THE CRUSADE OF THE CROWD.
The eloquence of Peter served him in the stead of more orderly methods
of enlisting the people. Untrained masses of men, women, and children
followed him from place to place, and about Easter to the number of
upward of sixty thousand crossed the Rhine. Walter, surnamed the
Penniless, assumed the leadership of the advance portion of this
impatient throng. The people, however, cared little for any authority
save that of the imagined divine presence, which would appear through
pillars of cloud and fire to direct them in emergency. The fears of the
more cautious were silenced by a saying of Solomon, “The grasshoppers
have no king, yet they go forth in companies.” A goose and a goat were
led at the head of the motley procession, under the fanatical delusion
that in these creatures resided some super-human wisdom. It has been
suggested that this superstition was due to the importation of Manichean
notions, since the goose was the Egyptian symbol for the divine sonship,
and the goat represented the devil—the opposing principles of good and
evil as conceived by this Eastern sect.
The first vengeance of the marching crowd was inflicted upon the Jews,
whose historic infidelity excited the wrath, or whose accumulated wealth
tempted the cupidity, of the ill-provided host. In the cities of what is
now western Germany this unfortunate people were pillaged and massacred
to such an extent that, says Gibbon, “they had felt no more bloody
stroke since the persecution of Hadrian.” The crusaders’ appetite for
plunder thus whetted, they passed on to the ruder countries of Hungary
and Bulgaria, where they took a forceful revenge upon a people of
kindred Christian faith for refusing to supply them with provisions.
This provoked a bloody retaliation, under which the advanced crusaders
were scattered, more than two thirds of their number perishing in the
defiles of the Thracian mountains.
Peter, who had delayed at Cologne, with a new German contingent followed
the desolate track of his forerunners. He propitiated Coloman, the
Hungarian king; but at Semlin, enraged at the marks of the discomfiture
of Walter, he looted the town. At Nisch his army abused the hospitality
of the Bulgarian prince, Nichita, who had given them the freedom of the
market. The outraged people took terrible vengeance, and Peter’s host
was driven out. At length, in sorry remnants, they reached
Constantinople August (30, 1096). With the permission of the Emperor
Alexius, they pitched their camp outside the city gates to wait for the
new bands of crusaders.
A third horde pressed upon the footsteps of Walter and Peter, led by
Gottschalk, a German priest. Reaching Hungary in the midst of the late
summer harvest, they forgot their religious vows in the abundance which
surrounded them, and gave themselves up to every form of debauchery.
King Coloman lulled the invaders into a feeling of security until,
taking advantage of a time when they were unarmed, he gave orders for
their extirpation. This was not difficult to accomplish, as the
followers of Gottschalk were of a lower class than even those who had
preceded them, largely vagabonds and brigands, ferocious only in crime,
and without the spirit of noble and sustained adventure.
A still more unconscionable crowd had in the meantime gathered on the
banks of the Rhine and Moselle. A bigoted priest, Volkman, and a
reprobate count, Emico, were chosen leaders. These men hoped to atone
for the crimes of youth by excesses of cruelty wrought under the name of
religion. This band met with terrible chastisement from the Hungarians
at Merseburg. The walls of the town, which they had undermined, gave way
under their assault and buried multitudes of the assailants in the
falling débris. In the words of William of Tyre, the panegyrist of the
later crusades, “God Himself spread terror through their ranks to punish
their crimes and to fulfil the words of the Wise Man, ‘The wicked flee
when no man pursueth.’” Through Bulgaria their advance was of the nature
of flight to gain the sheltering walls of Constantinople.
Here, about the Greek capital, were collected the wrecks of various
expeditions. If the memory of their misfortunes, augmented by their
different stories of the journey, depressed and solemnized the
crusaders, idleness and the sight of the riches of Constantinople
inflamed their natural thirst for spoil. Homes and even churches in the
suburbs were looted. The Emperor Alexius induced his unwelcome guests to
cross the Bosporus into Nicomedia, where for two months he supplied
their wants, as men feed wild beasts that they may not themselves fall
prey to their rapacity.
The impetuosity of the crusaders was soon stirred again by their
proximity to the Turks. They refortified the deserted fortress of
Exerogorgo; but scarcely were they within its walls when Kilidge-Arslan
(“sword of the lion”), the Sultan of Roum, laid siege to and captured
the place. He then surprised the town of Civitat, outside of which the
crusaders had made their chief camp. A terrible massacre ensued. Out of
a numberless multitude, but three thousand remained to contemplate,
instead of proud cities they had hoped to wrest from the Infidel, the
piles of bones which strewed the plains of Nicæa. Walter was slain, and
the town into which the miserable remnant was huddled would have fallen
into the hands of the Turks but for the opportune relief afforded by the
imperial troops from Constantinople. It is estimated by Gibbon that not
less than three hundred thousand lives were lost in these preliminary
excursions before the more orderly hosts started from western Europe.