The individual narratives brought together here reveal insight into the two hundred year struggle for possession of Jerusalem, in the words of two soldiers who participated first-hand in the bloody campaigns. Geffroy de Villehardouin (1150-1212?) was an appointed marshal of Champagne, France, whose «Conquest of Constantinople» recounts the controversial Fourth Crusade of 1204, against Eastern Christians in the Latin empire of Constantinople. Jean de Joinville (1224-1317) inherited the office of...
