In 1096, a small, grubby, angry man on a donkey led twenty thousand men and women - most of them half-armed peasants - over the Straits of Bosphorus into Anatolia. The angry man, Peter the Hermit, had led this rabble across Europe. He'd blagged transport across the Straits from the Emperor of Constantinople. He and his mob were the vanguard of the First Crusade.
'Vanguard' is another way of saying 'they didn't wait for the actual army' - despite warnings from the Emperor and other wiser heads, who could plainly see what was going to happen. Twenty thousand half-starved peasants were about to take on the Seljuk Turks, the warrior dynasty which had conquered Persia, and that was never going to end well. Peter's lot - the 'People's Crusade' - did conquer a couple of cities, thanks to numbers and the element of surprise. Possibly the element of bewilderment. I can't imagine what the Turks thought what this rabble of idiots was trying to achieve. In any case, the Seljuks got over their bewilderment soon enough, set up an ambush, and comprehensively kicked Crusader arse. A few thousand People's Crusaders survived and fled back to Constantinople.
Peter survived too, of course, as his kind generally do. In fact he lived at least another twenty years. He'd won enough prestige that he served as a diplomat and adviser to the leaders of the First Crusade proper. He made it as far as Jerusalem before he went home. He lived out the rest of his life running a monastery in the Ardennes. It was a pretty good life.
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