great expedition to the Holy Land. At the imperial diet in Frankfurt in March 1147 Conrad and the assembled princes entrusted Bernard of Clairvaux with the recruitment for the Wendish crusade. Before leaving, he had the nobles elect and crown his son Henry Berengar king. The succession secured in the event of his death, Conrad set out. His army of 20,000 men went overland, via Hungary, causing disruptions in the Byzantine territories through which they passed. They arrived at Constantinople by September 1147, ahead of the French army. Rather than taking the coastal road around Anatolia through Christian-held territory, by which he sent most of his noncombatants, Conrad took his army across Anatolia. On 25 October 1147, they were defeated by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Dorylaeum. Conrad and most of the knights escaped, but most of the foot soldiers were killed or captured. The remaining 2,000 men of the German army limped on to Nicaea, where many of the survivors deserted and tried to return home. Conrad and his adherents had to be escorted to Lopadium by the French, where they joined the main French army under Louis. Conrad fell seriously ill at Ephesus and was sent to recuperate in Constantinople, where his host the Emperor Manuel I acted as his personal physician. After recovering, Conrad sailed to Acre, and from there reached Jerusalem. He participated in the ill-fated Siege of Damascus and after that failure, grew disaffected with his allies. Another attempt to attack Ascalon failed when Conrad's allies did not appear as promised, then Conrad returned to Germany, through Constantinople, where he met Emperor Manuel I to discuss the problem of two emperors, and to renew their alliance against Roger II of Sicily. In 1150, Conrad and Henry Berengar defeated Welf VI and his son Welf VII at the Battle of Flochberg. Henry Berengar died later that year and the succession was thrown open. The Welfs and Hohenstaufen made peace in 1152 and the peaceful succession of one of Conrad's family was secured. Conrad was never crowned emperor and continued to style himself "King of the Romans" until his death. On his deathbed, in the presence of only two witnesses, his nephew Frederick Barbarossa and the Bishop of Bamberg, he allegedly designated Frederick his successor, rather than his own surviving six-year-old son Frederick. Frederick Barbarossa, who had accompanied his uncle on the unfortunate crusade, forcefully