The Glory of the Crusades

by Steve Weidenkopf

  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.

  The bottom line was that King Louis VII and Conrad III found themselves in a dire predicament before the gates of Damascus. It was “a choice between a brave and dangerous assault … and an ordered withdrawal, [so] retreat may have appeared the sensible path. Only it was not the path of heroes; the miracle of Antioch in 1098 was not to be repeated.”262 Had Damascus fallen into Crusader hands it would have meant the recovery of Edessa, the strengthening of the northern frontier, and the destruction of the possibility of Muslim unity in the Holy Land. The failure at Damascus was a lost opportunity that ultimately lost Outrémer.

  The End of the Crusade

  Conrad III left the Holy Land in September of 1148 after a very difficult year that left him with a severe wound and the loss of his army and a good portion of his wealth. He was the “leader of the largest army to set out in 1147, [and] Conrad lost most and gained least.”263

  One member of Conrad’s army did not forget his experience during the Second Crusade. The lessons learned in that expedition helped Frederick of Swabia, Conrad’s nephew and the future holy Roman emperor known as Frederick Barbarossa, plan and execute his journey during the Third Crusade.

  King Louis VII stayed in the Kingdom of Jerusalem until Easter of 1149. He departed on contracted Sicilian ships, which were set upon by the Byzantine navy. The ship carrying Queen Eleanor was seized and detained for a time. The royal couple eventually made their way to Sicily where they traveled to the Italian mainland. They met with Pope Eugenius, who tried to mend their rapidly unraveling marriage but to no effect. Louis and his estranged queen finally arrived home in France in November.

  Results of the Crusade

  The Second Crusade not only failed to liberate Edessa (which had been the primary objective) and Damascus, but it produced several other negative effects. It was such a disaster that “it is no exaggeration to say that the crusader states would have fared better had the Crusade never been launched.”264 The failure of the Byzantines to lend adequate support to the French and German armies and Manuel’s policy of benign neglect furthered the Western understanding that the Eastern Christians “were part of the problem rather than the solution” to the issues affecting Outrémer.265 The military blunders by both the French and German armies on their marches through Anatolia and the bad decisions at Damascus weakened the aura of invincibility surrounding Crusade armies in the Holy Land. The Muslims were no longer afraid of Christian armies.

  Perhaps the most deleterious effect of the failure of the Second Crusade was the lowering of morale and a general questioning of the Crusading movement. The First Crusade had been a miraculous success, so Second Crusade contemporaries expected the same. When failure was the result, questions were raised and answers posited in a negative way that affected Christendom’s view of its leaders and the Crusading movement as a whole. Eugenius III believed the failure of the Second Crusade was “the most severe injury of the Christian name that God’s Church has suffered in our time.”266

  Those who preached the Crusade and assis
ted with its prosecution were not immune to criticism. St. Bernard suffered such intense denunciation that he referred to that time in his life as the “season of disgrace.”267 Responding to the personal reproaches, Bernard offered his own explanation as to why the Crusade failed—it was the benevolent and mysterious will of God:

  How can human beings be so rash as to dare to pass judgment on something that they are not in the least able to understand? It might perhaps be a comfort for us to bear in mind the heavenly judgments that were made of old … For … it is true that the hearts of mortal men are made in this way: we forget when we need it what we know when we do not need it … The promises of God never prejudice the justice of God.268

  Other commentators leveled their ire at the Templars, accusing them of accepting Muslim bribes during the siege of Damascus.269 Although it is human nature to imagine overly complicated explanations for life’s setbacks, the reality is that the answers are often very simple. The failure of the Second Crusade was neither Bernard’s fault nor the Templars’; the Byzantines are not to blame, either (even though they did not assist at the level hoped for by Louis and Conrad). The Second Crusade failed because it was a poorly funded enterprise led by over-optimistic leaders who committed too many military blunders.270

  The Death of the “Honey-Sweet” Preacher

  Pope Eugenius III died in July of 1153 and, a month later, his trustworthy and loyal mentor and friend, Bernard of Clairvaux, followed him into eternal glory. Bernard was canonized twenty-one years after his death and officially declared a Doctor of the Church in 1830 by Pope Pius VIII. Despite the criticism of modern-day writers, St. Bernard’s preaching of the Second Crusade was not “sinful” behavior; rather, it was the work of a man totally dedicated to Christ, his Church, and his vicar on earth.271 The pope had called the Crusade and authorized Bernard to spread its message and motivate warriors to undertake its burden. Bernard understood the need for the Second Crusade and he worked tirelessly to promote it. His mission was far from sinful; it was the work of holiness. “The Church has had great saints since, perhaps even greater, but none ever again whose life and universal impact quite matched that of Bernard of Clairvaux.”272

  201 An anonymous trouvère song used for recruitment during the Second Crusade, J. Bédier and P. Aubry, eds., Les Chansons de Croisade avec Leurs Melodies, 1909, 8–11; trans. M. Routledge in Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade—Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 283.

  202 Divina dispensation II in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 134.

  203 Bernard of Clairvaux, “Epistolae,” in Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols., eds. J. Leclercq and H. Rohais, (Rome, 1955–1977), no. 247, 140–141 in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 65.

  204 Outrémer, meaning “overseas,” was the French term for the Crusader States.

  205 Tyerman, God’s War, 201.

  206 Grousset, The Epic of the Crusades, 41.

  207 John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades 1000–1300 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 214.

  208 Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant” in Thomas F. Madden, The Crusades—Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 250.

  209 See Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 71.

  210 Ibid.

  211 R.C. Smail, Crusading Warfare, 1097–1193 (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 102.

  212 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 161.

  213 Pernoud, The Crusaders, 104.

  214 Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 80.

  215 Desmond Seward, The Monks of War—The Military Religious Orders (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 19.

  216 Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 76.

  217 Ibid.

  218 Seward, The Monks of War, 35.

  219 Terence Wise, The Knights of Christ (London: Osprey Publishing, 1984), 6.

  220 Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 79.

  221 Wise, The Knights of Christ, 7.

  222 Ibid.

  223 Seward, The Monks of War, 35.

  224 Miriam Rita Tessera, “The Papal Schism of 1130,” in Crusades, vol. 9 of The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010), 11.

  225 Seward, The Monks of War, 17.

  226 Wise, The Knights of Christ, 26.

  227 Seward, The Monks of War, 35.

  228 Pernoud, The Crusaders, 104.

  229 Tyerman, God’s War, 269.

  230 Phillips, The Second Crusade, xviii.

  231 Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, 135.

  232 Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 51.

  233 Quantum Praedecessores, trans. L. & J.S.C. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (London: 1981), 57–59, in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 282.

  234 Ibid., 281.

  235 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 50.

  236 Warren Carroll, The Glory of Christendom—A History of Christendom, vol. 3 (Front Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1993), 20.

  237 Christopher Rengers, O.F.M., Cap., The 33 Doctors of the Church (Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc.), 282.

  238 Ibid.

  239 Bernard referred to the Crusade as “the business of God, namely the expedition to Jerusalem.” Phillips, The Second Crusade, 65.

  240 Bernard, “Epistolae,” in Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols., eds J. Leclercq and H. Rochais, (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1955–77), no. 363, p. 314. Quoted in Phillips, Second Crusade, 73.

  241 Bernard of Clairvaux, Letters, ed. B. Scott James, 2nd ed. (Stroud: 1998), no. 391, 460–463, in Housley, Fighting for the Cross, 33.

  242 Bernard, “Epistolae,” Quoted in Chronicles of the Crusades, Hallam, 126.

  243 Radulf preached at Cologne, Mainz, Worms, Speyer and Strasbourg.

  244 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 87.

  245 Ibid., 85.

  246 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 28.

  247 Vita Prima S. Bernardi in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 95.

  248 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 169.

  249 Ibid., 174.

  250 Niketas Choniates, O City of Byzantium—The Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. H.J. Magoulias (Detroit: 1984), 39, in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 206.

  251 Tyerman, God’s War, 325.

  252 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 62.

  253 Ibid., 63.

  254 Ibid.

  255 Ibid., 126–127.

  256 Grousset, The Epic of the Crusades, 118.

  257 William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, 2 vols., CCCM 63, 63A (Turnhout: 1986), 755, in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 211.

  258 Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. R.J.C. Broadhurst (London: 1952), 271–272. in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 218.

  259 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 220.

  260 Die Urkunden Konrads III. Und seines Sohns Heinrich, ed. F. Hausmann, MGH DD 9 (Vienna: 1969), 197, 357 Quoted in Phillips, The Second Crusade, 222.

  261 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 223–224.

  262 Tyerman, God’s War, 335.

  263 Ibid.

  264 Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 61.

  265 Ibid.

  266 Tyerman, God’s War, 336.

  267 Rengers, The 33 Doctors of the Church, 294.

  268 Bernard, De Consideratione, in Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 131.

  269 Würzburg, chronicler in Chronicles of the Crusades, 147.

  270 Phillips, The Second Crusade, 278–279.

  271 For criticism of Bernard, see Barron, Catholicism, 162.

  272 Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, 75.

  5

  The Sultan and the Kings

  [We want to fight] … until you see Jesus fleeing from Jerusalem.

  Ibn Munir of Tripoli273

  We have heard things that make us tremble at the severity of the judgment that the divine hand has executed over the land of Jerusalem.


  Pope Gregory VIII274

  The count of Poitou heard the devastating news and knew immediately what he had to do. The pope had once more called to arms the warriors of Christendom. The Holy City of Jerusalem had fallen into enemy hands; the Christians of the Latin East were in desperate need.

  The count had plenty to keep him occupied at home, including incessant political intrigue. None of it mattered now. Christ’s patrimony was in peril, and the pope’s call moved this warrior to forget the cares of home to embrace the cross. The count made his way to Tours, and there in the city of St. Martin, in November of 1187, he took the vow to go on Crusade. He was determined to utilize all the means at his disposal to muster a formidable army motivated by one mission: the recovery of the Holy City.

  Spiritually prepared and armed with the resources of the kingdom of England and his extensive holdings in Aquitaine, the thirty-two-year-old count was confident that his mission would be accomplished. In the summer of 1190, medieval Europe’s greatest military commander departed his home, not to see it again for the next four years. The time was at hand: Richard the Lion-Hearted was going to war.

  Their Worst Fear—the Rise of Saladin

  Less than thirty years after the failure of the Second Crusade, the Christians of the Latin East found themselves surrounded by a unified Islam whose ruler pursed a campaign of jihad to push them out of the Holy Land forever. William of Tyre, the historian of the Latin East, described the military and political situation of Outrémer with the ascendancy of the infamous Saladin:

  [A]ll the kingdoms round about us obey one ruler, they do the will of one man, and at this command alone, however reluctantly, they are ready, as a unit, to take up arms for our injury. This Saladin … a man of humble antecedents and lowly station, now holds under his control all these kingdoms, for fortune has smiled too graciously upon him.275

  Saladin was a Kurd born in the town of Tikrit in modern-day Iraq—the same birthplace as Saddam Hussein. The man who would wreak havoc among the Christians in Outrémer was known as Yusuf Ibn Ayyub during his lifetime, but he became known in western literature and history as Saladin, from the Arabic title Salah al-Din (“Restorer of Religion).”276 He was a pious and observant Muslim who fasted, slept on a rough mat, and gave generous alms to the poor. His spiritual practices were rooted in a desire to do the will of Allah and imitate the example of Mohammed and even exceed it, for “while he emulated the temperance he surpassed the chastity of his Arabian prophet.”277