SOURCE: “The Accounts of Eye Witnesses and Participants” in The First Crusade, Peter Smith, 1921, pp. 1–21.

In the following essay, Krey analyzes the eyewitness chronicles and letters of the First Crusade, maintaining that they have primarily been examined as sources for literature, not as literary productions. Krey then examines the style and language of these accounts.

It is now more than eight hundred years since Christian Europe was first aroused to arms in an effort to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the Infidel, and yet the interest in those expeditions still persists. Scarcely a generation has passed without demanding a fuller and fresher account of the Crusades for its own perusal. Sober historians have sought earnestly to answer the call, but, voluminous as their work has been, the fanciful poet and novelist have succeeded in keeping a pace in advance. It would require many pages to...