THE
HISTORY OF CHIVALRY.
BY
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,
AUTHOR OF “DE L’ORME,” “DARNLEY,” “RICHELIEU,” ETC.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.
PREFACE.
In writing the pages which follow this Preface, I have had to encounter the difficulty of compressing very extensive matter into an extremely limited space. As the subject was, in my eyes, a very interesting one, and every particular connected with it had often been food for thought and object of entertainment to myself, the task of curtailing was the more ungrateful: nor should I have undertaken it, had I not been convinced by my publisher that one volume would be as much as the public in general would be inclined to read. I wished to write upon Chivalry and the Crusades, because I fancied that in the hypotheses of many other authors I had discovered various errors and misstatements, which gave a false impression of both the institution and the enterprise; and I have endeavoured, in putting forth my own view of the subject, to advance no one point, however minute, which cannot be justified by indisputable authority. A favourite theory is too often, in historical writing like the bed of the ancient Greek; and facts are either stretched or lopped away to agree with it: but to ensure as much accuracy as possible, I have taken pains to mark in the margin of the pages the different writers on whose assertions my own statements are founded, with a corresponding figure, by which each particular may be referred to its authority.
In regard to these authors themselves, it seems necessary here to give some information, that those persons who are inclined to inquire beyond the mere surface may know what credit is to be attached to each.
On the first crusade we have a whole host of contemporary writers, many of whom were present at the events they describe. Besides these are several others, who, though they wrote at an after-period, took infinite pains to render their account as correct as possible. The authors I have principally cited for all the earlier facts of the Holy War are, William of Tyre, Albert of Aix, Fulcher of Chartres, Raimond of Agiles, Guibert of Nogent, Radulph of Caën, and Robert, surnamed the Monk.
William of Tyre is, beyond all doubt, the most illustrious of the many historians who have written on the crusades. Born in Palestine, and though both educated for the church and raised step by step to its highest dignities, yet mingling continually in the political changes of the Holy Land—the preceptor of one of its kings—frequently employed in embassies to Europe, and ultimately Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, William possessed the most extensive means of gathering materials for the great work he has left to posterity. He brought to his task, also, a powerful mind, as well as considerable discrimination; and was infinitely superior in education and every intellectual quality to the general chroniclers of his age. He was not born, however, at the time of the first crusade; and consequently, where he speaks of the events of that enterprise, we may look upon him as an historian, clear, talented, elegant, and not extremely credulous; but we must not expect to find the vivid identity of contemporaneous writing. In regard to the history of his own days he is invaluable, and in respect to that of the times which preceded them, his work is certainly superior, as a whole, to any thing that has since been written on the subject.