800th Anniversary of a Tragic—and Puzzling—Event

A highly romanticized 18th-century illustration of the Children’s Crusade

In the year 1212, bizarre events took place across Europe. Thousands of children left their homes to go to the Holy Land, or Palestine, hoping to reclaim it from the Muslims. This came to be known as the Children’s Crusade, one of the stranger and more catastrophic episodes in European history.

Two boys are at the heart of the story. In France, a boy named Stephen appeared at the king’s court claiming to have a letter from Jesus Christ, and asking for the king’s support for a crusade. Although the king told Stephen to go home, instead the boy managed to lead some 15,000 to 30,000 children south. When they arrived on the Mediterranean coast, they were victimized by unscrupulous merchants, who put the children on ships and sold most of them into slavery in North Africa and Iraq. Others died when their ships sank. Only one of Stephen’s followers was said to have returned to France.

The other boy, Nicholas, lived in Germany. He led thousands of supporters over the Alps toward the sea, which few reached. Nicholas was confident that the Mediterranean Sea would part to let him and his followers walk to Jerusalem on dry land. No big surprise there—the sea stayed wet. Of the 20,000 in Nicholas’s original entourage, perhaps one-tenth returned home.

But did all that really happen? In a word—no. The events of 1212 were neither a true crusade nor a mass movement of saintly youngsters. Instead, the “children” were probably landless peasants and laborers, displaced by economic upheaval, who hit the road en masse looking for something better. There were children in the crowds, and some may even have had the Holy Land as an ultimate goal. But the sweet, sad tale of pious children giving their lives for a noble cause is more historical fiction than history.

Image credit: © Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Related Links

• Children’s Crusade
  Read what is known about the Children’s Crusade and its origins.
  (Source: Britannica Online; accessed September 30, 2012)
• The Children’s Crusade
  This article includes the theories about what really happened and how the events were portrayed over time.
  (Source: Wikipedia; accessed September 30, 2012)
• Medieval Sourcebook: Chronica Regiae Coloniensis, s.a. 1213
  The “Children’s Crusade,” 1212
  Read a near-contemporary account of the event, translated into modern English.
  (Source: Fordham University; accessed September 30, 2012)
• The Pied Piper of Hameln
  Read different versions of the “Pied Piper” story, said to have been based on the Children’s Crusade.
  (Source: Professor D. L. Ashliman, University of Pittsburgh; accessed September 30, 2012)