Children's Crusade 1212 - Marseille / Arles Slave Traders Cash In on Religious Fanaticism / Route Map & Lessons to be Learned

FOREIGN TRADERS WERE BUSY IN PROVENCE IN 1212

Marseille and Arles are cities located in the southern part of France known as Provence. Arles is located on the Rhône river close to its mouth. Marseille is France's largest port, and the second largest city in the country.

"In the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries Western Europe had little to offer foreign traders except slaves, yet its privileged classes craved the luxuries and exotic goods which could be bought in the East. Muslim or Jewish traders established in Marseilles and Garde Freinet offered good prices for slaves." (Robin Blackburn, The making of New World slavery: from the Baroque to the modern, 1492-1800, Verso, 1997, p 43)

TRAFFICKING IN FOREIGN SLAVES

The traders discovered that the more successful they were, the more inventory they needed. And getting it was not always easy. And so they took to importing slaves: "also arriving at Verdun for onward transshiprnent to Spain or North Africa were Slavs taken prisoner in the East." (Robin Blackburn, The making of New World slavery: from the Baroque to the modern, 1492-1800, Verso, 1997, p 43) Verdun is in France close to the borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany, and is marked by "A" on the map at right.

THE MARKET WANTED LIGHT-HAIRED SLAVES

Mr. Jacob Golan runs three "factories with slave labor" (per Yitzhak Tyler, the chief of undercover activities for the Haifa police cited in Michael Specter, Contraband Women, New York Times, January 11, 1998) "Israelis love Russian girls. They are blonde and good-looking and different from us." (Jacob Golan cited in Michael Specter, Contraband Women, New York Times, January 11, 1998)

Arab buyers had a similar opinion. The Arab term Saqlab (or Sclav), meant a fair-headed slave. (Omeljan Pritsak, The Origin of Rus', Volume One - Old Scandinavian Sources other than the Sagas, Harvard University Press, 1981, p 7)

AND THE MARSEILLE TRADERS RESPONDED

The Jewish Radaniya was based out of the Marseille area. Their business model involved trafficking in light-haired slaves from the Ukraine area, and selling them around the known world, but especially to the Islamics in North Africa. They traded silver coins struck in Islamic territories for the slaves. (Omeljan Pritsak, The Origin of Rus', Volume One - Old Scandinavian Sources other than the Sagas, Harvard University Press, 1981, p 25)

AN INTERNATIONAL NETWORK

"During the ninth century, the Persian geographer lbn Khurradadhbih described the prodigious trading network of Jews from Radhan, a neighborhood of Baghdad, who journeyed across North Africa and the whole Eurasian landmass from France and Spain in the west to India and China in the east, crisscrossing the continents from north to south. These Radhanites had learned many of the languages spoken within this vast territory and traded in commodities as diverse as swords, brocade, eunuchs, and slaves from the west, to spices. perfumes, and precious woods from the east. The Radhanites were fortunate to be able to rely on the local knowledge of Jews living across both continents.

Middle Eastern Jews continued to participate extensively in international trade during the medieval period" (Myer Samra, Migration Patterns of Iraqi Jews in M. Avrum Ehrlich, Editor, Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora - Origins, Experiences, and Culture, ABC-CLIO, 2008, p 354)

Hence the name Radaniya used by Pritsak. (Pritsak, supra) It comes from the Jewish quarter in Baghdad. (Samra, supra) And their network? From France and Spain way over to the east. (Samra, supra) And the commodity? "Slaves from the west". (Samra, supra) And who helped them get the slaves? "Radhanites were fortunate to be able to rely on the local knowledge of Jews living across both continents". (Samra, supra)

"This is a sophisticated, global operation. It's evil, and it's successful because the money is so good. These men pay $500 to $1,000 for a Ukrainian or Russian woman. Do you understand what I am telling you? They will buy these women and make a fortune out of them." (Yitzhak Tyler, the chief of undercover activities for the Haifa police cited in Michael Specter, Contraband Women, New York Times, January 11, 1998)

LOWERING THE COST OF INVENTORY - AND "SOURCING" PRIME LIGHT-HAIRED CHILDREN FROM GERMANY

"During the course of the wars against the Albigensians, crusade preaching became a constant fact of life in northern France and parts of Germany." (Thomas F. Madden, The new concise history of the Crusades, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, p 136) The Marseille traders took notice. And so, "in early 1212, a young man named Nicholas from Cologne either initiated or quickly became the focus of a popular movement that swept through the Rhineland. Nicholas had in mind to go to Jerusalem and rescue the Holy City from the Muslims. Under divine instruction, he began walking south to the sea, which he believed would open up before him, allowing him to walk to Palestine. Tens, then hundreds, then thousands joined him in his march." (Thomas F. Madden, The new concise history of the Crusades, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, p 136) Thousands of? Light-haired children. "These Radhanites had learned many of the languages spoken within this vast territory and traded in commodities as diverse as swords, brocade, eunuchs, and slaves from the west". (Samra, supra)

"Contemporary rabbinical responses provide further confirmation of the role played by Jews in the trade in children and young people as well as in the profitable transformation of boys into eunuchs. These texts reveal that anyone who engaged in such trade was aware of the risks involved, because any person caught and arrested in possession of castrated slaves in Christian territories was decapitated by order of the local authorities". (Ariel Toaff, Pasque di sangue, translated by Gian Marco Lucchese and Pietro Gianetti located at http://www.bloodpassover.com/, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2007, p 129) Dr. Toaff is "Professor of Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Toaff has written Wine and Bread: A Jewish Community in the Middle Ages (1989; translated into English and French), Jewish Monsters: The Imaginary Jew from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age (1996) and Eating Jewish Style. Jewish Cooking in Italy from the Renaissance to the Modern Age (2000)." (Ariel Toaff, Pasque di sangue, translated by Gian Marco Lucchese and Pietro Gianetti located at http://www.bloodpassover.com/, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2007, Back Cover)

"This is a sophisticated, global operation. It's evil, and it's successful" (Yitzhak Tyler)

At the same time, in northern France (the light-haired part of the country), the same "instruction" was at work. But it was not "divine instruction", as we shall see.

YOUNG JEW GETS A SPECIAL LETTER

"The leader of the French children was a 12-year-old boy named Stephen, who in May 1212 traveled with some companions from his village near Chartres to the court of King Philip Augustus at Saint-Denis. Stephen carried a letter he claimed had come from Christ himself, bidding Stephen to preach a new crusade."

MARKETING AND PROMOTION - MADISON AVENUE 1212

"He began to travel around France, exhorting children to join him on a great expedition to the

THE JEWISH DREAM

east, promising them that the sea would part before them - just as it had for Moses and the Israelites when fleeing from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan - and they would be able to walk dry-shod to Palestine. The many youngsters who were eager to follow his lead gathered at Vendôme in late June, as Stephen had commanded, and from there they set out south for Marseilles." "there were up to 30,000 children and their hangers-on marching down the byways of France. Led by Stephen in his horse-drawn cart, the children proceeded by way of Tours and Lyon". (James Harpur, The Crusades: The Two Hundred Years War : the Clash Between the Cross and ...?, The Rosen Publishing Group, 2008, p 82)

CHILDREN ON THE MOVE

In both Germany and France, well-financed boys made a splash. They had plenty of money to travel around the country. Stephen had his "horse-drawn cart". (per Harpur, supra) But no job, because he was 12 years old. So, did Stephen and Nicholas have support staff along? Someone to pay the bills? Of course they did. There were those "hangers-on" (per Harpur, supra). They were along on the trip, and as the pilgrims progressed, some children were KIDNAPPED!

PICKED OFF ALONG THE WAY

"Children originally numbering 20,000 were led by Nicholas to various locations in Italy with the hope of continuing to the Holy Land. By the time they arrived their number had been greatly diminished by hunger, exposure (they had crossed the Alps), kidnapping, and murder. In Italy their hopes never materialized and, although it would appear that some reached the Holy Land, they were likely taken into slavery and prostitution." (Evan Connel, Deus lo Volt! Chronicle of the Crusades, http://www.focusdesign.com/portfolio/crusades/pages/children.htm) "This is a sophisticated, global operation. It's evil, and it's successful because the money is so good. These men pay $500 to $1,000 for a Ukrainian or Russian woman. Do you understand what I am telling you? They will buy these women and make a fortune out of them." (Yitzhak Tyler, the chief of undercover activities for the Haifa police cited in Michael Specter, Contraband Women, New York Times, January 11, 1998)

PREYED ON BY SLAVE TRADERS WHO ACCOMPANIED THE GROUPS

"They were accompanied by many adults". (Jonathan Riley-Smith, The crusades: a history,
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, p 172) But these adult "hangers-on" were not doing a very good job of protecting the children. "That Christian Europe of the Middle Ages feared the Jews is an established fact. Perhaps the widespread fear that Jews were scheming to abduct children, subjecting them to cruel rituals, even antedates the appearance of stereotypical ritual murder which seems to have originated in the 12th century. As for myself, I believe that serious consideration should be given to the possibility that this fear was largely related to the slave trade, particularly in the 9th and 10th centuries, when the Jewish role in the slave trade appears to have been preponderant.

ABDUCTIONS WERE FREQUENT

During this period, Jewish merchants, from the cities in the valley of the Rhône, Verdun, Lione, Arles and Narbonne, in addition to Aquisgrana, the capital of the empire in the times of Louis the Pious [Louis I]; and in Germany from the centres of the valley of the Rhine, from Worms, Magonza and Magdeburg; in Bavaria and Bohemia, from Regensburg and Prague - were active in the principal markets in which slaves (women, men, eunuchs) were offered for sale, by Jews, sometimes after abducting them from their houses. From Christian
Europe the human merchandise was exported to the Islamic lands of Spain, in which there was a lively market. The castration of these slaves, particularly children, raised their prices, and was no doubt a lucrative and profitable practice.

JEWISH MERCHANTS SOURCING SLAVES FOR THE MUSLIM MARKET

The first testimony relating to the abduction of children by Jewish merchants active in the trade flowing into Arab Spain, comes down to us in a letter from Agobard, archbishop of Lyon in the years 816-840. The French prelate describes the appearance at Lyons of a Christian slave, having escaped from Cordoba," who had been abducted by a "Leonese Jewish merchant twenty four years before, when he was a child, to be sold to the Moslems of Spain. His companion in flight was another Christian slave having suffered a similar fate after
being abducted six years before by Jewish merchants at Arles. The inhabitants of Lyons confirmed these claims, adding that yet another Christian boy had been abducted by Jews to be sold into slavery that same year. Agobard concludes his report with a comment of a general
nature; that these were not considered isolated cases, because, in every day practice, the Jews continued to procure Christian slaves for themselves and furthermore subjecting them to "infamies such that it would be vile in itself to describe them"". (Ariel Toaff, Pasque di sangue, translated by Gian Marco Lucchese and Pietro Gianetti located at http://www.bloodpassover.com/, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2007, p 129)

MOVING TOWARDS THE DUNGEONS -- VOLUNTARILY

"Women often start their hellish journey by choice". Michael Specter, Contraband Women, New York Times, January 11, 1998)

And so the two columns of children progressed southwards. Not towards Jerusalem, but rather in the direction of Marseille. They were accompanied by "hangers-on", but no guardians, and so their numbers were thinned considerably by kidnapping and murder along the way. (Connel, supra)

But sooner or later, what was left of the columns arrived in the Marseille area. If they had been traveling towards Palestine, the route would have gone through Germany, down the Danube, and through Turkey. But that wasn't the plan.

While the Nicholas group from Germany was headed to Genova, some of the group "may have travelled west to Marseille where, the story goes, they were deceived by two merchants into embarking on ships from which many of them were sold into slavery in North Africa."(Jonathan Riley-Smith, The crusades: a history, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, p 172)

And so the remaining children arrived in the area where "Jewish traders established in Marseilles and Garde Freinet offered good prices for slaves." (Robin Blackburn, The making of New World slavery: from the Baroque to the modern, 1492-1800, Verso, 1997, p 43) The place where the Jewish Radaniya traded silver coins struck in Islamic territories for the slaves. (Omeljan Pritsak, The Origin of Rus', Volume One - Old Scandinavian Sources other than the Sagas, Harvard University Press, 1981, p 25) But these slaves came on their own, and no silver coins to buy them were necessary. Oh, there had been travel expenses and remuneration for Stephen and Nicholas and their "hangers-on", but that was just the cost of doing business.

"But then the unthinkable happened: the sea refused to part before them, and many became instantly disillusioned with Stephen and left. Those who stayed loyal to him, hoping that the miracle might yet happen, were then approached, it is said, by two local merchants whose actions and names, Hugh Ferreus and William Porcus." "The two men offered to transport the children to the Holy Land free of charge, and the young crusaders, perhaps believing that God worked miracles in more than one way, gladly accepted the offer. Nothing more was heard of them for 18 years. Then in 1230, a survivor of the expedition, a young priest, returned to France from Egypt and related what had happened. The party had set out from Marseilles in seven ships, but two of them had been wrecked off the coast of Sardinia. The remaining five vessels had then been captured by Muslim pirates, who had apparently been tipped off by Hugh and William. The children were taken to Algeria, where some were sold in slavery, while others met the same fate after a journey to the markets of Alexandria. The priest himself had been enslaved but was later released." (Harpur, supra, pp 82, 83)

These slave traders knew what they were doing all along. "Muslim or Jewish traders established in Marseilles and Garde Freinet offered good prices for slaves." (Robin Blackburn, The making of New World slavery: from the Baroque to the modern, 1492-1800, Verso, 1997, p 43) William and Hugo are not Muslim names.

VILE DECEIVER

"Stephen of Cloyes may have been a boy in years, but he was most vile in his way of life, and his followers perished through the design of Satan".(Norman Zacour, The Children's Crusade, A History of the Crusades, Volume II, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962, p 337) According to Thomas of Sherborne, this young Jew "promised the Sultan he would lead an army of Christians into bondage" and admitted that "he had led Frankish children into slavery when he was a child". (Connel, supra)

He had backers. (Riley-Smith, supra) With Satanic motives. (Zacour, supra)

According to Aubrey de Trois-Fontaines, "The ribaldi and other evil men who joined them sullied the entire army, so that while some perished at sea, and others were sold, only a few of so great a multitude made their way home". "Now, the betrayers of those children are said to have been Hugh Ferreus and William Porcus, merchants of Marseilles". (Norman Zacour, The Children's Crusade, A History of the Crusades, Volume II, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962, pp 335-336)

SLAVE TRADERS GET COCKY

After the Children's Crusade scam, these Jewish slave traders hatched a plan to capture the emperor Frederick, and sell him to Mirabel, the prince of the Saracens of Sicily. The emperor got word in time, and ended up hanging these evil men, as well as Mirabel and his two sons. (Norman Zacour, The Children's Crusade, A History of the Crusades, Volume II, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962, p 337)

POGROM IN RHEINLAND

After his huge role in this scam, Nicholas, who had played the front man in conning the German children, " never returned, and the anger of the bereft Rhineland parents was visited on the boy's father, who was killed by a lynch mob." (Harpur, supra, p 83)

Even in Marseille, the Jews were no longer welcome.

For centuries, what they had done to the children was not forgotten: "After their expulsion from Provence, Jews tried on many occasions to settle in Marseilles, and a group of them did live there in the seventeenth century. However, they were accepted on sufferance and could hardly be considered legal residents. An Edict of May, 1682, ordering them to leave Marseilles was renewed on July 19, 1683, September 14, 1683, and November 15, 1690." (Zosa Szajkowski, Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, KTAV Publishing House, 1970, p 281) "Judaism has been intertwined with slavery, both as an ideological and conceptual basis." (Judaism and slavery, Wikipedia)

"Indeed, general medieval histories, if they mention Jews at all, refer to them almost exclusively as money-lenders or involved in slavery". (Norman Roth, Medieval Jewish civilization: an encyclopedia, Routledge, 2003, p 189) The Jewish Radaniya consortium "controlled the slave trade from the Black Sea to North Africa from Arles." (Norman Davies, Europe: a history, Oxford University Press, 1996, p 656)

But just in the Middle Ages? "The industry has proved very lucrative for the human traffickers, with each woman sold in Israel bringing in anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000". (Mona Alami, Slave trade heads to Israel, Asia Times, 5 Oct 2008 )




Acknowledgements:

Maps from Google Maps

http://www.letour.fr/PHOTOS/TDF/2007/1100/D/de/_TDF_2007_DEP1100.jpg

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44540000/jpg/_44540089_arabcoins226index.jpg

http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/croisades/big_images/c_croisade_des_enfants1.jpg