Saint Louis being thus so interesting a character in himself, it is very fortunate that we have an excellent contemporary biography of him, from the hand of a friend and companion who knew him well. Sire de Joinville's _Histoire de Saint Louis_ is a classic of French literature and in most respects the best piece of biographical writing that has come down to us from the Middle Ages. Joinville, or more properly John, lord of Joinville, was born in Champagne, in northern France, probably in 1225. His family was one of the most distinguished in Champagne and he himself had all the advantages that could come from being brought up at the refined court of the count of this favored district. In 1248, when St. Louis set out on his first crusading expedition, Joinville, only recently become of age, took the cross and became a follower of the king, joining him in Cyprus and there first definitely entering his service. During the next six years the two were inseparable companions, and even after Joinville, in 1254, retired from the king's service in order to manage his estates in Champagne he long continued to make frequent visits of a social character to the court. Joinville's memoirs of St. Louis were completed about 1309--probably nine years before the death of the author--and they were first published soon after the death of Philip the Fair in 1314. They constitute by far the most important source of information on the history of France in the middle portion of the thirteenth century. Joinville had the great advantage of intimate acquaintance and long association with King Louis and, what is equally important, he seems to have tried to write in a spirit of perfect fairness and justice. He was an ardent admirer of Louis, but his biography did not fall into the tempting channel of mere fulsome and indiscriminate praise. Moreover, the work is a biography of the only really satisfactory type; it is not taken up with a bare recital of events in the life of the individual under consideration, but it has a broad background drawn from the general historical movements and conditions of the time. Its most obvious defects arise from the fact that it comprises largely the reminiscences of an old man, which are never likely to be entirely accurate or well-balanced. In his dedication of the treatise to Louis, eldest son of Philip IV., the author relates that it had been written at the urgent solicitation of the deceased king's widow. The biography in print makes a good-sized volume and it is possible, of course, to reproduce here but a few significant passages from it. But these are perhaps sufficient to show what sort of man the saint-king really was, and it is just this insight into the character of the men of the Middle Ages that is most worth getting--and the hardest thing, as a rule, to get. Incidentally, the extract throws some light on the methods of warfare employed by the crusaders and the Turks.