The Children's Crusade was possibly the most extraordinary episode in the history of the crusades. The pueri (children, youngsters) of 1212 set out to recover Jerusalem and the True Cross in medieval Europe's first youth movement. Over the centuries their unarmed crusade has been imagined and re-imagined. The first full-length modern study in English of this memorable popular crusade sheds new light on its history and offers new perspectives on its supposedly dismal outcome. Its richly re-imagined history and mythistory is explored from the thirteenth century to the late-twentieth century. Its mythistorians include: Matthew Paris, Voltaire, D'Annunzio, Brecht, Runciman, Andrzejewski, Bernard Thomas, Kurt Vonnegut and Agatha Christie.

Introduction -- History: the Pope and the Pueri -- History: birthpangs of the children's crusade -- History: charisma -- History: on the road -- History: the great migration -- Mythistory: the shape of a story -- Memory: the echo of the centuries-fourteenth to eighteenth -- Memory: the echo of centuries-nineteenth to twentieth.