by much cruelty and unchecked plunder; and
the religion of the Greeks was outraged by the Latin victors as much as
it could have been by heathen barbarians.

The Crusaders set up an emperor and a patriarch of their own, and the
Greek clergy were forced to give way to Latins. The pope, although he
was much disappointed at finding that his plan for the recovery of the
Holy Land had come to nothing, was yet persuaded by the greatness of the
conquest to give a kind of approval to it. But the Latin empire of the
East was never strong; and after about seventy years it was overthrown
by the Greeks, who drove out the Latins and restored their own form of
Christian religion.

Innocent did not give up the notion of a crusade, and at a later time he
sent about preachers to stir up the people of the West afresh; but
nothing had come of this when the pope died. I must, however, mention a
strange thing which arose out of this attempt at a crusade.

A shepherd boy, named Stephen, who lived near Vendome, in the province
of Orleans, gave out that he had seen a vision of the Saviour, and had
been charged by Him to preach the cross. By this tale Stephen gathered
some children about him, and they set off for the crusade, displaying
crosses and banners, and chanting in every town or village through which
they passed, "O Lord, help us to recover Thy true and holy cross!" When
they reached Paris, there were no less than 15,000 of them, and as they
went along their numbers became greater and greater. If any parents
tried to keep back their children from joining them, it was of no use;
even if they shut them up, it was believed that the children were able
to break through bars and locks in order to follow Stephen and his
companions. Ignorant people fancied that Stephen could work miracles,
and treasured up threads of his dress as precious relics. At length the
company, whose numbers had reached 30,000, arrived at Marseilles, where
Stephen entered the city in a triumphal car, surrounded on all sides by
guards. Some shipowners undertook to convey the child-crusaders to Egypt
and Africa for nothing; but these were wretches who meant to sell them
as slaves to the Mahometans; and this was the fate of such of the
children as reached the African coast, after many of them had been lost
by shipwreck on the way.

Innocent, although he had nothing to do with this crusade, or with one
of the same kind which was got up in Germany, declared that the zeal