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238 General History oj Europe 382. Urban II issues a Call to the First Crusade (1095). The Pope responded, and at a Church council held at Clermont in France (1095) he summoned princes, knights, and soldiers of all ranks to give up their usual wicked business of fighting their Christian brethren in the constant neighborhood warfare ( 342 ) and to turn instead to the aid of their fellow Christians in the East. He warned them that the cruel Turks would, if unchecked, extend their sway still more widely over the faithful servants of the Lord. The proposed campaign appealed to many different kinds of men. The devout, the romantic, and the adventurous were by no means the only classes that were attracted. Syria held out induce- ments to the discontented noble who might hope to gain a prin- cipality in the East, to the merchant who was looking for new enterprises, to the merely restless who wished to avoid his respon- sibilities at home, and even to the criminal who enlisted with a view of escaping the punishment for his past offenses. The faith- ful crusader, like the faithful Mohammedan, was assured of imme- diate entrance to heaven if he died repentant for his sins. 383. Peter the Hermit and his Crusading Army. A few months after Urban issued his summons a motley army of peas- ants, workingmen, vagabonds, and even women and children had been collected under the leadership of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless. These simple folk were confident that the Lord would protect them during their two-thousand-mile journey to the Holy Land and grant them a prompt victory over the in- fidel. But, as might have been expected, a great part fell by the way, and the rest were slaughtered or scattered by the Turks when the disorderly horde reached Asia Minor. 384. The First Crusade (1095). The most conspicuous figures of the long period of the Crusades are not, however, to be found among the lowly followers of Peter the Hermit, but are the knights, in their long coats of flexible armor. A year after the summons issued at Clermont great armies of fighting men had been collected in the West under distinguished leaders the Pope speaks of three hundred thousand soldiers. Among the crusading