Could Frederick Barbarossa have won the Third Crusade?

Without the Fourth Crusade as we know it, Byzantium might have a chance to survive against the Ottomans later
I don't know if the Ottomans will even be a thing.They will probably be little more than Turkic bandits that gets wiped out along with the other Turks in Anatolia once the Seljuks Sultanate implodes.
 
Fair enough I suppose, but even if the empire doesn't directly rule the Holy Land, a large number of German nobles would probably see it dragged into the European struggles of power, in particular between Germany and France.

Well IOTL the Crusader States' largely French nobility didn't get very involved in French affairs. Besides, even if the Crusaders had wanted to get involved in affairs back home, they were too distant to offer anything more than token support. Most of the crusading expeditions never reached the Holy Land, and those that did often had to leave early to stop rivals back home causing mischief. There's no reason to think that these problems wouldn't have applied equally strongly to an army going the other way.

If the Kingdom of Jerusalem has been recovered, anything beyond that is probably unlikely, then I think a Fourth Crusade is quite possible but one which actually sticks to its original target of invading Egypt. How successful they are, and how long they manage to retain control if they were - I have doubts about how they would treat the local Coptic Christian minority never mind the Muslims, is a rather large question however.

IOTL the Crusader States seem to have treated their non-Catholic populations well enough to avoid any major outbreaks of dissatisfaction. Admittedly the situation in Egypt would probably depend a lot on the personality of whomever became king, but it's by no means inevitable that a Crusading Egypt would alienate its Muslim and Coptic subjects.
 
Well IOTL the Crusader States' largely French nobility didn't get very involved in French affairs. Besides, even if the Crusaders had wanted to get involved in affairs back home, they were too distant to offer anything more than token support. Most of the crusading expeditions never reached the Holy Land, and those that did often had to leave early to stop rivals back home causing mischief. There's no reason to think that these problems wouldn't have applied equally strongly to an army going the other way.
You did however have events like the Lombard War otl.

Which was exactly what it sounded like. A civil war in the Kingdom of Jerusalem between the Lombard and Germans versus the Frankish nobility.

That was not a particularly smart idea for anyone involved.
 
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If the combined Army does retake the KoJ to a defensible line out in Oultrejordain would the Frenchies who were expelled by Saladin come back to claim their holdings? Or would Richie, Phil and Freddy B be able to dish out the fiefs by right of conquest? Would they name the King?
 
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