A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

also assassinated in the following year. By that time, Jerusalem had fallen to the Turks without a
struggle; Damascus and Antioch followed. The Byzantine emperor, Michael IV, saw the Turks at
his gates and made an agonised appeal to the pope in Rome for help. Meanwhile, Spain was again
under attack, this time from a fanatical Muslim sect, the Almoravids. So, just as the Christian world
was getting used to the idea that the Saracens were on the run, they learned that things were worse
than ever.
Two men were chiefly responsible for bringing the news to Europe (for in those days of poor
communication, it might have taken years). One was the pope himself Urban II, a Frenchman. He
hurried to France in 1095, asked many bishops to meet him at Clermont, and there, in a great open
field, stood on a platform and told the vast crowd of Turkish atrocities against Christians in the
Holy Land. In fact, there is little evidence that the Turks mistreated Christians; they were far
harsher against their own dissident sects. But it was undoubtedly true that pilgrimages to the Holy
Land had now become much more dangerous. When the pope called for a crusade, hundreds of
noblemen fell on their knees and dedicated themselves and their property to the service of God.
The other great preacher of the crusade was a dirty, flea-infested monk called Peter the Hermit, a
short, dark-haired man who rode around on a donkey. But he possessed what we would now call
‘charisma’, that curious power of swaying a crowd that was later to be Hitler’s most remarkable
asset. Men were doubly eager to listen to him since life was hard and miserable, and the idea of a
visit to the Holy Land seemed a welcome alternative to ploughing for sixteen hours a day.
What followed was something of a grim farce. Most of these ignorant peasants were not quite sure
who they were supposed to fight; they had a vague idea that all foreigners were heathens. In the
Rhineland, thousands of men set out to join a certain Count Emich, who claimed to have wakened
up one morning and found a cross branded on his flesh. Some of the pilgrims had apparently
decided to follow a god-inspired goose, although it is not clear how they recognised its inspiration.
Count Emich felt that butchery may as well begin at home, and ordered his followers to attack the
Jews of Spier - they were to become Christians on pain of death (or, in the case of women, rape).
They went on to Worms and massacred the Jews there for two days, then on down the Rhine,
slaughtering Jews wherever they found them. Many now decided that they had done their Christian
duty and returned home. In Hungary, other crusaders obtained permission of the king to revictual,
provided they behaved themselves. They took this to be permission to pillage the countryside; a
young Hungarian boy was impaled to teach him a lesson. The king declared that if the crusaders
wanted to pass through his domain they must agree to be temporarily disarmed. Then the
Hungarian army got its own back by massacring them. Emich himself was refused permission to
enter Hungary, so the crusaders fought the Hungarians until they were all routed and massacred -
Count Emich managed to escape and went back home.
Peter the Hermit’s army reached Constantinople in August 1096, having stormed a town in
Hungary on the way and killed four thousand inhabitants. The emperor Alexius looked at this
undisciplined rabble with dismay and recognised that the pope had made a mistake in calling the
crusade. His guests proceeded to loot, steal and remove the lead from church roofs. Alexius shipped
them across the Bosphorus as quickly as he could. Once in enemy territory, they decided that it was
time to begin converting the heathen. They stormed into several villages of Greek Christians and
began torturing the inhabitants and roasting babies on spits. Another group captured a castle and
discovered, to their delight, that it was full of provisions. It seemed an ideal headquarters from
which to raid the countryside. A Turkish army surrounded them and made them aware that their
only source of water was a spring below the castle. The crusaders were finally forced to drink the