Battle of Iconium (1190)
| Battle of Iconium | |
|---|---|
| Part of the 37°52′00″N 32°29′00″E / 37.8667°N 32.4833°E | |
| Result |
|
Kingdom of Hungary
Holy Roman Emperor
Prince of Hungary
3,000 killed[6]
Garrison:
all killed or captured
20 nobles taken hostage
The Battle of Iconium (sometimes referred as the Battle of Konya) took place on May 18, 1190, during the
Background
After the disastrous
Crusader army
| Primary source | Year | Frederick's troop strength | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gesta Federici I Imperatoris in Expeditione Sacra | 1190–1200 | 90,000 | [3] |
| Annales Reicherspergenses | 1194 | 80,000 | [10] |
| Chronica regia Coloniensis | 1220 | 30,000, including 15,000 knights | [3] |
| Chronicon Montis Sereni | 1225–1230 | 100,000, including 20,000 knights | [3] |
Annales Stadenses |
1232–1264 | 600,000 | [3] |
| Modern author | Year | Frederick's troop strength | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ekkehard Eickhoff | 1977 | 12,000–15,000 | [3] |
| Rudolf Hiestand | 1992 | 13,000, including 4,000 knights | [3] |
| Bernard and David Bachrach | 2016 | 20,000 | [4] |
Prelude
After passing through today's
On 14 May, the Crusaders found and defeated the main Seljuk army, putting it to rout.[14] Seljuk records attribute the Crusader victory to a devastating heavy cavalry charge which supposedly consisted of 7,000 lancers in white clothing and mounted on snow-white horses.[14][15] On 15 May, the Crusaders replenished their surviving horses at a bog, but the next day, 60 Crusaders were killed in a Seljuk attack.[16] 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" (the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia). Barbarossa refused, supposedly saying "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".[12][16]
Battle
While some German commanders advised heading directly through Cilician Armenia to the Levant, Emperor Frederick insisted on taking Iconium to assure his army's food and horse shortage, so on 17 May the Crusaders camped in the "garden and pleasure ground of the sultan" outside the city, where they found plenty of water.[17][12] Meanwhile, Qutb al-Din regrouped and rebuilt his forces after the first defeat, and retaliated on 18 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 facing the Turkish field army.[1] The city fell easily; Duke Frederick was able to assault and take the walls with little resistance, and the garrison failed to put up much of a fight before surrendering altogether.[18] The Germans proceeded to massacre the citizenry.[18]
The pitched battle was a much harder fight, and required the presence of the Emperor to defeat the larger Turkish force.[1] He is reported to have said to his soldiers: "But why do we tarry, of what are we afraid? Christ reigns. Christ conquers. Christ commands".[19][20] Although the fighting was intense, the Germans managed to crush the Turks with relative ease.[21][b] The Seljuks were routed yet again, leaving the city at the mercy of the crusaders. The Germans did not pursue, partly because they had been weakened by a food shortage for the previous two weeks.[6]
Aftermath
After the victory, the Crusaders took booty amounting to 100,000 marks in the city and renewed themselves and their horses with wheat and barley.[6] They rested for five days in the city and camped in the sultan's park on 23 May.[22][23] There they bought over 6,000 horses and mules at steep prices, as well as an unknown number of donkeys, and stocked themselves with bread, meat, butter and cheese.[22][23] They continued their march on 26 May, taking 20 high-ranking Turkish nobles as hostages to safeguard themselves.[22] The success of the Imperial army greatly alarmed Saladin, who was forced to weaken his army at the Siege of Acre and send detachments to the north to block the arrival of the Germans.[24] Saladin even dismantled the walls of the Syrian ports lest they be used by the crusaders against him.
But this proved unnecessary as, on 10 June, Barbarossa drowned while crossing the
Casualties
The Turks lost 3,000 killed at the field battle on 18 May according to the History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick (Historia de Expeditione Friderici Imperatoris), a contemporary German chronicle relying on eyewitness accounts from the participating Crusaders and completed by an Austrian cleric called Ansbert no later than 1200.[28][6]
Notes
- ^ "After desperate fighting involving the Emperor himself, the Turks outside the city were defeated, apparently against numerical odds, leaving Iconium at the mercy of German pillaging and looting".[1]
- ^ "Even an enfeebled and decimated German army had managed to dispose of [the Seljuks of Iconium] with comparative ease"[21]
References
- ^ a b c d e Tyerman 2006, p. 426.
- ^ Phillips 2002, p. 140.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Loud 2010, p. 19.
- ^ a b c Bachrach & Bachrach 2017, p. 197.
- ^ Konstam 2004, p. 124.
- ^ a b c d Loud 2010, p. 111.
- ^ Freed 2016, p. 471.
- ^ Loud 2010, p. 45.
- ^ Tyerman 2006, p. 418.
- ^ Loud 2010, p. 165.
- ^ Loud 2010, p. 104.
- ^ a b c Johnson 1969, p. 112.
- ^ a b Loud 2010, p. 105.
- ^ a b Loud 2010, p. 107.
- ^ Johnson 1969, p. 111.
- ^ a b Loud 2010, p. 108.
- ^ Loud 2010, p. 109.
- ^ a b Loud 2010, p. 110.
- Laudes imperiale, associated in the mediæval German mind with the imperial office and particularly with the Emperor Charlemagne. Imperial propaganda had represented him as both a saint and a precursor to the Crusaders, as in the Rolandslied of Conrad the Priest.
- ^ Johnson 1969, p. 113.
- ^ a b Johnson 1969, p. 116.
- ^ a b c Loud 2010, p. 113.
- ^ a b Loud 2010, p. 162.
- ^ Loud 2010, p. 64.
- ^ a b Tyerman 2006, p. 428.
- ^ Loud 2010, p. 181.
- ^ Asbridge 2004, p. 422.
- ^ Loud 2010, pp. 1–2.
Sources
- ISBN 0-19-517823-8.
- Bachrach, Bernard S.; Bachrach, David S. (2017). Warfare in Medieval Europe c.400 – c.1453. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1138887664.
- Freed, John B. (2016). Frederick Barbarossa : a prince and the myth. New Haven. p. 471. )
- Johnson, Edgar N. (1969). "The Crusades of Frederick Barbarossa and Henry VI". In Setton, Kenneth M.; Wolff, Robert Lee; Hazard, Harry W. (eds.). A History of the Crusades. Vol. II: The Later Crusades, 1189–1311. The University of Wisconsin Press.
- Konstam, A. (2004). Historical Atlas of The Crusades. Mercury Books.
- Loud, G. A. (2010). The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts. ISBN 9780754665755.
- Phillips, Jonathan (2002). The Crusades 1095-1197. Routledge.
- Tyerman, Christopher (2006). God's War: A New History of the Crusades. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674023871.