Louis the Fat, to know the requirements and the difficulties of
government. "He consented to accept," says his biographer, "only when he
was at last forced to it by Pope Eugenius, who was present at the king's
departure, and whom it was neither permissible nor possible for him to
resist." It was agreed that the French crusaders should form a junction
at Metz, under the command of King Louis, and the Germans at Ratisbonne,
under that of the Emperor Conrad, and that the two armies should
successively repair by land to Constantinople, whence they would cross
into Asia.

Having each a strength, it is said, of one hundred thousand men, they
marched by Germany and the Lower Danube, at an interval of two months
between them, without committing irregularities and without meeting
obstacles so serious as those of the first crusade, but still much
incommoded, and subjected to great hardships in the countries they
traversed. The Emperor Conrad and the Germans first, and then King Louis
and the French, arrived at Constantinople in the course of the summer of
1117. Manuel Comnenus, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, was reigning there;
and he behaved towards the crusaders with the same mixture of caresses
and malevolence, promises and perfidy, as had distinguished his
grandfather. "There is no ill turn he did not do them," says the
historian Nicetas, himself a Greek. Conrad was the first to cross into
Asia Minor, and, whether it were unskilfulness or treason, the guides
with whom he had been supplied by Manuel Comnenus led him so badly that,
on the 28th of October, 1147, he was surprised and shockingly beaten by
the Turks near Iconium. An utter distrust of Greeks grew up amongst the
French, who had not yet left Constantinople; and some of their chiefs,
and even one of their prelates, the Bishop of Langres, proposed to make,
without further delay, an end of it with this emperor and empire, so
treacherously hostile, and to take Constantinople in order to march more