It was exactly fifty years since Peter the Hermit went through France, telling of the indignities offered to the pilgrims, and the sufferings of the faithful. But in fifty years a vast change had come over the West. Knowledge had taken the place of ignorance. No fear, now, that the rude soldiery would ask as every fresh town rose before their eyes, if that was Jerusalem. There was not a village where some old Crusader had not returned to tell of the long march, the frightful sufferings on the way, the obstinacy of the enemy, the death of his friends. From sea to sea, in France at least, the East seemed as well known as the West, for from every province some one had gone forth to become a great man in Palestine. Fulke from Anjou, Godfrey from Lorraine, Raymond from Toulouse, another Raymond from Poitou, Robert from Normandy, another Robert from Flanders, Hugh le Grand from Paris, Stephen from Blois, and fifty others, whose fame was spread far and wide in their native places, so that men knew now what lay before them. They went, if they went at all, to fight, and defend, not to conquer. The city was Christian; but there was plunder and glory to be got by fighting beyond the city. Bernard proclaimed the Crusade. He preached the necessity of going to the assistance of a kingdom dear to all Christian eyes, tottering to its fall. He called attention to the corruption of morals, which he declared to be worse than any state of things ever known before; he forbore from promising easy conquests and victories where all the blood would be that of the infidel; on the contrary, he told the people that the penances inflicted by God Himself for their sins were the clash of arms, the fatigues and dangers of war, the hard fighting and physical suffering of a campaign under the sun of Syria; and, which is very significant, he appears to have invoked a curse upon all who refused to obey the summons, and follow to the Holy War.