The Childrens Crusade
by CHARLES C. HALL , Ed.D

Most of what we learned of the Crusades and the Crusaders is bathed in romanticism, myth and unvarnished lies. Mackay strips away the shroud and exposes them for what and who they really were.

Charles Mackay writes that "... the Crusaders were but ignorant and savage men, that their motives were bigotry unmitigated, and that their pathway was one of blood and tears."

Mackay's lucid revelations of the many ways by which we blindly follow charlatans, and/or dupe ourselves with delusional thinking which leads us down foolhardy and dangerous paths. Mackay's book* is held in such high esteem by Barnes & Noble that it placed it in its Library of Essential Reading. Few books make that cut. * Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay, 1841.

MacKay tells us that the era in which the Crusades occurred, the masses of people were morbidly superstitious because they lived in poverty and ignorance. "The clergy was all in all," Mackay writes. The clergy kept the serfs complacent and dependent in order to manipulate them to serve their selfish purposes. The serfs were "sheep to be sheared" by both clergy and cruel, feudal lords.

Serfs had no chance of ever rectifying their miserable circumstances due to the entire weight of "society" on their backs. Society as we know it did not exist. There was no political system in all of Europe nor England. Therefore, it was quite easy to raise the stateless hoards of riff-raff to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Serfs as well as nobles were threatened by the clergy of spending eternity in hell should they refuse to make the hazardous journey.

The Crusaders (ten of them plus the Childrens Crusade) were preached by the clergy. Pope Innocent III (the hermit pope) had visited Jeruselem and returned with outlandish tales of the manner in which Christians were treated. With his exalted position and threats of ex-communication from the Church, it was relatively easy to gather a great number of the ignorant serfs to make the treck. As a matter of fact, the serfs saw the experience as a way to break the monotony of their sorry existences. Plus, there were stories that others had enriched themselves through plunder and rapine on the journey.

The clergy had preached every Crusade that they must be attempted in the holy notion that Jeruselem must be retaken from the infidels -- the Muslims. They preached the Crusades throughout the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. The fervor of the nobles and masses was somewhat diminished after the first one, but it was always fairly easy to raise the rabble rousers.

The Pope's and Bishops' message was challenging and threatening which eased the nobles' desire to raise large groups of the restless and superstituous. The Crusaders had almost no chance of wresting the Holy Land from the Muslims due to the overwhelming numbers of the "infidels. "

The battles between the contestants were brutal, bloody and expensive to life and limb.

"In 1213 a more extraordinary body of Crusaders was raised in France and Germany. An immense number of boys and girls, amounting to some estimates to thirty thousand, were incited by the persuasion of two monks to undertake the journey to Palestine. They were no doubt composed of the idle and deserted children who generally swarm in great cities, nurtured by vice and daring and ready for anything, " Mackay writes.

The children were gathered up and sent to Marseilles to be loaded on slave ships and sold in Africa as slaves. The children and Pope Innocent III thought they were going to Palestine, as advertised. The two duplicatous monks' names have never been recorded to history. Half the slave ships fell victims of a severe storm and sank. The remaining ones sold the children into slavery. By a fortunate mistake, some were sent to Genoa where they were fed, counseled and returned to their countries of origin.

"Now what was the grand result of all these struggles?" Mackay asks. "Europe expended millions of her treasure, and the blood of two million of her children ... the feudal chiefs (nobles and knights) came in contact with a civilization far superior to their own and became better members of a new emerging society -- "The Enlightenment, " Mackay writes.

One could say that at the very minimum, some good did result from the senseless evil of the day.

So it goes.