Villehardouin and de Joinville: Memoirs of the Crusades

Villehardouin and de Joinville: Memoirs of the Crusades
by Geoffroi de Villehardouin

Publisher: Dutton 1955
ISBN/ASIN: B00088GEXQ
Number of pages: 340

Description:
Of these French memoirs, the Memoirs of Villehardouin and Joinville, here reproduced in an English form, are certainly not the least interesting. They are the first in date, those of Villehardouin having been written, probably, in the days of our King John, early in the thirteenth century; while those of Joinville were completed, about a century later, in October 1309, shortly after our Edward II. had begun to reign. Both are monuments of the French language, and of French prose, at an early stage of development giant lispings, as one may say. Both are written by eye-witnesses who had taken an important part, in the case of Villehardouin a very important part, in what they describe. Both deal with stirring episodes in one of the most stirring chapters in human history, the chapter that tells how, for some three centuries, Christendom put forth its power to capture, and again recapture,those holy fields.