The Crusades are the series of the religious military campaigns in the XI-XV centuries from Western Europe against the Muslims and not only. In a narrow sense they are the campaigns of 1096-1291 years into Palestine, first aimed at the ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem (with the Holy Sepulchre), against the Seljuk Turks. In a broader sense, Crusades are also other campaigns, proclaimed by popes, including later conducted Crusades with the purposes of the conversion to Christianity Gentiles Baltic and suppression of the heretical and anticlerical currents in Europe (the Cathars, Hussites, and others) (Bridge).
At the beginning of the XIII century among the towns and villages of France, and then among the territories of other countries it began to spread the idea that if adults for ‘their sins’ not be given the right to liberate Jerusalem from the ‘infidels,’ but it can be made by the ‘innocent’ children (Steffens).
The Children's Crusades are the adopted in the historiography name of the popular movement in 1212.
At the beginning of 1212, thousands of peasants (including children and adolescents) from Germany and France met into the army for the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (according to some sources, the French children went not up to Jerusalem, but to Paris to Philip Augustus, where a preacher promised to present a letter from the king Jesus Christ and do wonders, Philip ordered to dissolve the children to go home) (Strayer).
In May 1212, when the German people's army passed through Cologne, in its ranks there were about twenty-five thousand of children and teenagers on their way to Italy to reach Palestine through the sea. The chronicles of the XIII century over fifty times referred to this campaign, which was called ‘Children's Crusade’ (Steffens).
It began with the fact that in June 1212 in a village near the Vendome it appeared a shepherd boy named Stephen, who announced that he is a messenger of God and is called to be a leader and win back the Promised Land for the Christians: the sea had to dry before the army of the spiritual Israel. He went across the country and everywhere aroused stormy enthusiasm by the words as well as by the miracles, he performed in front of thousands of witnesses (Bridge).
Humor that gripped the French children, spread also in Germany, especially in the areas of Rhine. German children endured the terrible hardships, crossing the Alps on their way from Germany to Italy, and those, who survived the way, encountered in Italy with the hostile attitude of the local residents, who still remembered the looting of Italian crusaders under Frederick Barbarossa.
The road to the sea through the plains was significantly easier for the French children. Reached the Marseille, the participants of the trip prayed daily for make the sea in front of them to part.
Finally, two local merchant - Hugo Ferreus and Guillaume Porkus – ‘took pity’ on them and provided them with 7 ships, each of which could accommodate about 700 knights to go to the Holy Land (Strayer). Then their trail was lost, and only 18 years later, in 1230 in Europe it resurfaced a monk, which accompanied children (German and French children, in all probability, were accompanied by the clergy, although it does not proved), and said that the ships with young crusaders came to the shores of Algeria, where they were waited. It turned out that the merchants provided children with ships after the collusion with Muslim slave traders (Steffens).
Works Cited
Bridge, Antony. The Crusades. New York: F. Watts, 1982. Print.
Strayer, Joseph R. Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner, 1982. Print.
Steffens, Bradley. The Children's Crusade. San Diego, Calif.: Lucent Books, 1991. Print.
