ndreds of petty kings sought each his own
advantage.

[Sidenote: Minor Chroniclers between Villehardouin and Joinville.]

The Fourth Crusade was fertile in chroniclers. Villehardouin's work was
supplemented by the chronicle of Henri de Valenciennes, which is written
in a somewhat similar style, but with still more resemblance to the
manner and diction of the Chansons, so much so that it has been even
supposed, though probably without foundation, to be a rhymed Chanson
thrown into a prose form. This process is known to have been actually
applied in some cases. Another historian of the expedition whose work
has been preserved was Robert de Clari. Baldwin Count of Flanders, who
also accompanied it, was not indeed the author but the instigator of a
translation of Latin chronicles which, like the _Grandes Chroniques de
France_, was continued by original work and attained, under the title of
_Chronique de Baudouin d'Avesnes_, very considerable dimensions.

The thirteenth century also supplies a not inconsiderable number of
works dealing with the general history of France. Guillaume de Nangis
wrote in the latter part of the century several historical treatises,
first in Latin and then in French. An important work, entitled _La
Chronique de Rains_ (Rheims), dates from the middle of the period, and,
though less picturesque in subject and manner than Villehardouin, has
considerable merits of style. Normandy, Flanders, and, the Crusades
generally, each have groups of prose chronicles dealing with them, the
most remarkable of the latter being a very early French translation of
the work of William of Tyre, with additions[133]. Of the Flanders group,
the already mentioned chronicle called of Baudouin d'Avesnes is the
chief. It is worth mentioning again because in its case we see the way
in which French was gaining ground. It exists both in Latin and in the
vernacular. In other cases the Latin would be the original; but in this
case it appears, though it is not positively certain, that the book was
written in French, and translated for the benefit of those who might
happen not to understand that language.

[Sidenote: Joinville.]

As Villehardouin is the representative writer of the twelfth century, so
is Joinville[134] of the thirteenth, as far as history is concerned.
Jean de Joinville, Senechal of Champagne, was born in 1224 at the castle
of Joinville on the Marne, which afterwards became the property of the
Orleans family, and