MEMOIRS OF THE CRUSADES

TRANSLATED BY
SIR FRANK MARZIALS

POWERFUL and rich as English literature is, it has little to place in line against the superb array of French memoirs.
Englishmen enough have done great things, or taken part in the doing of them, or seen them done ; but only a scanty few have been moved to write even fewer to write with any approach to style of what they had done and seen. Among the French it has been otherwise. The French statesman, or leader, his life s greater battle being fought, has more often betaken himself to his pen, either to use Guizot s image for the purpose of fighting the old fights once more, with that weapon, in the smaller arena of letters, or simply for pure indulgence in the pleasures of memory. Villehardouin,
Joinville.  I exclude Froissart, beautiful as his work is, be cause he was a chronicler pure and simple and not an actor in the world’s affairs – Commines, Sully, Retz, the ” Grande Mademoiselle”; Saint-Simon, Chateaubriand, Guizot, here is a fine list of examples…

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