SOURCE: An introduction to Chronicles of the Crusades, Penguin Books, 1963, pp. 7–25.

In the following essay, Shaw surveys the content, form, and style of Villehardouin's Conquest of Constantinople. Shaw commends the “simplicity and lucidity” of the work.

Few events in history have been more coloured by romantic imagination than that series of expeditions to the Holy Land known as the Crusades. The very name conjures up a vision of gallant knights inspired by pure religious zeal, leaving home and country to embark on a just and holy war against the enemies of the Christian faith. The two chronicles here presented, each composed by a man who took part in such an expedition, give a truer picture of an enterprise in which the darker as well as the brighter side of human nature is shown in the actions of those who took the cross. However, since these chronicles deal with...