Army of Hugh the Great on the First Crusade armies. Army of Hugh the Great on the First Crusade The Army of Hugh the Great on the First Crusade was formed after the Council of Clermont, led by Pope Urban II in November 1095. Hugh, son of Henry I, King of France, and his wife Anne of Kiev, was Count of Vermandois, "de jure uxoris", due to his marriage to Adelaide, Countess of Vermandois, daughter of Herbert IV, Count of Vermandois, and his wife Adele of Valois. In August 1096, Hugh and his small army left France "in prima profectione", the first army of the third wave to leave
History of the papacy (1048–1257) held the possibility of a reunion between the eastern and western Churches after almost four decades of schism, thereby strengthening the western Church in general and the papacy in particular. On November 27, 1095, Urban II made one of the most influential speeches in the Middle Ages at the Council of Clermont combining the ideas of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war against infidels. The pope called for a “War of the Cross,” or Crusade, to retake the holy lands from the unbelievers. France, the pope said, was already overcrowded and the