Second Battle of Dorylaeum

October 25, 1147

Conrad III's German crusaders, exhausted and running short of water on the Anatolian plateau, were ambushed by Seljuk horse archers and cut to ribbons. Fewer than one in ten made it back to Nicaea. The Second Crusade was crippled before it ever reached Syria. The disaster repeated the pattern of the Crusade of 1101, proving that the overland route across Anatolia remained a death trap for western armies.