Chronicle of the Seventh Crusade: Louis IX in Egypt and the Holy Land (Annotated Version)

Description

A saint-king, a lost army, and the knight who lived to tell it.

John of Joinville, a noble of Champagne, set out on Louis IX’s crusade in 1248 at his own cost and entered the king’s service. He was there for the landing at Damietta, the Battle of Mansourah, the disastrous retreat, the capture of the king and most of the army, the ransom, and the years spent fortifying the Holy Land. His memoir is the fullest Western eyewitness account of the Seventh Crusade. It is candid about fear, hunger and disease, and devoted to the king he loved.

This edition presents Frank T. Marzials’s 1908 translation with a new introduction by Jim Pitrat on crusading in the mid-thirteenth century, the course of the campaign, and how to read Joinville alongside the Arabic chronicles. It adds 685 numbered paragraphs, 248 notes, a chronology, a glossary and four maps. It is the second volume in the Crusades series from Edge Weaver Legacy.