Children's Crusade Of 1212 Essay

Children’s Crusade of 1212

A lot of people wonder what part children played in the Children's Crusade against the Muslims.  Hundreds upon thousands of young children left their work, no matter what it was, to march to the city of Jerusalem.  In their fantasy of fighting for their Holy City, many did not realize the dangers of the journey.  In fact, so many young people died, that the returning group seemed minuscule.  It could have been easily avoided if not for the aggressiveness that was displayed.  This event became one of the most tragic times of the medieval era.  The Children’s Crusade was unnecessary and thousands of innocent children died or were sold into slavery because of thoughtless actions (Trueman).

    By definition, the Children’s

Crusade was a group of fifteen thousand to thirty thousand children walking to Jerusalem in hopes of saving the Holy City from the Muslims.  Most were twelve.  This was first known as the French Crusade.  They were led by a young boy who claimed to have a letter from Jesus himself.  His actions blocked the crusaders from making it to their destination of Jerusalem, and most of the “valuable white-skinned children” (Trueman) were sold into slavery.  The crusade was a total failure, though it did inspire the Fifth Crusade, which was also an unsuccessful venture (Trueman).
The crusade was based off of children’s “visions” from God.  In these “visions,” they were told that they would get a bunch of children together and the water would dry up for them, much like Moses with the Red Sea.  They believed they would save the Christendom, a word used to describe the society of Christians worldwide.
The first crusade was led by a twelve-year-old boy named Stephen of Cloy.  He went out to seek out the king’s permission for the crusade.  When he pleaded his case to the king, the king told him that he was too young and to go home.  Stephen was persistent.  He got a bunch of children together and told them to spread the message.  When they were ready, they all met together.  After that, they set off on their journey.  The children thought that once they got to Marseilles, France, the water would dry up, they would cross, and off they would go save the Christendom.  That is the exact opposite of what happened (Kreis).
It was an unusually hot summer and a lot of children died on the side of the road from exhaustion, dehydration, or heat stroke.  Others tried to find their way back home.  Most of the children who tried to go back home died.  Some of them, however, made it.  The children who did make it to Marseilles were relieved to have arrived, but extremely disappointed when the water did not dry up for them.  From there on, some tried to find their way back home; most of the ones who tried failed and sorrowfully died. The children who did not try to go back home either stayed in Marseilles or continued to follow Stephen (Kreis).
Two merchants by the names of Hugh the Iron and William the Pig offered them ships, free of charge, to take them to Palestine.

Of course, Stephen accepted.  Once again, not everything went exactly as planned.  There was a storm on their journey, and two of the ships crashed.  The five surviving ships kept sailing to where they thought was Palestine, but turned out to be Sardinia, Italy.  There they learned that they had been tricked.  They were brought there by an agreement with William the Pig, Hugh the Iron, and a Saracen group from Africa.  They were then sold into slavery, some taken to the Algerian coast, and others taken to Egypt

(Kreis).
    The second crusade, also known as the German Crusade, was led by a young boy by the name of Nicholas.

He was from Cologne, Germany.  A second notable feature is that in this crusade, there were more women participating than the last crusade.  The group traveled from Cologne to Rome in order to visit the Pope.  To do this, they had to travel through the Alps, in which many died.  When Nicholas and all of the other children reached the Pope, they marched in with an intent to have the Pope sanctify the crusade.  He did not.  Both major rulers, the king and the pope, publicly rejected the twelve-year-old “leaders” of the Children’s Crusades, but the children were stubborn and proceeded anyways (Kreis).

    In this crusade, children died on the journey because of the cold.  Later on, a few of the group members wandered about and found some ships. Nobody knows what happened to the children who went on those ships.  The ones who did not go on the vessels attempted the journey back home. Most of them, as expected, died.  Not much is known about this crusade compared to the other, but they were both tragic events.  This was also unprecedented, especially after the first failed attempt

(Kreis).
    In conclusion, the Children’s Crusade was unnecessary and could have been prevented. You could blame lots of different people for the event.  The parents of the children, the children themselves, and even possibly the king and pope for not taking further action against this crusade.  However, as noted in several sources,  the total of the  ten crusades were in the end bloody and had nothing to do with religious purposes.  As Blue in Overly Sarcastic Productions stated, “[...people would do human-y things]...like compromise their religious beliefs for more human scale motivations, such as money, or land, or power, [or mass murder]...”, the people who would start these crusades had, at one point, no religious reasoning behind the messy wars that ensued.  As usual, our skills in common sense lead us to kill thousands of children. The Children’s Crusade was an unusual time for many and thousands of innocent younglings died or were sold into slavery (Overly Sarcastic Productions).

Works Cited

“History Summarized: The Crusades.” YouTube, uploaded by Overly Sarcastic Productions,
    11 Jun. 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZhyDIIkeLo&t=62s.
Kreis, Steven. “The Children’s Crusade (1212).”
www.historyguide.org/ancient/children.html. The History Guide, 28 Feb. 2006.
Web. 4 Oct. 2017.
Trueman, C.N. “The Crusades.”
    www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/the-crusades/. The History
    Learning Site, 5 Mar. 2015. Web. 3 Oct. 2017.