by Pierre Du Plessis

Created on: November 21, 2008

The People's Crusade

I sat down in my armchair at home after a long day's work on the market and thought about the fresh rumour I had heard. The marketplace was always the best place to hear the latest rumours, especially so here in Constantinople.

The news wasn't good news. The Saracens had captured Edessa, a city we had worked so hard to capture on the crusades years before. I had answered the Pope's call back then, just as thousands of others did. With a sigh, I sat back and lost myself in the memories of my past. What I fool I had been.

I grew up in the village of Plomion in northern France. As a child, I seldom travelled further than a mile from the village, and when I did, the belt was often applied to me when I returned. My mother died when I was eleven, but I still remember her kind, loving face as if I saw it yesterday. My father brought me up, but he didn't care much for me except for as another pair of hands at the farm. He died from a fever when I was sixteen and I inherited the farm.

All that changed two years later in 1096, when a priest of Amiens came to our village. His name was Peter the Hermit. Peter rode into our village alone on a donkey and made a speech on the village green. I cannot recall the words, and it isn't really important, but it was something along the lines of "barbarian hordes pillaging our cities unchecked, ransacking our temples in Jerusalem itself" and "The Pope calls you to do your duty to God and protect the Holy Land, and all your sins are forgiven! And if you die an untimely death, you'll spend an eternity in Eternal Paradise!" The speech ended with "Deus vult!", "God wills it!"

The speech put a fever into my heart, and that of my fellow villagers. We were drawn in by the promises of loot and land, adventure, honour and glory, or God. Many of us immediately joined Peter, who, we discovered, actually already had an army of over ten thousand with him. Some of us didn't even stop to collect what little food we had from our houses. I ran all the way to my farmhouse and packed my entire stock of food and dug out the sword, leather helmet and wooden shield which had belonged to my great grandfather who fought in the French Army. When my sweetheart Laura heard the news, she of course wanted to come with me, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. And I have spent the rest of my life regretting it.

Though my fellow villagers and I were hardly alone on crusade, we stuck together and seldom spoke to people from other villages.

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