THE
HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES
BY
Joseph Francois Michaud.
TRANSLATED BY W. ROBSON.
A New Edition,
WITH PREFACE AND SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER BYHAMILTON W. MABIE.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK:
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON,
714 Broadway.
PREFACE.
The publication of a new edition of this standardwork finds its justification in the wide-spread interestin historical study and in the importance of the eventswhich it describes with such fullness and accuracy.The popular demand for histories of the best class isunprecedented in the annals of book-making, and issubstantial evidence of a growing taste for the mostimportant literature. The standard historians haveone after another been published in attractive editions,and are rapidly filling the libraries of English-speakingpeople everywhere. In this remarkable development ofpopular interest in historical literature, so striking anepisode as that of the Crusades could not be left withoutits record, and the story is nowhere told so entertaininglyand comprehensively as in the pages ofMichaud. It is a story worthy of careful study, notonly on account of its intrinsic interest, but because ofits significance in that larger history of Europe of whichit forms, in many respects, the most dramatic and picturesquechapter.
There has been of late an immense advance in themethods of historical investigation, and the contemporaneoushistorian studies the events which he undertakesto portray from a new standpoint. It would bedifficult to find in any other department of literarywork a wider difference of method and aim than thatwhich separates Robertson’s Charles V. from Freeman’s[iv]Norman Conquest of England. The clue is nolonger sought in the hands of trained diplomatists, butin the broad, though less obvious, unfolding of thepopular life. To the most advanced school of historiansRobin Hood is almost as important as RichardI. The historical writer of the last age worked witha pictorial imagination, weaving his story about thestriking characters and episodes of an age; the samewriter to-day, with an imagination trained in philosophicalmethods, discerns the dimly outlined movementof national life behind the pageantry of courts, thestruggles of parties, and the rush of events. It isdoubtless this very deepening of historical study andbroadening of historical effect which has made the historythe rival of the romance in popular interest. Thestudied narrative of Hume repels in spite of its trustworthiness,while Green’s portrayal of the nationaldevelopment against a background of equally trustworthyfact charms a host of readers into repeatedperusals.
The epoch of the Crusades is important from thestandpoint of either school. Prescott and ProfessorSeeley would each find in it material to his fancy.Studied with an eye to pictorial effect, what series ofevents could be more impressive than that whichchronicles the successive campaigns to capture andhold Jerusalem? If chivalry was ever anything morethan an aftergrowth of fancy and sentimen