Peter the Hermit and the People’s Crusade: the Controversial History of the First European Army to Head for Jerusalem

Of the many campaigns during the Middle Ages, few are as remarkable or seemingly impossible to win at the start as the First Crusade (1095-99), and the true crowning achievement of that crusade, which resulted in two centuries of Western European Christian states in the Middle East and the permanent firing of the European imagination, was the conquest of Jerusalem on July 15, 1099 after three weeks of siege. That victorious siege came four years after the call for a crusade first went out, and had the Crusaders not taken Jerusalem, the First Crusade would not likely have been followed by any more and the campaign might have been no more than an historical footnote of what could have been.As it turned out, the siege of Jerusalem and the crusade as a whole says much about the first major clash of Western and Eastern military tactics after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as the power of faith and even fanaticism to motivate people beyond ordinary human endurance. For better and worse, the siege and fall of Jerusalem to the Crusaders has become a fundamental piece in the current view of the West in that part of the world. Indeed, to this day, the First Crusade remains a polarizing event, even among modern historians. For some, the Crusaders were heroes and saints, and for others they were devils who disrupted the peaceful local sects of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, establishing an alien colony that heralded modern European imperialism. In fact, the First Crusade is a good example of why it is unwise to choose sides in history, because neither side was correct and the situation was highly complex.What’s often forgotten about the First Crusade is that it started inauspiciously for the Europeans, and the first army to arrive in the Middle East had an extremely checkered history even before it was decimated. On October 21, 1096, in the proximity of Helenopolis, which is now known as the village of Hersek in Bithynia, a contingent of Crusader pilgrims was massacred by the Seljuk Turkish Army, which had strategically positioned itself in anticipation of an ambush. The event took place in a significantly symbolic location in the Christian tradition. Indeed, the name Helenopolis is derived from the legend that Helen, the mother of Constantine and a notable proponent of her son’s conversion, was born there. This was where the castle of Kibotos, also known as Civetot, once stood, constructed under Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus’s orders. It was near this castle that Crusader pilgrims established their encampment, leaving behind women, children, and the elderly as they prepared to launch an attack on the Turkish forces in Anatolia. The surprise attack was brought to a swift end by the Turkish forces’ superior tactics and equipment, which ultimately resulted in the massacre of the Christian population and the capture of numerous prisoners. These armed pilgrims were part of a large group of people from all over Europe who believed in God and set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This pilgrimage was later renamed the “People’s Crusade,” the “Crusade of the Poor,” or negatively framed as the “Crusade of the Beggars.” They had aimed to regain the city of Jerusalem and its holy Christian sites, much the same way the armies that followed them did. For a long time, the People’s Crusade was considered a separate event from the First Crusade, but many scholars now believe the two are closely connected. In fact, after Pope Urban II’s famous speech at Clermont-Ferrand in 1095, several groups of pilgrims, warriors, and noblemen gathered in different groups and set off on different journeys to try to reach the Holy Land with violent intentions. The People’s Crusade and its mysterious leader, Peter the Hermit, have remained notorious for over 1,000 years due to the violence it inflicted on civilians during its march to Jerusalem, in particular the massacres of Jews along the way.