Peter the Hermit preached a lot, so unsurprisingly one of his sermons caught the attention of count Emicho von Leiningen (1050-1117). He recruited both peasants and knights. The plan was to take Jerusalem, but instead they started to baptize and murder Jews. To name a few cities, where these pogroms happened, are Metz, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. Those Jews, who refused to turn to Christianity, were robbed and then killed. They reached Hungarian border, after murdering Jews a long time. Fearing for their own Jewish population, Emicho was denied passage through the border. In response they tried to take the castle of Meseberg but failed miserably. They lost almost everybody in that attempt.
Now Peter, too, was on his way towards Constantinople. There they could freshen up and go take Jerusalem. Sadly, they were all clueless on the distance to Jerusalem. Suffice it to say they were hungry and terrorized local Jews to get money out of them. When they finally made it past Constantinople, they were slaughtered by the Muslims. Only Peter and a few of his men managed to survive, and they returned to Constantinople to await the nobles. The period when the peasants marched towards Constantinople, and getting massacred afterwards, is called the People’s Crusade. It didn’t last long, but it devastated the Eastern Europe Jewish population and its peasants. But on the bright side thanks to these pious souls it was easier for the nobles to march towards Jerusalem. Muslims didn’t think much of these newcomers. They sent only a small force to deal with them, because their previous foes were easy targets for them, and the Muslims assumed this time would be no different. Little did they know that newcomers were no mere peasants playing at war this time, but actual knights and nobles, whom war is no new thing.
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