Chapter Two - The Call to Crusade

CHAPTER TWO

The Call to Crusade

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be a sermon.

Nothing more than a fiery speech in a French field, something to rally the nobles, inspire a few swords, and maybe scare the Muslims a little. What it became… was something else entirely.

The city of Clermont wasn’t exactly a metropolis. Just another mud-soaked medieval town. But on that cold November day in 1095, it might as well have been the center of the world.

Pope Urban II stood before a crowd of bishops, barons, knights, and peasants, his robes heavy with gold, his voice loud enough to split the sky. And what he delivered was not a calm appeal. It was a full-throated, blood-boiling, soul-rattling command from heaven.

“You must go. You must fight. You must take Jerusalem back from the infidels.”

The effect was instant. Apocalyptic.

People dropped to their knees, sobbing.
Others tore their tunics and screamed “Deus Vult!” God wills it!
A few may have fainted. One probably threw up.
Something raw and ancient had just been stirred.

And it didn’t matter if most of them didn’t even know where Jerusalem actually was.

What Urban had just done was pure alchemy. He’d taken centuries of religious anxiety, political chaos, and knightly bloodlust, and forged them into one, singular cause.

The Crusade.

And not just any crusade. This wasn’t your average medieval war. This was a holy war. A battle for the soul of Christendom. An armed pilgrimage. A one-way trip to glory, death, and most importantly, guaranteed admission into heaven.

Urban didn’t mince words. He told them that every sin they had committed, no matter how vile, would be washed clean if they took up the cross. Theft? Cleared. Murder? Forgiven. Adultery? That too.

All you had to do was kill the right people.

It was a theological jailbreak.

Suddenly, thousands of men who had spent their lives cutting each other’s throats in pointless feudal skirmishes now had a divine excuse to do the same thing, but on someone else’s land.

And it wasn’t just knights. It was peasants. Monks. Merchants. Ex-soldiers. Anyone who heard the call felt something. A pull. A hunger. A sense that this was their moment. That history had opened a door and they’d be damned if they stayed home and missed it.

They sewed crosses onto their tunics. They kissed their families goodbye.
And they began to march.

East.

Toward glory, salvation… and a thousand miles of dust, disease, hunger, and death.

The Pope had summoned an army.
What he got was a tsunami.

And at the front of it?
Not kings. Not generals.

But a barefoot monk named Peter the Hermit and a swarm of peasants with no plan, no supplies, and no clue what they were walking into.