SOURCE: An introduction to Memoirs of the Crusades by Villehardouin and de Joinville, translated by Sir Frank Marzials, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1908, pp. x-xxvii.

In the following excerpt, Marzials offers a brief review of Villehardouin's account of the first four crusades. He discusses the debate regarding Villehardouin's veracity, maintaining that he was essentially honest in his account of the Fourth Crusade. Marzials goes on to praise the simplicity and directness of Villehardouin's writing style.

Villehardouin's story opens with the closing years of the twelfth century. In those years, as he tells, Fulk of Neuilly, near Paris, a priest well known for his holiness and zeal, began to preach a new Crusade; and Fulk's words, so men thought, were confirmed by many signs and miracles; and even apart from such supernatural aid, it is not difficult, I think, to conjecture wherein lay the force of his appeal or to...