A new expedition was necessary to aid the kingdom which the brave
Noureddin was threatening. Louis VII. and the Emperor Conrad, each at
the head of one hundred thousand Crusaders, marched, as their
predecessors had done, by the route of Constantinople, (1142.) But the
Greeks, frightened by the recurring visits of these menacing guests,
plotted their destruction.

Conrad, who was desirous of being first, fell into the traps laid for
him by the Turks, and was defeated in detachments in several battles by
the Sultan of Iconium. Louis, more fortunate, defeated the Turks on the
banks of the Mender; but, being deprived of the support of Conrad, and
his army being annoyed and partially beaten by the enemy in the passage
of defiles, and being in want of supplies, he was confined to Attalia,
on the coast of Pamphylia, where he endeavored to embark his army. The
means furnished by the Greeks were insufficient, and not more than
fifteen or twenty thousand men arrived at Antioch with the king: the
remainder either perished or fell into the hands of the Saracens.

This feeble reinforcement soon melted away under the attacks of the
climate and the daily contests with the enemy, although they were
continually aided by small bodies brought over from Europe by the
Italian ships; and they were again about to yield under the attacks of
Saladin, when the court of Rome succeeded in effecting an alliance
between the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the Kings of France and
England to save the Holy Land.

The emperor was the first to set out. At the head of one hundred
thousand Germans, he opened a passage through Thrace in spite of the
formal resistance of the Greeks, now governed by Isaac Angelus. He
marched to Gallipolis, crossed the Dardanelles, and seized Iconium. He
died in consequence of an imprudent bath in a river, which, it has been
pretended, was the Cydnus. His son, the Duke of Swabia, annoyed by the
Mussulmans and attacked by diseases, brought to Ptolemais scarcely six
thousand men.

At the same time, Richard Coeur-de-Lion[58] and Philip Augustus more
judiciously took the route over the sea, and sailed from Marseilles and
Genoa with two immense fleets,(1190.) The first seized Cyprus, and both
landed in Syria,--where they would probably have triumphed but for the
rivalry which sprang up between them, in consequence of which Philip
returned to France.

Twelve years later, a new Crusade was determined upon, (1203.) Part of
the