This deservedly famous and thoroughly delightful book, which has more than one contemporary or slightly younger parallel, though none of these approaches it in literary interest, presents the most striking resemblance to a chanson de geste—in conduct, arrangement (the paragraphs representing laisses), and phraseology. But it is not, as some other early prose is, merely verse without rhyme, and with broken rhythm; and it is impossible to read it without astonished admiration at the excellence of the medium which the writer, apparently by instinct, has attained. The list of the crusaders; their embassy to "li dux de Venise qui ot à nom Henris Dandolo et etait mult sages et mult prouz"; their bargain, in which the business-like Venetian, after stipulating for 85,000 marks of transport-money, agrees to add fifty armed galleys without hire, for the love of God and on the terms of half-conquests; the death of the Count of Champagne (much wept by Geoffroy his marshal); and the substitution after difficulties of Boniface, Marquis of Montserrat;—these things form the prologue. When the army is actually got together the transport-money is unfortunately lacking, and the Venetians, still with the main chance steadily before them, propose that the crusaders shall recover for them, from the King of Hungary, Zara, "Jadres en Esclavonie, qui est une des plus forz citez du monde." Then we are told how Dandolo and his host take the cross; how Alexius Comnenus, the younger son of Isaac, arrives and begs aid; how the fleet set out ("Ha! Dex, tant bon destrier i ot mis!"); how Zara is besieged and taken; of the pact made with Alexius to divert the host to Constantinople; of the voyage thither after the Pope's absolution for the slightly piratical and not in the least crusading prise de Jadres has been obtained; of the dissensions and desertions at Corfu, and the arrival at the "Bras St Georges," the Sea of Marmora. This is what may be called the second part.

The third part opens with debates at San Stefano as to the conduct of the attack. The emperor sends soft words to "la meillor gens qui soent sanz corone" (this is the description of the chiefs), but they reject them, arrange themselves in seven battles, storm the port, take the castle of Galata, and then assault the city itself. The fighting having gone wholly against him, the emperor retires by the open side of the city, and the Latins triumph. Some show is made of resuming, or rather beginning, a real crusade; but the young Emperor Alexius, to whom his blind father Isaac has handed over the throne, bids them stay, and they do so. Soon dissensions arise, war breaks out, a conspiracy is formed against Isaac and his son by Mourzufle, "et Murchufles chauça les houses vermoilles," quickly putting the former owners of the scarlet boots to death. A second siege and capture of the city follows, and Baldwin of Flanders is crowned emperor, while Boniface marries the widow of Isaac, and receives the kingdom of Salonica.

It has seemed worth while to give this abstract of the book up to a certain point (there is a good deal more of confused fighting in "Romanie" before, at the death of Boniface, Villehardouin gives up the pen to Henri of Valenciennes), because even such a bare argument 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 mediæval 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.

William of Tyre.

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 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. Joinville.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.

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 for this same reason he abounds in anecdote, and in the personal detail which, though it may easily be overdone, is undoubtedly now and then precious for the purpose of enabling us to conjure up the things and men of old time more fully and correctly. And there is a Pepysian garrulity as well as a Pepysian shrewdness about Joinville; so that, on the whole, he fills the position of ancestor in the second group of historians, the group of lively raconteurs, as well as Villehardouin leads that of inspired describers. For an instance of the third kind, the philosophical historian, France, if not Europe, had to wait two centuries, when such a one came in Comines.

It is almost unnecessary to say that when the secret of producing prose and its advantages over verse for certain purposes had been discovered, it was freely employed for all such purposes, scientific as science was understood, devotional, instructive, business (the Livre des Mestiers, or book of the guilds of Paris, is of the thirteenth century), and miscellaneous. But few of these things concern literature proper. It is otherwise with the application of prose to fiction.

Fiction.

This, as we have seen, had probably taken place in the case of the Arthurian romances as early as the middle of our period, and throughout the thirteenth century prose romances of length were not unknown, though it was later that all the three classes—Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Antique—were thrown indiscriminately into prose, and lengthened even beyond the huge length of their later representatives in verse. But for this reason or that, romance in prose was with rare exceptions unfavourable to the production of the best literature. It encouraged the prolixity which was the great curse of the Middle Ages, and the deficient sense of form and scanty presence of models prevented the observance of anything like a proper scheme.

Aucassin et Nicolette.