Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 35- The People's Crusade

Episode Date: January 21, 2019

On this episode Joe and Nick dive into the age of the Crusades...kind of. The People's Crusade was an mob put together by a starving, homeless monk to retake the Holy Land without food, water, weapons, or military training. Support the show: http://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow us on twitter: @lions_by Sources: Extra History, the First Crusade. The First Crusade. A New History

An army of Jesus Christ, which bears his Holy Cross, cannot be beaten. As the Count of Tiberias suggests that it could be, there must be war. God wills it! God wills it! God wills it! God wills it! God wills it! Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast.

I'm Joe. I'm Nick. We're doing this. And yeah, so today, well actually before we get into the episode, I have to point out that we are not drinking Old Crow today. We broke our rules because a listener sent us a bottle of gin, and neither one of us are gin people, so we're just kind of winging how to drink it. It's interesting, honestly.

It's not bad. I'm a fan. I'm not sure if it's better than the crow but i'm contractually obligated to say that to a contract i've signed with actually nobody so yeah uh if so if you want to get in the mood for what we're talking about today go ahead and get a bottle of gin and just start drinking it straight like i almost did um so before we get started uh nick what do you know about the crusades uh not a lot yeah that definitely doesn't play into my wheelhouse mine really either um i'm not a medieval or a classical can i say assassin's creed yeah that's a scholarly source why not

yeah uh this story is actually about uh how all the assassins ran about sweet wrist knives uh those things are sweet you wish you had one i don't know didn't he have to remove like two of his fingers that's in the earlier times and it later got better or they didn't have to do that the bladed version of the shocker at all times pretty much yeah i don't i'm not cool with that i really like having all my fingers even even if I have weird looking thumbs. You do have weird looking thumbs. I do have weird looking thumbs. I've been told.

So today we're actually not exactly talking about a real crusade, though it is folded in with the first crusade. We're talking about something that has actually been on our flow chart of ideas since I think episode two, and that is the People's Crusade. ideas since I think episode 2 and that is the People's Crusade. The People's Crusade was a mob of mostly unarmed, starving peasants that

was radicalized, led, and encouraged by the screechings of a hungry, homeless priest named Peter. Goddamn priest. Yeah, well, he was like a priest in the old-timey sense. Not really, but he was because he had a lot of pull. But before we get to the crusades and the story of our star uh pier the hermit uh we have to go a little bit about how pier the

hermit or also known as pier the first or uh peter of amyan we have to so there's more peters no this is all the same peter uh he just has multiple names because like they didn't have surnames oh you say peter the first so i'm just assuming there's more peters i guess maybe yeah um we have talked a little about how he ended up being important and it makes about as much sense as the rest of the story which is none at all he was the first person named pete Yeah, he was the first Peter ever. Okay. So Peter was a Catholic priest that was born in Amiens, France,

sometime around 1050. We're not sure of a birth date or an exact place. I'm sure they didn't know either. Probably not. I just kind of winged it. Yeah. There's not like there's birth certificates or anything yet. Now, Hunt is known about Peter's family or his early life, other than that he was known as a, quote, ugly and swarthy man.

Swarthy. Yes, swarthy. Who was incredibly devout to his particular brand of Christianity, which was known as aesthetics. So, aesthetic Christianity is an interesting sect of religion. So I had to take a few religion classes for my college degree in history. And aestheticism pretty much only like fell on Jainists, which is like a Indian religion. Okay.

But aestheticism is in religion is known as something that was, is a little different than what like we know as aesthetics, which is like totally getting shredded. Yeah. Chicken rice. I was thinking, I was like, okay,

for six small meals a day, the gains house, the gains, not quite the gains of Jesus. Yes. So in religion, aesthetics means something much different and far dumber. So if I,

for some reason have an aesthetic fan, one, eat a cheeseburger. And two, thank you for listening. It isn't actually a bunch of bros restricting themselves for gains. It's the restriction of everything. You name it, he didn't want it. Or at least he said he didn't want it. You could make no money, harvest nothing, kill nothing, and you sure as hell couldn't fuck. Why is that a thing?

Why is this a thing? It is. And that's actually just the normal mainstream version of aesthetics. You could not. So the only food you could eat had to be donated via a kind of like tithe from lay people. Or you could get get through good old fashion begging uh so there's actually like a lot of aesthetics all around us today uh they're just hungry homeless people right uh which effectively that's what these guys were they couldn't own a

house they couldn't do it they were just like homeless religious so they're the first of the homeless kind of but like not quite because they were they were like highly respected and taken care of, unlike homeless people today. Like, yeah, they were taken care of. They would have died without lay people. And like I said, that was like normal mainstream aestheticism. There's also like extreme aestheticism. You just die. Kind of like you would.

But like so if lay people weren't giving them like food they totally would die but they were effectively being kept live through public welfare but the stuff that they did went from like extreme Batman origin story to get most style torture on a sliding scale

all the name of Jesus so such as like the practices of chaining yourself to rocks, eating only grass, praying seated on a pillar in the elements like some kind of Kung Fu origin story, solitary confinement inside of a cell, abandoning personal hygiene, and quote, adopting the lifestyle of a beast. That's awesome. It also included self-inflicted pain such as cutting or self-flagellation and voluntary suffering. So emos. Yeah, it's like if the lead singer of My Chemical Romance got really into God.

But Peter wasn't an extremist. He was like the mainstream aestheticist uh but there was one guy named saint simeon who was peter's boy like that was the guy who taught him and who was like his mentor uh who sat upon a pillar for 37 years without leaving in aleppo syria uh he eventually gained so much fame during his stay at the top of that pillar that the emperor consulted with him. Because, like, he did all this, so obviously he must be so in tuned with God. We have to ask for his advice.

When in reality, just some hungry homeless dude sitting on a rock. Yeah, just some dude that's up there. And I feel like he probably just stuck and he's like, fuck, I can't even get down now. I'm sure at some point he's like, I really want to get down, but everybody would mock me. I've been up here for so long. I'm the pillar guy. I feel like I wouldn't even get down now. I'm sure at some point he's like, I really want to get down, but everybody would mock me. I've been up here for so long. I'm the pillar guy.

I feel like I wouldn't care. Well, I'm different. Well, Peter was hardcore. He was an aesthetic. He was homeless. He was kind of a drifter. He did not sit on a pillar for three decades. Instead, he only founded a monastery.

So I guess that's like the next step down. It's like the cover band to the pillar guy mainstream band let me teach you to suffer and he's like i don't want to suffer that bad like yeah like any other holy man of the time he wanted to go on a pilgrimage to the holy city of jerusalem which was controlled by the selja turks at the time um now this was generally generally not a great arrangement because obviously the Christians wanted the holy city, the Muslims wanted the holy city,

but pilgrimages were kind of okay. They let people freely pass through for the most part because remember, this is before the Crusades started. But when Peter showed up so he says the Turks wouldn't let him in instead according to a the fine source of Peter

himself they beat the shit of him still everything now there's a lot of reasons to believe that he have anything no that's one of the reasons why this is probably bullshit there's a lot of reasons to not believe Peter here besides the fact that he has a his whole life will be charted by lying his ass reasons why this is probably bullshit um there's a lot of reasons to not believe peter here besides the fact that he has a his whole life will be charted by lying his ass off um which we'll get

into uh but as a stat his status as an aesthetic monk uh he wouldn't have shit with him anyway yeah uh also uh like just the act of wearing robes when you're an aesthetic made you kind of a rich snob like a lot of aesthetics just wander around naked. Really? Yeah. Cause clothes was bad. Fuck that. Could they have taken the right?

Like, I don't know. It was this beard. Um, take his pubes, shave that man. Um, also like there is no proof he was ever there.

No eyewitnesses. There's no proof he had pubes. no, he tried to go to Jerusalem. I, I'm going to assume he was fully there no eyewitnesses there's no proof he had pubes uh no that he tried to go to jerusalem i'm going to assume he was fully mained uh he had his own clothing that's right nature's clothing uh because most uh pilgrims didn't travel alone most of them went in groups even monks uh nobody went with peter mysteriously enough so the general consensus is that he never fucking went what what is

known is the time when he said he got back he immediately started like going on tours giving incredibly anti Turk anti Muslim sermons all over the place he was actually giving speeches before the Pope saying people need to

reclaim the Holy Land which is like the hipster crusades. Because this wasn't a serious thought at the time. And he had a tour schedule? That's pretty sweet. He had some pretty strict roadies. And this wasn't a mainstream thought process at the time to storm in and retake the Holy Lands. It would be, obviously, because we're talking about the crusades eventually. storm in and retake the holy lands it would be obviously because we're talking about the crusades eventually but uh at the time not something everybody was thinking about doing i feel like

even coming from him that everybody'd be like this guy's fucking weird yeah he didn't have a ton of followers at the time uh but he was listened to to a frightening extent i feel like everybody has a list everybody just finds their listener. I guess we're a good example of that. But we are making fun of him for being a gross, smelly, naked homeless guy. But it should be noted that Peter did wear clothes unlike a lot of aesthetic monks. And their cast, their group, was highly respected. So while we're mocking him,

everybody took this guy totally seriously back then. I'd imagine so. Yeah. So at the same time Peter was doing this, Pope Urban II called the Council of Claremont. It was kind of an assembly for church reform in 1095. The Pope was begged by the Byzantine emperor to come to his aid against the advancing Turkish army. The Pope gave a sermon that told of horrible stories about the atrocities being committed against the Christians of the Holy Land by their horrible Muslim overlords, along with the Turkish conquering of Western Anatolia.

They were, in in short all lies. None of them had ever happened. Now, obviously, the Muslims did control all these lands, but there is a term called jizya in Islam that the Crusaders or the Muslim Crusaders follow, and that was if you're a nonbeliever, that was fine, but you had to pay a tax. You couldn't have churches. Like, there wasn't going to be crosses everywhere.

You could still worship, pay us your money, and carry the fuck on, effectively. And that was actually something that would start during the Crusades from the Quran all the way into the Ottoman Empire until World War I. So, it has some historical reverence here. But they definitely weren't slaughtering people quite yet. That would definitely happen during the Crusades. Okay, so not just yet. For sure. Yeah, there was awful shit happening on both sides of the Crusades.

But that wasn't yet. We're not quite there. There's little historical evidence to prove that any of the crimes that Urban talked about actually happened. Also, it's not like the Muslims just took over the Holy Land. It had been 400 years. This is not anything new. No. And in between the time it was taken and now during the Council of Claremont, the church never really gave a fuck.

There's a lot of lies being thrown around. You know, when you're talking about such a staunch organization such as the Catholic Church... God, do I know. You wouldn't expect to hear so many lies, would you? would you? What this really was was a very, very solid political move by Pope Urban to consolidate

not only his rule over the church, but Western Europe. The Byzantines didn't even ask him for some crusading Christian army to reclaim the Holy Lands. They just want some help fighting the fucking Turks to retake Western Anatolia. They never said shit about Jerusalem.

This is getting good. But Urban needed a way to unite Europe around him. There's actually another guy at the time named Clement III, who also claimed to be the Pope. He was

known as a anti-Pope. Anti-Pope. Yeah. It's actually something that happens a lot throughout the medieval history of the church uh there's a ton of i think there might actually be an anti-pope today um there's is this just everything that like opposite of what the pope does no he's not like the bizarro pope i don't know an anti-pope is someone that is considered kind of like a usurper. So in this case, there's a reason why Urban is giving this speech in France. Real quick.

What? Usurper? Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't know what that is. Someone trying to take the throne. Okay, cool. Thanks.

So there's a reason why Urban is giving the speech in France and not like the Vatican, because that's where Clement III is. Okay. And also at the time, all the multiple kingdoms of Western Europe were all fighting wars, regardless of what the Catholic Church said. And this actually included the Catholic Church itself just being involved in a war in Sicily. uh the catholic church itself just being involved in a war in sicily um so this was a way for urban to unite western europe all these fractured kingdoms around him give clement the finger and claim himself to be the true pope um like he didn't care so much about the catholic church as much as he cared about his catholic nice okay um Hopefully it's not a bad Catholic church. They're all bad Catholic churches, it turns out.

Come here, my son, Nicholas. Now open mouth kiss me. God. That's too far. That's how my church was. God. So Urban could unite all of these varyingian kingdoms against a common

enemy that was not a christian this time and that is the celiac turks um then he would be able to be the real king shit pope maybe he'd have even be allowed back into rome because he isn't even allowed in italy at this point do they just have posters up everywhere i imagine they look for the guy at the second biggest hat i don't know um and that was how the first crusade began and uh so yeah i don't know how many memes you deal with on a daily basis but do you ever see the die you know you ever see the dais volt uh memes where it's like uh it'll be like a crusader saying dais Volt about something or like they end up a lot around Dark Souls memes. I think I've seen them. Well, this is where it actually started.

It might be history's first meme because someone in the crowd when Urban stood up and said they need to retake the Holy Land, someone said God wills it, which is Dias Volt in Latin. I hope somebody was in the back. That's dank. Yeah. That's dank. Yeah. That's sweet, dude. Someone in the back is like, boof, a Deus Fulton. Now, there's conflicting reports whether or not Peter was actually at this event because he really liked to tell people he was. But he's not someone that really would have been invited.

I wouldn't invite him anywhere. He wasn't some high-ranking member of the church at all. So I don't know why he wouldn't have been there. Really anybody? He wasn't quite yet. Yeah, at this point? Okay. But once the Pope was in on the crusading game,

Peter took his show on the road, traveling around all of France and demanding people take up arms to free the Holy Lands. By doing this, Peter actually became a major speaker and recruiter for the Pope. His speeches spread quickly, and soon they were pretty much everywhere. Now, they traveled by spoken word, by writing, more rare in writing, but people were effectively spreading his message for him eventually um so much so that there's actually a several very well-known kings who went broke funding their

armies uh getting ready for the crusade uh people like godfrey and baldwin who are actually the first and second crusader kings of jerusalem once it was retaken um now there isn't a lot to say that um peter actually had a hand in mobilizing these guys there's a very good chance they would have gone at the pope's order anyway yeah um now they were obviously very very very religious there's no getting around that because a lot of people nowadays will say well they they're all pragmatic rulers they don't they weren't just going to drop everything and you know go fight for the pope but there's a really good chance that that was part of it because even though they knew that there's a lot of plunder and shit to have when you start marching east and burning down muslim cities and

shit stealing everything like they wouldn't have gone broke for that. They literally bankrupted themselves. Did that play any effect on the whole crusade part? I think it made things more desperate. Like, they definitely had to succeed or they were fucked. Also, it had a lot of secondary effects, should we say, that we will talk about. Now, Peter's speeches and the Pope's demands lit a fire under Christian Europe, and Peter was more happy to goad them on. As Peter began to tour around giving speeches,

people began to follow him personally and wanting to join him on the road to Jerusalem, because his plan the whole time was to go with the crusading army, which begs the question, why the hell did they want to follow Peter when they could have just as easily joined with one of the Kings putting an army together? Now, not everybody who fought in the crusades was a night. Every army full of nights needs a ton of people who aren't nights to flush out the numbers effectively.

Well, they were impatient. The Pope didn't actually plan his army to begin marching towards the Holy City until August of 1096, with kings and lords having to get their affairs in order before they could march across the goddamn world. Not to mention at the time, there was required for like yield logistics of getting all the food and supplies they would need for this long march. Of course. getting all the food and supplies they would need for this long march of course um but instead of being you know someone with a functioning brain peter was telling everybody that they could not wait they absolutely had to free the holy land now they had to do it because the liberation of the land couldn't fucking wait until august who's listening to this guy a lot of people um not a lot

of people you would expect to be marching to war, though. It also may have not hurt that Peter was telling everybody that would listen that he was appointed by Christ himself to lead them into war. And they would not have anything to fear because heaven would protect them from all harm that could come their way. Horse shit. Now, there's a little bit there's a few realistic reasons to think people believe in this uh besides the fact that there were i mean if there was an atheist around back then they weren't talking oh yeah also um one of the reasons that people decide to follow him is that life as a poor person medieval europe was fucking terrible uh your life

was generally horrible and meaningless and you'd spend your days scratching on existence of being taxed by some asshole lord to make matters worse europe was being hit by a pretty brutal drought at the time making their lives even worse um like all of those stereotypical showings of peasants in medieval europe it was like that just way worse covered in poop and they probably had the plane um they also just because like i guess the the subtitle to our podcast is then then things got worse and then things got worse there's an outbreak of something called ergotism which is something i had never fucking heard of. Ergotism? Yes. It is something I had never fucking heard of until I was researching this

episode. It is also known as ergot poisoning. This is caused by a fungus that infests rye crops, which can then be transmitted to humans. Once someone is infected with ergotism, it can cause painful seizures, spasms, uncontrollable diarrhea, itching,

mania, psychosis, and vomiting. And that's before all your limbs rot off from gangrene. Oh. The death was so terrible, prolonged, and painful, people thought it was a curse from God himself, and they called it the Holy Fire. Could do without that. Yeah. And rye was a pretty large staple in everybody's diet i don't drink rye whiskey anymore so well this isn't really something that exists anymore um

they found ways to like cure if that's the right word for not to cure ergotism but to cure the rye of the fungus right um but they hadn't quite figured that out yet so they all just got gangrene their dicks fell off um they kind of just maybe it'll pass over it'll pass over yeah uh have you tried praying uh well my hands fell off so um so yeah maybe if staying at home and either starving to death or having your dick rot off from grain poisoning was somehow worse than joining forces with the hungry, hungry hobo. You know, like, what choice do they have? I mean, there's another good reason.

I mean, they were saying that the Holy Land was the land of milk and honey. You know, it's the land of Jesus Christ. And that's the land that God chose. I mean, it's a fucking desert. Right. But they don't know that. Exactly. Also, the church is giving out something

known as an indulgence you grew up as a catholic do you know what indulgence is sounds really familiar so an indulgence is and i didn't know what it was either because i grew up as a unholy armenian orthodox church member um i grew up as a bad catholic yeah i think everybody grows up as a bad catholic uh an indulgence is something that you can do in service of the church to reduce or eliminate punishment of sin. In Pope Urban's edict to retake the Holy Land, he offered

anybody who marched, anybody who marched, to war under the cross a plenary indulgence, which is a forgiving of all sins regardless of what it is. Scott free. Scott, all you had to do is drop what you're fucking doing and start marching towards the desert.

Doesn't matter what it was. And this was something like, this sounds kind of ridiculous to us because it's the year 2019 now. It's our first podcast in the year. What's up? But like back then, people like, oh, like you just gave the most religious population probably ever a get out of jail free card. Pretty much. If they just all marched east and imagine all the horrible criminals and murderers and

everybody else are like, well, fuck, I guess I'm going to Jerusalem now. Fuck it. Now, a lot of these people with horrible, um, reputations, you could say we're turned away from these knights' armies. Like, nobody's going to let the local gross bandit in that everybody knows. Peter had no scruples such as that. So, he's like, yeah, sure, join me. So, he has an actual following.

Oh, yeah. Somewhere north of 100,000 people. Holy shit. His Patreon must be really good god i don't know these guys are all broke and starving fuck you're right do they take rye from patreon i wonder so would they all have to beg with him yeah so i wonder how long a line that would be that i gave it to the last guy that becomes a uh i guess you could say a sticking point later on. We will get to,

uh, it's all bad. Um, now this is, uh, this formation of Peter's army. You can call it an army. He called an army.

The church called in an army was not officially ordained a crusading army. The church actually called the poppers army. Uh, and for people who don't know pauper is like an old-timey speak for people so poor they are totally dependent on the church for food so like there is no secret that um this is just a line of hungry unarmed people for the most part it's a lot of food and these aren't i mean there is some some knights in this formation. Very, very few. To the point that nobody really knows, but they put it maybe a couple dozen.

To the point that- Just a baker's dozen? We know most of their names. That's how few of them there were. Most of them are men, women, and children. Everybody's poor and hungry, so they're not going to leave their family back at home. Bring them with you. It's more just like a giant mob of hungry refugees. Yeah, it's like an angry mob of hungry refugees at this point.

But they're leaving their own place to go take over somebody else's. So they're just a mob of assholes. Yeah. If we beg over there, there's new stuff. Let's do it. Yeah. I mean, this is like the one group of people you don't want marching off in your name to fight a war is now marching off in your name to fight a war. Nobody should march off in my name.

Yeah. Yeah. And now remember, they're almost six months ahead of the actual army now because they're not preparing anything. They're just like, we're walking tomorrow. You coming? So they're already headed out ahead? It's about half of a year ahead of the actual crusading force.

What is their whole plan? Their whole plan is just march to Jerusalem. Their plan, all right, so most of these people didn't know how far away Jerusalem was. Oh, they're in for a shock right. So most of these people didn't know how far away Jerusalem was. Oh, they're in for a shock. Yeah.

Yeah. That sucks. Especially with the shitty sandals. Yeah. I mean, like they had nobody had any idea how far out they were marching. Nobody brought theirs. Like they didn't have any food to bring with them for supply because they didn't have any food at home and nobody with them has like money because anybody with money is joining the actual crusading army yeah so they're they're all

fucked up yeah um so since peter really had no idea what he's doing um but he did kind of he knew he could travel better in a smaller group so his army kind of fractured. Half would go with him and half would go with a Frenchman named Walter Sainte-Avoir. Walter Sainte-Avoir, whose name translates to literally Walter without property. Also Walter the penniless.

Dude, he's perfect for the cause. Yeah, he really, really is. Now, we're not really sure where Walter came from. He's not a knight or anything like that. He's just a follower of Peter. But Walter's Santa Voir would take about half

Peter's army. Did he pick the name? I don't know. Probably not. I feel like I would have done better if I would have picked a name. Yeah, I would like Peter with the sweet horse or Walter with the sweet horse or like walter sexy peter walter who might own shoes oh i don't know um walter so walter and his half of the army began a long march to constance noble and things went all right for the most part until they showed up in Belgrade in modern day Serbia,

which acted as something of a doorstep for the Byzantine empire. When Walter and his army showed up on their doorstep, the Byzantines are pretty goddamn confused. One, because the Pope had promised him an army of soldiers, not a gaggle of farmers in their family. Also, they were about six months early where

are your weapons our nails are pretty long we could scratch you in the eyes yeah um rar the the local governor also didn't really buy walter's story that he was in fact totally part of the crusade bro let me in uh and so they just like didn't let him into the city what so they walked for no reason so uh the governor of belgrade told them to chill out and wait and they were gonna send word back to the pope and ask like if these are legitimately his people and then if the pope answers correctly they'll let walter and his boys i feel like that word would take four fucking ever yeah it's like the with one horsepower all the way there yeah um so i mean now this is an army of people who couldn't be asked to wait for the pope to march in six months honestly i wonder if they're like

oh they're doing it by horse that's really fast like how we look at internet like oh it's by man oh i wish we had a horse yeah fuck um so the army who didn't have the patience to sit back and wait for the pope definitely did not have the patience to wait for the governor of belgrade to get word back from france uh instead they began pillaging the countryside. With what? Sheer fucking numbers. Just a human wave descending into a village to steal all your food. Do you have food? Do you have food? Like, that's all I can do.

Change? Change. Like the South Park episode with all the homeless people. Now, so it should be noted. uh now so it should be noted this was probably not anything done out of malice or something like the governor kicked us out well fuck him that's probably not what happened uh remember these are broke hungry peasants who all just walked from to fucking serbia from france they were hungry they were dying. They didn't bring any food with them in the first place because

remember, they were desperately poor. Even if they did, so here's the kicker. There's a reason why the Pope wanted to wait six months. That's because it was spring in Europe. Crops are generally harvested in the fall, which

you can't have any supply. If you have no crops. You have to wait until fall. To have the crops for your supply. So a lot of these farmers. Abandoned what little farming they had. Before anything grew. So badly in need of food.

They stripped the local farms bare. And robbed people's storehouses. Then even began fighting the local Byzantine army. When they show up to try to keep the peace. Remember that's the army. they were technically sent to help yeah i feel like the farmers should have known better oh no they weren't supposed to bring food with them anyway they didn't need it yeah okay well remember land of milk and honey man pretty much jesus is gonna smile on you uh so part of the army broke off doubled doubled back into Hungary and began pillaging the shit out of it as well. What the fuck?

This was stopped when locals and the army beat the shit out of them and sent them running. All they had were probably sticks. They'd be fine. You know, I think they probably looted a couple weapons, but they definitely weren't well armed. Walter and his hungry bastards were eventually wrangled together under sword point by the Byzantines and marched under escort to Constantinople where they would wait for Peter, which is actually kind of impressive. Like these guys just fucking ran rabid through your countryside and just like, all right, cut out you guys. Yeah. Using their dead children as weapons.

Yeah. I would assume in the medieval times, these dudes just get their fucking heads hacked off. Right. And they just, yeah. But no, they're just like, cut it out go to constant noble yeah hey guys chill for a second yeah uh but before we get to peter's journey we have to talk about a third splinter group and that is a group that splinter group yep uh that's a maybe you can call it a sleeper cell. I don't know. I like it. Sam Fisher.

This is a wing of the People's Crusade, you can call it, that formed kind of independently of Peter based on his sermons and someone who really liked his message. And that was a guy named Count Emiko of Leningrad in Germany next door. Now, Peter never marched over to meet the count count did this all on his own okay but he was following peter's example he put an army together um to march to jerusalem six months before everybody else that's a leader peter probably wants takes action you know i'll let you revise that statement a little bit. All right. I already,

uh, I should know what we do around here. And his army believed that Peter was right. And he was being commanded by God to go on March immediately in March. The count did remember how I said earlier, a lot of people went broke financing these armies. Yeah. Well,

a lot of people went broke, had no money in the first place. They went to debt as western catholicism banned the practice of nursery which is actually the practice of money lending that can enrich the lender so like the concept of interest stuff like that illegal in catholicism at the time there was one group of people that did not believe in nursery, though. Jews. That's right. We're talking about Jews in Germany and money.

You can see where this is going now. Are you sure we should go down this route? So a lot of these crusading knights went to the local Jewish community to take loans, which meant they were now all in debt to the local jewish community histories of motherfuckers to the jews um you know i think i talked about this with you or possibly somebody else before but history is a flat circle when it comes back to blaming the jews for everything and i can never figure out why i don don't know. No matter, like, we're talking about the year 1096 and you might as well be reading, like,

our fucked up uncle's Facebook messages today, right now, when they're talking about Jews with debts and banks and shit. Time's a flat circle. Totally off topic, but I have an uncle who's kind of like that,

but he blames it, like, the Jews taking over WWE. It's fucking hilarious. Vince McMahon, notable Jew. So, there happened to be a large population of these Jewish moneylenders in the Rhineland region of Germany, where the count was from and who he definitely owned a ton of money to. Like I said before, we can all see where this is going. So is this the part where I take it back?

Yeah, because I'm about to talk about something that was now known as the Rhineland Massacres. I'll take it back before you go further. So the count led his mob from town to town, but during the local Jewish population and stealing everything in sight. Fuck. Uh, this meant the count,

uh, was sacking his own cities, slaughtering his own subjects and stealing what is effectively his own money. Yeah. Okay. Nobody is entirely sure how many people they killed somewhere in the tens of thousands. He's just eating his own tail

uh but it was enough to horrify even the anti-semitic catholic church this guy's a fucking asshole yeah geez uh this was made worse when several local catholic bishops saw what was going on and was they were totally not cool thing because they may have not liked jews but they're like we didn't say kill the jews i hope he's kind of like wild card fuck i don't know i think at this point like at any point i'm gonna assume he had a funny mustache i feel like most people yeah yeah for sure german killing jews he had a small mustache for sure um so his army and the mob and whatever would show up to towns and most towns there even the heavily jewish populated towns had a catholic presence in it um the bishops in these churches would come out

and tell amico to stop he'd fucking kill him i'm not jewish like dude i'm on your side like so these guys joined the catholic crusade and just killing a whole bunch of their own people and Catholics. Uh, dude's eating his own tail. Yeah. So, and there's,

uh, one situation in the, uh, town of Mets men's. I think it is men's. Yeah. Uh, with it's men with a Z,

uh, the local Jewish population decided, well, if he wants gold, fuck it. We'll pull over money together and bribe this motherfucker to leave us alone uh so they pulled all their money which is a considerable amount of money and ten dollars yeah fit a solid 15 15 25 week uh and took it out to uh amico and his army to bribe them to get him to go away uh so amico took the bribe and then killed all the jews anyway um a local bishop heard what

was happening uh and just so they had uh like he had his own bodyguard it was a sizable bodyguard of actual knights um told all of his uh bodyguard to get their shit together we're going in to fight these guys um all the local townspeople joined the bishop and followed him into battle to fight namiko's men and they actually did turn them away uh at first they won the battle but unfortunately they lost the war because namiko's men returned sacked the city and killed thousands of people fuck um eventually they ran out of jews to murder and began to march towards hungary uh i guess probably getting back on the on the road. They're like, oh, lost sight of what we're actually doing. Saw something shiny.

Yeah. But what they got there, the Hungarian king flat out refused to let him in. Everybody knew what the hell they'd been doing, and there was absolutely no way he was letting Amico's murderous army into his country. Word spreads fast. So that was when Amico ordered an attack on the Christian Hungarian city of Mosin. So his new targets are Christians. Yeah, his targets have been everybody but Muslims.

It turns out, however, that fighting an actual army that could defend itself was a lot harder than slaughtering unarmed men, women, and children. Because Amico's army was totally destroyed. Not Amico, however, though. He managed to survive and went home where everybody shit-talked him behind his back for abandoning his vow to capture Jerusalem. And he died a free man. He never really had any punishment for what he did. The end. Because remember, those were those were his people that he that he killed.

Which brings us back to Peter. The dude was an asshole. Yeah, Miko's a real motherfucker. Let's go back to peter uh so they too had found their way down to hungary now uh who is now probably really fucking sick dealing with these assholes oh yeah uh after the last guy showed up and put his city under siege the king wanted absolutely nothing to do with peter and his band of starving penniless assholes and told him to fuck off um eventually the king had a heart and relented,

seeing how Peter wasn't slaughtering anybody, he wasn't pillaging anybody, and by all accounts, Peter was an alright guy. And besides, his army was nothing but a whole bunch of unarmed peasants. Once inside, Peter's mob started to ride over a pair of shoes. What? What? Started to ride over a pair of shoes

I'm sorry that was funny you took a laugh break sip and then continued to laugh that was awesome so the riot quickly grew out of control and turned to a full scale battle over shoes? over a pair of shoes

one pair from historical accounts there's one pair of shoes over a pair one pair for from historical accounts there's one pair of shoes the best looking shoes yeah they're probably uh dita's go to adidas tracksuits so they could gop nick it up uh we're squatting right now uh the uh so peter's army managed to uh get get together and launch a full scale battle where they took the entire city stealing everything that wasn't bolted down and killing somewhere around

4,000 Hungarians I feel like there's no plan that goes into anything that these guys do they just go attack and then wow can we have food no no you say okay scratch scratch getting punched to death by gross old hands Can we have food? No. No, you say. Okay. And then people just die.

It's getting punched to death by gross old hands. He then hauled ass to the Byzantine border before any real Hungarian army could show up to stomp them into the ground. Now, Peter was the one arriving at Belgrade. The same city who had

just had to deal with the last group of poor, starving, self-proclaimed crusaders. And they had to be over these dudes. Like, oh, God, that's another group of them. I think I'd move. So that's when the governor called in his local garrison to keep them in line as they escorted the crusading dickbags to Constantinople. The crusaders got pissed that the army was moving so slow because remember the liberation of jerusalem couldn't wait and they attacked the byzantine army these guys are assholes god not

only did they attack them they routed them uh which leads me to believe like this is why the byzantine army is losing all their land to the turks they're not good soldiers. No, they're losing to a bunch of poor, hungry people. Yeah. They then did the exact same thing Walter's people did and pillaged through the countryside. What the fuck? When they got to Belgrade they pillaged it, looted it, and set it on fire. Yeah.

And they're still not taking any Are they taking stuff? Money? Food? Oh yeah, they're taking everything now. They like behave themselves until they got there. The surrounded governors hunkered down behind their city walls and called in as many troops as they could. The governor of Nice met with Peter and begged him to chill the fuck out, and his army would escort them to meet Walters in Constantinople. Peter agreed.

Now, he agreed under the condition That the governor would feed his 40,000 person man Army that he had with him That however Would not leave enough food for the actual Population of the city the governor was in charge of So the governor told himself So the governor told Peter

To walk to Constantinople Immediately just get the fuck out of my town Did that work? Peter agreed. Figured his people had like a lust for blood for no reason. It was around this time that Peter figured out he was no longer in control of anything because while Peter agreed, the mob did not. They began to pillage and rob the countryside again

before doubling back and burning Dundee's itself. These guys are assholes. So originally, the governor understood these people to be unarmed, needy people for the most part, but also fellow Christians. So, he ordered his army to take it easy on the mob.

Take hostages, don't kill them unless you absolutely have to. Assuming the mob would see that, you know, this is kind of pointless we're fighting our fellow christians or you know wait these guys aren't the people we're here to fight whatever it is uh but instead the mob attacked the city again and again leaving the governor no other choice but to order his army to attack them without mercy peter's mob was smashed and

sent running immediately uh peter ran for his life and hid in the hills. By the time the rest of his people found him, a quarter of them were dead. They had also lost all the money and food that had been stolen during their rampant pillaging. Was one guy carrying it? Yeah, just like one dude in a cart. Fuck, we lost the cart.

Defeated, broke, and hungry, they finally walked to Constance Noble to meet with walter totally defeated uh they're still hungry well they lost all their damn food and they're walking probably 20 goddamn miles a day yeah uh they were even granted an audience with the emperor of the byzantine empire uh despite the fact they had just led a murderous rampage across his land he did not order them to be x executed on the spot like one would assume. Instead, he begged them to stay there until the real crusader army showed up, which was

now only a few months behind. Walter and Peter refused, and the emperor shrugged and gave up. He then offered them a fleet of boats so they could take their gross mob across the Bofra Strait into the heart of the Muslim Empire. Just get the fuck out of my city. The emperor did this absolutely knowing they were all going to die.

The loss of the boats was probably a small place to pay to get rid of all these people. I'm sure he was like worth it. Now the Turks not expecting an invasion from the sea didn't exactly have a standing army waiting to stop them upon landing. Holy fuck. They did well? Depends on your definition.

So Peter and Walter's force pillaged at will, going from town to town and killing and stealing everything they saw. Now, across the Bosphorus Straits from Constantinople is Western Anatolia. If you remember what I said earlier, Western Anatolia is the place where the Byzantines

wanted to get back, meaning it was full of Christians, not Muslims. So they managed to invade the Seljuk Turks and only kill their fellow Christians. Again. Again. Now the mob finally got to the town of Nicomedia and began kind of falling out with each other. What town?

Nicomedia. Yeah. The French portion of the mob, who was the majority, elected to stay with Peter because Peter was their boy. Peter was from France too. While the Germans and the Italians decided to follow the leadership of one of the few actual soldiers in the group,

a German knight named Reinhold. Reinhold? That Reinhold? Yep. That's it? Yep. No last name that we're aware of. No, that's nice. Well, the two sides had different leaders. They both kind of stayed together. It was kind of like a little brother, big brother scenario where they

kind of hated each other, but they weren't going to move out. I feel like Reinhold probably stolen a few of Peter's girls. Honestly, he seems like a suave dude. I remember Peter's anesthetic. He doesn't fuck. Reinald fucks. Exactly.

Reinald definitely fucks. That's why. So they moved together kind of like a short distance away, but they kind of pillaged in tandem. They finally pillaged their way down the coast. They got to the city of Sivat. By this point, the mob's advance had been so rapid that it shocked peter and he finally began telling people that they should probably wait until the real army shows up um he knew it was only a matter of time

before they ran to a real army and they'd be fucked yeah but everybody ignored him uh the two sides began trying to outdo one another. Competitive, nice. Yeah, like competitive pillaging. One side's group would go out, pillage someone, raid someone, whatever, then return to the camp in Civet and just like brag how brave they were. Talk of their woes.

Yeah, like they would talk about how, yeah, we killed this many people. Look how much food and loot we stole forcing the other group to go out and try to outdo them Peter seeing that nobody was listening to him and this all devolved into some weird dick measuring competition said fuck it and

bailed on his own crusade I feel like he slowly faded into his own crowd it's like the meme of Homer Simpson backing up into the bush he's like well then so he left his own people behind and just walked back to Constance Noble on his own It's like the meme of Homer Simpson backing up into the bush. He's like, well then. So he left his own people behind and just walked back to Constantinople on his own. Now the French side he left behind

decided they had a brilliant plan to finally outdo the German side once and for all. They would attack the local Turkish capital. They failed. Now that's largely still a bunch of fucking randos with looted swords at this point using stale baguettes. Yeah.

I mean, they, they weren't going to be siege an actual city. No. Um, so they decided to rampage through the countryside around it. Uh, they did the normal looting and now this escalate into an outright

genocide. They just killed everybody who looked kind of Brown and they began throwing Muslim kids into fires that they had built. Holy shit. Yeah. I feel like, uh, genocide they just killed everybody who looked kind of brown and they began throwing muslim kids into fires that they had built holy shit yeah i feel like uh along with all their mobbing and shit they're getting a tan well i mean you have to think so i feel like they're getting confused going like muslim even like the the christians who lived in western antolia they're at least like olive colored like they're not white yeah not like white like the fucking french are the italians just as yourself yeah i mean a lot of people think armenians are middle eastern which just goes to show how better education system is but they're still very wrong

um you're very here You have some fair skin. Yeah, I'm white as the driven snow. When I was deployed, I got pretty damn brown, but so did everybody else. Yeah. So the German side, seeing what their French counterparts had done, instead of being deeply introspective on how awful they had all all become now they're literally throwing babies onto fires right um they decided to take over a local castle to show the french like look what we can do and they did actually they totally did it took a castle yeah they totally took it was a small castle um they probably didn't even stay in it well the the turkish garrison inside was really small and like not expecting it so they

got taken out pretty quickly overran mostly uh so you know the the germans are now on top the turks had finally gotten their shit together however and they dispatched an army to chase these bastards out of western anatolia and uh quickly closed in on the germans in the castle because remember they're in a castle they're pretty easy to surround uh the turks knew something about the castle that the germans had just taken over that the germans did not know and that was the castle had glory holes had glory holes no that was the castle did not have any fucking water in it oh yeah um and there was a well that was outside castle walls that obviously they were gonna get to now because they were surrounded.

So they simply surrounded the castle, sat back, and waited for them to all die of thirst. Fuck. So after a couple days of literally drinking their own piss and donkey blood... Oh, Bear Grylls would have done fucking great. The Germans surrendered. As was custom during the time of the Crusades,

the Turks demanded that the people convert or die. Now, most of the surrendering Germans refused to betray their faith and were executed. The one person who didn't, however, Reinald. Yes! There is a happy ending. Reinald did not only quickly get down on his hands' needs and beg them to let him convert. He then promised them he'd even join the Turks in their war against the Byzantines.

Shocking. Even the local Ottoman general, who was like, wait, what? Did you hear what this guy said? I meant Turkish, not Ottoman. We're not quite there yet. Sorry.

But yeah, the local Turk general is like, you want to do what now? I really would have hoped the officers like, you're trying to fucking double agent us and just kill them anyway, but they didn't. So soon a message was passed back to the French crusaders saying the Germans had captured not just that castle, but the whole provincial capital.

And if they didn't hurry, they'd miss all that sweet, sweet looting that was going on. That letter was penned by Reinhold because Reinhold's a bastard. This Reinhold guy. He knows how to play it. It did not take long for all 20,000

of the crusaders to take off running in that direction of the city that was totally not under German control. Yeah. Instead, they ran right into a Turkish ambush. The crusaders routed at the first sign of battle

and were slaughtered almost to a man. Of the 40,000 people dropped off in western Anatolia by boats. You're going to say a low number. Yeah, just guess. How many make it back? Can you give me a hot and cold? Like if I'm close?

I'll give you two guesses. Okay. I'll go, you said 40,000? 40,000, four zero. All right, so I'll go 10,000. Cold. 5,000. A little warmer.

Holy shit. 3,000 made it back. Oh my God. They'd eventually be rescued by the Byzantine army. a little warmer holy shit 3000 made it back oh my god they eventually be rescued by the Byzantine army so with that the people's crusade died having killed tens of thousands of Christians Jews

and finally themselves while nearly totally destroying the Byzantine economy and they rescued them yep why I don't know they're just stupid too Peter himself would join the real crusade And they rescued them? Yep. Why? I don't know. They're just stupid too. Peter himself would join the real crusade when it came through,

and his reputation as the righteous voice of God was not harmed in the slightest. He was with the armies as they retook the holy cities, and was the man who proclaimed a random spear that they found as the spear who stabbed Jesus Christ. Yeah. Oh, okay. Which is still Catholic canon to this day. Probably. Within a few years, he was back in Europe, found

another monastery in Flanders before finally dying in 1115. Now, for decades after his death, people gave Peter credit for being the true originator of the First Crusade, saying it was him that returned from the Holy Land and told the Pope that he must assemble an army to drive the Turks out. It was a story that Peter himself has been telling people for decades while he was alive.

So, Peter the Hermit lived as he died. A bullshit artist. Especially with that whole spear thing yeah I can honestly imagine that him probably licking the tip of it like tastes like Christ that's Jesus that's Jesus if I know it yeah this tastes like the son of God right here and that is

the people's crusade now I know something I never really knew about the people's crusade to be honest it's it's a weird little footnote that i you know he doesn't get enough credit uh as being like one of the worst generals of all time because he's not technically a general he wasn't really leading an army i feel like he said let's do this and everybody's like fuck it let's go it's almost like uh when a dog runs out and catches

a truck or like like runs out and chases a truck but then he like actually catches it and doesn't know what to do like Peter didn't actually think people were gonna follow him to Jerusalem but he's like well I got 40,000 fucking people behind me now and Walter's already there so I guess I gotta go

fuck it dude I guess that's what we're starting uh we're gonna start uh sacking cities i don't know if i want to do that it seems like a lot of work and it never ends well it ended well for him well it actually did end pretty okay for peter and ryan our boy i don't know he's a real bitch ryan holds like so ryan don't know. He's a real bitch. Reinhold's like... So Reinhold had enough balls to get a schism in the middle of the fucking army there and then bitched out at the first opportunity.

Still stole Peter's bitches. And then turned double agent and got 20,000 people killed. Gotta play the game, man. That's true. That's true. That's true. I'm glad I learned something, honestly. So that is this week's episode. You can follow the podcast, as always, on Twitter

at lines underscore bye. You can follow me at jcast99. You can follow me at nickcastm1. And if you'd like to support the show in one way or another you could donate to our Patreon where a dollar will get you access to all of our bonus episodes

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until I collapse into a crying pile of death and destruction. He's going to get into fetal position. Things are about to get weird. Until next week, guys, take it easy. Later. Hi, this is Nate Bethea, and I'm the producer of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. This show is brought to you by Audible. And as it just so happens, Audible is offering our

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