Part 4 (1/2)

[Sidenote: _Trace of Common Sense_]

There seems, at first, just one trace of common sense, one semblance of a plan for the movement of the hordes and mobs toward the Holy Land.

Some who had had a taste of war agreed that, as the numbers were great enough for several armies, they should not start at the same time nor traverse the same route, and that the rallying-place should be Constantinople.

[Sidenote: _Peter Chosen General_]

[Sidenote: _A Monomaniac_]

Those who had followed Peter from place to place, eager to be the first to start, chose the Hermit for their general. It would seem as if Peter had seen enough of war to know that his undisciplined mob could meet but one fate. It is very probable that he had become a monomaniac before he began to preach the Crusade, and that, for the greater part of his career, he had lost whatever balance of judgment he had had. It is sometimes very hard to distinguish between the unbalanced and the enthusiast, between the enthusiast and the fanatic, and between the fanatic and the monomaniac. Men can certainly be sane on every point but one. Peter in accepting the military command, pa.s.sed the bounds of reason. A monk might well think himself called to preach on a great theme, to arouse the nations to a great duty. He might easily and properly feel himself competent to be the prophet of G.o.d in denouncing the sluggish and the time-serving. But to accept military command without experience of war except as an observer, and to lead an untrained and unprepared mob from Western Europe to Palestine through difficulties of which, as a pilgrim, he had had experience, connotes insanity, or, at the best, ”zeal without knowledge.”

[Sidenote: _Wore Old Ca.s.sock_]

[Sidenote: _Walter the Penniless_]

He did not a.s.sume a new uniform. He wore his old one. It was still his coa.r.s.e woolen ca.s.sock, his hood, his sandals, and his rope, and he rode the same old mule with which his wanderings began. His army was not less than eighty thousand strong. But the camp followers were almost as many, made up of old men, women, and children. Peter's crazy faith promised food to all. They had joined him from Northern France, and as he approached Germany great numbers from Southern and Central France swelled his ranks. A gleam of sense appears in the division of his rabble into two bands, one to be led by himself; the other by Walter the Penniless, who appears, from some points of view, like a twin of Peter. Historians have little to say of Walter's origin. Some say he was of gentle birth and had exchanged his all for his t.i.tle of ”Penniless;”

others that Walter was not put in command until his uncle died. The only certain thing seems to be that his poverty and enthusiasm were equal to those of his followers.

[Sidenote: _France Helps Crusaders_]

All goes well while the Crusaders march through loyal and liberal France. Help was literally poured into their laps; nor did the Germans, from the earliest historic days easily touched by n.o.ble sentiments, fail to respond both to the plea for the Holy Land and for practical sympathy. The Rhine people smoothed the pilgrims' way. They were, however, to meet trouble on the banks of the Danube.

[Sidenote: _Western Christendom Disordered_]

[Sidenote: _Rumors of Cannibalism_]

The expectation that the end of the world was to come about the year 1000 was, for a century before that date, well-nigh universal and dominant. As that year approached the condition apparently confirmed the prophetic warnings of the New Testament. Western Christendom seemed to be hopelessly disordered. It was at this time that a worse invasion than that of the Turks threatened Europe. The Magyars, or Huns, were barbarous, irresponsible, undrilled, and rapacious; less responsible to authority and less moved by pity than the Turks had ever been. In their love for indiscriminate ma.s.sacre they seem to have been the wild Indians of Europe. They came, n.o.body antic.i.p.ating them, n.o.body knowing from whence. Their ranks were filled up and increased, n.o.body knew how.

Rumors of cannibalism preceded them, and they were believed to be less than human in form and mind. A Finn might have partly understood their talk, but, to the people they attacked, their speech was gibberish.

[Sidenote: _Huns in Europe_]

The weakness and divisions of Christendom invited their approach and palsied resistance. At almost the same date Bremen on the Baltic and Constance on the lake, felt their power. They swarmed over the Alps.

They menaced Southern France, and peered from the Pyrenees at Spain.

Italy felt their heaviest hand, and Rome saw their devastating flames almost under its walls. For fifty years Christendom quaked and fell before them, and halted them for the first time in A. D. 936 by the hands of Henry the Fowler. Gradually they were restrained to the limits of modern Hungary, and in the eleventh century they were Christianized and the worst enemies of Christianity became guides and caterers to the Crusaders, while not sharing largely in their enthusiasms.

[Sidenote: _The Bulgarians_]

It was very different with the Bulgarians south of the Danube over whose great plain of Sophia a smoother path would be found if the Crusaders could reach it. Sometimes protecting, sometimes robbing Constantinople, their chiefs drank from the gold-banded skull of a Byzantine emperor.

Basil conquered them only to show himself more barbarous by putting out the eyes of fifteen thousand Bulgarian captives.

[Sidenote: _Bulgarian Allegiance_]

[Sidenote: _Queer Christianity_]

At the beginning of the Crusades Bulgaria was nominally subject to the Greek Empire, but held that authority in contempt. Heavy forests then grew to the southern edge of the Danube where now there are bare hills.

This mingling of forest and hill gave to the Bulgarians a security in self-rule which was only, in general, ineffectively interrupted by the army of the empire. The Bulgarian type of Christianity did not extend the idea of brotherhood beyond its own borders. They could cheerfully make themselves, without the least trouble of conscience, the terror of their Christian brethren who were making their way to Jerusalem.

[Sidenote: _Bulgars Attack Crusaders_]

The march, which began in piety and was conducted for a time with due consideration for the rights of others, soon, almost of necessity, became a raid on the property of the people through whose lands they pa.s.sed. Bulgarian authority not being able to supply provisions to Walter's army, they foraged along their lines of march, and, when resisted, burned houses and slew their inmates. The Bulgars answered in kind; attacked the Crusaders when loaded down with booty; penned some scores of them in a church to which fire was promptly put, and one hundred and forty were cremated. Walter did not stop to attempt to revenge, but dragged after him a starving and diminis.h.i.+ng army.