The question of Antioch had been settled
just in time for the new Crusade. Ever since his disillusion over the Fourth
Crusade Innocent had been preparing for a more meritorious effort to save the
East. He had been troubled by many distractions. There had been the difficult
problem of the heretics in southern France to solve; and the fierce solution of
the Albigensian Crusade, though he had instigated it and given the Crusaders
indulgences similar to those earned by a war against the infidel, had raised
difficulties in its turn. In
1211,
in
answer to an invasion of Castile by the Almohad vizier, an-Nasir, he had
preached the Crusade in Spain; and his efforts were justified by the
magnificent victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, in July
1212,
when the African army was routed and a new
phase of Christian reconquest began. But there were few knights ready to make
the journey to the Holy Land. The only response to the prayers for the rescue
of Jerusalem came from a very different class.
One day in May
1212
there appeared at Saint-Denis, where King
Philip of France was holding his court, a shepherd-boy of about twelve years
old called Stephen, from the small town of Cloyes in the Orleannais. He brought
with him a letter for the King, which, he said, had been given to him by Christ
in person, who had appeared to him as he was tending his sheep and who had
bidden him go and preach the Crusade. King Philip was not impressed by the
child and told him to go home. But Stephen, whose enthusiasm had been fired by
his mysterious visitor, saw himself now as an inspired leader who would succeed
where his elders had failed. For the past fifteen years preachers had been
going round the country-side urging a Crusade against the Moslems of the East
or of Spain or against the heretics of Languedoc. It was easy for an hysterical
boy to be infected with the idea that he too could be a preacher and could
emulate Peter the Hermit, whose prowess had during the past century reached a
legendary grandeur. Undismayed by the King’s indifference, he began to preach
at the very entrance to the abbey of Saint-Denis and to announce that he would
lead a band of children to the rescue of Christendom. The seas would dry up
before them, and they would pass, like Moses through the Red Sea, safe to the
Holy Land. He was gifted with an extraordinary eloquence. Older folk were
impressed, and children came flocking to his call. After his first success he
set out to journey round France summoning the children; and many of his
converts went further afield to work on his behalf. They were all to meet
together at Vendome in about a month’s time and start out from there to the
East.
Towards the end of June the children
massed at Vendome. Awed contemporaries spoke of thirty thousand, not one over
twelve years of age. There were certainly several thousand of them, collected
from all parts of the country, some of them simple peasants, whose parents in
many cases had willingly let them go on their great mission. But there were
also boys of noble birth who had slipped away from home to join Stephen and his
following of ‘minor prophets’ as the chroniclers called them. There were also
girls amongst them, a few young priests, and a few older pilgrims, some drawn
by piety, others, perhaps, from pity, and others, certainly, to share in the
gifts that were showered upon them all. The bands came crowding into the town,
each with a leader carrying a copy of the Oriflamme, which Stephen took as the
device of the Crusade. The town could not contain them all, and they encamped
in the fields outside.
1212: The Children at Marseilles
When the blessing of friendly priests had
been given, and when the last sorrowing parents had been pushed aside, the
expedition started out southward. Nearly all of them went on foot. But Stephen,
as befitted the leader, insisted on having a gaily decorated cart for himself,
with a canopy to shade him from the sun. At his side rode boys of noble birth,
each rich enough to possess a horse. No one resented the inspired prophet
travelling in comfort. On the contrary, he was treated as a saint, and locks of
his hair and pieces of his garments were collected as precious relics. They
took the road past Tours and Lyons, making for Marseilles. It was a painful
journey. The summer was unusually hot. They depended on charity for their food,
and the drought left little to spare in the country, and water was scarce. Many
of the children died by the wayside. Others dropped out and tried to wander
home. But at last the little Crusade reached Marseilles.
The citizens of Marseilles greeted the
children kindly. Many found houses in which to lodge. Others encamped in the
streets. Next morning the whole expedition rushed down to the harbour to see
the sea divide before them. When the miracle did not take place, there was
bitter disappointment. Some of the children turned against Stephen, crying that
he had betrayed them, and began to retrace their steps. But most of them stayed
on by the sea-side, expecting each morning that God would relent. After a few
days two merchants of Marseilles, called, according to tradition, Hugh the Iron
and William the Pig, offered to put ships at their disposal and to carry them
free of charge, for the glory of God, to Palestine. Stephen eagerly accepted
the kindly offer. Seven vessels were hired by the merchants, and the children
were taken aboard and set out to sea. Eighteen years passed before there was
any further news of them.
Meanwhile tales of Stephen’s preaching had
reached the Rhineland. The children of Germany were not to be outdone. A few
weeks after Stephen had started on his mission, a boy called Nicholas, from a
Rhineland village, began to preach the same message before the shrine of the
Three Kings at Cologne. Like Stephen, he declared that children could do better
than grown men, and that the sea would open to give them a path. But, while the
French children were to conquer the Holy Land by force, the Germans were to
achieve their aim by the conversion of the infidel. Nicholas, like Peter, had a
natural eloquence and was able to find eloquent disciples to carry his
preaching further, up and down the Rhineland. Within a few weeks an army of
children had gathered at Cologne, ready to start out for Italy and the sea. It
seems that the Germans were on an average slightly older than the French and
that there were more girls with them. There was also a larger contingent of
boys of the nobility, and a number of disreputable vagabonds and prostitutes.
The expedition split into two parties. The
first, numbering according to the chroniclers, twenty thousand, was led by
Nicholas himself. It set out up the Rhine to Basle and through western
Switzerland, past Geneva, to cross the Alps by the Mont Cenis pass. It was an
arduous journey for the children, and their losses were heavy. Less than a
third of the company that left Cologne appeared before the walls of Genoa, at
the end of August, and demanded a night’s shelter within its walls. The Genoese
authorities were ready at first to welcome the pilgrims, but on second thoughts
they suspected a German plot. They would allow them to stay for one night only;
but any who wished to settle permanently in Genoa were invited to do so. The
children, expecting the sea to divide before them next morning, were content.
But next morning the sea was as impervious to their prayers as it had been to
the French at Marseilles. In their disillusion many of the children at once
accepted the Genoese offer and became Genoese citizens, forgetting their
pilgrimage. Several great families of Genoa later claimed to be descended from
this alien immigration. But Nicholas and the greater number moved on. The sea
would open for them elsewhere. A few days later they reached Pisa. There two
ships bound for Palestine agreed to take several of the children, who embarked
and who perhaps reached Palestine; but nothing is known of their fate.
Nicholas, however, still awaited a miracle, and trudged on with his faithful
followers to Rome. At Rome Pope Innocent received them. He was moved by their
piety but embarrassed by their folly. With kindly firmness he told them that
they must now go home. When they grew up they should then fulfil their vows and
go to fight for the Cross.
1212: The Fate of the Children
Little is known of the return journey.
Many of the children, especially the girls, could not face again the ardours of
the road and stayed behind in some Italian town or village. Only a few
stragglers found their way back next spring to the Rhineland. Nicholas was
probably not amongst them. But the angry parents whose children had perished
insisted on the arrest of his father, who had, it seems, encouraged the boy out
of vainglory. He was taken and hanged.
The second company of German pilgrims was
no more fortunate. It had travelled to Italy through central Switzerland and
over the Saint Gotthard and after great hardships reached the sea at Ancona.
When the sea failed to divide for them they moved slowly down the east coast as
far as Brindisi. There a few of them found ships sailing to Palestine and were
given passages; but the others returned and began to wander slowly back again.
Only a tiny number returned at last to their homes.
Despite their miseries, they were perhaps
luckier than the French. In the year 1230 a priest arrived in France from the
East with a curious tale to tell. He had been, he said, one of the young
priests who had accompanied Stephen to Marseilles and had embarked with them on
the ships provided by the merchants. A few days out they had run into bad
weather, and two of the ships were wrecked on the island of San Pietro, off the
south-west corner of Sardinia, and all the passengers were drowned. The five
ships that survived the storm found themselves soon afterwards surrounded by a
Saracen squadron from Africa; and the passengers learned that they had been
brought there by arrangement, to be sold into captivity. They were all taken to
Bougie, on the Algerian coast. Many of them were bought on their arrival and
spent the rest of their lives in captivity there. Others, the young priest
among them, were shipped on to Egypt, where Frankish slaves fetched a better
price. When they arrived at Alexandria the greater part of the consignment was
bought by the governor, to work on his estates. According to the priest there
were still about seven hundred of them living. A small company was taken to the
slave-markets of Baghdad; and there eighteen of them were martyred for refusing
to accept Islam. More fortunate were the young priests and the few others that
were literate. The governor of Egypt, al-Adil’s son al-Kamil, was interested in
Western languages and letters. He bought them and kept them with him as
interpreters, teachers and secretaries, and made no attempt to convert them to
his faith. They stayed on in Cairo in a comfortable captivity; and eventually
this one priest was released and allowed to return to France. He told the
questioning parents of his comrades all that he knew, then disappeared into
obscurity. A later story identified the two wicked merchants of Marseilles with
two merchants who were hanged a few years afterwards for attempting to kidnap
the Emperor Frederick on behalf of the Saracens, thus making them in the end
pay the penalty for their crimes.
1216: Death of Pope Innocent III
It was not the little children that would
rescue Jerusalem. Pope Innocent had larger and more realistic views. He decided
to hold a great Council of the Church at Rome in 1215, where all the religious
affairs of Christendom should be regulated and above all the Greek Church
should be integrated. He wished to have a Crusade already launched by then. Throughout
1213 his legate, Robert of Courcon, toured France with orders, so great was the
emergency, not to examine over-carefully the suitability of those that took the
Cross. The Legate carried out his master’s instructions with a zeal that was
excessive. Very soon the French nobles began to write to their King that their
vassals were being excused their vows by the Legate’s preachers, and that an
absurd collection of old men and children, lepers, cripples and women of ill
fame had been gathered together to conduct the Holy War. The Pope was obliged
to restrain Robert; and when the Lateran Council of 1215 opened, there was
still no Crusade ready to embark. At the first session the Pope himself spoke
on the plight of Jerusalem, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem rose to plead for
aid. The Council hastened to reaffirm the privileges and indulgences to be
accorded to Crusaders and to arrange for the financing of the expedition, which
was to assemble in Sicily or Apulia and set sail for the East on June 1217.
The Council stirred the Church into
activity. Throughout the spring of 1216 preachers set out all over Western
Christendom, as far afield as Ireland and Scandinavia. The doctors of the
University of Paris declared that anyone who took the Cross and then tried to
avoid the fulfilment of his vow committed mortal sin. Popular visions were
reported of crosses floating in the air and were given full advertisement.
Innocent was hopeful. He had already noticed that the 666 years allotted in
Revelation to the Beast were nearly spent. It was, indeed, six and a half
centuries since the birth of Mahomet. He had written to the Sultan al-Adil
warning him of the wrath to come and urging him to cede Jerusalem peaceably
while there was still time. But his optimism was a little premature. Gervase,
Abbot of Premontre, wrote to him confidentially to say that the nobles of
France were ignoring the views of the doctors at Paris, and that something
drastic must be done to keep the Dukes of Burgundy and Lorraine to their vows.
He also wisely advised that there should be no combined French and German
expedition. The two nations did not work together harmoniously. But the poorer
people were taking the Cross with enthusiasm. They must not be discouraged by
delay.