The Conquest of Constantinople

Geoffrey of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, was one of the six envoys who hired the Venetian fleet, and he names himself among those who spoke for the army at each turn of the expedition. His narrative runs from the preaching of the crusade to the death of Boniface of Montferrat in 1207, so it was written after that. Its translator calls it a monument of French prose at an early stage of its development.

He writes as a leader who had to answer for the decisions taken. Those who left the army or opposed the diversions to Zara and Constantinople appear in his account as men who wished to break up the host, and the plunder of the city is told as a victory given by God. His figures and sequence of events are those of a man who was in the councils; his judgments are those of one party. Read him beside History, which tells the same days from inside the city.