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.
