Each year,[811] two regular voyages of armed and unarmed pilgrims took place, from Europe to the Holy Land: these were called the _passagium Martii_, or the spring passage; and the _passagium Johannis_, or the summer passage which occurred about the festival of St. John. A continual succour was thus afforded to Palestine: and that the spirit of crusading was by no means extinct in Europe is evinced by the extraordinary fact of a crusade of children[812] having been preached and adopted towards the year 1213. Did this fact rest alone upon the authority of Alberic of Three Fountains Abbey, we might be permitted to doubt its having taken place, for his account is, in several particulars, evidently hypothetical; but so many coinciding authorities exist,[813] that belief becomes matter of necessity. The circumstances are somewhat obscure; but it seems certain that two monks, with the design of profiting by a crime then too common, the traffic in children, induced a great number of the youth of both sexes to set out from France for the Holy Land, habited as pilgrims, with the scrip and staff. Two merchants of Marseilles,[814] accomplices in the plot, as it would seem, furnished the first body of these misguided children with vessels, which, of course, were destined to transport them for sale to the African coast. Several of the ships were wrecked on the shores of Italy, and every soul perished, but the rest pursued their way and accomplished their inhuman voyage. The two merchants, however, were afterward detected in a plot against the emperor Frederic, and met the fate they deserved. Another body, setting out from Germany, reached Genoa after immense difficulties; and there the Genoese, instead of encouraging their frantic enthusiasm, wisely commanded them to evacuate their territory; on which they returned to their homes, and though many died on the road, a great part arrived in safety,[815] and escaped the fate which had overtaken the young adventurers from France.