usic was
sometimes overcome by psalms and other religious songs.

[Sidenote: _Crazy Enthusiasm_]

[Sidenote: _Ignorance of the Crusaders_]

More pitiful sights could be occasioned only by a famine or pestilence.
Men who had dependent families were followed by the wives and children
who could not afford to be separated from their natural protectors. Old
men, helpless as to livelihood, dragged after their strong-armed sons.
There was no joy over staying at home. Happiness seemed to abide only
with those who were going to war. A stream starting from a village drew
other streams from the villages and towns through which it passed until
a river of humanity rushed on. They did not know the length of their
journey, and could not conceive of the dangers they must approach and
pass. Some had been so steadfast in residence as to have no idea of the
size of the world even as it was known to other men. Great lords with
hounds in front, and falcon on wrist, went out as if the chief aim was
to hunt and fish. All were crazed, and at first no sane mind was left to
point out the dangers, or prepare a commissariat, or plan a campaign.

CHAPTER III.

THE MARCH AND THE BATTLE.

[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, passed the bounds of
reason. A monk might well think himself called to preach on a great
theme, to arouse the nations to a gre