He was recruited by Pope Paschal II, Urban's successor, to lead the crusade being proclaimed in response to the success of the First Crusade. He preached the crusade throughout Lombardy, where there had been little enthusiasm for the first one, but where his influence sparked a wave of zeal: crowds greeted him chanting "Ultreja! Ultreja!" On 15 July 1100, he celebrated the anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem in Milan. He appointed one Grossolano, then bishop of Savona, to act as his vicar and, on 13 September, with bishops Guy of Tortona, William of Pavia, and probably Aldo of Piacenza, he left with a company reported at the exaggerated figure of 50,000 men, led by Albert, Count of Biandrate, and his nephew Otto Altaspata. Albert, Count of Parma, the brother of the Antipope Guibert, was there as a representative of the resolution of the church-state conflicts which enveloped Lombardy in the final decades of the eleventh century.