The Children's Crusade (novel)

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The Children's Crusade (French: La croisade des enfants, 1896) is a short fictionalized sketch by the French author Marcel Schwob of a real episode of 13th century history.

It takes the form of a series of five brief narratives by different witnesses which, together, help the reader to reconstruct the tragic events of the Children's Crusade in 1212. The five testimonies are from a Goliard priest, a leper, pope Innocent III, three pilgrim children (one speaks for all three), a clerk who was a historian, a little girl named Allys, and pope Gregory IX. The format has similarities with Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, though that work is written in verse and is on a much larger scale.