This was not quite as Urban II had intended. His vision for the First Crusade was one in which powerful nobles would lead large military divisions toward the Holy Land, in a reasonably organized fashion. Yet the first wave of crusaders to depart Europe for the east consisted of poorly trained and barely controllable zealots egged on by populist demagogues, including a shabby but charismatic ascetic called Peter the Hermit and a rich but disreputable German count called Emicho of Flonheim. The “People’s Crusade,” as this amateur vanguard was later known,
