Opens with the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly and the tournament at Ecry (28 November 1199) where Theobald III of Champagne and Louis of Blois took the cross, then the taking of the cross by Baldwin of Flanders, Hugh of Saint-Pol, Geoffrey of Perche and others through early 1200, the assemblies at Soissons and Compiegne in 1200, and the six envoys sent to Venice in the winter of 1200 to 1201. For the year 1200 it is the key witness to who had sworn the crusade and when. Villehardouin was a principal actor and later a Latin lord in Greece; his account defends the leaders and is silent on much that was awkward.
About this source
- Title
- La conqueste de Constantinople
- Author
- Geoffrey of Villehardouin
- Author's dates
- about 1150 to about 1213; marshal of Champagne
- Written
- about 1207 to 1213
- Language
- Old French prose
- Covers
- 1199 to 1207
- Kind
- History
Listed here for its French opening chapters; the crusade proper belongs to the Balkans and Latin East libraries. Villehardouin defends the diversion to Constantinople and should be read against Robert of Clari and the Devastatio.
Where to read it
Editions
- E. Faral (ed. and trans.), Villehardouin, La conquete de Constantinople, 2 vols (1938 to 1939), Old French with French, not free (not freely online)
- E. Faral (ed.), Villehardouin, La Conquete de Constantinople, Classiques de l'histoire de France, 2 vols (Paris, 1938 to 1939), Old French with modern French (not freely online)
Translations
- F. T. Marzials, Memoirs or Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the Conquest of Constantinople (1908), English; reproduced in the Fordham Medieval Sourcebook
- M. R. B. Shaw, Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, Penguin (1963), not free (not freely online)
- F. T. Marzials, Memoirs of the Crusades by Villehardouin and de Joinville (London, 1908), English
- Marzials's translation at Project Gutenberg (ebook 6032)
- M. R. B. Shaw, Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades (Harmondsworth, 1963), English (not freely online)