Villehardouin, Geoffroy de

VILLEHARDOUIN, GEOFFROY de. - Marshal of Champagne by hereditary right, b. no later than 1152, he took part with his lord, Count Theobald III, in the Fourth Crusade and wrote its history; d. in the East no earlier than 1212.

Having become a crusader (at the tournament of Écry-sur-Aisne, 28 Nov. 1199) he was sent to Venice to negotiate the terms for the overseas transport of the army of 20,000 men, which then embarked in Oct. 1202 to occupy Zara and Constantinople (1203-1204) and to found the Latin Empire of the East in Greece. He certainly had a notable part in this diversion and in the election of Boniface of Montferrat as head of the enterprise, after the death of Theobald III; he obtained the title of marshal of Romania and distinguished himself in the unfortunate expedition against the Bulgarians, which ended with the defeat of Adrianople (14 April 1203). He also took part in the war against Theodore Lascaris and occupied the Morea, while recognizing Venetian sovereignty there; he obtained from the emperor Henry II of Flanders the fief of Messinopoli in Thrace. Around 1207 he began to compose La conquête de Constantinople, from the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly which had prepared the Crusade up to the death of Boniface of Montferrat: "memoirs" aimed at attesting the part that fell to V. himself in the direction of the enterprise, and at the same time the purity of its intentions, conducted without ever losing sight of the service of God, contrary to what a fairly broad and widespread body of polemical writing had been asserting, traces of which remain in the chronicles of Gunther and of Ernoul. With firmness and effectiveness as a narrator, V. unfolds a whole theory of "providential causes"; the substantial truthfulness and relative completeness of his work has been demonstrated by its recent scholar, Edmond Faral.