The Second Crusade
The Second Crusade was preached by the most influential churchman in Europe, led by two kings, and achieved nothing at all. Edessa, the first crusader state founded and the most exposed, fell to Zengi of Mosul in 1144, and the news produced a papal bull and a preaching campaign by Bernard of Clairvaux whose effect was extraordinary — he is reported to have run out of cloth for crosses at Vézelay and to have cut up his own habit. Conrad III of Germany and Louis VII of France both took the cross, which no reigning monarch had done in 1096. The armies went overland through Byzantine territory, quarrelled with Manuel I, and were destroyed separately in Anatolia by Seljuk horse archers — Conrad's near Dorylaeum in October 1147 and Louis's at Mount Cadmus in January, after which most of the survivors were shipped from the coast or died. What reached Palestine was a fraction of what had set out. The council at Acre in June 1148 then made the decision that finished it: instead of retaking Edessa or attacking Aleppo, the kings and the local barons chose Damascus, which was the one Muslim state in the region allied with Jerusalem against Zengi's son Nur al-Din. The siege lasted four days. The army moved from an orchard with water to a plain without it, on advice that has been read as treachery ever since, and withdrew. Damascus went over to Nur al-Din, and the crusader position was worse than before. Bernard spent his last years explaining it.
- Year: 1147 CE
- Category: Military
