The Third Crusade
Article
August 14, 2022

The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was a major military campaign announced by Pope Gregory VIII. for the recapture of Jerusalem, which was conquered by Saladin in 1187. After the fiasco of the Second Crusade, the Zengian dynasty controlled and united Syria, and after several wars with the Crusaders and the Fatimids, also Egypt. The Zengian Empire was gradually conquered in the 1270s and 1280s by Saladin, originally a vassal and warlord in the service of Zengian Nur ad-Din, bringing the Palestinian Crusader states into the grip of a unified Muslim state. Sultan Saladin then launched a war against the Crusaders; his campaign culminated in the victorious Battle of Hattin in 1187 and then the conquest of Jerusalem. Pope Gregory VIII. responded by announcing the third crusade, to which even the most powerful rulers of the Christian world signed up: the Roman-German emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the French king Philip II. Augustus and King Henry II of England and after his death his son Richard and with them many other powerful European feudal lords. The German army set out on the journey in 1188, passed through Hungary and the Byzantine Empire, and in May 1190 destroyed the Seljuk army at Iconium. A month later, however, Emperor Frederick drowned in the Salef River and his expedition disintegrated; part of the army decided to return to Europe and only a fraction under the command of Barbarossa's son Frederick of Swabia arrived in Antioch. In 1190, the French and the English also set out, choosing the route to Palestine by sea. After wintering in Sicily in mid-year, the Crusaders arrived in the Holy Land; before that, the English king Richard managed to conquer the renegade Byzantine province of Cyprus. The Europeans joined the local crusader barons and together with them conquered the powerful port city of Acre, which became the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for the next hundred years. King Philip then decided to return to France, while Richard the Lionheart remained for the next year. His campaign was crowned with several successes, but he failed to recapture Jerusalem. The Crusade eventually ended in a truce with Saladin.