Excerpt from Memoirs of the Crusades 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 I 309, 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.