Henry VI's crusade
The crusade of Henry VI. in 1197 / 98 (also known as German crusade was) Kaiser of a Heinrich VI. initiated crusade as a reaction to the failure of his father Friedrich I Barbarossa in his crusade 1189–90 . Henry VI. died shortly before departure in 1197 in Messina . The erupting dispute over the German succession caused the crusaders to break off the crusade. The army was already on its way to Palestine , where there was the coastal strip between Tire and Tripoli with the cities of Sidonand brought Beirut back under Christian control before returning home in 1198.
background
In 1187 Saladin had conquered Jerusalem and large parts of the Crusader states . To recapture this, King Philip II August of France, King Richard the Lionheart of England and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa, undertook the Third Crusade . Barbarossa drowned during this campaign in Cilicia and his crusade army disbanded. The Holy Land remained largely in Muslim hands.
During the Third Crusade, Barbarossa had left the heir to the throne, then 24-year-old Henry VI, as regent. Heinrich was his successor and was crowned emperor in 1191. By capturing Richard the Lionheart, he even made the English king his vassal . As early as 1189, the Kingdom of Sicily had fallen to him through inheritance claims of his wife, which he was able to enforce militarily until 1194. The reconquest of Jerusalem for the Christians should also Pope Celestine III. motivate Henry VI. Recognize claims to Sicily as a tenant. The Pope had so far refused to do this.
Heinrich trusted that another crusade would be successful, avoiding the difficulties his father had encountered. In 1195, the armistice concluded by Richard the Lionheart with Saladin also expired, and there was also the fact that, since the death of Sultan Saladin in 1193, his brother had been waging a civil war against his sons over the succession as sultan, so the Ayyubids were weakened. Heinrich hoped to be able to use the enormous enthusiasm and momentum of the Third Crusade in his empire for another crusade.
Emperor Heinrich also intended to take advantage of the precarious situation of the Byzantine Empire . This was besieged from the European side by Serbian , Bulgarian and Wallachian rebels and was overrun by Rum Seljuks from Asia Minor . In addition, his father's victorious battles had weakened Byzantium considerably economically. Heinrich made the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos responsible for the betrayal of his father and held this close relationship with King Tankred of Sicily, the usurper on the Norman throne. Therefore, Heinrich did not shy away from blackmailing the Byzantines to help them finance the costs of his crusade. Heinrich initially demanded tribute from Emperor Isaac. Isaac was born in April 1195 by his brother Alexios III. Angelos overthrown. In his place, the new emperor Alexios was supposed to pay an annual tribute of 16 hundredweight gold to Heinrich. Byzantium introduced a special tax, the so-called Alamannikon, to meet the demands. The caliph of Tunis and Tripoli also agreed to pay tribute to Heinrich.
At the Diet of Gelnhausen in October 1195, ambassadors from the new ruler of Cyprus, Amalrich von Lusignan , reached the emperor , who paid him Amalrich's homage and asked that Henry crown him King of Cyprus. Prince Leo II of Lesser Armenia made a similar request shortly afterwards. Heinrich accepted the homage and promised to personally perform the coronation soon.
Call to the crusade
In the week before Easter 1195, Heinrich made a private vow to Bishop Johann von Sutri to undertake a new crusade. At Easter in 1195 on the Reichstag in Bari , he officially announced his taking on the cross. From the summer, Heinrich traveled through Germany to promote participation in the crusade among the German nobility. Papal legacies soon followed him; in August called Pope Celestine III. officially on the German clergy to preach the new crusade. In December, at the Reichstag in Worms, Heinrich scheduled the start of the crusade for Christmas 1196 and designated his then one-year-old son Friedrich (II.) As his successor as German king.
Despite the loss of the German contingent in the Third Crusade, an enormous army of crusaders soon came together, including the archbishops of Mainz and Bremen , nine bishops , five dukes and numerous other nobles. The crusade army is said to have been the largest that was ever organized under the banner of a single prince. The chronicler Arnold von Lübeck puts the army at 60,000 men, including 400 crusaders from Lübeck. The mercenary contingent equipped by Heinrich probably comprised around 6,000 men, 1,500 of them knights .
Just as the crusade army was gathering in the ports of southern Italy and Sicily, a large-scale conspiracy of the Sicilian-Norman nobility against the new imperial-Hohenstaufen rule became known. Heinrich, who was supposed to be murdered by an assassination attempt, had the revolt put down with all severity by his crusade troops.
Course of the crusade
While his army was already embarking for Palestine, Henry VI died. on September 28, 1197 at the age of almost 32 in Messina , possibly on the Ruhr , but perhaps also as a result of an assassination attempt. The crusade then took a different course.
Since March 1197, some parts of the army had gradually set sail towards Acre . In August, the crusader contingent from Saxony and the Rhineland under the leadership of Count Palatine Heinrich von Braunschweig and the Archbishop of Bremen, Hartwig II von Utlede , reached Messina with 44 ships after stopping in Norway, England and Portugal. These united with the main part of the crusade army, which was still in southern Italy, and sailed for Palestine under the command of Chancellor Konrad von Querfurt and Reichshofmarschall Heinrich von Kalden . They reached Acre on September 22, 1197. Part of the fleet stopped en route in Cyprus, where Konrad von Querfurt received Amalrich's homage and crowned him King of Cyprus.
The crusaders gathered in Acre until the beginning of September 1197, where they caused some unrest and the resentment of the French masters of the city. The German princes in the crusader army rejected Heinrich von Kalden as leader and elected Heinrich I of Brabant in his place. Under him they set up camp in Tire and began a campaign to drive the Muslim pirates out of Beirut and to connect the Syrian coast between Tire and Tripoli . They occupied Sidon and reached Beirut on October 24th, which they also occupied. They used their stay in Beirut to support Amalrich's candidacy for the throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The subsequent coronation of Amalrich, a vassal of the emperor, as King of Jerusalem strengthened the German influence on the Holy Land. They conquered Gibelet and thus restored the land connection to the county of Tripoli . Then they advanced into the hinterland towards Damascus , where they besieged Toron Castle from November 1197 . The crusaders had already received vague rumors in Beirut that the emperor had died; during the siege of Toron the news of the emperor's death was confirmed. Konrad von Querfurt lost his office as Chancellor as a result of the report, as this was tied to the person of the emperor, and by the summer of 1198 most of the nobles had left for Europe to secure their feudal rights in the empire against Heinrich's successor.
Before the last crusaders withdrew in July 1198, they concluded a five-year truce with the Ayyubid sultan al-Adil I , who was the crusaders, d. H. the Kingdom of Jerusalem , confirmed their conquests. The conquered lands were given to local nobles by King Amalrich II of Jerusalem : The rule of Beirut was given as a fief to John I of Ibelin . The county of Sidon went to its old owner, Rainald Garnier . The rule of Gibelet , as part of the County of Tripoli , went to Guido I. Embriaco .
On his way back home, Archbishop of Mainz Konrad von Wittelsbach visited Prince Leo II in Tarsus in early 1198 and crowned him the first king of Lesser Armenia.
Consequences of the crusade
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The early death of Heinrich abruptly ended his ambitious plans. The further weakening of Byzantium that he helped to pave the way for the conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
The five-year truce with the Muslims was disrupted by raids from both sides, but was extended by six years in 1204 when it became clear that the Fourth Crusade would not reach Palestine.
Since the crusade of Henry VI. the German nobles concentrated again on the conquest of the pagan territories on the other side of the Elbe , in Prussia and the Baltic States, which began with the Wendekreuzzug in 1147 .
With the support of many participants in this crusade, the hospital association founded in 1190 during the siege of Akkon was converted into the Teutonic Order in March 1198 .
literature
- Peter Csendes : Heinrich VI . Scientific Book Society , Darmstadt 1993.
- Edgar N. Johnson: The Crusades of Frederick Barbarossa and Henry VI . In: Robert Lee Wolff, Harry W. Hazard (eds.): The later Crusades, 1189-1311 (A History of the Crusades 2) . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1969, pp. 87ff .; here online .
- Claudia Naumann: The crusade of Henry VI . Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 1994.
- Hartmut Jericke: Emperor Heinrich VI. - The unknown Staufer . Muster-Schmidt, Gleichen 2008.