The Muslims got their
first great victory versus the crusaders when they captured Edessa in
1144 and destroyed the crusader state in that region. This led to the
Second Crusade, which was proclaimed late in 1145. Many people joined
the crusade, including the King Louis VII of France and the holy Roman
emperor, Conrad III.
Conrad's army left Nuremberg, Germany for Jerusalem in May
1147. A few weeks later the French army set out for Metz. The
Germans tried to cross central Anatolia in October, but the Seljuks
defeated them near Dorylaeum. The survivors fled to Nicaea. The
other German contingent, led by Otto of Freising, was defeated by
Turks at Ladoicea. The remaining crusaders fled to the coast of
Pamphylia and were slaughtered in February 1148. Few survivors
finished the trip to Syria by ship. The French army had reached Constantinople on October 4,
1147. The French then journeyed through Byzantine territory in west
Asia Minor. The Turks destroyed most of them, but the French king,
the German Emperor, and some knights survived and traveled by ship to
Outremer from Antalya on the southern coast of Asia Minor. Zengi had
died before the crusaders arrived so his sons took control, Saif
al-Din in Mosul and Nur al-Din in Aleppo. Joescelin II, the Frankish
count of Edessa, took advantage of Zengi's death and tried to regain
his capital, but Nur al-Din massacred the Edessan population and
retook it.
On June 24, 1148 the High Court of Jerusalem met at Palmarea
near Acre. The decision was made to attack Damascus, since Edessa was
no longer the war objective. On July 24, they camped along the west
side of Damascus. The Palestinian barons convinced the two kings that
the orchards on the west were making the siege more difficult, so they
moved to the southeast. They couldn't stay very long in the
southeast because it was a hot waterless plain. On that same day they
withdrew their army. The Second Crusade had failed miserably. There
was only one success from the whole crusade: a group of Dutch and
English crusaders had captured the cities of Libson and Tortosa.(6)
The Muslims had time to regroup after the Second Crusade, and in 1169,
Nur al-Din's forces took Egypt. Saladin took control of the Muslims
when Nur al-Din died on May 15, 1174 in Damascus. In 1180 he joined
forces with the Anatolian Seljuk sultan, Kilij Arslan II. Saladin
stopped the unification of Aleppo and Mosul in 1182, brought Aleppo
under his control in 1183, and made a four year truce with the Franks
in 1185 after invading Palestine in 1183.