---
title: "Mount Cadmus, 1148: William de Warenne and the Column Louis VII Lost"
url: https://writesidesofhistory.com/mount-cadmus-1148-william-de-warenne-and-the-column-louis-vii-lost/
description: "On 6 January 1148 Seljuk Turks split Louis VII's crusader army on Mount Cadmus and killed William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, during the Second Crusade."
era: medieval
published: 2026-10-15
topics: ["crusades", "medieval-england"]
words: 1612
publisher: "Writesides of History"
licence: "Quote freely, with attribution to Writesides of History and a link to the article url. The articles are written and published by Writesides of History, which is both author and publisher."
cite_as: https://writesidesofhistory.com/mount-cadmus-1148-william-de-warenne-and-the-column-louis-vii-lost/
sources:
  - "Odo of Deuil; ed. and trans. Virginia Gingerick Berry, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem (The Journey of Louis VII to the East), 1948 (primary)"
  - "Jonathan Phillips and Martin Hoch (eds.), The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, 2001 (scholarly)"
  - "G. E. Cokayne (ed.), revised by Vicary Gibbs and others, The Complete Peerage, vol. 12 part 1 (entry 'Surrey'), 1953 (reference)"
---

# Mount Cadmus, 1148: William de Warenne and the Column Louis VII Lost

**On 6 January 1148, on the slopes of a mountain near Laodicea in western Anatolia, a Seljuk Turkish force cut King Louis VII's crusader army in two and killed many of its knights, among them William de Warenne, third Earl of Surrey.** William had left England as one of the few great English magnates to take the cross in the Second Crusade. He never reached Jerusalem. The chroniclers who mention his death say little about how it happened, and this article sets out what they do say and where they fall silent.

## Where the army stood in January 1148

The Second Crusade was called after the fall of Edessa in 1144, and Louis VII and Conrad III of Germany led the two great armies east in 1147. Conrad's army was badly mauled by the Turks near Dorylaeum in October 1147. Louis, who came after him, chose the longer route down the Aegean coast rather than the direct road across the plateau. By the new year his column was stretched out along a river valley in winter, short of food and weighed down by baggage and unarmed pilgrims. Odo of Deuil, the king's chaplain, wrote the one eyewitness narrative of this march, and his sixth book is the main source for what followed. A Latin army in Anatolia was only as strong as its discipline, as [the destruction of the People's Crusade at Civetot](https://writesidesofhistory.com/civetot-1096-the-end-of-the-peoples-crusade/) half a century earlier had shown.

The French reached Laodicea on the Lycus around the new year, having fought their way across the Meander. Ahead lay a climb over a mountain range that the chroniclers call Cadmus. Modern scholars have argued over exactly which massif that was, and the identification should be treated as uncertain.

## The order that was not obeyed

The march order mattered. Louis rode with the rear guard, where the baggage train and the pilgrims were. The vanguard, which in the accounts is commanded by Geoffrey de Rancon, a vassal of Queen Eleanor, had been told to halt on the high ground and make camp so that the whole column could close up behind it. In Odo's telling, they went on over the crest and down the far side instead. The gap that opened between the vanguard and the rear is the whole story of the day. Some accounts name Amadeus of Savoy among the vanguard commanders, which is one reason the details differ from one telling to the next, and the sources are not in full agreement about who gave which order.

The Turks had been watching the column for days. When the rear halted on the slope, with the vanguard out of sight, they attacked the baggage and the foot soldiers and drove them down against the knights. Horses were lost on the steep ground, and the narrow path jammed. Odo, who was himself with the king's party, blames the vanguard's commander and the sins of the army. A chaplain loyal to the king had every reason to assign guilt to someone other than the king, and the account should be read with that in mind. Rancon was a vassal of [Eleanor of Aquitaine](https://writesidesofhistory.com/eleanor-of-aquitaine-noblewomen-patronage/), who travelled with the army, which is one reason the question of blame stayed charged.

## Chronology

| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1144 | Edessa falls to Zengi, prompting the call for a new crusade |
| Oct 1147 | Conrad III's army is defeated near Dorylaeum; Louis VII follows the coastal route |
| Dec 1147 | The French fight their way to and across the Meander |
| 6 Jan 1148 | The column is split on Mount Cadmus and the Turks attack the rear |
| c. 20 Jan 1148 | The survivors reach Attalia, where shipping is too scarce for all of them |
| 19 Mar 1148 | Louis VII arrives at Antioch by sea |
| July 1148 | The siege of Damascus fails and the crusade collapses |

## William de Warenne

William de Warenne was probably around thirty when he died; references disagree on his birth year. He was the son of William II de Warenne, and the great-grandson of the William de Warenne who had fought at Hastings and been rewarded with the rape of Lewes, as [the Norman Conquest](https://writesidesofhistory.com/the-norman-conquest-of-1066-how-william-the-conqueror-reshaped-england/) redistributed England. By 1148 the earldom of Surrey was one of the great holdings of the Anglo-Norman realm, with castles at Lewes and Conisbrough. William took the cross in 1147, and his half-brother Waleran de Beaumont, Count of Meulan, joined the same expedition. The reason the Warennes sit in a French army is not hard to find: they held land on both sides of the Channel and were kin to the Capetians through the Vermandois family.

Our dataset lists William among the war's noble casualties, as killed in action, with Odo of Deuil's sixth book as the cited chronicle (see [our record of these operations](https://writesidesofhistory.com/datasets/crusader-nobility-deaths/)). That is as precise as the record gets. The accounts describing the fighting on Mount Cadmus speak of the knights who stood to cover the pilgrims and the king, and of heavy losses among them. Where William fell, who was with him, and whether he was buried in Anatolia, are questions the sources do not answer. The fighting is described in general terms, and no surviving account gives William a scene of his own. That silence is the honest result, and it is more useful than a plausible invention.

## What happened to Louis

Odo's account of the king's own escape is the best-known passage. At dusk, with Turks all around the rear and his bodyguard scattered or dead, Louis got away on foot over the rocks and, in Odo's telling, was not recognised by the Turks. He found his way back to the camp in the dark. Whether every detail is as Odo gives it cannot be checked against an independent witness.

In the days after, the army was reorganised. Odo credits the Templars travelling with the king, and their officer Everard des Barres, with imposing a rule on the march, dividing the column into companies and making knights answerable to a Templar commander. [The Knights Templar](https://writesidesofhistory.com/the-knights-templar-guardians-of-the-crusades-and-medieval-power/) were here used as a military police for a royal army, a notable role for the order.

The rest of the march was a slow retreat to Attalia, where the army arrived in late January. There was not enough shipping for everyone. Louis sailed with the knights, and the infantry and pilgrims were left to make their own way or to wait. Many died of hunger, disease or Turkish attack. It was a defeat in all but name, though the French did not recognise it as such at the time. The king reached Antioch in March, and the expedition was diverted from the county of Edessa that it had been called to save and towards the fruitless attack on Damascus.

## Aftermath: an heiress and a gap

William's death left the earldom with a young daughter, Isabel. She was married first to William of Blois, a son of King Stephen, and after his death, to Hamelin, a half-brother of Henry II, who took the Warenne name and the title of earl through her. The comital line passed through a woman to a new family. A single defeat in Anatolia, on a winter day nobody in Sussex witnessed, had changed who held Lewes and Conisbrough. The Complete Peerage records the descent, but nothing in it explains the death itself.

Earlier crusades produced the same pattern of dead lords with no story attached, as [the crusade of 1101](https://writesidesofhistory.com/crusade-of-1101-hugh-of-vermandois-stephen-of-blois/) also did, and [the fall of Acre in 1291](https://writesidesofhistory.com/the-fall-of-acre-in-1291-the-last-crusader-stronghold-in-the-holy-land/) later closed the period. What distinguishes Mount Cadmus is that the king himself was nearly among them.

## Conclusion

The fight on Mount Cadmus is a story of one broken order, a long column and an enemy that knew the ground. William de Warenne's death in it matters less as an episode than as a measure of the cost: an English earl of the first rank, killed in the army of a French king, whose passing is recorded in a line or two. The chronicle names the battle, and it does not give us the man's last hour. A fair account says so rather than filling the gap.

## Frequently asked questions

**Where was Mount Cadmus?** It was a mountain range near Laodicea on the Lycus in western Anatolia, in modern Turkey. Scholars have long debated which modern massif the chroniclers meant, so the exact site of the fighting is uncertain.

**How did William de Warenne die?** Our record lists him as killed in action at Mount Cadmus in January 1148, citing the sixth book of Odo of Deuil. The sources do not describe his death in detail, and nothing reliable tells us who was beside him.

**Who was to blame for the defeat?** Odo of Deuil put the fault on the vanguard, led by Geoffrey de Rancon, which went on instead of halting as ordered. Odo was the king's chaplain and loyal to him, so historians treat the question of blame as a matter of interpretation.

**Did Louis VII survive?** Yes. By Odo's account he escaped on foot at dusk and was not recognised by the Turks. He later sailed from Attalia to Antioch and took part in the failed siege of Damascus.

## Recommended reading

- Jonathan Phillips, *The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom* (2007) - the fullest modern history of the expedition, including Louis's march through Anatolia. [View on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300164750)
- Christopher Tyerman, *God's War: A New History of the Crusades* (2006) - places the Second Crusade's failure within two centuries of crusading. [View on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674023870)
- Thomas Asbridge, *The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land* (2010) - a readable single-volume narrative that covers the Second Crusade and its consequences. [View on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060787295)