the History Channel's 'Crescent & the Cross' on the Crusades was revealing

In the year 1212 children resolved to do what kings and prices could not. They would march overseas to liberate the Holy Sepulcher. In the province of Orleannais a shepherd boy named Stephen from the village of Cloyes began to preach a doctrine never heard before. He declared that while tending his flock near Cloyes he was approached by a stranger, a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land, who asked him for something to eat. And when Stephen shared his food the pilgrim revealed himself to be Jesus Christ, saying that the innocent of France would succeed where kings had failed. He appointed this boy Stephen to lead the march and gave him a letter addressed to King Philip Augustus who was spending that summer at Saint Denys, burial place of Frankish kings since the time of Dagobert. Here, too, was the Oriflamme kept, holy standard of the realm. Concerning the identity of this stranger who claimed to be our Lord, chronicles report little. Mayhap some heretic thinking to reach the king. By himself he could not gain audience, but it is known how children work marvels and by means of an artless shepherd boy he thought to reach court with his diabolic argument.

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hey set forth about the time of the Pentecost, according to the annal of Cologne, and left behind their plows and carts, abandoned the animals they pastured. Many took up pilgrim costume, wide brimmed hat, palmer's staff, gray coat and a cross sewn to the breast. By repute they numbered twenty thousand. Some leapt and danced like storks prepared to migrate. Thus wrapped in mighty delusions they walked from Cologne to Basle, to Geneva, traversed the Alps near Mount Cenis, by which time half had been lost, murdered, starved, frozen, drowned in raging mountain streams, devoured by famished wolves.

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No one knows what became of Stephen, although an English monk, Thomas of Sherborne, while traveling through France long after the children vanished was held captive for eight days by a militant group of shepherds. This monk spoke of an old man commanding the shepherds who had been a slave in Egypt and promised the Sultan he would lead an army of Christians into bondage just as he had led Frankish children into slavery when he was a child. So he journeyed here and there preaching with no authority, claiming Our Lady had empowered him to conscript herdsmen and ploughmen by virtue of their simplicity to recover the Holy Land. Country folk left their flocks and herds to follow this old man. For, said they, God Almighty hath chosen the weak to confront the strong. Exiles, thieves, rogues, all came swarming. And whoever challenged their passage they would attack. Their master preached a doctrine of anger and venom that attacked various orders and deviated madly from conventional Christian doctrine. At the city of Bourges this all ended when this mob and its leader was attacked and ran down, most all slain, including the mad old man, the rest dispersed back to whence it came.

If the furious old man who led them was Stephen of Cloyes has been much debated. If he surrendered the ghost in boiling surf at Accipitrum, lost his head at Damascus, mayhap lived out his years in Muslim slavery, or if he declined to board the Judas ships and turned back to Cloyes, who shall decide? He with all who followed him had put their trust in Almighty God, expecting to win by faith what mounted knights could not through force of arms. They had gone armed with belief in lieu of steel. For love of our Lord they undertook the voyage, not for wealth or high repute. Those who devote their lives to Him, will they ever be disappointed at His reward?