may show the masterly fashion in which this first of modern vernacular
historians of the great literary line handles his subject. The parts
are planned with judgment and adjusted with skill; the length allotted
to each incident is just enough; the speeches, though not omitted, are
not inserted at the tyrannous length in which later mediaeval and even
Renaissance historians indulged from corrupt following of the
ancients. But no abstract could show--though the few scraps of actual
phrase purposely inserted may convey glimpses of it--the vigour and
picturesqueness of the recital. That Villehardouin was an eyewitness
explains a little, but very little: we have, unfortunately, libraries
full of eyewitness-histories which are duller than any ditch-water.
Nor, though he is by no means shy of mentioning his own performances,
does he communicate to the story that slightly egotistic interest of
gossip and personal detail of which his next great successor is
perhaps the first example. It is because, while writing a rather
rugged but completely genuine and unmetrical though rhythmical prose,
Villehardouin has the poet's eye and grasp that he sees, and therefore
makes us see, the events that he relates. These events do not form
exactly the most creditable chapter of modern history; for they simply
come to this, that an army assembling for a crusade against the
infidel, allows itself to be bribed or wheedled into two successive
attacks on two Christian princes who have given it not the slightest
provocation, never attacks the infidel at all, and ends by a
filibustering seizure of already Christian territory. Nor does
Villehardouin make any elaborate disguise of this; but he tells the
tale with such a gust, such a _furia_, that we are really as much
interested in the success of this private piracy as if it had been the
true crusade of Godfrey of Bouillon himself.

[Sidenote: _William of Tyre._]

[Sidenote: _Joinville._]

The earlier and more legitimate crusades did not lack fitting
chroniclers in the same style, though none of them had the genius of
Villehardouin. The _Roman d'Eracles_ (as the early vernacular
version[157] of the Latin chronicle of William of Tyre used to be
called, for no better reason than that the first line runs, "Les
anciennes histoires dient qu'Eracles [Heraclius] qui fu mout bons
crestiens gouverna l'empire de Rome") is a chronicle the earlier part
of which is assigned to a certain Bernard, treasurer of the