The People's Crusade was the beginning phase of the First Crusade whose objective was to retake the Holy Land, and Jerusalem in particular, from Islamic rule. After in 1095 the head of the Roman Catholic Church Pope Urban II started to urge faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the People's Crusade was conducted for roughly six months from April to October 1096. It is also known as the Peasants' Crusade, Paupers' Crusade or the Popular Crusade as it was executed by a mainly untrained peasant army prior to the main church-organized crusade. It was led primarily by Peter the Hermit with forces of Walter Sans Avoir. The peasant army of this crusade was destroyed by the forces of the Seljuk Turks under Kilij Arslan at the Battle of Civetot in northwestern Anatolia. The People's Crusade was the first, largest, and best documented of the popular crusades. The start of the more official and fully church-backed crusade, also called the "Princes' Crusade", started a few months later and was better organized, better armed, and better funded. Background Calling for a crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II planned the departure of the crusade for 15 August 1096. Nevertheless, a number of unexpected bands of peasants and low-ranking knights organized and set off for Jerusalem on their own. The peasant population had been afflicted by drought, famine, and disease for many years before 1096, and some of them seem to have envisioned the crusade as an escape from these hardships. Spurring them on had been a number of meteorological occurrences beginning in 1095 that seemed to be a divine blessing for the movement: a meteor shower, aurorae, a lunar eclipse, and a comet, among other events. An outbreak of ergotism had also occurred just before the Council of Clermont. Millenarianism, the belief that the end of the world was imminent, popular in the early 11th century, experienced a resurgence in popularity. The response was beyond expectations: while Urban might have expected a few thousand knights, he ended up with a migration numbering up to 100,000 Crusaders of mostly unskilled fighters, including women and children. A charismatic monk and powerful orator named Peter the Hermit of Amiens was the spiritual leader of the movement. He was known for riding a donkey and dressing in simple clothing. He had vigorously preached the crusade throughout northern France and