Christians of Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was ringing with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By the Germans the summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received with comparative coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelph of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous journey: not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement to follow their example. In England the English were too much weighed down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too much occupied in strengthening their position, and the King, William the Red, more ready to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert than to incur any risks of his own. The great movement came from the lands extending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans alike made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens of thousands, who could not wait for the formation of something like a regular army, hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to their inevitable doom. Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the crusaders had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and women, neither caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends could be attained, insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at once to the Holy City. Mere charity may justify the belief that some even among these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest conviction that their going to Jerusalem would do some good; that the vast majority looked upon their vow as a license for the commission of any sin, there can be no moral doubt; that they exhibited not a single quality needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise is absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance Peter undertook the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter disorder of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long together. At Cologne they parted company; and fifteen thousand under the penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter led onward a host which swelled gradually on the march to about forty thousand.