The Children's Crusade: When Faith Led Kids to Their Deaths

In 1212, thousands of children and young people across France and Germany became convinced that God had chosen them to succeed where adult Crusaders had failed. Led by charismatic young preachers - a French shepherd boy named Stephen and a German boy named Nicholas - tens of thousands of children abandoned their homes and marched toward the Mediterranean, believing the sea would part for them like the Red Sea and they would walk to Jerusalem.

The French contingent, led by 12-year-old Stephen of Cloyes, reached Marseilles where the sea refused to part. Two merchants offered to transport them by ship to the Holy Land for free. Instead, the ships sailed to Algeria where the children were sold into slavery. Some accounts say seven ships carried thousands of child ...