Battle of Iconium 1190 AD - Third Crusade - Expedition of Frederick Barbarossa

The Battle of Iconium was a battle during  the Third Crusade which took place on May 18,   1190 between an army of German  crusaders and the Seljuk Turks.   It was now almost a century after Christians  had miraculously recaptured Jerusalem   during the first crusade. After the establishment  of the crusader states, the Christians found   themselves in a state of near constant  warfare with their Islamic neighbors. In 1187   the Ayyubid Sultanate led by Sultan Saladin,  determined to drive the crusaders into the sea,   annihilated a crusader army winning a crushing  victory at the battle of Hattin the crusader   army was completely destroyed and the king of  Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignon, was taken prisoner.   After the battle of Hattin, Saladin captured  many Christian territories from the crusaders   including Acre and Jerusalem with the crusaders  clinging on to a small stretch of the coast.   Now the crusader states found  their position in the holy land   in great jeopardy they were now in danger of being  driven out of Outremer completely. Utterly shocked   at the disastrous defeat upon hearing the news  Pope Urban III is said to have collapsed and died.   The new pope Gregory VIII, interpreted  the capture of Jerusalem by Muslims   as punishment for the sins of Christians  across Europe; he called for a new crusade   to the holy land to fight the Saracens  and retake Jerusalem for Christendom. The pope sent letters all over Europe urging  them to join the crusade and many kings princes   knights and nobles and peasants alike took  off the cross, among them Richard the first   of England and Philip II of France. In Germany  the Kaiser himself also took up the cross   Frederick Barbarossa also  known as Frederick the first,   Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, King of  Germany, King of Italy and King of Burgundy. In March 1188 Frederick held an imperial  assembly in Mainz, which he named the Court   of Christ. During this assembly he reconciled  his feud with the archbishop of Cologne   who submitted to Frederick thereby restoring  peace to the empire. Bishop Godfrey of Wurzburg   then preached a sermon and Frederick at the urging  of the assembly took up the cross. He was followed   by his son Duke Frederick VI of Swabia and by many  other nobles including Duke Frederick of Bohemia   Duke Leopold V of Austria and  Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia. After taking the cross Frederick proclaimed  quote a general expedition against the pagans,   between April 1188 and April 1189 the  German crusader army mobilized and assembled   at Regensburg. The first of the three  kings to set out for the holy land,   Frederick set out on the 11th of May 1189 with an  army of twelve thousand to fifteen thousand men   including two thousand to four thousand knights.   After leaving Germany, Frederick's army was  joined by a contingent of two thousand Hungarians   led by prince Geza the younger brother of King  Bela the third of Hungary and Bishop Ugrin Csák.   Two more imperial contingents of the holy  roman empire from the duchy of Lorraine and   the duchy of burgundy also joined the army  during its transit of Byzantium in 1189. Finally after passing through Hungary,  Serbia, Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire,   the imperial army crossed over the Dardanelles  into Anatolia by the 28th of March 1190.   The interior of the Anatolian plateau at this time  was held by the Turkish Muslim Seljuk Sultanate   of Rum. The passage of the crusader army provoked  armed resistance from the local Byzantine   populations in Anatolia and the crusaders horses  suffered from hunger due to a lack of grasslands. Despite previously promising safe transit for  Frederick the Seljuk Turks continuously harassed   the crusader forces laying ambushes and using  hit and run tactics with swift horse archers   the crusaders in turn responded launching attacks  against whatever Turkish forces they could find. A Turkish attack on the imperial camp was defeated  on the 30th of April with 500 Turks killed. On   the 2nd of May, the crusaders defeated another  Turkish attack and killed 300 Turks. The next day   imperial soldiers were ambushed by the Turks  and hit with arrows and rocks Frederick VI Duke   of Swabia was wounded along with nine other  knights. When the crusaders camped near the   city of Philomelion on the 7th of May the Turks  believed the imperials to be completely exhausted   from hunger and so they attacked the camp with  ten thousand cavalry infantry and missile fire   surrounding the camp and pelting  the crusaders with arrow volleys.   Part of the crusader army led by  the emperor's son Frederick VI   Duke of Swabia and Berthold Duke of Morania  then sallied forth with two thousand men. The attack was repulsed by an intense infantry  clash followed by a crusader cavalry charge   the Turks were completely routed and the survivors  were saved only by nightfall and the mountainous   terrain out of 10 000 the Turks lost 4 174  killed according to the Turk's own body count. After a few days of rest the crusaders left  Philomelion on the 8th of may and continued on   marching towards the Turkish capital of Iconium  although they had won a clear victory over the   Turks they were not broken and the Turkish  attacks continued. In subsequent skirmishes   on the 9th and 10th of May the crusaders killed 64  Turkish soldiers and on the 11th of May about 250.   On the 12th the crusaders crossed a narrow  bridge that left them highly vulnerable   but the Turks interfered with the crossing  only minimally with 20 Turks slain that day.   Even more important than these battles was the  logistical situation, as the crusaders continued   their march through hostile territory supplies  were running out and morale was getting low,   desertion became frequent among foot soldiers  as was death from dehydration. Despite this the   crusaders continued their march until they reached  the Turkish capital of Iconium on the 13th of May. On the 14th of may the crusaders found and  defeated the main seljuk army putting it to   route seljuk records attribute the crusader  victory to a devastating heavy cavalry charge   which supposedly consisted of 7 000 lancers and  white clothing mounted on snow white horses. On the 15th the crusaders replenished their  surviving horses at a bog but the next day   60 crusaders were killed in another seljuk  ambush. That same day the Seljuks offered to   let Barbarossa and his army pass through their  territory for the price of 300 pounds of gold   and the lands of the Armenians. Frederick  Barbarossa refused the offer supposedly saying   quote "rather than making a royal highway  with gold and silver with the help of our   lord Jesus Christ whose knights we are,  the road will have to be opened with iron."   While some of his advisors advised heading  directly through Cilician Armenia to the Levant   Emperor Frederick insisted on taking Iconium  in order to remedy his army's food and horse   shortage. And so on the 17th of May, the crusaders  besieged the city where they found plenty of water   outside the walls. Meanwhile the Turkish commander  Kilij Arslan together with his son Qutb al-din,   regrouped and rebuilt their forces and retaliated  on the 18th of May. Barbarossa divided his forces   into two one commanded by his son the duke  Frederick of Swabia leading the assault to the   city and the other commanded by himself stationed  back in reserve behind his son. The garrison was   small and so the city fell easily. Duke Frederick  was able to assault and take the walls with little   resistance and the Turkish garrison retreated  back to the citadel eventually surrendering. Now the main Turkish field army which set  out previously to conduct a flanking maneuver   now appeared behind the crusaders Seeing the  massive Turkish army before them, the imperial   reserve led by the Kaiser turned to face the  new threat. With half of the crusader army now   inside the captured gates of Iconium the Kaiser's  forces now found themselves outnumbered. It is   reported that just before the battle Frederick  said to his soldiers quote "But why do we tarry?   Of what are we afraid? Christ reigns  Christ conquers Christ commands." The Turks then launched a  tenacious assault on the crusaders   pushing them back to the walls of the city. Despite the ferocity of the Turkish assault  the crusaders managed to hold their ground.   At some point during the  chaos, the emperor himself   emerged and led a devastating heavy  cavalry charge on the Turkish center. Although the fighting was intense the Germans  managed to crush the Turks with relative ease,   they smashed through the Turkish center sending  the wings and the rest of the Turkish field army   into panic. The Seljuks were routed yet again  leaving the city at the mercy of the crusaders.   The Germans did not pursue partially because  they had been weakened by food shortage   for two weeks prior. According to a contemporary  German chronicle relying on eyewitness accounts   from the crusaders, the Turks lost around 3  000 men killed at the battle that day. The   exact number of crusader casualties is  not known but it was probably minimal.   After the victory the crusaders took booty and  loot amounting to 100 000 marks in the city and   refreshed themselves and their horses with wheat  and barley they rested for five days in the city   and camped in the sultan's park on the 23rd  of May. There they bought horses and mules as   well as donkeys and stocked themselves with bread  meat butter and cheese. They continued their march   on the 26th of May taking 20 high-ranking Turkish  nobles as hostages to safeguard themselves. The success of the imperial army against the Turks  greatly alarms Saladin who was forced to weaken   his army at the siege of Acre and send attachments  to the north to block the arrival of the Germans.   Salah al-din even dismantled  the walls of the Syrian ports   lest they be used by the crusaders against him,   however this proved unnecessary as on the 10th  of June tragedy struck the German army when the   Emperor Frederick Barbarossa fell from his horse  while crossing the river Saleph and died suddenly.   Sources differ on what exactly transpired some  state that his horse slipped and lost its footing   throwing him into the river while others speculate  that given his old age he could have simply died   suddenly from some underlying health condition.  Whatever the case disillusioned at the death   of their leader much of his army disbanded and  sailed home through the Cilician and Syrian ports.   Barbarossa's son Frederick VI of Swabia attempted  to continue the crusade and carried on with   the remnants of the German army along with the  Hungarian army under the command of prince Geza   with the aim of burying the emperor in  Jerusalem. However this did not occur,   hence the emperor's flesh was interred  in the church of Saint Peter in Antioch,   his bones and the Cathedral of Tyre, and his heart  and inner organs in Saint Paul's church in Tarsus. The German army was then struck with disease  near Antioch with a large number of them dying   however about five thousand imperials  and Hungarians under duke Frederick   did manage to eventually join the siege of Acre in  October where the crusaders eventually triumphed. While the imperial army did not achieve its  objective of recapturing Jerusalem it did   capture the capital of the seljuk sultanate and  had inflicted considerable damage on Turkish   forces with more than 9 000 Turkish soldiers  killed in all battles and skirmishes combined. The German crusader victories against the  Turks were impressive feats indeed especially   considering at this point the Byzantines had  been struggling to thin them off for centuries.   Also notable is the fact that the Germans did not  permanently occupy Iconium they simply sacked the   city and continued on to their main objective  of Jerusalem. However if they had stayed,   it is very feasible the Germans could have set  up a permanent crusader state in Anatolia just   as for example Bohemond of Taranto had done at  Antioch during the first Crusade a century prior.   Furthermore, if Barbarossa had survived to reach  the holy land and linked up with Richard the   Lionheart of England, it is very plausible that  a combined German and English crusader army would   have been overwhelming to Saladin and Jerusalem  would have been recaptured by the crusaders. Many historians consider Frederick Barbarossa  to be among the Holy Roman Empire's greatest   medieval emperors of all time. He combined  qualities that made him appear almost super   human to his contemporaries: his longevity,  his ambition, his extraordinary organizational   and logistical skills, his battlefield  genius, and his political acuteness.   According to a German legend, Frederick is not  dead but asleep with his knights in a cave in   the Kypphauser mountains in Thuringia or mount  Untersburg at the border between Bavaria, Germany   and Salzburg, Austria. The legend states that  when the ravens cease to fly around the mountain,   he will awake once more and restore  Germany to its ancient greatness. you

Channel: a mad biscuit

Views: 3,618

Keywords: documentary, battle, iconium, philomelion, german, crusaders, crusade, crusades, third, frederick, barbarossa, hohenstaufen, emporer, holy, roman, empire, kaiser, turks, turkish, seljuk, rum, sultanate, hattin, saladin, richard, lionheart, england, germany, levant, history, animated, animation, attila, total, war, mod, medieval, 1212, 1190, outremer, jerusalem, anatolia, manzikert, byzantines, hungary, hungarians, bavaria, burgundy, teutonic, knights, leopold, austria, duke, thuringia, saxony, kilij, arslan, qutb, al-din

Id: btBZ7eGq2Mw

Length: 21min 55sec (1315 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021