Abbey of
Corbie. It is a very extensive relation, carrying the history of Latin
Palestine from Peter the Hermit's pilgrimage to about the year 1190,
composed probably within ten or fifteen years after this later date,
and written, though not with Villehardouin's epic spirit, in a very
agreeable and readable fashion. Not much later, vernacular chronicles
of profane history in France became common, and the celebrated
_Grandes Chroniques_ of St Denis began to be composed in French. But
the only production of this thirteenth century which has taken rank in
general literary knowledge with the work of the Marshal of Champagne
is that[158] of Jean de Joinville, also a Champenois and Seneschal of
the province, who was born about ten years after Villehardouin's
death, and who died, after a life prolonged to not many short of a
hundred years, in 1319. Joinville's historical work seems to have been
the occupation of his old age; but its subject, the Life and Crusading
misfortunes of Saint Louis, belongs to the experiences of his youth
and early middle life. Besides the _Histoire de Saint Louis_, we have
from him a long _Credo_ or profession of religious faith.

[Footnote 157: Ed. Paulin Paris. Paris, 1879.]

[Footnote 158: Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1874.]

There is no reason at all to question the sincerity of this faith. But
Joinville was a shrewd and practical man, and when the kings of France
and Navarre pressed him to take the cross a second time, he answered
that their majesties' servants had during his first absence done him
and his people so much harm that he thought he had better not go away
again. Indeed it would be displeasing to God, "qui mit son corps pour
son peuple sauver," if he, Joinville, abandoned _his_ people. And he
reports only in the briefest abstract the luckless "voie de Tunes," or
expedition to Tunis. But of the earlier and not much less unlucky
Damietta crusade, in which he took part, as well as of his hero's life
till all but the last, he has written very fully, and in a fashion
which is very interesting, though unluckily we have no manuscript
representing the original text, or even near to it in point of time.
The book, which has been thought to have been written in pieces at
long intervals, has nothing of the antique vigour of Villehardouin.
Joinville is something of a gossip, and though he evidently writes
with a definite literary purpose, is not master of very great
argumentative powers. But