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Out of Vendome, amid songs and shouts and tears and applause of the crowd gathered to see the departure, moved the ranks of youths, their eyes dazzled with the wonder and the glory of the leader–their hearts on fire to do his bidding. And in Stephen there burned the zeal of the real leader. In order to keep up the spirit of the host, which fatigue would tend to lessen, he spoke to them often in stirring words. At morning or noon or evening when they halted or encamped and also while they marched, he leaned often from his chariot and spoke encouraging words. Sometimes they thronged around him so closely when he spoke that it was hard work for his guards to protect him from the consequences of their weak homage and as they pushed forward to be near him, many of the weak and small were crushed to death. The veneration for the Boy Prophet was carried to such an extent that all vied with each other to procure a thread of his clothing, a piece of the trappings of his car, while they who had a single hair of his head felt they had a priceless treasure. It is small wonder that this shepherd boy, sensitive as he was to impressions, and duped as he was in the belief that he was anointed by God to a holy calling, and then worshipped by an ever-increasing tide of followers, should have been affected by the rapid change in his circumstances and surroundings. He was evidently possessed of no slight ability to carry out plans, and had much power over people, and his whole nature was aflame with the emotional credulous piety of the Middle Ages. Such was the lad Stephen, shepherd of Cloyes, prophet of the Children’s Crusade, when with pomp and ceremony he led his army out of Vendome.

The pathway of his army was marked by far fewer hardships than those the German children were encountering, for the country through which they travelled was more peopled and the distance they had to go much shorter. They did not have to sleep on rocky heights or on freezing moors, and in the lands through which they passed they encountered only sympathy and interest. So their ranks were scarcely thinned by desertion or death, and yet even so, the trip was none too easy, especially on account of the great heat and drought of the summer, to which Stephen constantly referred as a sure sign from God that the sea was to be dried up for their benefit as he had predicted.

His army did not bear heat, want and exhaustion as well as the sturdier German children did, and in an incredibly short time its ranks lost all discipline and authority, and at last each one of his band of followers became keen only to outwit the others in a search for food, and in endeavours to hide it, they struggled on–a loose, undisciplined mass, until finally Stephen’s authority was entirely lost and the march became only a race for the sea. All original enthusiasm of the army had vanished, and the courage which for a while had been kept up by Stephen’s zeal, and by spirited songs and stories, died away, and Stephen was obliged to make use of constant deceptions in answer to questions as to when the weary march would be over, saying that a few more days or hours would bring them to the sea, and so ignorant of geography were the youths that the falsehoods were not detected. Day by day they awoke with fresh hope which was fed by the sight of a castle or walled town which they thought might be Jerusalem, and night after night they lay down victims of a cruel deception–poor deluded, wilful, little pilgrims! On and on they marched through central France, through Burgundy, and beautiful Provence, and finally from the last range of hills they had to climb, there burst on them a view of the cool, blue sea, and from their ranks there came a mighty cheer! With renewed hope they hurried down to the walls of the city of Marseilles which they saw lying below the hills, an enchanting vision of cool green beauty to their untravelled eyes. Their shouts announced their arrival to the people of the city, who hurried to street corners and to market places, and saw with curious and astonished eyes the strangest of all armies which had ever visited their city before, and young and old listened with wide-eyed astonishment to the tale they told. Three hundred miles they had come, those children, in about a month, and the sea was now to divide that they might pass over in safety to accomplish their holy object!