Cologne | The History Jar

Map showing the People’s Crusade – not sure about language. The People’s Crusade went through the Rhineland, by-passed Bohemia, received permission to travel through Hungary and from there into the Byzantine Empire – (Serbia and Bulgaria – ish!)

As with the previous post this is not an exhaustive piece on the Peasant’s Crusade or the People’s Crusade as it is also known – it’s an introduction.

Pope Urban II preached crusade at the Council of Clermont in November 1095. The idea was that the crusaders would set off the following summer. However, before the various military leaders could get themselves organised an army of about 50,000 peasants marched in the direction of Constantinople.

The peasants were led by Peter the Hermit. He had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but was prevented from entering the city by the Seljuk Turks. It is possible that he was one of the inspirations for Urban II’s sermon but more factually we know that he preached crusade in France and then began gathering his army under the authority of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. His licence to preach included England.

For the people who joined Peter the Hermit there was the religious element of the crusade to consider but also the fact that it enabled peasants to leave the land which many of them were tied to by the feudal structure. However, as the vast majority of them were not wealthy there came the problems of having to take entire families and living off the land.

By spring 1096 Peter was in the Rhineland where preaching crusade led to a massacre of Jews. This killing spread with the crusade. At Mainz the Bishop hid numbers of Jews in his palace but they were still murdered. In part it was religious intolerance – torah scrolls were destroyed. The Jewish population was targeted and murdered. Another element was the opportunity to acquire money and goods.

At Cologne, Peter had to stop to resupply but here, initially at least, the Jewish community was largely saved by their gentile neighbours who hid them in their own homes. Unfortunately the crusaders sought them out when they moved into hiding in nearby villages -and killed them anyway. None of it makes happy reading.

At this time, whilst Peter halted, a party of impatient crusaders led by Walter the Penniless contained on their journey. As this army led journeyed south stealing and living off the land there were confrontations between the crusaders and the local Christian populations.. At Semlin about 4,000 Hungarians were killed and a number of crusaders took refuge in a chapel where they were burned to death. The rest of the crusaders continued on their way setting Belgrade on fire. They were attacked on the way to Sofia resulting in the loss of many of their untrained soldiers. Peter travelling after Walter’s group came to Semlin to find the town wall hung with things taken from Walter’s crusaders.

Peter and his army eventually arrived in Constantinople in July 1096. They were not what the Emperor Alexios wanted not least because he was now expected to care for an untrained army that included impoverished men, women and children – think rabble rather than army. There are questions as to whether Alexios sent Peter and his People’s Crusade off across the Bosphorus without guides in order to get rid of them or whether they continued into Turkish territory despite having been told to wait but that is a matter for debate.

At Dracon, in Turkish held territory Peter and his army were attacked and fought the Battle of Civetot. It was a disaster for the People’s Crusade. Most of them were killed or enslaved.

Duncalf notes that the chroniclers of the period did not write much about the People’s Crusade not least because they did not assist the main or Princes’ Crusade although Peter the Hermit turns up on other occasions in the story of the First Crusade because he joined with the army of Godfrey of Bouillon. There other narrative accounts which are contemporary including that of Anna Komnina the daughter of Emperor Alexios.

I am sorry if there are any really terrible spelling mistakes – this version of WordPress changes spellings to what it thinks they should be, based on the pattern the misspelling makes and I cannot always see where changes have happened even reading the post through before hitting the publish button.

For a more extended account of the People’s Crusade follow this link: https://www.historynet.com/first-crusade-peoples-crusade.htm

Duncalf, Frederic (1921) The American Historical Review, Volume 26, Issue 3, April 1921, Pages 440–453, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/26.3.440

Kostick, Conor (2008), The Social Structure of the First Crusade. Brill

WilliamMarshal Already a week into 2018 – where on earth did 2017 go? But now that we have arrived at Twelfth Night the time has come to refill the History Jar. Before I meandered into the halls of England I was waxing lyrical about William Marshall. It turns out that I have even more reason to be interested inhume than I had first thought. It turns out that my spouse – “He Who Is Occasionally Obeyed- HWIOO” is a direct descendant of the aforementioned.

However, back to the man in question. Serving Henry II and his sons was not an easy option. By February 1183 Henry II and Prince Richard found themselves facing a rebellious army headed up by the rest of the royal brood. The Young King soon found himself in an uncomfortable position and sent for William. Interestingly Henry II gave Marshall leave to rejoin his rebellious son.

History doesn’t say what William thought of the Young King’s looting of the abbey at La Couronne near Limoges but when the Young King succumbed to dysentery it didn’t take folk long to point at his desecration of the abbey rather than poor hygiene as the cause of the problem.

On the 7th June 1183, at Martel Castle, The Young King realised that he was dying. On the 11th of June he made his confession in public. William Marshall was one of the knights who heard Prince Henry’s sins described and saw him receive the last rites. One of the last things he did aside from asking to be buried with his ancestors and for mercy for his household was to give William his cloak and ask him to take it to the Holy Land “and with it pay my debts to God.” Chroniclers writing afterwards described Henry as a bit of a wild playboy. Gerald of Wales described him as ungrateful.

Whatever the truth, bearing mind that no one was too keen on reminding Henry II of any links they might have had with his rebellious offspring, Marshall now stepped away from his role within the royal household and set off on pilgrimage. It was probably a very sensible thing to do. By this time he’d been accused of all kinds of naughtiness with the Young King’s wife and had taken part in two rebellions against Henry II as part of the mesnie (household) of the Young King. What is more interesting is that Henry II promised to keep Marshall’s job open for him and gave him money for the journey. Henry had, despite everything, loved his son.

We know that Marshall spent two years in the Holy Land but we don’t know what he got up to because although his biography mentions many exploits in passing it doesn’t go into any detail. Certainly Marshall didn’t arrive at an auspicious time. The forces of Saladin were victorious across the region nor did it probably help that the man who was in part responsible for his uncle Patrick’s murder was in charge militarily -Guy de Lusignan who would eventually marry Sybilla of Jerusalem and inherit a very troubled kingdom after the death of the boy king Baldwin V. Guy would be taken prisoner within two years by Saladin and Jerusalem would fall triggering the Third Crusade.

By the spring of 1186 Marshal was back in England with a length of silk cloth which would one day become his shroud. The Young King’s cloak was left in Jerusalem – Marshall’s last service to Henry II’s eldest son complete. Marshall was ready to resume his service to the Crown and as he came to the brink of his fourth decade it was time to take a wife.

Marshall’s life would continue to be intertwined with the lives of Henry II’s sons. He would serve them with loyalty and also the boy king Henry III but ultimately in 1219 he would lay down his secular burden, retire to his estates in Caversham. His own loyal knight John of Earley – a man who contributed much to Marshall’s biography – would be sent to collect a simple length of white silk which had lain in store throughout Marshall’s rather eventful life. He revealed that he had taken a vow to join the Knights Templar in the 1180s -so perhaps during his time in the Holy Land. In return for them burying him as one of their own he gave them the manor of Upleadon. He’d even arranged for the stitching of a robe of the knights’ order.

Marshall was buried in the church of the Knights’ Templar in London on 20 May 1219. It would appear that Marshall may have spent only two years in the Holy Land but that part of his heart had been there ever since.

His pilgrimage to the Holy Land was the second pilgrimage that he had made. His first one had been to Cologne when he had been accused in 1182 of indiscretions with the Young King’s wife. Marshall had demanded trial by combat to prove his innocence and been refused. He had taken himself off to Cologne to the shrine of the Three Kings. The relics had been taken from Milan in 1164 but it was only in the 1190s that an impressive golden shrine was constructed – which seems an appropriate way to end a post the day after Epiphany, the day when the three kings or magi were supposed to have arrived in Bethlehem following “yonder star.”

magi