The first who took the Cross was the famous Frederic Barbarossa,[646] who conducted a magnificent army across Hungary and Greece, saw through and defeated the perfidious schemes of the Greek emperor, Isaac Angelus,[647] passed on into Asia Minor, overthrew in a pitched battle the Saracen forces which had been called against him by the base and cowardly Greek, and took the city of Iconium itself. Such splendid successes, with so little loss, had never before attended any Christian host; but the light that shone upon the German arms was soon changed to darkness by the death of Frederic, who, bathing imprudently in the Orontes,[648] returned to his tent in a dying state, and soon after expired[649] at seventy years of age. After the decease of the emperor, while Henry, his eldest son, who had remained in Germany, assumed the imperial crown, Philip Duke of Suabia led on the host towards Antioch. But the very name of Frederic had been a subject of such fear, even to Saladin himself,[650] that he had ordered the towns of Laodicea, Ghibel, Tortosa, Biblios, Berytes, and Sidon to be dismantled at the approach of the Germans. Now, again, the Saracens resumed the offensive; and, between war and famine, the Teutonic crusaders were reduced to a small body when they reached Antioch. Their force was still sufficient to give them the command of that city, and proved a most serviceable aid to the Christian troops, who were slowly beginning to rally throughout Palestine. A new military institution was soon after attached, by the duke of Suabia, to the German hospital, which had been founded at Jerusalem many years before by some northern merchants, and had since been greatly enlarged by the Hanseatic[651] traders of Bremen and Lubec. On this establishment he grafted the Order of the Knights of the Holy Cross, or the Teutonic knights of the Hospital of St. Mary,[652] which soon greatly increased, and was sanctioned by papal authority.