ON THIS DAY ·
Death of Frederick Barbarossa
10 Jun 1190 — Frederick Barbarossa, the mightiest king of the age, drowns crossing a river in Cilicia. His great German army dissolves in grief and disease before it reaches the Holy Land.
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The moment in context
The Third Crusade lost much of its strength before it could be used. Frederick Barbarossa marched a huge German army overland only to drown in the Saleph in Cilicia in 1190, after which his force dissolved in grief and disease, so that the strongest of the three crusaders never arrived. Richard the Lionheart sailed instead, and on the way seized Cyprus from its Byzantine ruler in an unplanned conquest that turned out to be the crusade’s most durable prize, a Latin kingdom that would outlast every state on the mainland by three centuries. The long siege of Acre finally ended in 1191, and it was there that the campaign’s worst act took place.
From Third Crusade, chapter 7 of The Crusades, 1095–1291 (1191).
The place: Death of Frederick Barbarossa — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The shock of 1187. The loss of Jerusalem and the True Cross galvanized Europe as nothing had since 1095. Kings who were bitter rivals at home all took the cross —…
- The turn — Arsuf, 7 September 1191. Arsuf proved that a disciplined crusader army could still beat Saladin in a straight fight — and, in the same stroke, proved that winning battles no…
- What it changed — A rescued but truncated kingdom. Outremer survives — as a coastal strip governed from Acre, with Jerusalem a pilgrimage destination rather than a possession. The states will last…
Then ask the room: Richard beat Saladin at Arsuf and Jaffa but never tried to hold Jerusalem. Was that failure or realism? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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