In 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.
Louis, still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry-le-Brule, and wanted to make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sins. In the Autumn of 1145, Pope Eugenius requested Louis to lead a Crusade to the Middle East. Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade.
Eleanor as well as Louis took up the cross during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. She insisted on taking part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers from her duchy. Her launch of the Second Crusade from Vézelay, the rumoured location of Mary Magdalene´s burial, emphasised the role of women in the campaign. In Constantinople, Eleanor was much admired. She was compared with Penthesilea, the mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian Nicetas Choniates.
From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, the Crusade went badly. The Crusade itself would achieve little. Louis was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no concept of strategy, tactics, troop discipline or morale.
Louis started off optimistically. He had been preceded by the German Emperor Conrad who Louis thought had won a great victory against a Moslem army. As Louis camped near Nicea, the sad remnants of the German army, including Emperor Conrad, straggled into the French camp, bringing news of their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans, then made off, back towards Antioch. Louis decided to cross the Phrygian mountains directly, in the hope of speeding his arrival in antioch where they would find refuge with Eleanor's uncle, Raymond II of Tripoli, in Antioch. As they ascended the mountains, they past the unburied corpses of the previously slaughtered German army.
On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmos, Louis chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard, with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon; this, being unencumbered by baggage, managed to reach the summit of Cadmos, where de Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. De Rancon however chose to march further, deciding in concert with the Count of Maurienne (Louis´ uncle) that a nearby plateau would make a better camp. As the army was divided in two, the Turks attacked, took the strategic mountain peak and happily set about massacring yet another army of incompetents. The King was saved by his own lack of presence , having scorned a King's apparel in favor of a simple solder's tunic, he escaped notice. As one chronicler noted, while his bodyguards were having their skulls smashed open, Louis "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety,".
Eleanor paid for Louis' incompetence. Geoffrey de Rancon, who had made the decision to continue beyond the peak, was Eleanor's vassal. Worse, the Aquitainians had been in the vanguard which had escaped the massacre. And worse yet hostile Church chroniclers soon found a new excuse: the baggage train had been slow because of all of the finery carried for Eleanor and her ladies. In any case the remainder of the army continued to Antioch.
While in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there, she introduced those conventions in her own lands, on the island of Oleron in 1160 and later in England as well - the beginnings of what would become Admiralty law. She was also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople and trade ports of in the Holy Lands.
Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged. Eleanor's reputation was further tarnished by an alleged affair with her uncle, Raymond, Prince of Antioch. The city of Antioch had been annexed by Bohemond of Hauteville in the First Crusade, and it was now ruled by Eleanor's flamboyant uncle Raymond who had gained the principality by marrying its reigning Princess, Constance of Antioch. Eleanor supported her uncle Raymond's desire to re-capture the nearby County of Edessa, the cause of the Crusade; in addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now showed conspicuous affection towards her uncle. Historians today dismiss this as familial affection, noting their early friendship, and his similarity to her father and grandfather, but at the time hostile Church chronicler believed, or at least reported, that the two were involved in an incestuous and adulterous affair.
Louis was directed by the Church to visit Jerusalem instead. When Eleanor (allegedly) declared her intention to stay with Raymond along with her Aquitaine forces, Louis had her brought out by force. His long march to Jerusalem and back north debilitated his army, and her imprisonment disheartened her knights. Divided Crusade armies could not overcome the Muslim forces. At the insistence of Church leaders, who were even more incompetent than Louis, the Crusade leaders targeted Damascus, an ally until the attack. Failing, they retired to Jerusalem, and then left for home in 1152.
The royal couple, on separate ships due to their disagreements, were first attacked in May by Byzantine ships attempting to capture both. Although they escaped, stormy weather drove Eleanor's ship south to the Barbary Coast. In mid-July, Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where she discovered that she and her husband had both been given up for dead. She was given shelter and food by servants of King Roger of Sicily, until Louis eventually reached Calabria. She set out to meet him there. Later, at King Roger's court in Potenza, she learnt of the death of her Uncle Raymond.
Instead of returning to France, they now went off to visit the Pope in Tusculum (where he had been driven by a Roman revolt). Pope Eugenius III did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant a divorce; instead, he asserted that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. He manoeuvred events so that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a specially prepared bed. The papal bed seems to have been efficacious because Eleanor conceived their second child - another daughter, Alix of France. But perhaps not entirely efficacious because Alix doomed the marriage. Faced with another disappointment over the lack of a male heir, opposition to Eleanor from many French Barons, and his wife's desire for divorce, Louis bowed to the inevitable. On March 11, 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Louis and Eleanor were both present. On March 21 four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugenius, granted an annulment due to consanguinity within the fourth degree (Eleanor and Louis were third cousins, once removed, sharing a common ancestry with Robert II of France). Their two daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them awarded to King Louis. Eleanor's land's reverted to her.
Two lords... Theobald of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne, and Geoffrey of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy) tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. This was a normal way for Christian men of all classes to find a wife throughout the middle ages (and into modern times in strongly Catholic countries). Both attempts failed. As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come at once and marry her.
On Whit Sunday, May 18, 1152, six weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry. She was about 11 years older than the count (and, incidentally, related to him more closely than she had been to Louis - a marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie, had been declared impossible for this very reason). Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters:
William, Count of Poitiers
Henry ("Henry the Young King")
Matilda of England,
Richard (Richard I of England, The Lionheart.
Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany
Leonora of Aquitaine
Jeanne of England