Last we left off
count Emicho's disastrous crusade had been smashed in Hungary
and the French contingent of peasant Crusaders had been escorted under guard to Constantinople.
Now it's time we returned to Peter and his main force of peasant Crusaders in Cologne.
By the time Peter was ready to depart Cologne, he had amassed some forty thousand followers.
Most of them are untrained and unarmed,
a small handful of them were lesser knights.
His host included women, children and the elderly and together they were gonna
retake the Holy Land !
They set off towards the end of April, and made their way down to Hungary.
This time, the king of Hungary was a little less interested in allowing
Crusaders through his lands, but in the end he basically said to Peter :
"look, you guys can go through, but first you gotta swear that you're not going to kill
anybody or break my things".
To which Peter, of course, agreed.
All was going well until the crusade arrived at the very town that the French
expedition had looted while waiting at the Byzantine border.
Some of the present crusaders got into a dispute with a merchant over a pair of shoes.
This dispute became a brawl,
this brawl became a riot,
a riot then escalated into a battle
which culminated in one of the crusading knights leading a band of
followers to storm the Citadel of the city.
They then stole the city's food, killed four thousand Hungarians,
and then hightailed it for the Byzantine border before the Hungarian army could show up.
But now the poor beleaguered Byzantine governor and Belgrade suddenly had
40,000 hungry, riotous peasants on his doorstep.
He had heard of their behavior in Hungary, so he brought in a mercenary
force to help keep the peace.
They were to make sure that the Crusaders crossed the Sava river in a
slow orderly fashion.
So the Byzantines could keep track of them and to make sure that bands of
Crusaders weren't just wandering the countryside.
But of course the Crusaders
felt that they weren't crossing the river fast enough, so they decided that
the best course of action was to attack the Byzantine troops that were
ostensibly there to help !
After routing or killing the smaller Byzantine force
they then went pillaging and looting through the country until they got to Belgrade,
which they pillaged, looted and set on fire.
The Crusaders then began to loot and sack their way towards Niš,
the provincial capital.
But our poor beleaguered Byzantine governor had been
busy preparing the defenses of Niš while the ponderous Crusader army was on the March
he had called in as many troops as he could, and when the Crusader
force got there he met with Peter.
He asked that Peter wait at Niš until a military escort could lead them to
Constantinople
Peter agreed, but only on the condition that the governor feed his army while they wait.
Now 40,000 people is no small number to feed in medieval times, and
soon the governor was faced with the choice of feeding the Crusaders or
feeding his people.
So the governor just told them to go.
Just head for Constantinople and leave him alone.
But some of the German contingent decided to burn down a mill on their
way out which then escalated and soon the governor had to call in the troops
had been gathering at Niš to suppress the out-of-hand Crusaders.
He gave his troops instructions to take hostages rather than killing when possible.
Peter made his way to the very back of his column to see if he and the governor
could come to an agreement and maybe his crusade could be allowed to go on its way
but by now the mob of Crusaders were really completely out of Peter's control.
They attacked the city of Niš itself.
The garrison turned them away but the
defeated Crusaders just got a bigger mob together and attacked the walls of the
city again. This time our beleaguered Byzantine commander had had enough.
He told his men to attack the Crusaders before they destroyed the provincial
capital. The Crusaders were of course no match for trained armed and armoured
troops and were decimated
(or I guess you could say quartered)
Peter fled to the hills and hid.
But by the time what remained of his army found him, a quarter of it was missing
their supplies and money had also disappeared during the route and so the bedraggled
band of beggars dragged itself to Constantinople,
hungry, tired, and broke. There they met up with the French contingent that had left
the West before them, and Peter along with the leader of the French force,
Walter Sans-Avoir, were summoned by the Emperor.
Despite everything, the Emperor
counseled them to wait for the real force of knights which the Pope had assured him
was on its way.
But, if they really wanted to go attack the Turks, he wasn't going to stop them.
He would find some boats to ferry them across the Bosphorus.
Of course despite, the warnings
the Crusaders wanted to cross into enemy territory, so after five days of feeding
30,000 unexpected guests
the Emperor assembled his boats and ferried them into Anatolia
Once across they began to pillage town after town until they made it to Nicomedia.
And remember : this was
Byzantine territory a few short years ago ! These are the very towns that Emperor Alexius
had petitioned the Pope to help him get back !
But beyond that there is no question : these towns were Christian.
But that distinction seemed lost on the Crusaders and so pillage and loot they did.
But once they reach Nicmedia, a quarrel broke out and the army fractured.
The French contingent of the army stayed under the extensible leadership of Peter
but the German and Italian portions broke off and elected to follow a knight
named Rainald instead.
From there the two groups continued to pillage until they both ended up
occupying the fortified coastal town of Civetot. Peter urged them to hold up there
until the main crusading force arrived. But by this point he had long since lost control.
The two groups started making forays into the surrounding countryside
literally egging each other on. Each time one group would return from a raid
they boast and talk about how much braver they were, how much more they were
doing for the cause. Which would then inevitably lead to the other group doing
something rasher, stupider and more foolhardy to show how much braver they
were and how much more they were doing for the cause...
Peter, unable to control this, decided to leave the Crusade and head back to
Constantinople to ask for the Emperor's help. But while he was heading back
the French forces decided that it would be a good idea to attack the local
Turkish capital. They couldn't get through the walls so instead they
pillaged and butchered everything around it with atrocities ranging from systemic
massacre of civilians, to children being tossed on a fire.
They considered this a job well done and headed back to the base with more than
the usual amount of self-congratulation. The German contingent, not to be one upped,
then went to help to capture a nearby castle.
The garrison there was light and the German Crusaders were successful but
they forgot to check if the castle had any water stored up.
Of course the
Turkish forces by this point had been mobilized and they knew full well that
the castle had no water reserves and that the nearest well was way outside
its walls.
So the Turkish army pulled up and parked itself outside the castle.
After a few days drinking the blood of donkeys and their own urine
the Crusaders surrendered.
Upon surrender the Turks demanded that the Crusaders
either convert to Islam or be put to death.
While many Crusaders refused to
abandon their faith and were put to the sword, brave sir Rainald, leader of the
band, never a man to be outdone, surprised even the enemy commander when he
only offered to become a Muslim but also offered to join the Turks and make war
against the Christians if they spare his life.
Meanwhile word probably intentionally spread by the Turks filtered back to the
French Crusaders that the German group had not only captured a castle but
actually captured the Turkish capital as well !
An argument broke out in the camp : some thought that they should wait for Peter
to return (which he never would)
while others thought that if they waited they miss out on all the good looting.
Soon the faction supporting looting won out - because of course it did -
and every single remaining Crusader, about 20,000 of them, marched out of
their base toward the Capitol under the leadership of one Geoffrey Burel.
About three miles from the Crusader base, in a narrow wooded valley, the full might of
the Turkish forces lay in wait.
The disorganized Crusaders, rushing up the road in an effort to make it to the
capital in time for plunder, didn't even notice the trap.
As a hail of arrows poured out of the woods
the Crusaders began to rout almost immediately. Turkish horsemen thundered
out of the woods chasing down the Crusaders almost to a man.
Of the 40,000 peasant Crusaders who had left western Europe, only 3,000 following their brave
leader Geoffrey Burel managed to flee fast enough to escape.
Those three thousand managed to hold up in an old abandoned castle until the Byzantines
came to rescue them.
So let's just review the Crusade scorecard so far :
Hungarian citizens killed ? Thousands.
Byzantine citizens killed ? Also thousands.
German Jews killed ? again, thousands.
Crusaders killed ? Tens of thousands.
Christians killed ? Tens of thousands.
Turks killed ? Meh, a few, most of them civilians...
Massive economic disruption to the eastern Roman Empire ? Check !
Eastern roman forces who the Crusaders were supposed to be helping attacked ? Check !
Potential allies in Muslim territory ransacked ? Check !
And Holy Lands retaken ? Zero !
And thus the First Crusade began...
Join us next time to find out what the Barons have been doing during these
shenanigans, see how the better equipped barons and princes fare against the
Turks and watch the First Crusade actually begin.