The Glory of the Crusades (16 page)

Despite the heavy losses at Dorylaeum, Conrad’s army continued the march. After three days it became apparent that they should not continue. The leading nobles demanded a council with Conrad to discuss the future of the army. Morale was low and casualties continued to mount.

Things went from bad to worse when Conrad was struck by two Muslim arrows—one was to the head, causing a gruesome injury. The nobles begged Conrad to retreat. He agreed. The mighty German army, once full of promise and hope of victory, was demolished as an effective fighting force. The weeks-long march had brought nothing but a 20-percent casualty rate, a demoralized army, and a severely wounded king.

They returned to Nicaea in early November. Louis VII’s French army soon joined them and was shocked to hear of the German defeat. The two armies marched together to Ephesus to celebrate Christmas, and it was then that Louis decided to move out and continue his journey through Anatolia. Conrad, still suffering from his arrow wound, decided to go to Constantinople to convalesce. After spending the rest of winter and early spring there, he informed Emperor Manuel that he was leaving to re-join the Crusade. Conrad’s group celebrated Easter at Acre and then marched to Jerusalem, were he visited the holy sites. In May 1148 he entered into an agreement with King Baldwin III and the Templars to lead his remaining forces to Damascus.

Louis VII and the French

The twenty-six year old Louis VII (1120–1180) was a pious and devoted Catholic steeped in the Crusading history of his ancestors. The heroic tales of the First Crusade were read aloud at his coronation ceremony in 1137.
252
His pious and austere lifestyle contrasted greatly with that of his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the most famous woman of the medieval period.

Pope Eugenius knew of Louis’s interest in the Crusade, which is why he addressed the bull
Quantum Praedecessores
to the French king and his subjects. Louis eagerly took the cross because the martial ethos of the medieval French demanded it, and a desire to emulate the actions of the First Crusaders pushed him. Of course, it was no easy decision, since “to raise the money necessary for the Crusade, to be away from one’s lands for two or three years and to stand a fair chance of losing one’s life constituted a serious set of calculations for any individual, let alone one with the God-given responsibilities of a crowned head.”
253

St. Bernard traveled to Vézaly at Easter in 1146 to attend an assembly called by Louis. Here the Second Crusade would be announced and French warriors would be urged to participate. The choice of Vézaly was deliberate. It was well known as the starting point for the pilgrimage, or
Camino
, to Santiago de Compostela. There could be no better place to call forth soldiers to engage in the penitential and armed pilgrimage of the Crusade.

Bernard preached eloquently and the nobility and clergy of France responded. The great French fervor manifested itself in an unexpected multitude of individuals taking the cross; so many, in fact, that the cloth crosses ran out and Bernard improvised by tearing his own habit to make more!
254
Louis VII’s family and relatives joined him in taking the cross, including his wife (one of several women who joined the Crusade), his brother Robert of Dreux, and his uncle Amadeus of Savoy. Crusading veterans and sons of First Crusaders also signed up.

Over the next fifteen months, Louis assembled the men and materiel needed to conduct combat operations in the east. Besides the military and political preparations Louis focused on spiritual preparation. In a show of immense humility and penance, the king visited a leper house outside of Paris to minister to the poor souls by washing their feet.
255

By the summer of 1147, Louis VII must have felt confident and hopeful for the journey ahead. He had spent over a year getting ready for the grand adventure. Political and military preparations were complete. His spiritual preparations helped center the true nature of the expedition in his heart. All was ready for the king of France and his mighty soldiers to march to war.

The French Head East

The French, as the Germans had before them, enjoyed an uneventful march through Eastern Europe but troublesome setbacks once they entered Byzantine territory. Emissaries from Emperor Manuel demanded the French agree to return any liberated former imperial territory, just as Alexius had demanded of the First Crusaders. The French had believed Greek towns along the way would be open to them in order to buy food, but most refused to allow them entry and instead lowered (insufficient) food in buckets by ropes over the city walls. Advance units of Louis’s army were even attacked by Byzantine forces outside the walls of Constantinople.

Despite Byzantine harassment the main French army arrived at Constantinople in early October 1147. After being transported to Anatolia they proceeded to Nicaea, where they watched in horror as the battered army of Conrad III returned from its disastrous march.

Louis and his army moved inland and were ambushed and constantly harassed by the Turks. The king countered the mobile tactics of the Muslims by organizing his army so that the knights were in the front and sides, protecting the infantry and baggage train within a shell of heavily armored soldiers. Although the march was difficult due to constant Muslim attacks, the army was holding and Louis was confident of their safe arrival in the Holy Land.

Disaster at Mount Cadmus

As the French army approached Mount Cadmus in southern Anatolia, Louis gave strict orders that the line of march should not be broken for fear the Turks would exploit the gap. Unfortunately, his orders were not followed. The vanguard made good time through the mountain pass but allowed a gap to form between its units and the long, slower-moving baggage train. The rearguard had not even moved out of camp yet. Seeing the baggage train exposed, the Turks attacked.

The news reached Louis in the rearguard and he immediately sprang into action, leading his elite personal bodyguard into the fray. After heavy fighting and narrowly escaping capture, the king made his way back to the shattered remnant of his army and surveyed the scene. Many of his nobles were now dead, along with a number of infantry. On top of that, the marauding Muslims had plundered his baggage train. The once-promising Crusade was in crisis.

The Antioch Affair

Louis and his nobles finally arrived in Antioch on March 19, 1148. Their time in that city produced the most salacious story of the entire Crusade. It was a tale of political intrigue and marital difficulties that became one of the most remembered episodes of the Crusading movement.

Prince Raymond of Antioch welcomed King Louis but saw in his arrival an opportunity to increase his control over the surrounding countryside. Raymond hoped the consolidation of territory using French muscle would secure his independence from the Byzantines, who had attacked the city a decade previously and still maintained that the city was imperial territory. Raymond also wanted to take advantage of the local Muslim political situation and believed the time was right for an attack on Aleppo, ruled by Zengi’s son Nur al-Din.

Louis recognized that an attack on Aleppo would not be advantageous and decided the best course of action was to march south to Jerusalem and link up with Conrad’s remaining forces. This decision infuriated Prince Raymond and set into motion the “Antioch Affair.”

Louis’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine had been pleased with the decision to travel to Antioch. Prince Raymond was her uncle, although he was only eight years older, and they had known each other for years. Raymond spent a great deal of time with Eleanor during her stay in Antioch and after Louis’s rebuff of his plans, his time with the Queen increased. Eleanor welcomed the attention. She “was indeed flirtatious, flighty, and already tired of her husband.”
256
Sources differ and historians argue over what did or did not occur between Prince Raymond and Eleanor, but the historian of the Latin East, William of Tyre, believed the queen was “a foolish woman” who, “contrary to her royal dignity,” was unfaithful to Louis.
257

Throughout this time in which she was possibly having an adulterous—and incestuous—affair, Eleanor tried to convince Louis to support Raymond’s plan to march to Aleppo. She was furious at Louis’s decision to travel to Jerusalem instead and threatened to seek an annulment on the grounds of consanguinity (they were third cousins once removed) if Louis refused to go to Aleppo. The queen’s threat did not move Louis to reconsider and he marched to the Holy City.

After they returned from the Crusade, Eleanor did follow through on her threat and sought an annulment, which was granted in 1152. Two months later she married Henry Plantagenet, the future king of England. That marriage produced eight total children; three of the sons became kings of England—including Richard I the Lion-Hearted and his infamous rival, John.

Damascus

By the summer of 1148 the Second Crusade was in near shambles. The major armies had suffered horrific casualties during their marches through Anatolia and the remnants arrived in Jerusalem disheveled and disheartened.

Louis, Conrad, King Baldwin III, and the local Christian nobility met to determine the course of the Crusade. They faced three choices of targets: Aleppo, Damascus, or Ascalon. Aleppo was least viable, as Nur al-Din was well entrenched and too far north. A good tactical and strategic argument could have been made to attack the Fatimid city of Ascalon, the gateway to Egypt; its capture would provide a base of operations to launch raids into Egypt and solidify the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s southern border. However, the local nobility preferred an attack on Damascus. Damascus and Jerusalem had been allies until Nur al-Din, the ruler of Aleppo, married the daughter of the ruler of Damascus. The local Latin nobility were afraid that the marriage would lead to Nur al-Din’s total control of Damascus in the future, which would threaten the survival of Christian Jerusalem. So, they convinced Louis and Conrad to join forces and march with local troops to Damascus.

The combined army arrived near Damascus on July 24, 1148. Damascus was protected not only by its defensive walls but also by orchards, which surrounded most of the city “like the halo around the moon.”
258
The orchards comprised plots surrounded by dry mud walls which served as a natural defensive barrier. Some plot owners had constructed towers as well. The army that controlled the orchards had Damascus by the throat—the Crusaders recognized this and therefore focused their initial attack here.

The German army led the way through the orchards and pushed the Muslim defenders back. Conrad was seen engaging in personal combat as he severed the head, neck, and shoulder of one Muslim defender. This display of strength caused other Muslim troops to retreat.
259

By the end of the first day of fighting the Crusaders were in an excellent tactical position. They were in control of most of the orchards and had pushed the outer defenses of the city back to the walls. They had plenty of food and water, and set their camp on a plain on the other side of the orchards in front of the city. Curiously, the army had not brought along any siege equipment, nor did it construct any, indicating that the leaders expected a rapid assault or quick surrender to bring them victory.

On the second day of fighting the defenders counterattacked and made small gains, but the Crusaders were still in a dominant position. By the third day, at the suggestion of the local Christian nobles, the Crusaders broke camp and shifted their point of attack to what they believed to be a weaker section of the walls on the eastern side of the city. Their belief was not accurate, as the eastern walls were heavily defended. Meanwhile, Damascene troops reoccupied the orchards, preventing the Crusaders from returning to their original attack position. Separated from their previously abundant food and water supply and aware of advancing Muslim relief armies, Louis and Conrad made the heart-wrenching decision to end the siege and withdraw to Jerusalem. The Crusade was over; it had accomplished nothing and was an abject disaster.

The Blame Game

Why did the Christian armies fail? William of Tyre tried to answer that question a quarter century later by interviewing surviving veterans in France. Unfortunately, his research did not provide a definitive answer, but it did point to the belief that treachery was involved. Conrad III believed blame should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the local Christian nobility:

With general consensus we reached Damascus and set up our camp in front of the city gate. Although our men faced considerable danger, there can be no doubt at all that the city was close to being captured, and surrendering. But then, those whom we had no reason to distrust behaved in this way: they claimed that the side of the city we were on was impregnable and intentionally led us to another district where there was neither water for the army, nor was it possible to gain entry. Everyone was angered by this and turned around and retreated in grief with the siege a failure.
260

The story circulated in the West that Jerusalem’s nobility had been bribed to betray the siege; this belief would sour European relations with the Latin East for the next thirty years.

Muslim sources, though, provide more awareness of what happened that fateful July in 1148. Although the generally accepted Western narrative was that the Crusaders were in a very favorable position of attack after the first day of fighting, the reality was more nuanced. The first day did result in Crusader success, including the killing of two well-known and important Muslim religious figures. However, the notion that the city was on the brink of surrender was not accurate. The inhabitants of Damascus had no intention of surrendering and were motivated by deep religious piety to fight and defend their city. Damascus held a special place of importance for Islam, as it was reportedly the site where the messiah would come before the day of judgment at the end of the world; the slopes of Mount Kaisoun allegedly were the birthplace of Abraham; and it was the city where God gave asylum to Jesus and Mary.
261
The city known as “God’s Paradise on Earth” would not have fallen without tremendous effort, and with Muslim reinforcements rapidly approaching, the Crusader belief in a “quick win” did not fit the reality of the situation.