Page "Peter the Hermit" Paragraph 10

He appears, in the beginning of 1098, as attempting to escape from the privations of the siege of Antioch -- showing himself, as Guibert of Nogent says, a " fallen star.

" However, Guibert and other sources go on to write that Peter was responsible for the speech before the half-starved and dead Crusaders which motivated their sally from the gates of Antioch and their subsequent crushing defeat of the overwhelmingly superior Muslim army besieging the city.

Thus, having recovered his stature, in the middle of the year he was sent by the princes to invite Kerbogha to settle all differences by a duel which the Emir subsequently declined ; and in 1099 he appears as treasurer of the alms at the siege of Arqa ( March ), and as leader of the supplicatory processions around the walls of Jerusalem before it fell and later within Jerusalem which preceded the Crusaders ' miraculous victory at the Battle of Ascalon ( August ).

At the end of the year he went to Latakia, and sailed thence for the West.

From this time he disappears ; but Albert of Aix records that he died in 1131, as prior of a church of the Holy Sepulchre which he had founded in France.