Description

The People's Crusade was the beginning phase of the First Crusade whose objective was to retake the Holy Land, and Jerusalem in particular, from Islamic rule. In 1095, after the head of the Roman Catholic Church Pope Urban II started to urge faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the People's Crusade was conducted for roughly six months from April to October 1096. It is also known as the Peasants' Crusade, Paupers' Crusade or the Popular Crusade as it was executed by a mainly untrained peasant army prior to the main church-organized crusade. It was led primarily by Peter the Hermit with forces of Walter Sans Avoir. The peasant army of this crusade was destroyed by the forces of the Seljuk Turks under Kilij Arslan at the Battle of Civetot in northwestern Anatolia.