The material for the earlier part of his Chronicles he took largely from his predecessor and model, Jean Lebel; the later books are filled with narratives of what he saw with his own eyes, or gathered from the lips of men who had themselves been part of what they told.  This fact, along with his mastery of a style which is always vivacious if sometimes diffuse, accounts for the vividness and picturesqueness of his work.  The pageant of medieval life in court and camp dazzled and delighted him, and it is as a pageant that we see the Middle Ages in his book.

Froissart holds a distinguished place among the poets as well as the historians of his century.  He wrote chiefly in the allegorical style then in vogue; and his poems, though cast in a mold no longer in fashion, are fresh and full of color, and were found worthy of imitation by Geoffrey Chaucer.

But it is as the supreme chronicler of the later age of chivalry that he lives.  “God has been gracious enough” he writes, “to permit me to visit the courts and palaces of kings, ... and all the nobles, kings, dukes, counts, barons, and knights, belonging to all nations, have been kind to me, have listened to me, willingly received me, and proved very useful to me....  Wherever I went I enquired of old knights and squires who had shared in deeds of arms, and could speak with authority concerning them, and also spoke with heralds in order to verify and corroborate all that was told me.  In this way I gathered noble facts for my history, and as long as I live, I shall, by the grace of God, continue to do this, for the more I labour at this the more pleasure I have, and I trust that the gentle knight who loves arms will be nourished on such noble fare, and accomplish still more."_

THE CAMPAIGN OF CRECY

How the king of England came over the sea again, to rescue them in Aiguillon

The king of England, who had heard how his men were sore constrained in the castle of Aiguillon, then he thought to go over the sea into Gascoyne with a great army.  There he made his provision and sent for men all about his realm and in other places, where he thought to speed for his money.  In the same season the lord Godfrey of Harcourt came into England, who was banished out of France:  he was well received with the king and retained to be about him, and had fair lands assigned him in England to maintain his degree.  Then the king caused a great navy of ships to be ready in the haven of Hampton, and caused all manner of men of war to draw thither.  About the feast of Saint John Baptist the year of our Lord God MCCCXLVI., the king departed from the queen and left her in the guiding of the earl of Kent his cousin; and he stablished the lord Percy and the lord Nevill to be wardens of his realm with (the archbishop of Canterbury,) the archbishop of York, the bishop of