Just before Whitsun, Alexios I was asked by the crusaders for a leader, and he gave them Raymond of Toulouse, with Tzitas and 500 Turcopole troops, to give them good advice and restrain them from their wilder ideas: they first disagreed over the route. Raymond and Stephen of Blois wanted to follow the route of the First Crusade, but the Lombards used their numerical superiority to impose a rescue mission for their hero Bohemond, directly to his prison in Neokaisareia, or by going direct to Khorasan and attacking Baghdad (?)