Folly and Failure: the Second Crusade

The loss of Edessa on Christmas Eve, 1144, sent shock waves through Europe. Edessa was the first Crusader state established half a century before, and like many nasty precedents it was feared that unless a reaction occurred, a domino effect would happen to sweep the Crusaders out of the Holy Land.

I find the Second Crusade a curious mixture of surprises, failures and disappointments from the perspective of Christian Europe. The fall of Edessa having become common knowledge, the Papacy felt compelled to issue a call to arms with the promise of remission of sins, to be preached by the very persuasive Bernard of Clairveax. The reaction to the preaching was the enlistment of the French and German monarchs in the adventure to set out overland. Northerners, often Flemish and English, were to depart via sea to their objective. However, Henry II of England was too sly to be dragged into the enterprise, just as well for him and his people.

Problems soon began to weaken the expedition. Unlike the first Crusade, the second was launched under the shock of a vague sense of fear at Muslim encroachment, rather than with a specific military objective in mind. Perhaps that more than anything explains so well why the Northern segment of the Crusade hardly went further than Iberia. Taking shelter on the Portugese coast, the Crusading band was then convinced by a local Christian lord to take the local city of Lisbon from the Moors. Why go all the way to Palestine, when one could indulge their material and carnal desires so close to home. With no clear military objective in the east, plus a dangerous and uncertain journey ahead of them, the Northern segment of the Second Crusade did not journey on to Palestine. Ironically, the taking of Lisbon was the only episode in this military adventure which interrupted the pattern of failure for the Christian side.

Meanwhile, the armies of Emperor Conrad III and Louis VII continued their trek overland, the rabbles of ill disciplined men who went ahead of them causing dischord with the Byzantines upon crossing the Danube. Lavishly entertained and welcomed by Manuel I Komnenos in Constantinople, Odo of Deuil from France nonetheless admits the Crusaders  held a meeting to discuss capturing Constantinople from their allies and  he records the  typical  Western view that the Byzantines were effeminate, effete and mendacious.

Manuel duly decided to ship his ungrateful guests over the Bosphorus to Anatolia, offering them guides and advice on how best to travel. Haughtily rejecting the Emperor's help, the two camps of Crusaders then fell out with one another and decided to separate. Travelling by poor routes against the advice of their Byzantine allies, separated by their petty squabbling, the two armies were defeated separately by the Turks, with few making it on to Palestine.

When they did so it was more failure and embarassment. Annoyed and hot headed over their recent defeats, the new arrivals to Palestine demanded immediate military action against whatever Muslim city was closest. Damascus was a city which had an alliance with the Crusader States, yet remained in the hands of her local Muslim dynasty. Eager for glory, the new arrivals ignored the more intelligent voices among the local aristocracy of Outremer and hastened to attack the only Muslim ally the Christians had. They failed to take the city and in doing so a city which was once a key part of Outremer's defence policy has thrown into the arms of Nur ed-din. Once again, the lack of a clear objective contributed to the utterly inept conduct of the Second Crusade.

For King Louis, it was bad enough, yet while in the Holy Land his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was travelling with him, had an affair with her uncle the Prince of Antioch. The humiliation could hardly have been worse for the young King. So the sorry band of men returned home, with little to show for their undertaking and having left the Crusader States in a situation a good deal more tenuous than they had found them to begin with.

Seocnd crusaders were ill disiciplined ? you rno tmixing with the peter hermit peoples crusade

so what the turks overwhelmed the Second crusade.

What numbers of Turks were fighting the frist crusade

Where the Turks Armoured ,or have a central armoured cavalry like the Mongols did?

Constantine - what is your source for Eleanor's "alleged" affair with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers.