ABSTRACT
The German Crusade of 1197-98 has been largely ignored by Anglophone historians, or regarded at best as little more than a minor incident in the aftermath of the Third Crusade. Admittedly, like so many other crusading expeditions, it was in the end something of a damp squib, concluding in confusion and ignominious retreat in the face of an aroused and at least temporarily united Islam, and with most of the participants returning in haste to their homeland in the wake of the death of the Emperor Henry VI. Yet contemporaries did not necessarily agree, considering it to be on a par with the earlier expeditions of Frederick Barbarossa and Richard the Lionheart.1 And one might suggest that, even in terms of the Holy Land, it was by no means unimportant, for the recovery of Beirut was a considerable success;
and while this was apparently counterbalanced by the loss of Jaffa to al-Ādil in September 1197 – shortly before the main body of crusaders arrived in the Holy Land – this was only a temporary setback, since Jaffa was subsequently regained through diplomacy in 1204.2 In addition, it was while the German crusaders were in the East that the Teutonic Knights were formally constituted as a military monastic order, at Acre in March 1198.3
The recapture of Beirut in November 1197 continued the process begun by the Third Crusade whereby the embattled Christian states in the East were once again established on a viable footing, even if on a significantly smaller scale than before the disaster of 1187. By itself the success at Beirut did not completely solve the problem that the crusader states at the end of the twelfth century comprised a series of coastal enclaves, separated one from another rather than forming one continuous, even if narrow, strip of territory. Admittedly the more-or-less simultaneous recapture of Gibelet [Jubail], by the local Franks, once again linked the territory of Beirut with the county of Tripoli,4 while Bohemond III’s recapture of Lattakiah [Laodiciea] regained an important stronghold in the south of the principality of Antioch.5 However, between Lattakiah and the county of Tripoli lay Jabala, which remained in Muslim hands, while Beirut was separated from the rest of the kingdom of Jerusalem by Sidon and its territory, which the Franks only regained in 1227.6 Thus when Jacques de Vitry, the new bishop of Acre, wished to travel northwards to Beirut and from there on to the county of Tripoli early in 1217 he was able to traverse the territory of Sidon only with a large military escort.7 Here the failure of the German Crusade properly to follow up its success at Beirut was a serious setback, especially given the high hopes with which it had been invested at the time. Indeed, the Duke of Brabant, who several sources suggest was chosen as the acting military commander of the expedition (at least until the arrival of the emperor), could even write home late in 1197: “we hope that the holy city of Jerusalem will be captured in a little while; for the Saracens, knowing that our army is united and strong, never dare to put in an appearance.” In the event, such optimism proved to
be sadly unfounded; and even in this letter, the duke continued in a more realistic frame of mind to request the recipient, the archbishop of Cologne, to force those within his province who had not yet done so to fulfil their vows, which certainly hints at one reason why the expedition did not in the end achieve greater success.8 Similarly, in the first few days of February 1198, soon after his election as pope, Innocent III wrote to the duke and the other leaders of the crusade, urging them to continue the good fight and not to contravene their vow by abandoning the Holy Land, but to “smite the Philistines.”9 Yet within not much more than a fortnight of this letter being written, and long before they could have received it, the Germans raised the siege of Toron, which had at one point seemed about to succeed, and retreated in haste and confusion, short of food and hampered by torrential rain, back to Tyre, and thence to Acre, from where they started to sail for home relatively soon afterwards. A few may indeed already have departed earlier, for the duke of Bavaria is known to have been back in Germany at this time (March 1198).10 Peace was once again concluded with the Muslims in June 1198, by which time many of the German crusaders had already returned home.11
