What is Children's Crusade?

[klirko]

Playing as Reformed Hellenic Byzantium and there is just a stack of troops sitting in the west of Anatolia doing nothing named the "Children's Crusade".

[Rick]

historicaly they were just that a crusade of children who left europe 2 months before the first crusade. they were all killed or sold into slavery, most before they got past constantinople

[whit]

Saved on mouths to feed though.

[Rick]

Originally posted by whit30:

Saved on mouths to feed though.

lol

[kazaddum]

Originally posted by mrmrmiller:

historicaly they were just that a crusade of children who left europe 2 months before the first crusade. they were all killed or sold into slavery, most before they got past constantinople

I think they made it into asia minor, tho. But you're right regarding the end.
The peasant crusade was the one that did not even reach Constantinople.

Originally posted by whit30:

Saved on mouths to feed though.

That was sort of a reason for the crusades. To get the second and so on sons of royals out of europe (and either get a title for them or getting them killed), so internal fighting would cool down.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by kazaddum:

Originally posted by mrmrmiller:

historicaly they were just that a crusade of children who left europe 2 months before the first crusade. they were all killed or sold into slavery, most before they got past constantinople

I think they made it into asia minor, tho. But you're right regarding the end.
The peasant crusade was the one that did not even reach Constantinople.

Actually the other way round, the people's crusade (lead by Peter the Hermit) reached Constantinople a bit before the regular first crusade and the Byzantine Emperor, quickly ferried them to Asia Minor (not really keen of having several thousand undisciplined armed peasants next to his capital, who already had plundered and looted on their way through the balkans). In Asia Minor the people's crusade was quickly ambushed by a turkish army and mostly killed.

Btw. THATS the one that was shortly before the regular first crusade the children's crusade happened in the early 13th century

The Children's Crusade or Crusades (there where several such movements), made it at most to harbours on the mediteranean (Marseille, Genoa..), the traditional story is that they were there tricked by slave traders who told them they where sent by God to sail them to the holy land, and instead sold them.
Its more likely that the children crusades just dispersed there, some wandering on, some staying stranded in those ports.

[Optimus Princeps]

Originally posted by kazaddum:

Originally posted by mrmrmiller:

historicaly they were just that a crusade of children who left europe 2 months before the first crusade. they were all killed or sold into slavery, most before they got past constantinople

I think they made it into asia minor, tho. But you're right regarding the end.
The peasant crusade was the one that did not even reach Constantinople.

Originally posted by whit30:

Saved on mouths to feed though.

That was sort of a reason for the crusades. To get the second and so on sons of royals out of europe (and either get a title for them or getting them killed), so internal fighting would cool down.

No the point of the Crusades was to protect the pilgrims in the Holy land against Islamic extremism. Population control was simply a plus for all sides.

[Doc]

Originally posted by Alfonzo:

No the point of the Crusades was to protect the pilgrims in the Holy land against Islamic extremism. Population control was simply a plus for all sides.

What extremism? The original goal of the crusades was Alexios Komnenos saying 'hey, those Turks kicked my ass, could you guys come help because we have Jesus in common'? After which it sort of morphed into 'hey wouldn't it be great if we could take the Holy Land', and after that finally succeeded, resulted in 'let's kill the Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem for the hideous crime of not being Christian'.

[SKull]

Originally posted by Alfonzo:

No the point of the Crusades was to protect the pilgrims in the Holy land against Islamic extremism. Population control was simply a plus for all sides.

It most certainly was not. That was the excuse, not the reason. We always get excuses for wars, but never the reasons. So nothing has changed there

Three main reasons for wars:

1: Kill people.
2: Steal things.
3: Force people to do what you want.

Usually it's all three of these. But it is never to protect anyone from "extremism" (I mean seriously, WTF is that exactly anyway? Maybe you're the "extremist"...)

The usual excuses for wars are equally simple:

1: They're evil.
2: We're good.

Variations of these two excuses have been given for every war in human history. Not hard therefore to tell the difference between the reason and the excuse. I don't know how a single person anywhere still gets fooled by this caveman-level propaganda.

[Random]

indeed, we bombed our own towers, lets get us some iraqi oil. just a medieval version.

[Khorps]

Originally posted by SKull:

Originally posted by Alfonzo:

No the point of the Crusades was to protect the pilgrims in the Holy land against Islamic extremism. Population control was simply a plus for all sides.

It most certainly was not. That was the excuse, not the reason. We always get excuses for wars, but never the reasons. So nothing has changed there

Three main reasons for wars:

1: Kill people.
2: Steal things.
3: Force people to do what you want.

first of all, it is not an excuse, humans do not have some deep urge to just declare war on everyone of a different nation, there are reasons for every war whether it's something simple like the need to secure land for cultivation and resources or you're allied with a guy who is allied with a guy who is threatened by a guy because a guy in the guy's nation killed a guy in that guy's nation. the reason for the first crusade was originally to help the eastern romans retake anatolia but it was also a religious war to retake Jerusalem. what Alfonzo mentioned was also a reason.

killing people is not a reason for war, it is a product of it. the khans of mongolia did not wipe out the populations of major cities because just because they wanted to kill people for fun. I would say war is more-so a reason for killing people. civilizations purged cities for some main reasons:

punishment for resisting
to stop possible future rebellion
to make administration more centralized and simpler
cruelty

I can see some other logical reasons such as to make space for colonization of the city

stealing things is a weird way of putting it given that usually armies in a war did not sneak into another nation and take some stuff then leave, that would better be described as a raid and even in a raid you have to fight the owner. in a war what usually happens is you have to fight people, imagine if a burglar went into someone's house knowing there was a 99% chance they'd be in and then physically fought them for prestige or a part of their house. if a burglar goes in and discovers they have a gun they run away, a nation does withdraw and sue for peace when they discover their enemy has an army.

this is the most reasonable thing here because war always is getting people to do what you want, whether it's giving you territory or trade rights. I don't see how this contradicts what Alfonzo said, if the reason for war is that the enemy is discriminating against pilgrims then you're going to war to make them do what you want, that is, to stop discriminating against pilgrims.

Originally posted by SKull:

Usually it's all three of these. But it is never to protect anyone from "extremism" (I mean seriously, WTF is that exactly anyway? Maybe you're the "extremist"...)

The usual excuses for wars are equally simple:

1: They're evil.
2: We're good.

Variations of these two excuses have been given for every war in human history. Not hard therefore to tell the difference between the reason and the excuse. I don't know how a single person anywhere still gets fooled by this caveman-level propaganda.

oh really? what makes you so sure of that? nations go to war over all sorts of things, cities have gone to war over a bucket of treasure, compared to that extremism seems perfectly reasonable even if it's not directly against your state. also unless someone states they have a different definition of a word then go with the dictionary definition.

these excuses are also quite reasonable compared to alot in this post because rarely will a state admit they were wrong in going to war. that would cost them everything they gained, if they didn't gain much if at all or lost what they gained, say like Germany in WW2 then of course they're probably going to apologize but it's not necessarily always going to be the case.

if anything is caveman propaganda it's your post, it is a ridiculously simplistic view of history.

[ApricotMigraine]

Just happened in my game.

Playing Catholic Antioch, got event notifications for it, no option so support or otherwise react to it tho.

Just kept saying that oh, the children are led by this loudmouth kid and oh they're going to Genoa and the mediterranean sea will part to let them through and Muslim evil invaders will reneg on their evilness, put down their arms and let Lord Jesus into their lives.

Obviously the sea did not part and they got stuck first at Genoa, then in Anatolina Thrace.

Next thing I know there's a 130K light infantry (with a few thousand archers thrown in) stack at Antioch and something about angels singing.

I stopped my Iberian invasion just so I could watch what surely should have been a massacre. Instead they carpet bombed Jerusalem and boom! Milo the Messenger of God is a 14 year old King of Jerusalem with Primogeniture Agnatic-Cognatic.

My fault entirely, since I took Egypt in a Crusade earlier and just wiped out a 20k Seljuk's stack in Galicia, so Children's Crusade saw very little opposition. He won't be Crusading far. The only path out for him is through Arabia, but my thruce with Seljuks expires sooner, so I'll envelop Jerusalem.

Still, I broke my alliance with France and betrothed my daughter to Milo instead, because he got a pretty nifty bloodline for his troubles. I can always ask for a Pope's claims to Jerusalem, for now I'm curious to see if there will be more events.

[Random]

I had a female crusader take england, around the year 810. she just appeared out of no where and took wessex who at the time happened to have taken essex, so it was probably targeted at them being the english capital. Eitherway she got the kingdom title off the bat and then proceeded to vassalize/force vassalize everyone in england itself, which was a little concerned for me as I just went germanic in scotland.

I beat her in the end after whittling down all her event troops, and her bloodline was matrillineal so kind of hard to acquire and keep due to male heirs not passing it on meaning i was constantly intermarrying to keep the bloodline alive. Still though, no idea why she was in england at all, like ive seen jerusalem change hands to various kid crusades etc (when one is wiped out by the sunnis another comes in a decade or 2 later).

Basiacally the chick that took england may as well have been jean de'arc, she had some insane traits also, making her basically look like a satan child however it was all positive related along with a ton of buffs like killing a mythical beast and all sorts of junk, she was crowned by the pope also, and apparently originated from a lombard family around ferrara.

[Ragnarök]

The First Crusade had zippo to do with the Latins making a land grab or gaining titles. The entire venture was done under the premise that anything that was taken would be returned to Emperor Alexios as all of the Sultanate of Rum was de jure part of the Byzantine Empire. The Emperor wouldn't even ferry them across the Bosphorous until that word was given making them essentially captives in Constantinople. Many of them had to auction their own lands or the lands of their family members in Europe to even afford the endeavor in the first place.

The Latins only took what they did after Alexios left them for dead at Antioch which they had captured despite being starved throughout the winter, they then held the city against a counter siege, sallied and defeated the Turks.

Applying a modern lense to their motivations is absurd. The Crusaders believed that what they were doing was for the glory of God, this is widely recorded in the source material. Earthly gains didn't even factor in for the majority.

Jerusalem was put to the sword because it resisted, they had to take it by siege. This was standard practice in the Middle Ages for cities that chose to resist. Nothing to do with making room to colonize either, all but a few hundred packed up and sailed back home once it was clear the war was over.

[Khorps]

Originally posted by Ragnarök:

The First Crusade had zippo to do with the Latins making a land grab or gaining titles. The entire venture was done under the premise that anything that was taken would be returned to Emperor Alexios as all of the Sultanate of Rum was de jure part of the Byzantine Empire. The Emperor wouldn't even ferry them across the Bosphorous until that word was given making them essentially captives in Constantinople. Many of them had to auction their own lands or the lands of their family members in Europe to even afford the endeavor in the first place.

The Latins only took what they did after Alexios left them for dead at Antioch which they had captured despite being starved throughout the winter, they then held the city against a counter siege, sallied and defeated the Turks.

Applying a modern lense to their motivations is absurd. The Crusaders believed that what they were doing was for the glory of God, this is widely recorded in the source material. Earthly gains didn't even factor in for the majority.

Jerusalem was put to the sword because it resisted, they had to take it by siege. This was standard practice in the Middle Ages for cities that chose to resist. Nothing to do with making room to colonize either, all but a few hundred packed up and sailed back home once it was clear the war was over.

I don't disagree with any of this, I did list punishment for resisting and wasn't really referring to the siege of Jerusalem when I mentioned colonization

[Alien]

Originally posted by kazaddum:

That was sort of a reason for the crusades. To get the second and so on sons of royals out of europe (and either get a title for them or getting them killed), so internal fighting would cool down.

I see this explanation being given quite often for the crusades ; however let's keep in mind that it's not that clear.

This explanation comes from the fact that we don't know how to explain the popularity of the crusades. Nothing forced noblemen and countrymen to go to war so far from their homes, when they often already had conflicts with their neighbours to deal with.
Officially, the goal for the the crusades was still to "liberate" the holy land. We have no idea what it was unofficially, but some historians theorized that the Pope was tired to see christian leaders fighting eachother. Btw, it's not just the second sons who went to the crusades - that's just a myth. Several kings went themselves, and even if it was the occasion of non-heirs to shine, they weren't the only ones to go.

Personally I prefer the "indoctrination" explanation. Christians had been indoctrinated by the Church for centuries, and nobles they were essentially a military social class. When the Pope, aka the "big holy father of everyone", told them to fight for the Christ, they also had in mind all stories and epics about Arthur or Roland fighting Picts or Sarrasins. Their whole culture pushed them to go to foreign lands for religious reasons. Keep in mind that at this point most of them believed the Holy Land was basically a magical land with miracles everywhere.

Indirectly yes, it made the inter-christian wars in Europe cool down for a bit (but not even for that long - I mean, the building of castles in Europe is in its golden age during the twelth century). But I really don't think they did that on purpose. They were essentially a bunch of fanatics powered by the 12th century Renaissance. It's not unlike the Fremen in Dune.