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Peter the Hermit and the ‘Peoples’ Crusade’ - Page 2

© Michael Evans

Why did crusading have such popular appeal? Pilgrimages, including those to Jerusalem, were becoming more popular, but it is unlikely that many of the rural poor would have been able to take part in these. Maybe they simply wanted to escape from the lives of poverty and drudgery. Maybe the image of the heavenly New Jerusalem (described in the book of Revelation), carrying the promise of a life free of suffering, was combined in their minds with the literal idea of the East as a Land of Milk and Honey. One, hostile, report of a group of poor crusaders records that every village they entered, they asked 'is this Jerusalem'? (Anyone who has ever travelled long distances in a car with young children will understand this). Other church writers mockingly described pilgrims following a goose that they believed was filled with the Holy Spirit. Clearly these people had very little idea where Jerusalem was, but they were motivated by some deep religious conviction, however muddled.

It is conventional to describe Peter's movement as 'the People's Crusade', although more recently, historians have pointed to the participation of some knights and minor nobles among the military leadership. However, the fate of Peter's movement suggests that it was of a more spontaneous and ill-organised affair than the armies of the noblemen who followed after them. Peter's men had little grasp of logistics, and degenerated into a plundering expedition through eastern Europe, repeatedly coming into conflict with local Christians. They eventually made it to Constantinople, where the Byzantine Emperor Alexius was only too happy to help them on their way to Turkish lands, just to get them out of his hair. Alexius's daughter Anna dismissively called their leader 'Cuckoo Peter'. Confronted with their first Turks, the crusaders were overwhelmed by the hardened Muslim warriors, and many died miserably, besieged in a tower where they were forced by thirst to drink water from a sewer. Peter, like any good general, escaped alive, and went on to play a very minor role in the First Crusade proper.

Similar movements to Peter's emerged in Germany, where they distinguished themselves even less. These German crusaders' main activity was to slaughter the Jews of the Rhineland, reasoning that they were equally 'enemies of Christ' as the Muslims, and therefore fair game. Most of these armies perished even before reaching Constantinople.

So the 'Peoples' Crusades' were inglorious affairs, but interesting social phenomena, revealing something of the evangelical and excitable religious atmosphere of the time. The men who came after them were more hardened warriors, and to them fell the honour (if such it was) of leading the First Crusade.

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