Peter the Hermit Part 4

[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.

[Sidenote: _Crusaders Learn Something_]

The Governor of Nissa, moved by their condition, refreshed them with food, warmed them with clothing, and strengthened them with arms. Taught by the Bulgarian lesson, they pa.s.sed through Thrace without thieving, and came at last, worn and miserable, to the walls of Constantinople, where Alexius permitted them to await the arrival of Peter and his army.

[Sidenote: _Peter's Brave Follies_]

[Sidenote: _A Devastated Country_]

Peter and his army pa.s.sed safely through Germany, but behaved worse and fared worse than Walter and his following. The frontiers of Hungary were decorated with the bodies of Crusaders hanging at the gates of Semlin.

Immediately Peter ordered war. The people of the city fled to a hill, with the Danube on one side and a forest on the other. They were driven into the river, four thousand being put to the sword. Belgrade first knew of the battle by the corpses floating past her walls. Naturally, on penetrating further into Bulgaria, the Crusaders found only abandoned cities, food carried away, and as much as was possible, the road bereft of support of any kind. At Nissa they found a well-fortified city, where Bulgarians looked down from the walls on the Crusaders, and these last did not dare to try their strength on such an obstacle.

[Sidenote: _A Great Loss_]

At Nissa they seemed to have obtained supplies and marched on. Some Germans paid off real or fancied scores by burning some mills on the Nissava River. The Nissans fell on Peter's rear guard, killed all who fought, captured two thousand carriages and many prisoners. Peter turned back immediately, and flamed with wrath as he saw the dead who lay near Nissa.

[Sidenote: _A Tart Answer_]

Peter cooled down enough to send messengers to the city and ask, on the ground of a common Christianity, for the restoration of the prisoners and spoil taken from the Crusaders. The governor of the city tartly reminded the messengers that Christian conduct alone proved men to be Christians, and that the Crusaders having made the first attack, he could only count them as enemies.

This answer fired the Crusaders to fight. Peter, apparently growing in wisdom by experience, tried to hold the warriors back and begged them to negotiate. To wrath opposition is always treason, and Peter found himself regarded as a coward and placarded as a traitor.

[Sidenote: _Fighting and Negotiations_]

While Peter was parleying with the Governor of Nissa, two thousand Crusaders tried to scale the city walls and carry the city by a.s.sault.

The Bulgarians drove them back. A general fight began even while the two chiefs were negotiating. Peter proved his courage by waving his crucifix between the combatants and demanding that the fighting should cease. The uproar of battle gave no heed to his voice. His army was utterly routed and cut to pieces. They had fought without command, and were beaten into death and disorder. The Bulgarians captured horses, equipages, the chest which held the offerings of the faithful, and the women and children.

The greater skill and strength of the Bulgars won the fight which the unreasoning fury of Peter's followers had provoked.

[Sidenote: _Peter's Five Hundred_]

On the top of a hill near by Peter bemoaned his losses and, it is said, his foolhardiness. At that moment but five hundred men answered his call. The next day seven thousand who had been put to flight rejoined him at the call of his trumpet. They came in day by day until thirty thousand were mustered. The rest had perished.

[Sidenote: _Penitent Rebels_]

The survivors had small stomach or ability for fighting. They made their way toward Thrace in a humble and peaceable frame, and seemed to feel the mistake of rebellion against authority. Pity came to their relief.

Their thin bodies, their staggering gait, their rags, and their tears brought them the aid denied to their arms. None seemed to have turned back. The combatants who were not killed still kept their faces toward the Holy City.

[Sidenote: _A Greek Welcome_]

There seems good evidence that the Greeks would have met them differently had they been less helpless. The aversion of the Greeks to the Latins had grown now for centuries. The Latins were tolerable to the Greeks only when the Greeks needed their aid. The Latins had arrived.

For the present they could do no harm. The emperor, Alexius, intending to complain, sent messengers to Peter. These returned with tales of weakness and suffering. They were permitted to journey on, and, with palms waving, came at last to Constantinople.

[Sidenote: _Peter Captivates Alexius_]

Peter, an object of universal curiosity, if not of admiration, had audience with the emperor, captivated the monarch as he captivated all, and went forth loaded with help for his army and some good advice. This last was to the effect that Peter had better await the arrival of the military princes and generals who had pledged themselves to the Crusade.

But these, perhaps with calculated delay, lingered at home while other bodies of Crusaders as ill prepared, as troublesome, and as ill-fated as those which had followed the lead of Peter, marched away.

[Sidenote: _Roving Crusaders_]