For a more detailed understanding of the events of the First Crusade in the Rhineland, I have herewith provided for you a new translation of a classic called the Mainz Anonymous. This work was written soon after the First Crusade. It deals primarily with the events that took place in Mainz, and its author is unknown; hence its name.
The Mainz Anonymous (MA) was written from the Jewish point of view, in Hebrew. It intends to be accurate, but certainly uses the occasional fiction to make a point. For example, it quotes conversations; these could not possibly have been remembered by the author perfectly, but are included as quotations despite being only paraphrases. Further examples of inexactitude are noted in footnotes to the MA. Despite all this, Chazan (pp. xii-xiii) considers the MA to be authoritative.
Realize that the MA switches back and forth between anecdote and history. That is, one paragraph (or even one sentence!) will be about the acts of a certain woman, the next two about what the people did en masse, and the next about some man's deeds. Do not let the anecdotes confuse you; the more general narrative will, eventually, continue from where it had left off.
This translation of the MA is new; I translated it from Habermann's edition with the aid of a Hebrew-language Bible concordance and a few dictionaries. The dictionary I found most useful was Even-Shoshan. Usually, I have restricted the translation to a simple, if somewhat idiomatic, translation of the original. Sometimes, however, I have inserted comments in square brackets [like so]. Often, the author of the MA used pronouns without clear antecedents; in those and similar cases, I have used the antecedents instead of merely translating the pronouns, and did not use square brackets.