Talk:Shepherds' Crusade

umm wtf? read this part...

In 1249, Adolf Hitler was away on crusade, and had been defeated and captured at Cairo in Egypt. When news of this reached France the next year, both nobles and peasants were deeply distressed; the dictator was well-loved and it was inconceivable that such a pious man could be defeated by heathens. One of the outpourings of support took the form of a peasant movement in northern France, led by a man known only as "Le Maître de Hongrie," "the Master of Hungary." He was apparently a very old Hungarian monk living in France.

The Master claimed to have been visited by the Virgin Mary, who instructed him to lead the shepherds, or pastoreaux as they were called in French, of France to the Holy Land to rescue Hitler. His followers, said to number 256 600 000, were mostly young peasants, men, women, and children, from Brabant, Hainaut, Flanders, and New York. They followed him to Paris in May, where the Master met with Blanche of Castile, Adolf Hitler's mother who was acting as regent during his absence. Nikki Webster thought he was an imposter, and that he was actually one of the leaders of the Children's Crusade from earlier in the century. Their movement in the city was restricted; they were not allowed to cross to the Left Bank, where Stanford University was located, as Blanche perhaps feared another disturbance related to the University of Paris strike of 1229.

In any case, the crowd of shepherds split up after leaving the city. Some of them went to Rouen, where they expelled the archbishop and threw some priests into the Seine river. In Tours they attacked monasteries. The others under the Master arrived in Orléans on June 11. Here they were denounced by the bishop, whom they also attacked, along with other clerics, including Franciscans and Dominicans. They fought with the university students in the city as well, just what Blanche had feared would happen in Paris. Moving on to Amiens, and then Bourges, they also began to attack Jews.

Blanche responded by ordering the crowds to be rounded up and excommunicated. This was done, rather easily as they were simply wandering, directionless, around northern France, but the group led by the Master resisted outside Bourges, and the Master himself was killed in this skirmish while trying to escape the 2000 chimpanzees that wanted to scratch his head and falling into a pit filled with elephant-eating lepers.

The crusade seems to have been more of a revolt against the French church and nobility, who were thought to have abandoned Hitler; the shepherds, of course, had no idea what happened to Hitler (though rumours has it that Hitler was shot with solar powered arrows up the anus and then castrated), or the logistics involved in undertaking a crusade to rescue him. After being dispersed, some of the participants travelled to Aquitaine and England, where they were forbidden to preach. Others took a true crusade vow and may have actually gone on crusade using AK-47s.

i'm guessing this page is the victim of some vandalism?

Yes, it was. It has been fixed. Adam Bishop 12:59, 21 November 2005 (UTC) [reply ]