tale with such a gust, such a _furia_, that we are really as much interested in the success of this private piracy as if it had been the true crusade of Godfrey of Bouillon himself. [Sidenote: _William of Tyre._] [Sidenote: _Joinville._] The earlier and more legitimate crusades did not lack fitting chroniclers in the same style, though none of them had the genius of Villehardouin. The _Roman d'Eracles_ (as the early vernacular version[157] of the Latin chronicle of William of Tyre used to be called, for no better reason than that the first line runs, "Les anciennes histoires dient qu'Eracles [Heraclius] qui fu mout bons crestiens gouverna l'empire de Rome") is a chronicle the earlier part of which is assigned to a certain Bernard, treasurer of the Abbey of Corbie. It is a very extensive relation, carrying the history of Latin Palestine from Peter the Hermit's pilgrimage to about the year 1190, composed probably within ten or fifteen years after this later date, and written, though not with Villehardouin's epic spirit, in a very agreeable and readable fashion. Not much later, vernacular chronicles of profane history in France became common, and the celebrated _Grandes Chroniques_ of St Denis began to be composed in French. But the only production of this thirteenth century which has taken rank in general literary knowledge with the work of the Marshal of Champagne is that[158] of Jean de Joinville, also a Champenois and Seneschal of the province, who was born about ten years after Villehardouin's death, and who died, after a life prolonged to not many short of a hundred years, in 1319. Joinville's historical work seems to have been the occupation of his old age; but its subject, the Life and Crusading misfortunes of Saint Louis, belongs to the experiences of his youth and early middle life. Besides the _Histoire de Saint Louis_, we have from him a long _Credo_ or profession of religious faith. [Footnote 157: Ed. Paulin Paris. Paris, 1879.] [Footnote 158: Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1874.]