Lionheart
(1987)

AKA: Lionheart: The Children's Crusade

Country: USA

Genre: Adventure

Synopsis

An exiled young knight leads a band of orphans to join the Third Crusade with Richard Coeur de Lion, whilst protecting the children from the Black Prince, a disillusioned crusader turned child slave trader.

Notes

• Loosely based on the 'Children's Crusade', a conflation of myth and historical events. In the traditional stories, bands of children led by a young boy march to Italy intending to cross the sea to the Holy Land, in order to peacefully convert Muslims to Christianity, but end up being sold into slavery. In actual historical fact, there were two 'crusades' involving children, both of which occured in 1212, and neither of which got beyond Europe. One was begun by a young shepherd boy, Nicholas of Cologne, but disintegrated when, on reaching Genoa, the seas failed to dry up allowing the crusaders to walk to the Holy Land, as Nicholas had promised. The second was led by a 12-year-old French shepherd boy, Stephen of Cloyes, who claimed that he had a letter for the King of France from Jesus. After performing various miracles at Saint-Denis, he led his troop of children to Marseilles in June of 1212, where, reduced to begging for food, the majority gave up and returned home.