What was the People’s Crusade?

The People’s Crusade was a series of less-organized, popular movements consisting of knights and peasants that set out for the Holy Land ahead of the main armies of the First Crusade.12

Led primarily by the preacher Peter the Hermit and his associate Walter Sansavoir, these groups traveled across Europe, causing significant disorder in Hungary and Bulgaria. Upon reaching Constantinople, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I advised them to wait for the main Crusading force; however, the rank and file grew unruly. After being ferried across the Bosporus in August 1096, the army was ambushed and effectively annihilated by the Turks at Cibotus.312

Other groups associated with this movement, notably one led by Count Emicho, were responsible for horrific pogroms against Jews in the Rhineland. These acts of violence, which forced many to choose between conversion and death, are recognized as a pivotal and tragic moment in the history of antisemitism and medieval Christianity. Such zealotry was condemned by many contemporaries, and some even attributed the subsequent military failure of the People’s Crusade to these atrocities.12