Third Crusade
Frederick Barbarossa
William of Sicily was the first to respond, when he sent a fleet to Tripoli. But the first army actually to depart was led by the Emperor of the Romans, Frederick I, whom the Italians had nicknamed "Barbarossa" (Redbeard).
Frederick had been a monarch for three decades. He had fought and exiled his Welf rival, Henry the Lion, had won and lost in Italy, and had been crowned Emperor of the Romans. As a teen-aged boy, he had gone on the Second Crusade, but now he had a chance to lead one himself. With Germany quiet and Italy arranged as best he could manage, Frederick answered the crusading call eagerly.
Frederick took the cross publicly in March 1188. There was the usual long process of actually assembling an army and departing, so he did not set out until May 1189. His was probably the largest single crusading army ever to march. Medieval estimates are always exaggerated, but the force was certainly in the tens of thousands.
The army took the traditional overland route down the Danube River and across the Balkans to Constantinople. The passage was complicated by the fact that the Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus, had a secret arrangement with Saladin to delay Barbarossa. Saladin had heard wild stories about the German emperor who was supposedly marching with a million men. His own men were skittish at the threat and Saladin wished to delay the day of reckoning as long as possible.
Isaac Angelus did not slow up the Germans by much, but he did succeed in irritating Frederick to no end. There were squabble and skirmishes and even hostages taken. Frederick wintered at Edirne and in the spring of 1189 succeeded in obtaining a crossing into Asia Minor. The two emperors did not part on good terms. Over the entire two hundred years of crusading, this was the only occasion on which the Greek and Roman emperors ever met face to face.