Outside of youth hockey, soldiering is one of the most brutal and unethical things you can force a child to do. In the West, conflict zones where children are pressed into military service seem like something that happens far away, in some other, \u201cthird\u201d world.<\/p>\n
But, if you let your cynicism guide you, you\u2019ll know that we did all that shit, too. And I\u2019m not just talking about that time your grandpa lied about his age to fight in World War II. I\u2019m talking about the year 1212 CE, when an army of youths vowed to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims.<\/p>\n
This is the story of the Children\u2019s Crusade<\/strong>\u2014when 20,000 kids were asked, \u201cif all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?\u201d and all of them answered \u201cYes. God wills it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Back in 1187 CE, Saladin, the Muslim Sultan, captured Jerusalem from the Christians. Jerusalem is very important, of course, for reasons I was likely explained in Catechism school, but can no longer recall. That\u2019s OK\u2014the important thing is that, once upon a time, Jerusalem was a hotly contested piece of real estate, coveted by all the Abrahamic religions. I know this is hard for modern people to imagine, but do your best.<\/p>\n Anyway, the Christians did as Jesus surely would have, and mobilized paramilitary forces under the banner of new \u201cCrusades\u201d to take the land back. These were the Third and Fourth Crusades, and they failed so miserably that neither of them ever reached Jerusalem.<\/p>\n The Western Christians weren\u2019t happy. They\u2019d supported these retaliatory Crusades with blood and taxes, and they wanted a win. But the Third Crusade didn\u2019t even get to Jerusalem, and the Fourth Crusade was distracted by the shiny Constantinople, and attacked that city instead. Neither of these approaches brought the West any closer to taking back Jerusalem. It was time for militant Christian zealots to think outside the bun.<\/p>\n Two young bucks\u2014the French Stephen of Cloyes and the German Nicholas of Cologne\u2014saw that using adult men just didn\u2019t work. What the next Crusade needed wasn\u2019t battle-hardened, fully grown veterans. What it needed was children who could give the Crusades a really fresh spin. <\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n It all started when the aforementioned Stephen of Cloyes, a young French shepherd, was hand delivered a letter from\u2014get this\u2014the man-God-ghost himself, Jesus Christ. JC\u2019s letter instructed Stephen to travel around Europe and proselytize for a new Crusade, gathering followers as he went.<\/p>\n A couple of things that seem odd about this: For one, weird that Jesus would preach for violence, but it doesn\u2019t seem like folks back then saw any irony in this. Another thing: Stephen of Cloyes could read? A young shepherd? In 1212 CE? I call bullshit. You don\u2019t need to read to bully sheep around a grassy field.<\/p>\n Stephen somehow passed his story along to King Philip II of France, who was a good enough sport to hear the young shepherd out, but wasn\u2019t buying any of it. Stephen was a pushy kid, though, so he went ahead and gathered up a load of (mostly) child followers, without the king\u2019s help.<\/p>\n At the same time, the other boy\u2014Nicholas\u2014was in Cologne, Germany, doing pretty much the same thing. The Church had already done much of the legwork in both of these regions, hyping the locals for new Crusades. Medieval sources are unclear as to why these two areas appeared to produce kid crusaders in the same year. It is<\/em> a hell of a coincidence. But they don\u2019t call them the \u201cDark Ages\u201d for nothing. You\u2019ll just have to revel in the mystery there. <\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Look, I\u2019m just going to blow through the climax here without any fanfare: the Child Crusades didn\u2019t work. Also, they weren\u2019t technically<\/em> Crusades, since they lacked any official support from the Pope.<\/p>\n In fact, if the Pope doesn\u2019t ask you to go fighting in the Middle East, then it\u2019s not a Crusade. And, while the Church has a lot of bad history to atone for, this Children\u2019s Crusade doesn\u2019t appear to be an official ecclesiastical fuckup. Say what you will about Church violence, but they at least knew to hire professional (or, at least post-pubescent) soldiers when they needed to spill some blood. Typically, they didn\u2019t even like using full-grown commoners, who weren\u2019t considered skilled, disciplined, or smart enough for martial ventures.<\/p>\n So, if this Children\u2019s Crusade wasn\u2019t funded by the Church, who bankrolled it? Well, that\u2019s the thing, really: nobody did. Some 20,000 \u201cchildren\u201d just started walking from Germany and France with the goal of crossing the Italian alps, entering the Italian Peninsula, and taking ships from Genoa across the Mediterranean and into the Holy Land.<\/p>\n Of course, that was just the mobilization plan. You might be wondering, then, what the kids would do once they arrived at Jerusalem. How would they fight? Where would they get weapons and armor? Supplies? Training? Listen: don\u2019t worry about it. They never made it nearly that far.<\/p>\n Adults aren\u2019t always great planners, but kids are even worse. There simply was no plan\u2014no realistic plan, anyway. Not for any of it. This horde of poor kids just walked their way from their homes to the Italian Alps. They had no money, instead relying on charity. Unfortunately, charity was in short supply. By the time the child army passed through the Alps, loads of them were dead from hunger.<\/p>\n The survivors, upon reaching Genoa, found that the Genoese weren\u2019t so keen to help support this \u201cCrusade\u201d by offering free boat rides across the sea. Would they have done it for a bunch of kitted-out men-at-arms who actually stood a chance of pushing Saladin out of Jerusalem? Maybe. A bunch of poor, starving kids, though? Nah. The Children\u2019s Crusade would end there, in Genoa. The whole thing had lasted only a few months, from May to September 1212. <\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Again, thanks to the fog of time and legend, we don\u2019t know exactly what happened to all the kids who made it into Italy, but didn\u2019t make it to the Levant. Many, no doubt, just started walking right back where they came from. A number of those probably died on the way home, just as many had done on the first leg of the trip south.<\/p>\n For the rest, the medieval version of the story\u2014one that includes heaping amounts of conflicting rumors and legends\u2014is that many were sold into slavery in the Mediterranean. If that happened, then at least some of these young crusaders did technically make their way to the Levant, only they arrived as slaves, rather than soldiers.<\/p>\nThe Children’s Crusade, In Sum: Never Send a Man to do a Child\u2019s Job<\/h3>\n
Kid A(rmy) of the Children’s Crusade<\/h3>\n
Child \u201cCrusade\u201d Fails, Nobody Surprised<\/h3>\n
The Lost Boys of the Children’s Crusade\u2014Well, Lost Pueri<\/i><\/h3>\n