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This reminds me of when I learned there was no such thing as "The Children's Crusade". As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibl

This reminds me of when I learned there was no such thing as "The Children's Crusade". As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children". Nearly every source we had saying that the crusade involved children came much later, after a few writers referred to the same source with a mistranslation (think reading "me and the boys" as referring to actual children). But people spent 500 years discussing the horrors of the children's crusade without ever really questioning if it happened.

vlovich123 4y ago
Wouldn’t children be useful in terms of doing a bunch of tasks that aren’t worth the time of your soldiers? Ie what was the age of the squires for the soldiers?
- legitster 4y ago
  Sure, but to that extent the "children" that would have been sent would have been considered normal working age. Funnily enough, the word "infantry" comes from the same word as "infant". IE, the young guys on the battle field.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  A squire would generally be between the ages of 14 to 21. A pre-teen boy wouldn't be useful for the core duties of a squire because of a lack of strength for the physical labor involved in handling arms, armor and horses.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    Prior to the modern era, the Royal Navy and others had boys sometimes 12 or younger on ships as servants, sometimes (those boys with higher ranks) being trained to be officers. The age for this sort of thing was gradually raised with time, but even during WW2 there were still minors serving on combat vessels. 134 boy seamen died when the HMS Royal Oak was sunk in 1939.
    - vlovich123 4y ago
      Yeah. I’m not sure where this certainty is coming from considering how youngsters couldn’t be part of the crusades considering they’ve historically always been involved in conflict: > In 1814, for example, Napoleon conscripted many teenagers for his armies.[28] Thousands of children participated on all sides of the First World War and the Second World War.[29][30][31][32] Children continued to be used throughout the 20th and early 21st century on every continent, with concentrations in parts of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.[33] Only since the turn of the millennium have international efforts begun to limit and reduce the military use of children. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military I can see how it would be controversial because an argument could be made that children only are useful when you have some kind of artillery that doesn’t require the strength needed for a bow / crossbow. Still, I wouldn’t discount anything, especially on the purely modern subjective view of “it wouldn’t make financial sense”. Lots of human endeavors and actions don’t make financial sense. It’s not the only axis upon which humans behave. I suspect of the controversy probably arises from the age “child” denotes. Is it a prepubescent human (lets say 10 and under) or a teenager (let’s say 13 and over).
      - LarryMullins 4y ago
        Yeah, I think the above comment is also underselling the strength of pre-teen children, or greatly overestimating the weight of arms, armor, and the strength needed to do things with horses. Children have worked on farms around horses ever since horses were domesticated. A sword or breastplate only weighs a few pounds, a knight could easily employ a pre-teen child to polish his armor, oil his sword, wax his boots, make his breakfast, or any number of other chores a knight doesn't want to bother with personally.
        greedo 4y ago
        Swords and breastplate weigh far more than a "few pounds." Breastplate is close to 20lbs, a two-handed sword up to 10lbs. And that's just a small amount of the armor a knight would have (ignoring the fact that most warriors of the era wore chainmail, not plate).
qwytw 4y ago
> As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children". While a Crusade made up primarily of children is not realistic. The 'People's Crusade' was a thing. During the first Crusade 40 thousand or so poor peasants and various religious fanatics including many women and children departed Northern France a couple of months before the 'proper' army left. It wasn't pretty. Along the way they murdered thousands of Jews, sacked or attempted to sack multiple cities and most of those who survived the journey were eventually massacred by the Turks (according to some that's one of the reasons why the Turks were so ill prepared when the actual Crusader army arrived, they expected that all westerners were poorly armed, disorganized and had no understanding or proper warfare... )
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  That's pretty close to what we think of as the Children's Crusade. It was peasants with little weapons or training
- ekianjo 4y ago
  if I recall correctly most of them were enslaved even before making it to the Holy Land.
  - qwytw 4y ago
    Yeah, they only got as far as Nicaea.
- PakG1 4y ago
  It is really weird reading this, it makes me realize that motivations and rationalizations of people who joined Jan 6 and similar events are really nothing new under the sun.
  - logicchains 4y ago
    The motivations of people who joined Jan 6 are very simple: they thought they had been disenfranchised because of unprecedented anomalies during vote counting on election day, which their opposition made no effort to explain.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
? The whole of medieval europe swarms with stories of surplus children send to fend for themselves as servants and workers abroad. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabenkinder https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabenkinder Whole areas exported there population as soldiers, mercenaries and mining people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard Most of them were like the taliban in afghanistan, interlocked in eternal holy wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War Well obviously the taliban aint real either. A mountainous area, in eternal intertribal warfare.. not actually accepting the nation state.. ridiculous thought. The english soldiers fighting in the independence war against the americans, were partially germans, sold by in debted aristoctrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker_(Prussia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker_(Prussia) This was the reality on the ground, even up until the 2nd worldwar. The only escape for the peasants and althose 2nd,3rd sons who were bound to the land, was to go on pilgrimages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage or to flee to the "new world" were the nicer frontier awaited them. I find the idea of a children crusadd very plausible. The crusader knights surely promised the conquered lands to peasants who would follow them. And pre-pestilence europe was certainly crowded. Idealism is nice. Success self hypnosis is nice. But not believing in the brutality of bygone reality, while some parts of it are still around you, is foolish, and spreading that foolishness, is preparing for it to repeat itself. Work hard and meaningful, if not for yourselves, then to prevent the return of the olden times.
- Bouncingsoul1 4y ago
  wow. almost all of your sources (except the last one, which is quite broad) misses the timeframe of "medival europe".
  - emmelaich 4y ago
    Using times later than medieval reinforces the point though. Hardly irrelevant.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Check out the Wikipedia page to get a summary of the children’s crusade if you haven’t already. It was more akin to a religious-revival/evangelist movement than a military expedition afaict. Still your point stands, very plausible for young teens to be heavily involved in such things.
Eleison23 4y ago
I wrote a research paper in college on the Children's Crusade, and the question I posed to be answered was "how many children participated in it?" It turns out that it was a real phenomenon, and many children did leave home, but being children, practically none of them made it to the Holy Land. The journey for many was much, much shorter. And likewise, for many it was merely a spiritual crusade and they went nowhere but "TO GOD!" as they were heard to shout. There were eyewitnesses and contemporary accounts, and I compiled an impressive list of sources to document what could be gleaned from those accounts from a modern perspective.
- ljf 4y ago
  Sounds like a fascinating paper - would like to read that, or at least more of the sources.
  - Eleison23 4y ago
    [dead]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
IIRC, the Children’s Crusade never made it to the Holy Land. Instead they ended up a port in Europe where some “friendly” people offered to take them to the Holy Land on their ships for free. Turns out they were slavers and the children were taken to Northern Africa and sold as slaves. This story sounds actually plausible as it may not be that far from where the children started to a port city.
- shagmin 4y ago
  That's basically how I remember learning it. The Wikipedia article mentions that also, but only after one of the children who apparently had visions from God and said the Mediterranean Sea would part into two and leave a path (sort of like the Red Sea for Moses) for them to march directly to the Holy Land...when that failed they settled on hitching a ride on ships from people who turned out to be slavers.
- jmugan 4y ago
  Interesting. That's pretty much the plot of Pinocchio.
relaxing 4y ago
Wikipedia is right there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade It's pretty big jump from "it never happened" to "some things happened, just not the way the stories told us."
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Wikipedia is an excellent source to confirm the history books which are full of errors themselves.
  - relaxing 4y ago
    If you have another source, edit it in. There's plenty of debate on the Talk page about different books and journal articles as sources.
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    Do you have any credible sources that contradict the information presented by Wikipedia?
max-ibel 4y ago
Watch the bbc documentary “the crusades” by Terry Jones. I think it is pretty well researched.

vlovich123 4y ago

Wouldn’t children be useful in terms of doing a bunch of tasks that aren’t worth the time of your soldiers? Ie what was the age of the squires for the soldiers?

legitster 4y ago
Sure, but to that extent the "children" that would have been sent would have been considered normal working age. Funnily enough, the word "infantry" comes from the same word as "infant". IE, the young guys on the battle field.
PeterisP 4y ago
A squire would generally be between the ages of 14 to 21. A pre-teen boy wouldn't be useful for the core duties of a squire because of a lack of strength for the physical labor involved in handling arms, armor and horses.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Prior to the modern era, the Royal Navy and others had boys sometimes 12 or younger on ships as servants, sometimes (those boys with higher ranks) being trained to be officers. The age for this sort of thing was gradually raised with time, but even during WW2 there were still minors serving on combat vessels. 134 boy seamen died when the HMS Royal Oak was sunk in 1939.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    Yeah. I’m not sure where this certainty is coming from considering how youngsters couldn’t be part of the crusades considering they’ve historically always been involved in conflict: > In 1814, for example, Napoleon conscripted many teenagers for his armies.[28] Thousands of children participated on all sides of the First World War and the Second World War.[29][30][31][32] Children continued to be used throughout the 20th and early 21st century on every continent, with concentrations in parts of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.[33] Only since the turn of the millennium have international efforts begun to limit and reduce the military use of children. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military I can see how it would be controversial because an argument could be made that children only are useful when you have some kind of artillery that doesn’t require the strength needed for a bow / crossbow. Still, I wouldn’t discount anything, especially on the purely modern subjective view of “it wouldn’t make financial sense”. Lots of human endeavors and actions don’t make financial sense. It’s not the only axis upon which humans behave. I suspect of the controversy probably arises from the age “child” denotes. Is it a prepubescent human (lets say 10 and under) or a teenager (let’s say 13 and over).
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      Yeah, I think the above comment is also underselling the strength of pre-teen children, or greatly overestimating the weight of arms, armor, and the strength needed to do things with horses. Children have worked on farms around horses ever since horses were domesticated. A sword or breastplate only weighs a few pounds, a knight could easily employ a pre-teen child to polish his armor, oil his sword, wax his boots, make his breakfast, or any number of other chores a knight doesn't want to bother with personally.
      - greedo 4y ago
        Swords and breastplate weigh far more than a "few pounds." Breastplate is close to 20lbs, a two-handed sword up to 10lbs. And that's just a small amount of the armor a knight would have (ignoring the fact that most warriors of the era wore chainmail, not plate).

qwytw 4y ago

> As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children". While a Crusade made up primarily of children is not realistic. The 'People's Crusade' was a thing. During the first Crusade 40 thousand or so poor peasants and various religious fanatics including many women and children departed Northern France a couple of months before the 'proper' army left. It wasn't pretty. Along the way they murdered thousands of Jews, sacked or attempted to sack multiple cities and most of those who survived the journey were eventually massacred by the Turks (according to some that's one of the reasons why the Turks were so ill prepared when the actual Crusader army arrived, they expected that all westerners were poorly armed, disorganized and had no understanding or proper warfare... )

FormerBandmate 4y ago
That's pretty close to what we think of as the Children's Crusade. It was peasants with little weapons or training
ekianjo 4y ago
if I recall correctly most of them were enslaved even before making it to the Holy Land.
- qwytw 4y ago
  Yeah, they only got as far as Nicaea.
PakG1 4y ago
It is really weird reading this, it makes me realize that motivations and rationalizations of people who joined Jan 6 and similar events are really nothing new under the sun.
- logicchains 4y ago
  The motivations of people who joined Jan 6 are very simple: they thought they had been disenfranchised because of unprecedented anomalies during vote counting on election day, which their opposition made no effort to explain.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

? The whole of medieval europe swarms with stories of surplus children send to fend for themselves as servants and workers abroad. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabenkinder https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabenkinder Whole areas exported there population as soldiers, mercenaries and mining people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard Most of them were like the taliban in afghanistan, interlocked in eternal holy wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War Well obviously the taliban aint real either. A mountainous area, in eternal intertribal warfare.. not actually accepting the nation state.. ridiculous thought. The english soldiers fighting in the independence war against the americans, were partially germans, sold by in debted aristoctrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker_(Prussia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker_(Prussia) This was the reality on the ground, even up until the 2nd worldwar. The only escape for the peasants and althose 2nd,3rd sons who were bound to the land, was to go on pilgrimages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage or to flee to the "new world" were the nicer frontier awaited them. I find the idea of a children crusadd very plausible. The crusader knights surely promised the conquered lands to peasants who would follow them. And pre-pestilence europe was certainly crowded. Idealism is nice. Success self hypnosis is nice. But not believing in the brutality of bygone reality, while some parts of it are still around you, is foolish, and spreading that foolishness, is preparing for it to repeat itself. Work hard and meaningful, if not for yourselves, then to prevent the return of the olden times.

Bouncingsoul1 4y ago
wow. almost all of your sources (except the last one, which is quite broad) misses the timeframe of "medival europe".
- emmelaich 4y ago
  Using times later than medieval reinforces the point though. Hardly irrelevant.
therealdrag0 4y ago
Check out the Wikipedia page to get a summary of the children’s crusade if you haven’t already. It was more akin to a religious-revival/evangelist movement than a military expedition afaict. Still your point stands, very plausible for young teens to be heavily involved in such things.

Eleison23 4y ago

I wrote a research paper in college on the Children's Crusade, and the question I posed to be answered was "how many children participated in it?" It turns out that it was a real phenomenon, and many children did leave home, but being children, practically none of them made it to the Holy Land. The journey for many was much, much shorter. And likewise, for many it was merely a spiritual crusade and they went nowhere but "TO GOD!" as they were heard to shout. There were eyewitnesses and contemporary accounts, and I compiled an impressive list of sources to document what could be gleaned from those accounts from a modern perspective.

ljf 4y ago
Sounds like a fascinating paper - would like to read that, or at least more of the sources.
- Eleison23 4y ago
  [dead]

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

IIRC, the Children’s Crusade never made it to the Holy Land. Instead they ended up a port in Europe where some “friendly” people offered to take them to the Holy Land on their ships for free. Turns out they were slavers and the children were taken to Northern Africa and sold as slaves. This story sounds actually plausible as it may not be that far from where the children started to a port city.

shagmin 4y ago
That's basically how I remember learning it. The Wikipedia article mentions that also, but only after one of the children who apparently had visions from God and said the Mediterranean Sea would part into two and leave a path (sort of like the Red Sea for Moses) for them to march directly to the Holy Land...when that failed they settled on hitching a ride on ships from people who turned out to be slavers.
jmugan 4y ago
Interesting. That's pretty much the plot of Pinocchio.

relaxing 4y ago

Wikipedia is right there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade It's pretty big jump from "it never happened" to "some things happened, just not the way the stories told us."

ekianjo 4y ago
Wikipedia is an excellent source to confirm the history books which are full of errors themselves.
- relaxing 4y ago
  If you have another source, edit it in. There's plenty of debate on the Talk page about different books and journal articles as sources.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  Do you have any credible sources that contradict the information presented by Wikipedia?

max-ibel 4y ago

Watch the bbc documentary “the crusades” by Terry Jones. I think it is pretty well researched.