the most crushing
tyranny, material and moral, which a European people had ever
suffered.

THE SIXTH CRUSADE

TREATY OF FREDERICK II WITH THE SARACENS

A.D. 1228

SIR GEORGE W. COX

For six years after the end of the Fifth Crusade--in which
the crusaders, forgetting their vows, instead of delivering
Jerusalem sacked Constantinople--the Christians of Palestine
were protected by a truce with Saphadin, who had succeeded
his brother Saladin in power. This truce was broken by the
action of the Latin Christians, Pope Innocent himself, who
had been the leading spirit of the Fifth Crusade, continuing
to make known his designs for the recovery of the Holy Land.
Between the Fifth and the Sixth Crusades occurred that which
was in some respects the strangest manifestation of the
crusading mania, whereby the inspiration of the Pope and
other preachers of a new crusade carried some fanatics to
the maddest extremes. This movement, or series of movements,
is known as the "Children's Crusade," 1212.

In response to the appeals of certain priests who went about
France and Germany calling upon the children to perform
what, through wickedness, their fathers had failed to do,
and assuring them of miraculous aid and success, fifty
thousand boys and girls, braving parental authority,
gathered together and pervaded both cities and countries,
singing: "Lord Jesus, give us back thy Holy Cross," and
saying, "We are going to Jerusalem to deliver the Holy
Sepulchre." Some of them crossed the Alps, intending to
embark at Italian ports; others took ship at Marseilles.
Many were lost in the forests, and perished with heat,
hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Some, after being stripped by
thieves, were reduced to slavery, and a remnant, in sorrow
and shame, returned to their homes. Of those who sailed,
some were lost by shipwreck, and others sold as slaves to
the Saracens. "No authority," says Michaud, "interfered,
either to stop or prevent the madness; and when it was
announced to the Pope that death had swept away the flower
of the youth of France and Germany, he contented himself
with saying: 'These children reproach us with having fallen
asleep, while they were flying to the assistance of the Holy
Land.'"

Innocent now called a general council of the