Departure of the People's Crusade

Timeline

1. 1096Cologne · RhinelandPeter the Hermit preached across the German lands at Cologne, calling the faithful to join the crusade. Large numbers of French and German commoners and minor knights gathered there, forming the core of the People's Crusade, with numbers estimated in the tens of thousands.
2. c. 1096Cologne · RhinelandThe French knight Walter Sans Avoir, unwilling to wait for Peter to finish preaching, led several thousand French crusaders out of Cologne first, after Easter, marching east along the Rhine, Neckar, and Danube, parting ways with Peter's main force.
3. c. 1096Cologne · RhinelandPeter the Hermit led some twenty thousand followers out of Cologne, marching east along the traditional Rhine and Danube routes. Some chose to travel by boat down the Danube, while the main body crossed the Hungarian frontier overland, as the People's Crusade's large-scale eastern expedition got fully under way.
4. c. 1096Rhineland · RhinelandAfter Peter's departure, German nobles and preachers such as Gottschalk and Emicho von Flonheim led their followers east or attacked Jewish communities along the Rhine. Though nominally crusaders, these follow-up bands triggered large-scale massacres in the Rhineland, known as the Rhineland massacres.