Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/401

 OF THE ROIMAX EMPIRE 379 prelates." But the preacher Avas heard and obeyed by the great vassals, the princes of the second order ; and Theobald, or Thibaut, count of Champagne, was the foremost in the holy race. The valiant youth, at the age of twenty-two years, was encouraged by the domestic examples of his father, who marched in the second crusade, and of his elder brother, who had ended his days in Palestine with the title of King of Jerusa- lem : two thousand two hundred knights owed service and homage to his peerage ; ^^ the nobles of Champagne excelled in embraced by all the exercises of war ; ^5 and, by his marriage with the heiress FrancT*""" of Navarre, Thibaut could draw a band of hardv Gascons from either side of the Pyrenaean mountains. His companion in arms was Louis, count of Blois and Chartres ; like himself of regal lineage, for both the princes were nephews, at the same time, of the kings of France and England. In a crowd of prelates and barons, who imitated their zeal, I distinguish the birth and merit of Matthew of Montmorency ; the famous Simon of Mont- fort, the scourge of the Albigeois ; and a valiant noble, Jeffrey of Villehardouin,"'^ marshal of Champagne,"" who has conde- scended, in tlie rude idiom of his age and countr)',^^ to write or dictate ^^ an original narrative of the councils and actions in which he bore a memorable part. At the same time, Baldwin, count of Flanders, who had married the sister of Thibaut, assumed the cross at Bruges, with his brother Henry and the ^ This number of fiefs (of which 1800 owed liege homage) was enrolled in the church of St. Stephen at Troves, and attested, a.d. 1213, by the marshal and butler of Champagne (Ducange, Observ. p. 254). ^ Campania . . . militias privilegio sing^larius excellit ... in tyrociniis . . . prolusione armorum, &c. Ducange, p. 249, from the old Chronicle of Jerusalem, A.D. 1177-1199. "^ The name of Villehardouin was taken from a village and castle in the diocese of Troves, near the river Aube, between Bar and .'rcis. The family was ancient and noble; the elder branch of our historian e.xisted after the year 1400; the younger, which acquired the principality of Achaia, merged in the house of Savoy (Ducange, p. 235-245). "' This office was held by his father and his descendants, but Ducange has not hunted it with his usual sagacity. I find that, in the year 1356, it was in the family of Conflans ; but these provincials have been long since eclipsed by the national marshals of France. ^ This language, of which I shall produce some specimens, is explained by Vigenere and Ducange, in a version and glossary. The President des Brosses (M^chanisme des Langues, tom. ii. p. 83) gives it as the example of a language which has ceased to be French, and is understood only by grammarians. ^ His age, and his own expression, moi que ceste oeuvTe dic(a (Xo. 62, &c.), may justify the suspicion (more probable than Mr. Wood's on Homer) that he could neither read nor write. Yet Champagne may boast of the two first his- torians, the noble authors of French prose, Villehardouin and Joinville.