusaders. In May of 1147 he began an independent march eastward with an army of about twenty thousand men. He was joined by the kings of Bohemia and Poland and by his heir, Duke Frederick of Swabia, together with a battery of German nobles and bishops. Jealousies and disagreements among the leadership were to build up along the way, although there was little trouble during their passage across Hungary, because the long trek was just beginning. They had food supplies, with plenty of money to acquire more. As they advanced into the territory of the emperor of Byzantium, however, both food and money were running low.
Men desperate with hunger often don’t much care who owns the food, or what price is put on it. The German soldiers roamed the countryside, and wherever they found food they took it. Peasants and merchants who objected to being robbed were frequently killed for their recalcitrant attitudes. The Greeks also found it prudent to hide their women from an army that acted increasingly like uncontrollable rabble.
Once the Germans had stolen the food they wanted at the town of Philippopolis and seemed to have calmed down, a local juggler ventured to earn a few pennies by showing off his extraordinary skills to the visiting Crusaders. The Germans, who had never seen anything like it, superstitiously decided that what the juggler was showing them was beyond human ability. They grabbed him, accusing him of sorcery. The commotion triggered a riot in which the houses outside the walls were burned to the ground, while the local citizens ran for the protection of the city walls.
Emperor Manuel sent Byzantine troops to keep the Crusader army in line, but they were not effective against the aggressive Germans. Stragglers became almost certain victims of Byzantine revenge. However, when a German noble developed a sickness and dropped behind the army, only to be murdered and robbed by marauding Greeks, Frederick of Swabia took a personal hand in the punishment. He burned down a nearby Greek Orthodox monastery, after killing every monk inside it. The Germans arrived at Constantinople in September, but were no more welcome there than they had been in the countryside. The emperor Manuel tried, without success, to get them to cross over immediately into Anatolia.
Louis VII had started out about a month after Conrad with an army of about fifteen thousand. He was accompanied by his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose uncle was Prince Raymond of Antioch. The wives of several French nobles went along, as did a horde of camp followers. The French preceptor, Everard de Barres, took his place at the head of his regiment of Knights Templar. Like Conrad, the French had little trouble crossing Hungary, but once they entered the Byzantine lands they too suffered food shortages, as well as the antagonism caused by the Germans who had preceded them. Fortunately, the French commanders were able to keep better control of their men, and the disciplined Templars were a strong force for order. Louis VII finally appointed the Templar master to go ahead to Constantinople as his ambassador to Emperor Manuel.
As to that monarch, he wanted no part of either army, other than to see them on their way. He had been at war with the encroaching Turks during the prior year and had personally led his armies into the field. He was angry that he had been forced to cut short his campaign upon the news of the approaching Crusaders, afraid to be away from his capital when they arrived. To be able to leave the battlefield, he had reluctantly made truces and peace treaties with the rulers of several Turkish city-states. The truces with the infidel aroused the suspicions of the Crusaders when they learned of them. Furthermore, Manuel had reason to believe that Roger II of Sicily was about to go to war with Byzantium at any time, as indeed he did before the summer was out. The emperor’s greatest fear was that the Turkish nobility, whom he had bribed, tricked, and encouraged in every way to be at each other’s throats, would now be drawn together by the common threat of a Latin invasion.
Manuel was relieved to get Conrad and his Germans across the Bosphorus just before Louis VII arrived. He advised the Germans to travel the longer road along the coast, where the lands were in Byzantine hands, and to avoid the shorter inland roads through Turkish mountains, where they would be constantly in danger. In spite of the warning, Conrad elected to take the shorter route across Turkish territory. Manuel reluctantly accepted Conrad’s decision and provided the Germans with a party of guides.
At Nicaea, Conrad decided to follow Manuel’s advice in part. He put Otto of Freisingen in charge of a body of soldiers who were to escort the noncombatant pilgrims and camp followers along the longer but safer coastal road, while he would lead the larger part of the army on the short-cut across the interior. Conrad moved the army on October 25, and the soldiers soon found out what it meant to be away from any opportunity to forage for food and discovered the agony of being without sufficient water. They were also about to learn the penalty for failing to maintain flanking forces and outriders. After ten days on the march they were happy to come to the river Bathys, near Dorylaeum. It was little more than a creek, but the thirsty Germans had never known a more welcome stream. The knights quickly dismounted to water their horses and themselves, and soon the whole German army was spread out along both banks, dismounted and relaxed, happy to have this chance to rest their bodies and slake their thirst.
The Seljuk army had been following them, well out of sight, waiting for the right moment to strike. This was it, and soon the unwary Germans experienced the spasmodic shocks of wave after wave of Turkish light cavalry. Each wave of mounted bowmen loosed flights of arrows into men and horses, and there seemed to be no end to them. It was impossible to assemble the strung-out German forces, and most died where they stood. The Turkish bowmen were followed by sweeps of cavalry with razor-sharp swords, as the battle went on hour after hour. By evening, Conrad’s guard was able to get him out of the valley on the road to Nicaea, along with a few of his knights who had managed to mount their horses to act as the king’s bodyguard. Four out of five German Crusaders were left on the field, as was everything they had brought with them. The wounded were slaughtered by the victorious Turks, and the loot they took was so extensive that it went to markets as far away as Persia for its disposal. As the survivors struggled to get back to Nicaea, Turkish riders galloped off to report their great victory. All Islam could take heart from this fresh proof that the armored Franks were not invincible.
As the army of Louis VII left Constantinople and marched into Anatolia, short of water and supplies, the men became difficult to control. Only the Knights Templar observed any kind of discipline, so the king asked the Templar master to send Templar officers to each division of the army, with orders that all should heed their advice and follow their commands. For the first time, the Templars enjoyed a role new to European armies, that of military police. They had also moved away from their original role of highway patrol and were now functioning as a military unit.
At Nicaea the French met Conrad with the remnants of his army. The emperor told them of his great catastrophe at Dorylaeum, which Conrad believed was the result of his betrayal to the Turks by the emperor Manuel.
The two kings decided to go on to the Holy Land together, but this time they followed the safer coastal road, where they could maintain contact with a Byzantine fleet. At Ephesus, Conrad fell ill and couldn’t go on, so he was taken by ship back to Constantinople. What was left of his army continued with Louis VII.
Discipline and obedience are difficult to impose on the high and mighty, and the lack of it almost led to the French army suffering a defeat similar to the Germans’ downfall a few weeks earlier. Two days out of Laodicea the French had to follow the only road through the mountains, which climbed over a high pass. The king’s uncle, Amadeus of Savoy, commanded the vanguard of the French army. His orders were to camp at the top of the pass for the night, staying within clear sight of the main army at the bottom of the north slope. With plenty of daylight remaining, Amadeus decided to ignore his orders and marched his men over the pass to the bottom of the south slope of the narrow pass. Now the French army was split and vulnerable to the Turks who had positioned themselves among the rocks above the Crusader divisions camped at opposite ends of the canyon, out of sight of each other. It was another opportune moment for Islamic arms, and the Muslims struck hard. Rocks and tree trunks rained down on the Crusaders, dispersing them in panic. Archers above them could pick their targets at will. The king saved himself by scrambling up to shelter among the rocks. As the Crusader army appeared totally undone, the Turks climbed down to the road to finish them off. One unit, however, had not panicked: Everard de Barres had his Templars in tight control, and he had grasped the situation immediately. His men jumped to obey his orders, and the disciplined Templars on their massive war-horses easily beat off the dismounted Turks.
After that near-fatal experience, Louis VII placed the entire army under the direct command of the Templar master, who had his now much-respected Templar knights to enforce his orders. The French king was loud in his praise of the Templars, and his opinion was reinforced when the order made a substantial loan to him to replenish his depleted treasury.
The king and his court moved on to Antioch by sea, leaving his army and the Templars to follow on land. The prince of Antioch was delighted to see Louis because he wanted the French to join him in a campaign to seize Aleppo, the principal city of the new Muslim leader Nur ed-Din. Joscelin of Edessa wanted the new armies to recapture his lost lands: After all, the loss of Edessa had brought on this whole crusade. Louis VII declined. He would not participate in further military action with his battered forces until he had kept his Crusader vow by completing the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Conrad, who had recovered from his illness, had traveled directly to Jerusalem by sea from Constantinople and was waiting for Louis in the Holy City.
Once there, they found that Queen Melisende, acting as regent for her young son Baldwin III, also had private military ambitions. She asked Conrad and Louis to join her in the conquest of Damascus. The great walled city of Damacus was the key to Syria and, as a major trading hub, it was incredibly rich. Louis and Conrad agreed. Joined by the Templars and Hospitallers, the combined crusading armies of France and Germany set out with the local barons to add Damascus to the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. It was a great mistake.
The emir Unur of Damascus had maintained the friendliest relations with his Christian neighbors. He could scarcely believe that the largest Christian army ever assembled in the Holy Land had his domains as its target. Messengers on swift Arabian horses were dispatched to all parts of his realm to summon every fighting man to Damascus. The emir was even worried enough to seek help from Nur ed-Din, knowing full well the risk to himself once that ambitious fighter had his troops inside the walls of Unur’s capital city.
On Saturday, July 24, 1148, the Christian army, which had summarily taken the smaller towns in its path, arrived at the lush gardens and orchards for which Damascus was famous. They felled many of the valuable trees to build a palisade facing the city’s south wall. Inside, the city panicked, and barricades were constructed in the streets to slow down the Christian horde that was fully expected to erupt over the wall. But the next morning, before the Christians made their move, Muslim reinforcements began to march into the city through the gates on the northern side. Unur’s confidence grew as his numbers increased. He launched his own attacks on the Crusaders, as Muslim archers functioning as snipers penetrated the gardens around the Christian camp, where the thick growth of trees and bushes rendered the mounted knights almost useless. Encouraged by success, Unur launched mounted raids again and again, while the men infiltrating the gardens took an ever-increasing toll with their bows.
Louis, Conrad, and young Baldwin of Jerusalem made a joint decision. They would move the entire Christian army from the fertile overgrown fields of the south to the barren plain of the east. No Muslim guerillas could sneak up on them there.
Common sense should have told them that the southern fields were lush with growth because they had plenty of water, while the bleak eastern plain was barren because it had no water for plants, nor for thirsty soldiers, but common sense played little part in this campaign. To prove it, the leadership began bickering over who would own the realm of Damascus once it was taken. As thousands of men grew dehydrated from the severe water shortages, the quarreling among their leaders grew heated. Louis and Conrad favored the position of County Thierry of Flanders, who wanted to rule Damascus himself as an independent Crusader state. The local barons declared that they had committed their lives and fortunes to this campaign only because they expected Damascus to be added to the kingdom of Jerusalem. Their enthusiasm for the war declined visibly, and ugly rumors started.
It was whispered throughout the army that Unur had paid fantastic bribes to get the leaders to move their armies to the waterless plain in front of the stronger eastern wall. The local barons were rumored to be getting rich from their betrayal of the cause. Even the dedicated Templars became a target of slander. A chronicler of Würzburg, attempting to absolve the German king of any blame, wrote, “King Baldwin would have fulfilled his desire of Damascus, had not the greed, trickery and envy of the Templars got in his way. For they accepted a huge bribe from the Philistines [the Damascenes] to give secret aid to the besieged inhabitants. When they could not free the city by this means, they deserted the camp, the king and their companions, at night. Conrad III was enraged by this and, in hatred of the Templars’ deceit, relinquished the siege and left the city, saying that he would never again come to the aid of Jerusalem, neither himself nor any of his people.”
Archbishop William of Tyre, who never flinched from openly attacking the Templar order, didn’t agree with that account, which was totally untrue, but he did believe that the incredibly stupid moves of the leadership must have involved treachery. He wrote that the leaders of Damascus “. . . came up with the intention of storming with money the souls of those whose bodies they could not overcome by fighting . . . bringing a countless quantity of money, to persuade some of our leaders to play the part of the traitor Judas.” The truth is that the decision to drop the siege was brought on by greed, jealousy, and the simple fact that, quite predictably, the besieging army had run out of food and water.
As the Christian host turned away from Damascus and back toward Galilee, Unur proved that he had no allies among them. His light cavalry harassed the Christians all the way. Men died every hour of the journey from Muslim swords and arrows, and more fell from exhaustion, thirst, and heatstroke. With mounted Muslims all around them, to drop was to die, and no other unit had the Templar dedication and discipline that refused to leave any fallen brother to die on the roadside. The Second Crusade called by the holy St. Bernard was over, and it was in every way a miserable failure.
Conrad immediately took ship to Constantinople, where he made an alliance with the emperor Manuel against Roger of Sicily. Louis stayed in Jerusalem until spring, to attend the Easter services at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Returning home on a Sicilian ship, he paused at the Italian port of Calabria to make a pact with Roger against Conrad. Europe was getting back to normal.
It was normal, too, to find someone to blame for the utter failure of the divinely ordained campaign. Roger of Sicily saw great potential advantage for himself and accused the emperor Manuel of betraying the Christians to the Turks. He urged a Crusade against Byzantium. Louis agreed, as did many among the Church hierarchy, and especially Bernard of Clairvaux. The Second Crusade had been his brainchild. With his own powers of persuasion he had put the Crusade together and had been waiting to be acclaimed as the savior of the Holy Land. Now he needed a scapegoat, and he eagerly pounced on the emperor Manuel as the guilty party. Of course, for a Crusade against Byzantium to succeed, Conrad would have to abandon his alliance with Manuel and fight against him. Conrad declined. Bernard stormed at him, but Conrad wouldn’t budge. He had had enough of the advice of Bernard of Clairvaux to last a lifetime, and the fiery preaching could no longer move him. The thought of a Roman Christian attack on the Greek Orthodox city of Constantinople was appealing to many, and it would happen, but its time was not yet at hand.
Bernard probably found it small consolation, but the abbot’s protégés, the Knights Templar, had won the complete approval of Louis of France. In the king’s opinion they were the best body of fighting men in all Christendom. The Templars would, of course, agree with him totally, but their increasingly arrogant confidence in their own ability could be costly, as their next campaign was to prove.
If anything, the Muslims came out of the Second Crusade stronger, because they had completely wiped away the myth of the invincibility of the armored Christian knights, even when led by their kings, and had proven their own fighting ability. There was a resurgence of pride throughout all Islam. Surely no man could doubt now that Allah was the one true God.