With the first warm days of early spring the impatience of the people was no longer to be restrained. Refusing to wait while the chiefs of the Crusade organised their forces, laid down the line of their march, and matured their plans, they flocked in thousands to the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, clamouring for immediate departure. Most of them were on foot, but those who by any means could raise the price of a horse came mounted. Some travelled in carts drawn by oxen. Their arms were such as they could afford to buy. Every one, however, brandished a weapon of some kind; it was either a spear, or an axe, or sword, or even a heavy hammer. Wives, daughters, children, old men, dragged themselves along with the exultant host, nothing doubting that they too would be permitted to share the triumph, to witness the victory. From the far corners of France, from Brittany, from the islands, from the Pyrenees, came troops of men whose language could not be understood, and who had but one sign, that of the Cross, to signify their brotherhood. Whole villages came _en masse_, accompanied by their priests, bringing with them their children, their cattle, their stores of provision, their household utensils, their all; while the poorest came with nothing at all, trusting that miracles, similar to those which protected the Israelites in the Desert, would protect them also—that manna would drop from heaven, and the rocks would open to supply them with water. And such was their ignorance, that as the walls of town after town became visible on their march, they pressed forward, eagerly demanding if that was Jerusalem. Who should be the leader of the horde of peasants, robbers, and workmen who came together in the spring of 1096 on the banks of the Meuse? Among all this vast host there were found but nine knights: Gaultier Sans Avoir—Walter the Penniless—and eight others. But there was with them, better than an army of knights, the great preacher of the Crusade, the holy hermit and worker of miracles, Peter. To him was due the glory of the movement: to him should be given the honour of leading the first, and, it was believed, the successful army. By common acclamation they elected Peter their leader. He, no less credulous than his followers, accepted the charge; confident of victory, and mounted on his mule—the mule which had borne him from town to town to preach the war—clothed in his monastic garb, with sandals on his feet and a cross in his hand, he led the way. Under his command were a hundred thousand men, bearing arms, such as they were, and an innumerable throng of women, old men, and children. He divided this enormous host into two parts, keeping the larger under his own orders, and sending on the smaller as an advance-guard, under the knight Walter.