Unfortunately, a little more than a year later, Friedrich Barbarossa drowned while crossing a river in Anatolia, and his army was subsequently decimated by disease. This was the army led b y the Holy Roman Emperor. All this takes time.ДЄs a result, the first crusading army did not set out to reli eve the Holy Land until a lmost two years after t he disaster at Hattin or only a little before the start of the siege of Acre. Last but not least, when m on archs prepare to leave their kingdoms for extended periods of time, they also need to provide for a functioning administration to rule in their absence and ensure lines of communication betwe en their mo bile headquar ters and their cap itals. The complexity of these operations was enormous, a s the noted historian Christopher T yerman documents in his excellent work H ow to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religio us War in the Middle Ages. In addit ion, supplies for men and horses, siege engines, munitions and medical support had to be arranged.

Once committed to leading armies to the Holy Land, th e Holy Roman Emperor an d the kings began to meticulously prepare for the campaign, pulling together financial resources, and building or chartering fleet s in the case of the English and French, or organ izing land -transportation in the case of the Germans. Organizing a military campaign thousands of miles away, even in the age of instant communications, is not child 's play and kin gs and emperors a re not amateurs. The Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich 'Barbarossa,' King Henry II of England, King Philip II of France, the Dukes of Austria and Aquitaine, the Counts of Champagne and Flanders, and literally hundreds of other noblemen, thousands of knights and tens of thousands of commoners 'took the cross' and vowed to retake Jerusalem. The call for a new crusade f ell on ready and eager ears in 1187. The fall of Jerusalem in 1187 had, however, ignited a massive and vigorous response in the West long before the start of the siege of Acre.

Crusader kings 2 siege