Battle of Iconium (1190)

Crusader army

Prelude

After passing through today's Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire, the forces arrived in Anatolia, held by the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. The Seljuk continuously harassed the Crusader forces, laying ambushes and using hit-and-run tactics. The Crusaders, in turn, launched attacks against whatever Seljuk forces they could find. On 7 May, a 10,000-strong Seljuk army was destroyed by a 2,000-strong mixed infantry-cavalry Crusaders detachment under Frederick VI, Duke of Swabia and the Duke of Dalmatia in the Battle of Philomelion (1190), resulting in 4,174–5,000 deaths for the Seljuks according to the Seljuks' own body count and loss estimates. On 9–10 May, the Crusaders killed 64 Seljuk soldiers. On 12 May, the Crusaders crossed a narrow bridge that left them highly vulnerable, but the Seljuks interfered only minimally, with 20 Seljuks slain that day. More important than the battles was the logistical situation; supplies were running out, and morale was very low. Desertion was frequent among the foot soldiers, as was death from dehydration. Despite this, the crusaders continued their march until they reached the Seljuk capital city of Iconium on 13 May.

On 14 May, the Crusaders found and defeated the main Seljuk army, putting it to rout. 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. On 15 May, the Crusaders replenished their surviving horses at a bog, but the next day, 60 Crusaders were killed in a Seljuk attack. 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".

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. 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. 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. The Germans proceeded to massacre the citizenry.

The pitched battle was a much harder fight, and required the presence of the Emperor to defeat the larger Turkish force. 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". Although the fighting was intense, the Germans managed to crush the Turks with relative ease. 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.

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. They rested for five days in the city and camped in the sultan's park on 23 May. 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. They continued their march on 26 May, taking 20 high-ranking Turkish nobles as hostages to safeguard themselves. 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. 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 Saleph river. Much of his army disbanded and sailed home through the Cilician and Syrian ports. Barbarossa's son, Frederick VI of Swabia, carried on with the remnants of the German army, along with the Hungarian army under the command of prince Géza, with the aim of burying the emperor in Jerusalem, but efforts to conserve his body in vinegar failed. Hence, his flesh was interred in the Church of Saint Peter in Antioch, his bones in the cathedral of Tyre, and his heart and inner organs in Saint Paul's Church in Tarsus. The German army was then struck with an onset of disease near Antioch and a large number of them died. About 5,000 Imperials and Hungarians under Duke Frederick joined the siege of Acre in October.

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.