by Robert Payne
“Yes, indeed,” Urban II answered. “Yes, it is the will of God. You today see the accomplishment of the word of our Saviour, who promised to be in the midst of the faithful, when assembled in his name; it is He who dictated to you the words that I have heard. Let them be your war cry, and let them announce everywhere the presence of the God of armies!”
At this point Urban II raised up the crucifix.
“It is Christ himself who comes from the tomb and presents to you his cross. It will be the sign raised among the nations, which is to gather again the dispersed children of Israel. Wear it upon your shoulders and your breasts. Let it shine upon your arms and upon your standards. It will be to you the surety of victory or the palm of martyrdom. It will increasingly remind you that Christ died for you, and that it is your duty to die for him!”
There was another uproar, a chorus of deafening voices, and then there was a hush as Cardinal Gregorio dei Guidone, who later occupied the papal throne as Innocent II, pronounced a general confession. They all fell on their knees, beat their breasts, and confessed their sins.
The first to speak after the cardinal was Adhemar of Monteil, Bishop of Le Puy, who asked that he be allowed to enter the way of God and to take the cross from the pope’s hand. Urban II gave it to him. It was not a cross of wood or metal, but of cloth, which was sewed upon the right shoulder of a coat or mantle or fastened to the front of a helmet. Soon, as though from nowhere, there came strips of cloth cut in the shape of a cross, and everybody was busily sewing them on. The precise symbols of the Crusade had now been found: the cry “God wills it” and the small cross fastened to the shoulder. These symbols were important: they were simple, they evoked the idea of the Crusade, and they provided the soldiers of Christ with a war cry and an easily identifiable badge.
After Clermont, Urban II continued to travel across France, holding councils in Nimes in the south, Tours and Rouen in the north. He seemed to be everywhere. He was like an army on the march, blessing the people, encouraging all men to abandon their families and join the militia Christi, that army which he had summoned into existence. Bishop Adhemar was appointed papal legate to the Crusaders, charged with the ordering of the enterprise. He would be the pope’s representative in the field, in theory commanding the princes and soldiers who fought against the Turks. Urban hoped that under the vigorous command of Adhémar, Bishop of Le Puy, this army of French soldiers and peasants would conquer Jerusalem in his own lifetime.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM POPE URBAN II TO THE CRUSADERS IN FLANDERS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER 1095.
URBAN THE BISHOP, SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS of God, to all the faithful, both princes and subjects, waiting in Flanders: apostolic grace, and blessing.
We believe that your battalions have long since learned from many sources that barbarism and terror have been visited upon the churches of God and laid waste entire regions of the East. Worse still . . . the enemy has enslaved the churches and the holy city of Christ, glorified by his passion and his resurrection. Grieving over this terrible news with pious concern, we journeyed through Gaul and devoted ourselves largely to urging the princes of this land and all their subjects to free the churches of the East. . . .
We have appointed our most beloved son, Adhémar, Bishop of Le Puy, as commander of this . . . expedition, in our stead. Those who may wish to undertake the journey should therefore obey his orders, as though they were our own, and submit themselves fully to loosings or bindings, as far as they shall seem to belong to such an office. If there are any of your people whom God has inspired to this vow, let them know that the bishop with God’s help will set out on the Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, and they can then attach themselves to his army.
But bishops have very rarely been able to command armies, and inevitably the Crusaders would be commanded by princes and warriors. At the same time, if many were aroused to follow warrior princes, men of proven military skill, others saw the Crusade in another light altogether. They had been excited and buoyed up by Urban’s speech in the fields, but they were even more excited and buoyed up by the sermons of itinerant preachers, the most remarkable of them being Peter the Hermit. For some years he had been preaching up and down France about the need to free the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks. He claimed to have had a vision of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself, in which he had commanded him to rouse the people against the Turks, promising that for all those who took part in the expedition the gates of Paradise would open. Apparently without consulting the pope, Peter the Hermit ordered that all those who wished to join the Crusade should meet at Cologne the following Easter Day. He was in a hurry. Although most of these Crusaders were poor folk, untrained in war, he believed they would overcome the Turks by faith alone.
The Crusade
of the Poor
WE would like to know more about Peter the Hermit, who had the honor of leading the First Crusade across Europe and into the lands of the Turks, but we have only brief glimpses of him. He led his people to total destruction, but men still revered him and continued to rely on his judgment. He was more like a force of nature than a man.
He was a very small man, insignificant in appearance, and they called him “Cucu-Peter.” It has been suggested that “cucu” means “cowl,” and the name meant “Cowled Peter,” but it is more likely that “Cucu” was a term of endearment. He was a hermit who wore a monk’s costume, but it is possible that he was neither priest nor monk. He led his followers by the strength of his character and by the strength of his belief in the necessity of saving the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks. While Pope Urban II and the Bishop of Le Puy appealed to the princes and the knights, Peter the Hermit spoke to the poor peasants, the uprooted, the prostitutes, and all those who wanted to escape from bondage. No one ever thought of Urban II as being Christlike, but in the popular imagination Peter the Hermit, with his humility and his power, was as close to Christ as it is possible to be. They believed he carried with him a letter written in heaven, summoning the people of Europe to free the Holy Sepulchre.
Only two of the chroniclers claim to have set eyes on him. One was Anna Comnena, Princess of Byzantium, and the other was Guibert de Nogent, who had the luck to see him as he left Amiens at the very beginning of his Crusade:
. . . He was surrounded by such great throngs, received such enormous gifts, and was lauded with such fame for holiness that I do not remember anyone to have been held in like honor. He was very generous to the poor from the wealth that had been given him. He reclaimed prostitutes and provided them with husbands, not without dowry from him; and everywhere with an amazing authority he restored peace and concord in place of strife. Whatever he did or said was regarded as little short of divine, to such an extent that hairs were snatched from his mule as relics. This we ascribe not so much to the popular love for truth as for novelty.
He wore a plain woolen shirt with a hood and over this a cloak without sleeves, both extending to his ankles, and his feet were bare. He lived on wine and fish: he hardly ever, or never, ate bread.
To understand the extraordinary influence of Peter the Hermit over the people of northern France and Germany we must go to someone like Mahatma Gandhi in our own time. A small, ugly man who walked barefoot and cared nothing for possessions, who was visibly one of the people and could talk to them in their own language and always with authority, Peter the Hermit had nothing whatsoever in common with the great princes who were beginning to arm their followers and amass the wealth necessary for the long journey to Jerusalem. Toward these princes Peter the Hermit was likely to behave as Gandhi behaved toward the maharajas. He was indifferent to them, and they lived in a world which had nothing to do with his world. He was dedicated to the idea of the Crusade, and he was able to convince the peasants that they, too, should be dedicated to it and that they could share in the glory of its success.
Peter the Hermit rode out of Amiens early in March 1096, five months before Urban had—optimistically—hoped his forces would gath
er at Flanders to set out. In fact they didn’t set out until August 1097. He was accompanied by a huge crowd of the faithful. Women and children were in the crowd, the old and the young, the poor and the not-so-poor. They had all heard his sermons and exhortations, and they came freely, having sold their possessions except for the carts, horses, bedding, and food they needed for the journey. They were a joyful company, singing hymns, and it appears that music was played continually on the march. They came from all the provinces of France. There were even Scotsmen who came, according to Guibert de Nogent, “wearing short tunics of bristling fur which left their knees bare and with their baggage slung over their shoulders.” There were also pilgrims who came from unknown lands and who indicated their desire to join the Crusade by placing one index finger over another. All of the pilgrims wore strips of cloth shaped like an X on their shoulders, in memory of the heavy cross carried by Christ to Calvary. At night they slept under tents, which were no more than swathes of cloth stretched across poles. And during this first stage of their march, they were orderly and obedient.
While Peter the Hermit remained the undisputed spiritual leader, five knights, all belonging to the same family, served as the military leaders. They were Walter de Poissy, and his four nephews—Walter, William, Matthew, and Simon. Walter de Poissy died on the march, and it was the first of these nephews, known as Walter Sans-Avoir, who served as their commander in chief, as much as a man can ever be said to command a raggle-taggle army. He had squandered his patrimony and lived for many years as a mercenary. He was not an especially good soldier but he was an admirable diplomat, a brave man, a skilled negotiator, and a faithful lieutenant to Peter the Hermit. The army reached Cologne on April 10, which was Holy Saturday. A few days later, Walter Sans-Avoir decided that the time had come to lead the first columns in the direction of Constantinople, and he set out with Peter’s blessing. This was the vanguard of an army of perhaps a hundred thousand men, women, and children, all of them wearing the cross on their shoulders, all of them determined to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Walter Sans-Avoir’s column probably numbered about ten thousand men. William of Tyre tells us that there were few knights among them, and it is likely that there were no other knights at all. They had considerable sums of money, few baggage carts, only the most primitive weapons—swords, lances, axes, maces. Walter showed his diplomatic ability when the columns reached the Hungarian frontier. Hungary had only recently been converted to Christianity by St. Stephen, and Coloman, King of Hungary, had no desire to let ten thousand armed men pass through his country. Walter was able to convince him that the Crusaders offered no threat to his subjects: order would be preserved, everything would be paid for, and no harm would come to the Hungarians. On this assurance, Coloman gave his permission for them to continue their march. The people were friendly, and they reached the frontier in an orderly fashion except for a brief skirmish in a place called Semlin, where some Hungarians fell upon a handful of hapless Crusaders, beat them, stripped them, and hung their cloths and armor on the walls of the town. This small incident would have important consequences later. Meanwhile the army crossed the Save River without difficulty and marched to Belgrade in the Byzantine province of Bulgaria.
The governor of Belgrade had received no advance warning of their coming, and the sight of the ragged army made him fearful. When Walter asked permission to buy food, he was told there was none to spare, the harvest was not in, and he should seek food elsewhere. The governor was adamant. When Walter’s powers of diplomacy failed him, a few of his men took matters in their own hands. They found some herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and drove them by force into their own camp. The Bulgarians took to arms to prevent the plunder. At some distance from the city they found about 150 cattle thieves in the process of carrying off cattle, and they attacked. The cattle thieves took refuge in a church and the Bulgarians set fire to it, burning all of them to death.
Walter Sans-Avoir continued his march through the forests of Bulgaria until he reached a town then known as Stralicia, which was probably Sofia. The governor was kindly disposed to him and agreed to furnish a market where goods could be purchased at a fair price. When they set off for Constantinople he gave them guides, after keeping them in the town until messengers had been sent to the emperor to warn him of their coming. The emperor was surprised; he had been in correspondence with the princes and thought the Crusaders would be entering Byzantine territory in the autumn. He seems to have known nothing whatsoever about Peter the Hermit’s army of poor folk, but with his usual courtesy he received Walter Sans-Avoir in Constantinople. He offered the Crusaders lodgings and a marketplace outside the city walls. He learned that Peter the Hermit would soon be arriving with the main army. He may have realized that the Crusade would not have the character he envisioned. If vast numbers of poor, unarmed, or insufficiently armed people were coming to Constantinople on their way to Jerusalem, then it was incumbent on him to take precautions. Above all, he could not permit them to enter the city or to establish any power base in the city or in the neighborhood.
Peter the Hermit’s army set out from Cologne about ten days after the vanguard left. This vast, unwieldy army, soon to be augmented by Swabians and Bavarians, reached the frontiers of Hungary without incident, and once again King Coloman received the soldiers graciously. Peter the Hermit gave orders that there should be no pillage, and there was none until the Crusaders reached Semlin, where they found the arms of their friends hanging like trophies on the walls. Incensed, and perhaps believing that many of Walter Sans-Avoir’s men had been killed and that these trophies were deliberate provocations, they rioted. The riot turned into a pitched battle, in which the Hungarians were defeated. This was the first big battle waged by the Crusaders. Ironically it was fought between Christians. About four thousand Hungarians were killed, and the chroniclers claimed that the Crusaders lost only a hundred men. Peter the Hermit may have known nothing about this massacre for many days, because he was with an advance column that had already entered Byzantine territory.
By this time he seems to have lost control of the army, which moved by its own momentum. He might give orders that the army should pay for everything it took from the countryside, but his orders were rarely obeyed. It had become a river in flood, sweeping away everything in its path. When the people of Belgrade saw the army coming, they fled to the mountains. The Crusaders, feeling that the city had been abandoned to them, set fire to it. Then they set off for Nish, reaching it after a grueling seven-day march through the forests.
The emperor had established a large garrison at Nish, which was therefore capable of defending itself. Once more Peter the Hermit asked for provisions, which were provided, and for guides, which seem also to have been provided. The governor, however, was wary and asked for hostages against their promise of good conduct. Peter the Hermit gave the hostages. There appeared to be complete agreement between Peter and the governor, and no further incidents were expected. The Crusaders marched on, Peter riding on a donkey at the head of the army.
But the worst of all incidents was about to happen. There were some unruly Germans in the rear guard, and it amused them to set fire to some country houses outside the walls of Nish and to some water mills situated on the banks of the river. The governor was shocked and angry. He decided to teach them a lesson, and ordered his well-trained soldiers to attack Peter’s rear guard, capture the incendiaries, and take more hostages. Those captured were put to death. Then matters got out of hand. Innocent people perished; baggage trains were seized; women, girls, boys, and old people, who could not keep up with the rest of the army, were arrested, yoked together, and led into captivity. The governor, usually calm and intelligent, overreacted and permitted his soldiers to harass the rear guard unmercifully. The massacre only came to an end when Peter the Hermit, hearing that something terrible had happened, rode back in search of Byzantine officers who would be able to explain the situation to him.
Peter learned tha
t the people who had been attacked were not entirely innocent. They had provoked the Byzantines. The townspeople of Nish had rushed to aid the Byzantines in the massacre. Their pent-up hatred for Peter’s army exploded. In the fighting, about ten thousand of Peter’s men were killed or led away into captivity by the enraged Byzantines. For three days the fighting continued. Peter saw his army disintegrating. There was little he could do but wait out the crisis. Gradually he was able to restore order. He established his camp on a hill at some distance from Nish and sent out heralds to seek out the broken remnants of his army. He was in such a state of despair that he talked of giving up the expedition altogether.
Then, help came from an unexpected quarter. A messenger from the emperor arrived at his camp with good news. Standing in the midst of the exhausted leaders of the expedition, the messenger read from an imperial rescript;
Noble and illustrious men, a rumor has reached our ears that serious charges of an unsavory nature have been brought against you. They say you have done great violence to the people of our land who are our subjects, and that you have stirred up quarrels and disturbances. Therefore, if you ever hope to find favor in the sight of our majesty, we enjoin upon you, by our authority, that you do not presume to remain in any of our cities for more than three days, and that you will lead your expedition as quickly as possible to Constantinople with steady and harmonious leadership. We shall give you guides and we will cause you to be furnished with the necessary food at a just price.