Aroused by crusade processions, French and German peasant youths set out on a quest to find the True Cross and reclaim Jerusalem. Heading south over the Alps and into Italy, their trek was long and arduous. Onlookers watched their march to the sea in amazement. Monastic chroniclers found it both astonishing and troubling. Painting its supposedly catastrophic ending in the blackest of colours, chroniclers were soon gripped by its mythic themes. Through the centuries, imaginative writers never forgot it, and readers of all ages have been intrigued and fascinated by it ever since. From 1212 to the present generation, history, mythistory and memory are put under the spotlight in this fresh, new comprehensive investigation of The Children's Crusade.