the English were
too much weighed down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too
much occupied in strengthening their position, and the King, William the
Red, more ready to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert
than to incur any risks of his own. The great movement came from the
lands extending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans
alike made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens
of thousands, who could not wait for the formation of something like a
regular army, hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to
their inevitable doom.

Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the
crusaders had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and
women, neither caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends
could be attained, insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at
once to the Holy City. Mere charity may justify the belief that some
even among these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest
conviction that their going to Jerusalem would do some good; that the
vast majority looked upon their vow as a license for the commission of
any sin, there can be no moral doubt; that they exhibited not a single
quality needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise is
absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance Peter
undertook the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man
with some pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter
disorder of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long
together. At Cologne they parted company; and fifteen thousand under the
penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter
led onward a host which swelled gradually on the march to about forty
thousand.

Another army or horde of perhaps twenty thousand marched under the
guidance of Emico, Count of Leiningen, a third under that of the monk
Gottschalk, a man not notorious for the purity or disinterestedness of
his motives. Behind these came a rabble, it is said, of two hundred
thousand men, women, and children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or,
as some have supposed, by banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious
faith of Gnostics and Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was
painted. In this vile horde no pretence was kept up of order or of
decency. Sinning freely, it would seem, that grace might abound, they
plundered and harrie