As many as one hundred thousand people from all walks of life—not just knights, but peasants and priests, women and children—hastened to “take the cross”* and prepare for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.18 Fulcher of Chartres, a priest and chronicler who traveled with the earliest crusaders, wondered at what he saw: “Little by little and day by day the army grew.… You could see a countless number from many lands and of many languages.… Whoever heard of such a mixture of languages in one army?”
