o Pope Urban II. a fearful tale of
the tyranny with which the Mahometans there treated both the Christian
inhabitants and the pilgrims; and the pope gave him leave to try what he
could do to stir up the Christians of the West for the deliverance of
their brethren. Peter was a small, lean, dark man, but with an eye of
fire, and with a power of fiery speech; and wherever he went, he found
that people of all classes eagerly thronged to hear him; they even
gathered up the hairs which fell from the mule on which he rode, and
treasured them up as precious relics. On his bringing back to the pope a
report of the success which he had thus far met, Urban himself resolved
to proclaim the crusade, and went into France, as being the country
where it was most likely to be welcomed. There, in a great meeting at
Clermont, A.D. 1095, where such vast numbers attended that most of them
were forced to lodge in tents, because the town itself could not hold
them, the pope, in stirring words, set forth the reasons of the holy
war, and invited his hearers to take part in it. While he was speaking,
the people broke in on him with shouts of "God wills it!"--words which
from that time became the cry of the Crusaders; and when he had done,
thousands enlisted for the crusade by fixing little crosses on their
dress.

All over Europe everything was set into motion; almost every one,
whether old or young, strong or feeble, was eager to join; women urged
their husbands or their sons to take the cross, and any one who refused
was despised by all. Many of those who enlisted would not wait for the
time which had been fixed for starting. A large body set out under Peter
the Hermit and two knights, of whom one was called Walter the Pennyless.
Other crowds followed, which were made up, not of fighting men only, but
of poor, broken-down old men, of women and children who had no notion
how very far off Jerusalem was, or what dangers lay in the way to it.
There were many simple country folks, who set out with their families in
carts drawn by oxen; and whenever they came to any town, their children
asked, "Is this Jerusalem?" And besides these poor creatures, there were
many bad people, who plundered as they went on, so as to make the
crusade hated even by the Christian inhabitants of the countries through
which they passed.

These first swarms took the way through Hungary to Constantinople, and
then across the Bosphorus into Asia Minor. Walter the Pennyless,