It wasn't meant to be. Friedrich Barbarossa, the German emperor, leading an army of crusaders to Jerusalem, would never reach the holy land. Setting off in May 1189 from Regensburg, marching through the Balkans, they would reach Constantinopolis, then cross the Dardanelles, keep moving southward through Anatolia - fighting off Turkmen attacks all the way - pass the mighty Taurus mountains and just a short way up the Mediterranean would reach this point on the river Saleph on June 10th 1190.
The sixty-seven year old, red bearded emperor allegedly wanted to cool off in the June heat by taking a quick dip, but drowned in hip deep water. A "so it goes" moment in Vonnegutian tradition. Some say his horse slipped and he hit his head against a rock. Others claim a heart attack, which doesn't sound too unreasonable because the stream was most likely freezing cold from the melting Taurus snow.
After the loss of their emperor, the army fell into despair. Most returned back home via sea. Few continued their crusade towards the holy land. As for Barbarossa, Mos Teutonicus was administered. His flesh was interred in Antioch in St. Peter's Church; however, the whereabouts of his bones is still unknown.
Today it's quite mind-boggling to think of tens of thousands of crusaders in heavy armour marching 2500 km over the course of a year. Not dissimilar to Xenophon's March of the Ten Thousand. And at this spot, they still had many hundreds of kilometers ahead.
It was summer when I made this picture. On June 10th 1190 the crusaders probably had a similarly hot and hazy day. As they were marching down this valley, surely some of them must have been thinking of home, so incredibly far away now.
