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Citing articles via Google Scholar. He had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but was prevented from entering the city by the Seljuk Turks. His licence to preach included England.
For the people who joined Peter the Hermit there was the religious element of the crusade to consider but also the fact that it enabled peasants to leave the land which many of them were tied to by the feudal structure.
However, as the vast majority of them were not wealthy there came the problems of having to take entire families and living off the land. By spring Peter was in the Rhineland where preaching crusade led to a massacre of Jews. This killing spread with the crusade. At Mainz the Bishop hid numbers of Jews in his palace but they were still murdered. In part it was religious intolerance — torah scrolls were destroyed. War was endemic.
A warrior class, directly descended from the barbarians who had conquered the Western Roman empire, now ruled over its shattered remnants. The Church—despite its all-too-open greed, ambition, treachery and politics—was the one major force for preserving some remnant of literacy, culture and moral order. It wielded an immense spiritual authority and on the whole used its power wisely, trying to promote a world more humane than that of the warrior-knights.
Such was the environment that spawned the Crusades. There was, however, a predecessor to what is formally recorded in the history books as the First Crusade. In March , Urban hosted the first great council of his reign, held at Piacenza. There, decrees were passed against simony, clerical marriage and schism.
They told of the horrors experienced by the Christians of the East at the hands of the Turks, who had been raiding and conquering their lands. Alexius I was intelligent, crafty and treacherous enough to be successful as an Eastern ruler.
Therefore, he had sent his two ambassadors west to ask for recruits to re-establish his army. He could not possibly have dreamed of the response. Urban carefully considered the request and decided on a plan so far-reaching that it would change the course of history. On August 11, , he sent out letters requesting his bishops to join him at Clermont, France. On Tuesday, November 27, the crowds that had assembled were too large to be housed in the cathedral, where the council was meeting, so the papal throne was set up on a platform outside the east gate of the city.
Peter the Hermit—also known as Peter of Amiens because he was born in that French town—had never been within miles of any pope, but that did not prevent him from telling his followers that it was he who had persuaded Urban to preach the crusade. Peter was certainly among the first to preach it, but it is now known that there were many others who were advocating the same thing. It was, nonetheless, Peter who became the de facto leader for many of the Crusaders.
A former soldier, Peter was a short, elderly man whose face was almost as long and sad as that of the donkey he always rode. His garments were filthy. His bare feet had not been washed in years. He ate no meat or fruit, living almost entirely on wine and fish. In , Peter had made a pilgrimage to Palestine, but he was unable to reach the Holy City. His higher-ranking followers, most notably the capable French knight Walter Sansavoir or Sans-Avoir , or Walter the Penniless, brought thousands of men-at-arms with them.
German leaders such as Gottschalk and Orel formed similar armies, but probably on a smaller scale. Both Alexius and Urban wanted armies, not rabble. In the spring of , Peter halted at Cologne. Although he had always given his every coin to the poor, he now realized that he could not lead his followers on such a journey without a war chest.
Walter, impatient with the many delays, had already set out from France. Permission was granted, and the passage was completed with little incident. Alexius had established stores along the route of the approaching Westerners, but they could not begin to feed the hordes approaching his borders. He now learned that a second, much larger throng, was also on its way.
Hostility toward the Hungarians grew until an argument over the sale of a pair of shoes sparked a riot, and the Crusaders attacked the townsfolk. Shops and markets were looted, and hundreds of Hungarians were killed. Governor Nicetas, a conscientious but lackluster leader, requested guidance from Constantinople.
By the time Peter the Hermit arrived in Constantinople, Walter Sans Avoir's army had been restlessly waiting there for weeks. Emperor Alexius convinced Peter and Walter that they should wait in Constantinople until the main body of Crusaders, who were massing in Europe under powerful noble commanders, arrived.
But their followers were not happy with the decision. They'd undergone a long journey and many trials to get there, and they were eager for action and glory. Furthermore, there still wasn't enough food and supplies for everyone, and foraging and theft were rampant. Now the crusaders were in a truly hostile territory where there was little food or water to be found anywhere, and they had no plan for how to proceed. They quickly began squabbling amongst themselves.
Eventually, Peter returned to Constantinople to elicit help from Alexius, and the People's Crusade broke into two groups: one primarily made up of Germans with a few Italians, the other of Frenchmen.
Toward the end of September, the French crusaders managed to loot a suburb of Nicaea. The Germans decided to do the same. Unfortunately, Turkish forces expected another attack and surrounded the German crusaders, who managed to take refuge in the fortress at Xerigordon. After eight days, the Crusaders surrendered.
Those who did not convert to Islam were killed on the spot; those who did convert were enslaved and sent eastward, never to be heard from again. The Turks then sent a forged message to the French crusaders, telling of great riches the Germans had acquired. In spite of warnings from wiser men, the Frenchmen took the bait. They rushed onward, only to be ambushed at Civetot, where every last crusader was slaughtered. The People's Crusade was over. Peter considered returning home but instead remained in Constantinople until the main body of the more organized crusading forces arrived.
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