Ignoring Alexius’ advice to wait for the rest of the Crusaders, Peter’s army crossed the Bosporus Strait in early August. These groups departed for Byzantium in August 1096.Ī less organized band of knights and commoners known as the “People’s Crusade” set off before the others under the command of a popular preacher known as Peter the Hermit.
These groups defended the Holy Land and protected Christian pilgrims traveling to and from the region.ĭid you know? In a popular movement known as the Children's Crusade (1212), a motley crew including children, adolescents, women, the elderly and the poor marched all the way from the Rhineland to Italy behind a young man named Nicholas, who said he had received divine instruction to march toward the Holy Land.įour armies of Crusaders were formed from troops of different Western European regions, led by Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh of Vermandois and Bohemond of Taranto (with his nephew Tancred). The Crusades set the stage for several religious knightly military orders, including the Knights Templar, the Teutonic Knights, and the Hospitallers.
Those who joined the armed pilgrimage wore a cross as a symbol of the Church. Pope Urban’s plea was met with a tremendous response, both among the military elite as well as ordinary citizens. This marked the beginning of the Crusades.
In November 1095, at the Council of Clermont in southern France, the Pope called on Western Christians to take up arms to aid the Byzantines and recapture the Holy Land from Muslim control. Though relations between Christians in the East and those in the West had long been fractious, Alexius’s request came at a time when the situation was improving. In 1095, Alexius sent envoys to Pope Urban II asking for mercenary troops from the West to help confront the Turkish threat.
After years of chaos and civil war, the general Alexius Comnenus seized the Byzantine throne in 1081 and consolidated control over the remaining empire as Emperor Alexius I. However, Byzantium had lost considerable territory to the invading Seljuk Turks. By the end of the 11th century, Western Europe had emerged as a significant power in its own right, though it still lagged behind other Mediterranean civilizations, such as the Byzantine Empire (formerly the eastern half of the Roman Empire) and the Islamic Empire of the Middle East and North Africa.
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