_INTRODUCTORY NOTE_

Jean Froissart, _the most representative of the chroniclers of the
later Middle Ages, was born at Valenciennes in 1337. The Chronicle
which, more than his poetry, has kept his fame alive, was undertaken
when he was only twenty; the first book was written in its earliest
form by 1369; and he kept revising and enlarging the work to the end
of his life. In 1361 he went to England, entered the Church, and
attached himself to Queen Philippa of Hainault, the wife of Edward
III, who made him her secretary and clerk of her chapel. Much of his
life was spent in travel. He went to France with the Black Prince, and
to Italy with the Duke of Clarence. He saw fighting on the Scottish
border, visited Holland, Savoy, and Provence, returning at intervals
to Paris and London. He was Vicar of Estinnes-au-Mont, Canon of
Chimay, and chaplain to the Comte de Blois; but the Church to him was
rather a source of revenue than a religious calling. He finally
settled down in his native town, where he died about 1410.

Froissart's wandering life points to one of the most prominent of his
characteristics as a historian. Uncritical and often inconsistent
as he is, his mistakes are not due to partisanship, for he is
extraordinarily cosmopolitan. The Germans he dislikes as unchivalrous;
but though his life lay in the period of the Hundred Years' War
between England and France, and though he describes many of the events
of that war, he is as friendly to England as to France.

By birth Froissart belonged to the bourgeoisie, but his tastes and
associations made him an aristocrat. Glimpses of the sufferings which
the lower classes underwent in the wars of his time appear in his
pages, but they are given incidentally and without sympathy. His