Conrad III of Germany

Damascus was also, in these years, a city increasingly under the shadow of a larger geopolitical drama, one that would deliver into the boy's childhood one of its more vivid and formative episodes.

The Second Crusade, launched from Europe in response to the fall of Edessa, arrived in the Levant in 1148, and though its principal target had originally been intended as a recovery of lost Crusader territory in the north, the leaders of the expedition, including King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany, instead turned their combined forces toward Damascus itself, judging the wealthy Muslim city a more valuable prize.

The siege that followed, in July of 1148, brought a large Crusader army to the very orchards and gardens through which the boy's family had passed on their arrival in the city not long before, and for several tense days, the fate of Damascus itself hung in uncertain balance.

It is difficult to overstate what a siege of this scale would have meant to a boy of roughly eleven years old, living within the walls under threat.

he issued a bull that offered spiritual benefits similar to those of the First Crusade.

Bernard of Clairvaux, a highly influential monk, traveled across France and Germany to recruit participants, eventually persuading King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany to join.

At the same time, the Pope authorized similar campaigns in the Baltic against pagans.

and in the Iberian Peninsula against Muslim states.