The Second Crusade: 1147–1149

If the First Crusade is the high-water mark of the medieval Crusading ideal, the Second is the moment the ideal started to crack. It was the first royal expedition — the only time two reigning kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, took the field together — and the first expedition in which the propaganda was followed by a defeat so total that Bernard of Clairvaux, the Cistercian abbot who had done more than any single person to call it, publicly prayed to be released from the responsibility. The expedition was over, in his considered view, a punishment from God for the sins of the Crusaders.

This pillar tells the story of the expedition, with a particular eye to the gap between the preaching and the result. For the broader context, see the main article on the Crusades and the causes of the Crusades. For an analysis of the failure, see why the Second Crusade failed.

A note on the historiography. Jonathan Phillips’s The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (2007) is now the standard modern study, and it is what I have leaned on most. Hans Mayer’s Geschichte der Kreuzzüge im Mittelalter and Steven Runciman’s A History of the Crusades, vol. 2, are still useful for the older view, which was that the Second Crusade was an unmitigated disaster. Phillips’s more sympathetic reading — that the expedition was a more rational enterprise than the older view allowed, and that its failures should be understood in the context of 12th-century political complexity — has largely carried the field.

The fall of Edessa and the call to arms

The Second Crusade was a response to a single event: the fall of the County of Edessa to the Turkish atabeg Zengi in December 1144. Edessa, on the upper Euphrates, was the first Latin state in the East, founded by Baldwin of Boulogne in 1098, and it was the most exposed. Zengi, the most formidable of the Zengid rulers of Mosul, had spent several years tightening his grip on northern Mesopotamia; the fall of Edessa was the first major territorial loss the Latin States had suffered, and it produced a political shock in the West that was directly comparable to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187.

Pope Eugene III, who had been in exile in France, responded with the bull Quantum praedecessores of 1 December 1145, which is one of the most important documents in the history of the Crusades because it formalised the idea of a Crusade as a defensive war waged by the entire Latin Church. He entrusted the preaching of the expedition to Bernard of Clairvaux, the Cistercian abbot whose influence at the papal court and in Western Europe was at its peak. Bernard, whose public image survives in the great Gothic portal at Vézelay, took the job with the seriousness that characterised everything he did. He travelled through France and Germany, preaching in public squares, churches, and royal courts. By the spring of 1146, both Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany had taken the cross.

The preaching of the Crusade

The preaching of the Second Crusade was the most successful pre-modern mobilisation of public opinion in Western European history. Bernard’s sermon at Vézelay on Easter Sunday 1146, in which Louis VII took the cross, became one of the most famous scenes of the Middle Ages; according to one of the chroniclers present, the crowd was so eager to take the cross that Bernard had to tear up the cloaks of the new crusaders to distribute the cloth as crosses. This is the kind of detail that needs a sceptical eye — none of the sources is contemporary, and the scene probably accumulated touches through repeated retelling — but the underlying fact of a large and rapid response is not in doubt.

The response also produced a problem: too many people, and not all of them controllable. A German monk named Rudolf was preaching his own popular crusade in the Rhineland, with apocalyptic overtones that Bernard found alarming. Bernard denounced him and persuaded him to submit to the Pope. The episode set a precedent for the careful management of preaching that would characterise later Crusades, but it also established, for the first time, that papal-sponsored Crusades could be outflanked by unauthorised popular ones.

The armies and the march through Anatolia

The Second Crusade drew the largest armies yet assembled for a Latin expedition to the East. The German contingent under Conrad III was perhaps 20,000 knights and soldiers, the French under Louis VII was similar in size, and smaller armies came from the Low Countries, England, and Italy. The total size of the expedition has been estimated at perhaps 50,000 to 70,000 people, including non-combatants, which is considerably larger than the First Crusade.

The composition of the armies was a problem in itself. The Second Crusade included many non-combatants, including women, of whom the most famous was Eleanor of Aquitaine, the young wife of Louis VII, who accompanied her husband and who would later, on the way to Antioch, become involved in an affair with her uncle Raymond of Poitiers, prince of Antioch. The presence of the royal consorts, the household clergy, and the camp-followers, by general agreement, slowed the army and complicated the supply situation. The First Crusade had had similar problems, but the leadership had been more cohesive. The Second Crusade, with two kings and several regional contingents with their own agendas, was a different kind of operation.

The German army set out first, in the spring of 1147, marching through Byzantine territory into Anatolia. The Seljuk Turks used the same tactics of feigned retreat and ambush that had proved so effective against the People’s Crusade in 1096. The Battle of Dorylaeum, in October 1147, was a disaster for the Germans: Conrad himself was wounded, and the army was reduced to a small remnant. The French army, which set out later, fared no better. The Turks attacked the French in Anatolia in early 1148, and Louis himself was nearly captured. By the time the two armies reached the Latin East, both were shadows of their original strength. The march through Anatolia was the worst military disaster of the Second Crusade, and it set the stage for what followed at Damascus.

The Latin East and the choice of Damascus

When the remnants of the German and French armies arrived in the Latin East in 1148, they found a complicated political situation. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was ruled by Queen Melisende and her son Baldwin III; the relationship between them was tense, and the barons of the Kingdom were divided over policy. The original objective of the Second Crusade had been the recovery of Edessa, but by 1148 that objective had been quietly abandoned. The march to recover Edessa would have required a major expedition into northern Mesopotamia, beyond the logistical reach of the Latin East, and the Latin rulers preferred a local target.

The choice of Damascus is the most discussed decision of the Second Crusade. The local barons of Jerusalem had wanted to attack the city for years; Damascus had been a sometime ally of the Latin East, and the city’s emir, Mu’in ad-Din Anar, was a useful counterweight to Zengi’s successor, Nur ad-Din. The decision to attack Damascus was made by the combined leadership of the Crusade, with Baldwin III of Jerusalem and the royal leaders overruling local objections. The political interests of the local barons won the argument. The strategic cost, as the chroniclers saw, was the loss of a useful buffer against Nur ad-Din’s expanding power in Syria.

The Siege of Damascus (1148)

The Siege of Damascus in 1148 was the central event of the Second Crusade and the most embarrassing defeat. The Crusaders marched on Damascus in late June 1148, expecting an easy victory; they were confident in their numbers, the weather was good, and the city was not strongly fortified. Instead, the siege collapsed after only four days, and the Crusaders withdrew in disarray.

The reasons for the failure were multiple. The Crusaders initially camped on the eastern side of the city, where they had access to water and supplies, but on 27 July, for reasons that are not entirely clear, they moved to the western side, where they had no access to water and no natural defences. The garrison took heart and launched a series of sorties. Nur ad-Din gathered a relief force from the north. The Latin rulers of Jerusalem, who had been the most enthusiastic proponents of the attack, withdrew their forces. The relationship between the French and German contingents had been strained throughout the expedition. The Muslim forces, despite being outnumbered, were better organised and more determined. By 28 July the siege was over.

The failure was a profound shock. The Latin East had hoped for a great victory, and the embarrassing defeat exposed the limits of the Crusading ideal. Bernard of Clairvaux, who had staked his reputation on the expedition, was widely blamed. He defended himself in a letter to Pope Eugene III, arguing that the failure was God’s will and that the Crusaders had been responsible for the defeat by their sins. The defence was not entirely successful; the Second Crusade damaged Bernard’s standing, though he remained one of the most influential churchmen of the 12th century.

The aftermath

The aftermath of the Second Crusade was difficult. Conrad and Louis both returned to Europe, having accomplished nothing. Bernard of Clairvaux, who had staked his reputation on the success of the expedition, was severely criticized. The Latin East was in a worse position than it had been before, and the resources that had been raised for the expedition were largely wasted. Nur ad-Din, Zengi’s successor, was free to consolidate his power in Syria, and the relationship between the Latin East and its Muslim neighbours was now definitively hostile.

The failure of the Second Crusade also had long-term consequences for the Crusading ideal. The expedition had been the first royal one to the East, and its failure raised questions about whether kings should lead such expeditions. The Third Crusade would be led by kings, but it would also fail to achieve its central objective. The lessons of 1148 were clear: the Crusades were not a guaranteed path to victory, and even the most powerful armies could be defeated by determined Muslim resistance.

The most important long-term consequence was the rise of Nur ad-Din and, eventually, of Saladin. Nur ad-Din used the breathing space that the Crusaders’ defeat at Damascus had given him to consolidate his power and to launch a campaign of jihad against the Latin East. The recovery of Edessa, which had been the stated objective of the Second Crusade, became a secondary concern. The Muslim leaders turned to the more ambitious project of reconquering the rest of the Latin territories.

The wider campaign: Lisbon and the Reconquista

The Second Crusade is often remembered only for the failure at Damascus, but the expedition was much broader in scope. The preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux inspired a number of smaller campaigns, including a major expedition against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula. In July 1147, a fleet of English, Flemish, and Norman ships, originally bound for the Holy Land, decided to assist the Portuguese King Afonso I in his siege of Lisbon. The combined Christian force stormed the city on 24 October 1147, after a four-month siege, and it became the most important Christian conquest of the Second Crusade.

The capture of Lisbon was a turning point in the history of Portugal. It gave the young Portuguese kingdom a major city and a strategic port, and it demonstrated that the Crusading ideal could be applied to the Reconquista as easily as to the Holy Land. The success at Lisbon stands in stark contrast to the failure at Damascus, and it shows that the Second Crusade was a much more complex phenomenon than is sometimes recognized.

Other campaigns associated with the Second Crusade include the Wendish Crusade of 1147, a campaign against the pagan Slavs of northeastern Germany, and the unsuccessful expedition of the Welf duke Welf VI of Bavaria. The expedition was a true pan-European affair, with armies drawn from across the Latin West, and it had a lasting impact on the political and religious geography of Europe.

The Second Crusade in modern scholarship

The Second Crusade has been the subject of intense historical analysis in recent decades. Modern scholars have revised the older view that the Second Crusade was a complete failure, pointing to the success at Lisbon, the support for the Reconquista, and the survival of the Latin East despite the failure at Damascus. The Second Crusade is now seen as a complex phenomenon, with multiple campaigns and multiple outcomes. The most important modern account of the Second Crusade is Jonathan Phillips’s The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (2007), which provides a detailed and sympathetic treatment of the expedition. Phillips argues that the Second Crusade was a more coherent and rational enterprise than is often recognized, and that its failures should be understood in the context of the complex politics of the 12th century. Other important works include the studies by Steven Runciman, Hans Mayer, and Marcus Bull, all of which have helped to refine our understanding of this complex and important expedition.

The Second Crusade is also a useful reminder that the Crusades were not a single, undifferentiated phenomenon. The preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux inspired campaigns in Iberia, the Baltic, and the Holy Land, and the outcomes of these campaigns were very different. The Second Crusade, in this sense, is a microcosm of the entire Crusading movement, with its mixture of success and failure, idealism and self-interest. Understanding the Second Crusade is therefore essential for understanding the broader history of the Crusades.