The Crusade to the Holy Land organized by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Sicily (d. 1197), is sometimes known as the German Crusade of 1197-1198 because it consisted almost exclusively of contingents from Germany.
Although Henry VI appears to have taken the cross, it was clear by the early autumn of 1196 that he was not going to lead the crusade personally. Instead he appointed the imperial chancellor Conrad of Querfurt, bishop of Hildesheim, and the imperial marshal Henry of Kalden as leaders of the expedition. Archbishop Conrad of Mainz led the first contingents to the Holy Land at Christmas 1196, with the main army and a contingent from northern Germany and Brabant following during 1197, perhaps numbering as many as
16,000 men and more than 240 ships. Although Henry VI succumbed to illness in Sicily during the summer of 1197, the crusade continued and managed to secure the coast of Palestine for the kingdom of Jerusalem before concluding a truce with the Ayyubid rulers of Egypt and returning to the West in 1198.
Origins and Organization
In November 1194 Henry VI conquered the kingdom of Sicily, which he had claimed by right of his wife, Constance, daughter of King Roger II of Sicily. With his possession of Sicily further secured by the birth of an heir, Frederick (II) in December 1194, the emperor’s aims turned to a wider horizon. In March 1193 he received the cross from Bishop Radulf of Sutri in private at Bari. He promised to send 1,500 knights and a similar number of ministerials (serf-knights) to the Holy Land but not to lead them personally. Although the truce in the Holy Land concluded in 1191 between Richard the Lionheart, king of England, and Saladin came to an end in 1195/1196, it does not appear that the situation in Syria or Palestine had any influence upon the planning of the crusade or that the rulers of Outremer had asked for assistance. Henry sent an embassy to Byzantium to ask for support, but there is no indication that he schemed to redirect the crusade against Byzantium, as is often suggested.
It is probably futile to attempt to disentangle political from religious motives behind Henry’s decision to take the cross. The primary objective of the crusade was to bolster the kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been greatly reduced by the conquests of Saladin in the years 1187-1191, yet the enterprise should also be seen in connection with Henry’s ambitions to win over Pope Celestine III for his plans for hereditary succession of the Staufen dynasty in the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of Sicily. A new crusade also gave Henry the opportunity to assert imperial authority in the East, and to this end he started negotiations with the rulers of Cilicia and Cyprus, by which he would confer the royal dignity upon them in return for their acknowledgement of imperial overlordship.
The crusade was proclaimed at diets held in Gelnhausen and Worms in the autumn of 1195, at which numerous prominent bishops and princes took the cross. The original departure date had been fixed for Christmas 1195, but at Gelnhausen it was postponed to Christmas 1196. However, only a fraction of those who had taken the cross departed on this date with Conrad, archbishop of Mainz, who had been named as papal legate to the crusade. It is unclear how large this part of the army was, but several other princes joined it on its march across the Alps and through Italy toward the southern Italian ports of Bari and Brindisi, where the emperor had made preparations for transport; they included Walram, son of Duke Henry III of Limburg, and Abbot Mangold of Kremsmunster. Conrad’s fleet left Apulia in April, and two ships were lost in spring storms during the journey. Upon arriving in Palestine (probably in May 1197), the fleet returned to carry the main army from Italy.
To transport the army by ship was a natural decision, in view of Henry’s possession of the ports of Apulia and Sicily. But not all of the crusaders sailed from southern Italy. A fleet consisting of 44 ships (probably cogs) set sail from the ports of northern Germany and Brabant. The crusaders carried on it appear to have been relatively independent from imperial command, perhaps because most of them were supporters of the Welfs, the main opponents of the Staufen dynasty in Germany; the most prominent of them were Henry I, count palatine of the Rhine; Hartwig II, archbishop of Bremen; Henry II, count of Oldenburg; and Henry I, duke of Brabant. The transport of the main army would, however, have been problematic had it not been for these extra ships. The fleet reached Messina on 3 August 1197, after having briefly assisted the Christians on the Iberian Peninsula against the Muslims.
The main army left Germany on 1 May 1197, and the first groups reached Messina in July. They thus arrived too late to take part in the suppression of the Sicilian uprising against Henry that broke out in April. The leader was to be Conrad of Querfurt, bishop of Hildesheim, while the military command was given to the imperial marshal Henry of Kalden. The crusaders included a large number of lay and ecclesiastical princes from all over Germany: Wolfger of Erla, bishop of Passau; Frederick I, duke of Austria; Conrad, bishop of Regensburg; Ludwig I, duke of Bavaria; Hermann I, landgrave of Thuringia; Adolf III, count of Holstein; Dietrich, count of WeiCenfels; Gardulf, bishop of Halberstadt; Berthold II, bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz; and Rudolf, bishop of Verden. Henry of Kalden had been sent to Byzantium to demand financial and logistical assistance in the winter of 1196-1197, and he returned to Sicily in May 1197 to join the fleet, which set sail on 1 September. A part of the fleet sailed directly for Acre (mod. ‘Akko, Israel), but the imperial chancellor Conrad of Querfurt first sailed to Cyprus to crown the island’s ruler, Aimery of Lusignan, as king.
The Crusade in the Holy Land
The advance contingent under the leadership of Archbishop Conrad of Mainz made camp on the beach outside Acre. Walram of Limburg could not wait for the arrival of the main army to see some action and raided in the vicinity. This was a breach of the existing truce, which caused the Ayyubid rulers in Egypt to put an army in the field. Acre was saved by swift action by Hugh of Tiberias, who summoned assistance from Henry of Champagne, the ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Ayyubid army then turned on Jaffa (mod. Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel), which it captured. The problems of the Christians increased with the accidental death of Henry of Champagne on 10 September 1197. His successor, Aimery of Lusignan, was not crowned until late 1197 or early 1198.
The military goal of the crusade was to secure the coast of Palestine. To march against the city of Jerusalem had been made virtually impossible by the loss of Jaffa and the presence of the strong Ayyubid army. When the main army arrived, therefore, it headed north toward Beirut. It marched along the coast accompanied by the fleet to Tyre (mod. Sour, Lebanon), where the men-at-arms embarked on the ships, while the knights continued by land. The crusaders were able to occupy Sidon (mod. Saida, Lebanon), which had been abandoned by the Muslims.
In the meantime the Ayyubid army under the leadership of al-‘Adil had guessed that the goal of the crusade army was Beirut and marched inland toward the city, where he had its walls torn down before the crusaders could arrive. Al-‘Adil then turned south, meeting the crusade army in pitched battle in October near Sidon, where his troops were routed. The crusaders made camp at Nahr Damur, and Beirut surrendered to them. It was then decided to lay siege to the castle of Toron, which was invested in November. The successful undermining of the castle produced an offer by the garrison to surrender it in return for free passage, but the crusaders were divided as to whether to accept these terms or to take the castle by storm. The decision was overtaken by events. By the beginning of February the crusaders heard of the arrival of new Ayyubid forces. In the meantime news of the death of Emperor Henry VI had also arrived, and Conrad of Querfurt and other leaders left the army to return to Tyre. Some of the German crusaders remained in position at Toron, but finally abandoned the siege on 24 February after the arrival of an Ayyubid army under al-‘Aziz, nephew of al-‘Adil.
By March most of the army was on its way home. On 21 June 1198 a truce was concluded with the Ayyubids for five years and eight months. The crusade had achieved some modest successes, notably the recapture of Sidon and Beirut. Several prominent crusaders are known to have died during the expedition, including Duke Frederick of Austria, Count Otto III of Ortenburg, and Bishop Odo of Toul. At least one of the German nobles remained in Palestine: Otto, count of Henneberg-Botenlauben, married Beatrix, the daughter and heiress of Joscelin III of Courtenay, seneschal of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
There were two other significant developments during the crusade that were significant for the development of the crusading movement and relationships between West and East. As the main contingent marched toward Toron, Conrad of Mainz travelled to Tarsos (mod. Tarsus, Turkey) to attend the coronation of Leon I, king of Cilician Armenia, taking with him a crown bestowed on the new king by Henry VI (6 January 1198). Conrad, acting as representative of both emperor and pope, crowned Leon in a ceremony that marked a new rapprochement between Armenia and the Western powers, as well as a union of the Armenian and Roman churches.
Later in the year, as the German crusaders assembled in the coastal cities for their voyage home, many of their leaders met at Acre on 5 March 1198 with representatives of the kingdom of Jerusalem. There they made the decision to establish a new military religious order on the basis of the small fraternity that had originally been founded to run the German hospital in Acre during the Third Crusade (1189-1192). This act marked the establishment of the Teutonic Order, the third great international military order after the Hospitallers and Templars.
-Janus M0ller Jensen Alan V. Murray
Bibliography
Csendes, Peter, Heinrich VI. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993).
Halfter, Peter, “Die Staufer und Armenien,” in Von Schwaben bis Jerusalem: Facetten staufischer Geschichte, ed. Sonke Lorenz and Ulrich Schmidt (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1995), pp. 186-208.
Hiestand, Rudolf, “Kingship and Crusade in Twelfth-Century Germany,” in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Hanna Vollrath (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 235-265.
Hucker, Bernd Ulrich, “Das Grafenpaar Beatrix und Otto von Botenlauben und die deutsche Kreuzzugsbewegung,” in Die Kreuzzuge: Kein Krieg ist heilig, ed. Hans-Jurgen Kotzur, Winfried Wilhelmy, and Brigitte Klein (Mainz:
Von Zabern, 2004), pp. 23-47.
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World History
