What if I told you that 80,000 ordinary people once decided to walk to Jerusalem and fight professional armies with farming tools? In this episode, Michael Stevens breaks down the People's Crusade of 1096 - one of history's most tragic examples of good intentions meeting brutal reality. 🎯 What You'll Learn: • How Pope Urban II's speech accidentally triggered a peasant army he never intended to create • Why 40,000 desperate Europeans believed they could walk 2,000 miles and conquer the Holy Land • The shocking economics behind selling everything you own for a religious war that hadn't started yet • What happens when untrained civilians face battle-hardened Byzantine and Turkish forces 👤 Perfect for: curious listeners who want to understand how mass movements can spiral completely out of control. 📍 Chapters: [00:00] Michael Stevens introduces the disaster that preceded the "real" crusade [01:45] Pope Urban II's speech backfires spectacularly [04:15] Peter the Hermit builds an army of the desperate [06:30] The fatal math: 40 days to Jerusalem, 40,000 believers [09:00] When peasants meet professional soldiers [11:15] Why only 3,000 made it and what that meant for Europe This isn't just medieval history. Stevens connects the People's Crusade to modern mass movements, showing how desperation plus charismatic leadership creates predictable disasters. You'll recognize the patterns playing out today. 🔔 Never miss an episode: Follow When Rome Burns on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. New episodes drop daily, and next we're covering what happened when the actual knights finally showed up. Your next favorite historical disaster is one tap away. 🔍 Topics: First Crusade, People's Crusade, Peter the Hermit, medieval Europe, religious warfare

Stream the full show at When Rome Burns

------------ Keywords: operation citadel, australian history, historical disasters, political meltdowns, catherine the great, gold standard, world war 2

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