§ 54. THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADES. 267
vain did the king of France attempt to check the movement. The army increased to thirty thousand, girls as well as boys, adults as well as children.1 Questioned as to where they were going, they replied, " We go to God, and seek for the holy cross beyond the sea." They reached Marseilles, but the waves did not part and let them go through dryshod as they expected.2
The centres of the movement in Germany were Nicholas, a child of ten, and a second leader whose name has been lost. Cologne was the rallying point. Children of noble fami lies enlisted. Along with the boys and girls went men and women, good and bad.
The army under the anonymous leader passed through Eastern Switzerland and across the Alps to Brindisi, whence some of the children sailed, never to be heard from again. The army of Nicholas reached Genoa in August, 1212. The children sang songs 011 the way, and with them has been wrongly associated the tender old German hymn : —
' ' Fairest Lord Jesus,
Ruler of all nature, O Thou of man and God, the son,
Thee will I cherish,
Thee will I honor, Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown."
The numbers had been reduced by hardship, death, and moral shipwreck from twenty to seven thousand. At Genoa the waters were as pitiless as they were at Marseilles. Some of the children remained in the city and became, it is said, the ancestors of distinguished families.3 The rest marched on
1 Hurter regards the numbers handed down as greatly exaggerated.
2 An epigram, dwelling upon the folly of the movement, ran : —
" Ad mare stultorum
Tendebat iter puerorum" " To the sea of the fools
Led the path of the children."
3 Wilken for this assertion quotes the History of the Genoese Senate and People, by Peter Bizari, Antwerp, 1679. One of the families was the house of the Vivaldi.
268 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
through Italy to Brindisi, where the bishop of Brindisi re fused to let them proceed farther. An uncertain report declares Innocent III. declined to grant their appeal to be released from their vow.
The fate of the French children was, if possible, still more pitiable. At Marseilles they fell a prey to two slave dealers, who for "the sake of God and without price" offered to convey them across the Mediterranean. Their names are preserved, — Hugo Ferreus and William Porous. Seven vessels set sail. Two were shipwrecked on the little island of San Pietro off the northwestern coast of Sardinia. The rest reached the African shore, where the children were sold into slavery.
The shipwreck of the little Crusaders was commemorated by Gregory IX., in the chapel of the New Innocents, ecclesia novorum innocentium, which he built on San Pietro. Inno cent III. in summoning Europe to a new crusade included in his appeal the spectacle of their sacrifice. " They put us to shame. While they rush to the recovery of the Holy Land, we sleep/' 1 Impossible as such a movement might seem in our calculating age, it is attested by too many good witnesses to permit its being relegated to the realm of legend,2 and the trials and death of the children of the thirteenth century will continue to be associated with the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem at the hand of Herod.
§ 55. The Fourth Crusade and the Capture of Constantinople. 1200-1204.
LITERATURE. — NICETAS ACOMIXATUS, Byzantine patrician and grand logothete. During the Crusaders' investment of Constantinople his palace was burnt, and with his wife and daughter he fled to Niciea : Byzan-
1 See Wilken, VI. 83.
2 So Wilken, Sie ist durch die Zeuynisse glaubwurdiger G-eschichtschreiber so fest begrilndet, dass ihre Wahrheit nicht bezweifelt werden kann, p. 72. Rohricht, Hist. Zeitschrift, XXXVI. 5, also insists upon the historical genuineness of the reports.