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1096. AUGUST. CONSTANTINOPLE, CAPITAL OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE . . .

It was a miracle, and Emperor Commenus rubbed his hands with glee at the sight of it: a vast column of people approaching the city. Here at last, the reward for his efforts to prize out of the pope a fresh army that would certainly restore his faded power over a dwindling empire.

But this sublime vision of a mighty and shining fighting force slowly decayed as one after another of thousands of soiled, unsanitary, and hungry peasants pressed up to the city gate, expecting hospitality from the Holy Roman emperor.

This was not an army of knights but of locusts.

The trouble with a large mass of disorganized medieval zealots marching from village to village on little more than a vision of hope and the charity of local villagers is that no leadership can adequately provide for their physical needs, and by the time the People’s Crusade had crossed Hungary it was not just taking charity so much as devouring it. Many resorted to pilfering from the initially hospitable Christian populations, eventually turning to stealing local wives, raping women, burning granaries, and generally embarking on plunder, some of it at the behest of one of the “leaders,” Count Emerico, who “himself took part in the plunder and incited his comrades to crime.”¹

They murdered four thousand in Hungary alone before setting the Serbian city of Belgrade ablaze. But not before looting it.

Commenus saw nothing but having to provide sustenance for a band of paupers, vagabonds, and opportunists. The city gates remained firmly bolted, and the People’s Crusade made do by pitching tents outside the insurmountable walls.

Emperor Commenus.

Weeks of idleness ensued, and with their noses pressed to the window of riches inside Constantinople, the pilgrims took to pillaging homes on the outskirts of the capital. Despite the very best efforts of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless to set examples of decorum, brigandage replaced discipline: “They were not held back by the decency of the people of the province, nor were they mollified by the Emperor’s affability, but they behaved very insolently, wrecking palaces, burning public buildings, tearing the roofs off churches that were covered with lead, and then offering to sell the lead back to the Greeks.”²

A seething Commenus eventually made the sensible decision to gather provisions and deliver his capital from this swarm, even furnishing the People’s Crusade with boats to take them across the narrow strait of the Bosphorus and into Anatolia.

And off his hands.