Gaining a Reputation: The Templars and the Second Crusade

  The Second Crusade has not gone down in history as a great military achievement, yet it contributed materially to the success of the Knights Templar as an institution -- and to the myths already building around them.

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To recap, the Templars were not founded until after the First Crusade, and were originally so poor that they shared horses and depended on charity. In 1129, they received their "Rule" from St. Bernard of Clairvaux. At this time they also adopted white robes and surcoats as their habit.  The exclusive right to wear a red cross patée on their shoulders and/or breast was granted 17 years later in 1147. Yet despite their success with gaining recognition, property and recruits, the Knights Templar (as they increasingly came to be called) had not yet emerged as a significant military establishment nor proven their worth in battle. It was the Second Crusade that gave them that opportunity.

The loss of the County of Edessa to the powerful Selkjuk leader Zengi in 1144 shocked Western Europe and triggered a call for a new crusade. Pope Eugenius made the official appeal, while St. Bernard became the most passionate, articulate and effective preacher of this new crusade. Although St. Bernard succeeded in recruiting the German King, Conrad of Hohenstaufen, from the start the driving force behind this crusade was the young French King, Louis VII. Louis had in childhood been destined for the Church and only became heir to the crown of France after his elder brother’s death. Throughout his life, he was noted for his great piety, and the crusade appealed to him greatly.  After an impassioned speech by St. Bernard at Vézélay on Palm Sunday 1147, enough nobles (including the Duchess of Aquitaine, wife of King Louis) had been recruited to make the crusade viable.

From the start, however, the crusade suffered from poor coordination. The German crusaders set off ahead of the French and proceeded in such an undisciplined fashion across the Western territories of the Byzantine Empire that it came to many armed clashes with Imperial troops.  The French followed a month behind the Germans and although more disciplined, they now encountered inhabitants burned by the behavior of the Germans who were hostile ― which meant reluctant to sell food and other necessities. The situation was critical and King Louis sent envoys to the Greek Emperor to negotiate for market privileges in exchange for an orderly passage of the crusaders through Byzantine territory.

One of Louis’ envoys was the Master of the Temple in France (not to be confused with the Grand Master.) This was a certain Everard de Barres, already a close confidante of King Louis, and commander of 130 Templar Knights and probably equal numbers of sergeants and support elements for a total of about 300 Templars. These Templars were presumably all recent recruits from France, but they had had time to undergo training and indoctrination. From the start of the Second Crusade, they appear to have assumed their now traditional role of protecting pilgrims ― in this case armed pilgrims and their very large baggage train including the Queen of France and many other ladies. 

After crossing the Bosporus in late October, the French crusaders received alarming reports of the destruction of the German crusader ― rumors that soon proved all too true. The German has been all but annihilated near Dorylaeum (the site of a great crusader victory in the First Crusade).  Allegedly only one in five of the German crusaders escaped the slaughter. Conrad von Hohenstaufen preferred to blame “betrayal” by the Greeks rather than take responsibility for his own poor leadership and failure to send out scouts. It was the message of “betrayal” that he gave King Louis.

Although the remnants of the Germans now joined the French, Conrad himself soon fell ill and returned by ship to Constantinople.  The French continued more cautiously along the coastal road.  Two days beyond Laodicea the road led through a steep pass over Mt. Cadmus.  The vanguard was ordered to camp at the top of the pass to give the rest of the army time to catch up, but the commander (a vassal of the Queen of France rather than her husband) ignored the orders and continued over the pass allowing a large gap between units to develop. The Turks, who had been shadowing the army all along, immediately took advantage of the situation and fell upon the main and rear divisions, still struggling up the slope.  King Louis was unhorsed early on and too refuge either among the rocks or up a tree (depending on account). In the ensuing slaughter and chaos, the Templars distinguished themselves as the only disciplined fighting force capable of delivering counter-blows. When darkness fell, the Turks had been driven back, but not before the crusaders had suffered severe losses, particularly to the horses and baggage train.

Shaken by his experience, King Louis effectively turned the command of his entire army over to the Templars!  Everard de Barres organized the crusader force into units of 50, each under the command of a single Templar.  The Templars established an order of march and insisted that it be maintained. They also gave orders for the infantry to protect the horse during attacks and that ensured that no counter attacks were undertaken until ordered and properly coordinated and led.  These were simple things, but they had evidently not been instituted prior the Templars taking command ― in sharp contrast to the highly disciplined army of Richard the Lionheart half a century later.

Yet discipline is not substitute for food and fodder. The Turks employed a form of “scorched earth” policy to deny the advancing crusaders both.  Soon the crusaders were eating their horses ― except for the Templars, who had husbanded their supplies and could still feed both themselves and their mounts. This enabled the Templars to disguise the weakness of the entire force ― and beat off four more attacks by the Turks before the crusaders finally reached the Byzantine controlled port of Adalia. (Howarth, p.88)

Here King Louis VII ignominiously (and unlike his descendant and namesake King Louis IX) promptly abandoned his army, and took ship for Antioch with his wife and his leading nobles. The common crusaders were left to die of plague and hunger or sell themselves into Turkish slavery in order to survive.

King Louis arrived in Antioch in March 1148 with none of his infantry and in desperate need of money. The Templars were now to prove their value in the second field of endeavor or which they were to become famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view): as bankers.  Everard des Barres sailed from Antioch to Acre and there managed to raise loans by mortgaging Templar properties. The sums raised were enormous, as King Louis’ instructions to his ministers in France to repay the Templars document that they amounted to nearly half the annual revenues of the King of France at this time. (Barber, p. 68)

The rest of the Second Crusade was equally disastrous. At Acre on June 24, 1148 a joint decision was taken by the leaders of the crusade including Conrad of Hohenstaufen (who had sailed from Constantinople directly to the Holy Land and joined the crusader council), King Louis and King Baldwin of Jerusalem to attack Damascus. The choice seems odd since the Sultan of Damascus at this time had been comparatively friendly and was a joint enemy of Zengi’s successor Nur ad-Din. Although the Masters of both the Temple and the Hospital were present at this war council, their opinions are not known, and their voices were not yet powerful enough to be decisive.  

Initial assaults on Damascus from the East/South were thwarted because the city was here surrounded by gardens and orchards with irrigation ditches that prevented the use of mass cavalry charges but provided archers with effective cover. The decision was therefore taken collectively to move the besieging army to the east where there were no such gardens and orchards ― but where there was also a dearth of water. Thereafter, the entire crusade broke down into bickering and recriminations while the crusading army disintegrated ― destroying the reputations of King Louis and Conrad of Hohenstaufen both.

The failure of the Second Crusade had serious repercussions.  It proved that “Frankish” knights were not invulnerable and Frankish armies not invincible. This greatly bolstered confidence among the Turks. In Western Europe it proved that God was not always on the side of the crusaders.  But since God had to be on their side, the search for scape goats was on at once.  The most obvious scapegoat was the Greeks. Both Conrad and Louis felt they had been “betrayed” ― misled at best or intentionally led into ambushes at worst. Another scapegoat were the “Poulains” ― the barons and lords of the Kingdom of Jerusalem ― who seemed to the crusaders too ready and willing to make truces with their Saracen foes.

Yet as Barber points out it is ominous that one German chronicler pinned the blame for the disaster at Damascus on the Templars. The Templars, he claimed, had accepted a massive bribe from the Saracens to give secret aid to the besieged (Barber, p. 69). It is notable that this allegation came only from German sources and not from French. King Louis returned to France full of praise for the Templars, and their reputation there continued to grow.  The Templars never really put down strong roots in the German speaking world and within half a century, the Germans would found their own Order, the Deutsche Ritter Orden. Yet it would be a French king who destroyed the Templars.

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"St. Louis Knight" is a novel set against the backdrop of the Seventh Crusade and St. Louis' sojourn in the Holy  Land. A Templar novice and King Louis are the central characters. 

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The Second Crusade

 The loss of Edessa shook Europe. The First Crusade had already become legendary and very few living in the West had any idea of how vulnerable the crusader states had been in the intervening forty-five years. Indeed, Europeans were largely unaware of the frequent setbacks suffered, the high cost (in blood) of the victories, or the continuing threats faced by the Franks in the east. To most Europeans, it appeared that God had granted the Holy Land to the Christians and all was well with the world — at least the world Beyond the Sea. As a result, the loss of Edessa shattered their world view and triggered a new crusading frenzy that culminated in what is known as the Second Crusade. 

 

            From the start, the character of the Second Crusade differed fundamentally from the First. There was no longer any need to ‘ransom Christ’ or ‘liberate’ his city or his people from oppression. Instead, a new and dangerous precedent was set of offering spiritual benefits merely for fighting for Christ in any expedition called for by the pope. Henceforth, a ‘crusade’ might entail fighting anywhere that the pope viewed useful — against the Wends east of the Elbe, against the Moors in Spain, or by the thirteenth century, against heretics or the political enemies of the papacy. The Second Crusade set the precedent by encompassing three divergent theatres of conflict: a campaign led by the Danes and Saxons against the pagans of northeastern Europe; an offensive against the Moors led by Alfonso VII of Castile and Alfonso Henriques of Portugal, and an expedition against the Saracens in the Near East. 

 

The crusade to the Near East was broken down into two main components: a German crusade under the Conrad III, and a French crusade under Louis VII. The Germans first attacked the Jews at home before crossing Byzantine territory in an undisciplined fashion that led to many clashes with the local authorities and population. They crossed into Turkish territory without awaiting the arrival of the French and promptly walked into a Turkish ambush near Dorylaeum. Here the bulk of the German crusaders were annihilated. 

 

The French followed in a more disciplined fashion. Although suffering one serious defeat in which King Louis was unhorsed and came close to being captured, they avoided annihilation. Despite remaining in Byzantine-controlled territory thereafter, they found markets rare and insufficient, the terrain inhospitable and the weather cold and wet. To add insult to injury, the Byzantine garrisons largely remained behind their walls, leaving the crusaders vulnerable to lighting strikes by Turkish light cavalry. Even without a major battle, the near continuous Turkish harassment resulted in steady attrition.  Worn down by these tactics, the weather and terrain, the French arrived in the Byzantine port of Adalia on 20 January 1148 in a sorry and dispirited state. Louis VII promptly abandoned his infantry and set sail for Antioch with his wife, knights and nobles. 

 

As a result of this disastrous performance on the part of both commanders, few crusaders who came overland actually made it to the Holy Land. Most of Louis’ infantry died of hunger, exhaustion, wounds and disease or accepted slavery in exchange for their lives. On the other hand, a large contingent of northern Europeans, including many English, arrived by ship, swelling the number of combatants available in the Holy Land to an exceptional number. 

 

In consequence, on 24 June 1148, a council of crusade leaders and local barons convened to discuss what to do with their troops. The re-capture of Edessa was no longer viewed as a serious option. Not only had the destruction been too complete, Edessa lacked emotional appeal and religious significance. The argument that the re-capture of Edessa was vital to the defense of Antioch fell on deaf ears because the Prince of Antioch had done homage to the Byzantine Emperor a decade earlier; from the point of view of the Western leaders that made Antioch’s defense the Emperor’s problem, not theirs. The options narrowed down to an attempt to capture Ascalon, the only remaining port on the coast of the Levant still in Saracen hands, or an attack on Damascus. 

 

Historians can only speculate why Damascus, technically still an ally of Jerusalem, became the target of the Second Crusade. Possibly the absence of a significant fleet made a siege of Ascalon impractical. Nevertheless, Damascus was far from an easy target. The crusaders did not have and did build siege engines, nor were their forces sufficient to surround the city and cut it off from supplies and reinforcement. In the event, the ‘siege’ lasted only five days, before the approach of Zengi’s relieving army sent the crusaders scampering back to Jerusalem. The only positive feature of this miserable performance was there were few casualties; the losses of the crusade came during the march to Jerusalem not during this disgraceful military (in)action.

 

Accounts of what happened in the ‘siege’ are contradictory and marred by untenable accusations of treachery leveled at practically everyone. Christian sources speak of an inexplicable and unjustified move from a good to a bad position, but Muslim sources record no such blunder. Conrad III blamed the barons of Jerusalem for giving bad advice. However, the King of Jerusalem at this time was a minor and the ruling Queen both opposed the attack on Damascus and was absent from the siege; she can hardly be blamed for the failure of an army doing something she had advised them against. Given the history of alliance with Damascus, it is far more likely that the crusaders — always shocked by the readiness to local lords to cooperate with Muslims — ignored the advice of Jerusalem’s barons not to attack Damascus in the first place. 

 

Other commentators blamed the militant orders for accepting bribes yet admit that no money actually passed hands — a fact they explained away with Saracen duplicity.  William of Tyre indirectly blamed Louis VII, saying he promised Damascus to the Count of Flanders, thereby offending and demotivating everyone else. Michael the Syrian, a native Christian chronicler, believed the Damascenes tricked Baldwin III into believing Conrad III would depose him and set himself up as King of Jerusalem, if the crusaders succeeded in taking Damascus, a complicated conspiracy story. 

 

The consequences of the ignominious failure of a crusade led by two crowned heads of Europe and advocated by the most important clerics of the age were more far-reaching and damaging than the loss of Edessa that had triggered it. For one thing the sense of ‘manifest destiny’ that had inspired European confidence in their right to control the Holy Land was shaken. Naturally, clerics attempted to blame the crusaders themselves, suggesting their motives had not been pure enough or that they had sinned too greatly; God, they warned, had sent defeat to punish them. Alternatively, they argued that the defeat was a gift of God to ‘give brave men an opportunity to show courage and win immorality’ in the future.[i] People being people, however, it was much easier to blame someone else. The obvious scapegoats were the Byzantines, who had failed to provide sufficient support and protection during the long march through territory they nominally controlled, and the Franks living in the East, the so-called ‘Poulains,’ because they had ‘given bad advice’ or ‘taken bribes’ or been ‘too greedy for titles.’ Whatever the exact version of events, it further poisoned relations between the West and Constantinople while casting aspersions on the reliability of the Franks living in Outremer. Mistrust of ‘the Greeks’ and the ‘Poulains’ became a recurring sub-plot of all future crusades.

 

Furthermore, in the immediate aftermath of the failed crusade, Saracen confidence surged, triggering a new attack on Antioch. Prince Raymond, the consort of the heiress Constance and younger brother of Duke William of Aquitaine, sallied out to confront Nur al-Din in the field. Like his predecessor, he did so without awaiting reinforcements from Tripoli or Jerusalem. He was encircled on the night of 28 June 1149 and his army was slaughtered. Raymond’s body was found among the dead. Nur al-Din ordered his head and right arm hacked off. They were sent as trophies to the caliph in Baghdad. Such ‘civilized’ behavior has never been recorded among the Franks after a victory. Meanwhile, with the Frankish military force destroyed, Nur al-Din turned to absorbing into his own territory what was left of the County of Edessa. 

 

When the relief force from Tripoli and Jerusalem arrived, there was nothing left to salvage. All the Frankish leaders could do was provide protection for the surviving Frankish civilians and any Armenians that wished to evacuate the former County of Edessa. The Franks ceded all claims to territory to the Byzantine Emperor, while Frankish troops escorted a column of refugees south. They had to withstand repeated assaults from the forces of Nur al-Din. It is noteworthy that thousands of Armenians preferred Frankish to Saracen rule and chose to abandon their homes in order to seek refuge in Jerusalem. These refugees flooded the Holy City, briefly overwhelming the capacity of charitable institutions to deal with them. 

 

With the benefit of hindsight, historians often depict the capture of Edessa as the beginning of the end for the crusader states. In fact, Edessa had never been an objective of the crusade. It was not home to a single pilgrimage site. The population remained predominantly Armenian. Edessa might have been a useful buffer, but it was in no way essential to the raison d’être of the crusader states, their economy or their security. The heartland of the crusader states on the coast of the Levant remained viable entities for yet another hundred years.

---

[i] Jotischky, Andrew. Crusading and the Crusader States. [Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2004] 85.

 This entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader is also the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades.

                         

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"The Tale of the English Templar" is a fictional work that depicts the destruction of the Knight's Templar. 

An escaped Templar, an intrepid, old crusader, and a discarded bride

embark on a quest for justice in the face of tyranny. 

Find out more at: https://helenapschrader.net/the-english-templar/

 

"St. Louis Knight" is a novel set against the backdrop of the Seventh Crusade and St. Louis' sojourn in the Holy  Land. A Templar novice and King Louis are the central characters. 

It is now available in audiobook as well as paperback and ebook.

Buy Now!

 

 A crusader in search of faith --
A lame lady in search of revenge --
And a King who would be saint.

St. Louis' Knight takes you to the Holy Land in the 13th century, and a world filled with knights, nobles, prophets -- and assassins. 

(Available in Audiobook)