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Van Reese, age 10, of Santa Maria, Calif., for his question:

WHAT WAS THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE?

Nowadays we have crusades for charities and other worthy causes. But the famous Crusades of the Middle Ages were armies of Christians marching across Europe to capture Jerusalem. Two of them, sad to say, were Childrens' Crusades, during which thousands of children left home  and never returned.

The Crusades began around 1100 A.D. and lasted, on and off, through about three centuries. Most of them were glamorous events, led by knights in shining armor, with gorgeous pennants flying. They gathered from the countries of Europe and their lofty purpose was to capture the Holy Land from the non Christian Moslems.

As an adult project, this may have been a splendid idea. However, lots of children were carried away by the excitement and wanted to help.  In 1212 A.D., a French boy named Stephen rode a wagon around the countryside and persuaded 30,000 children to join in a Children's Crusade. King Philip refused permission, but they gathered in the port city of Marseilles and began a voyage from which they never returned.

The next year, a German boy named Nicholas was fired with the same idea. He gathered a Children's Crusade of 20,000 and set forth across the Alps to reach Rome. Without proper food or clothing, many perished on the way. In Rome, Pope Innocent III gently instructed the bedraggled children to return to their homes.

Many more perished as they tried to re-cross the cold, cruel Alpine heights. Historians suspect that some of them stopped to rest in villages along the way and were persuaded to stay there. It would be nice to think that this was so, but in any case none of those young crusaders ever returned to his or her original home.

The French children of the first crusade were even more unlucky. In Marseilles they had no money to purchase passage. But several ships offered to sail them to the Holy Land free of charge. Many of the children drowned when two of the ships were lost in a storm. And dishonest sailors sold the rest into slavery.

Some historians suspect that the Germans invented a tale in memory of the tragedy  and perhaps to remind parents that children should not be involved in adult problems. The tale is about the fabulous Pied Piper of Hamelin, who piped a magic tune and led all the children away through a magic mountain ¬whence they never returned.

 

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