Finally they reached the place which had provoked so many hardships
for them, which had brought upon them so much thirst and hunger for
such a long time, which had stripped them, kept them sleepless, cold,
and ceaselessly frightened, the most intensely pleasurable place,
which had been the goal of the wretchedness they had undergone, and
which had lured them to seek death and wounds. To this place, I say,
desired by so many thousands of thousands, which they had greeted
with such sadness and in jubilation, they finally came, to Jerusalem.

Amplifications like this, magnifying the internal, psychological
significance of the events, while simultaneously insisting upon the
religious nature of the expedition, characterize Guibert's response
to the Gest Francorum. His desire to correct is complicated by the
competitive urges that emerge when he faces the other apparently
eye-witness account of the First Crusade that became available to him,
Fulcher of Chartres' Histori Hierosolymitana.[22] Where he had
offered gently corrective remarks about the crudeness of the Gest
Francorum, Guibert mounts a vitriolic attack on Fulker's
pretentiousness:

Since this same man produces swollen, foot-and-a-half words, pours
forth the blaring colors of vapid rhetorical schemes,[23] I prefer to
snatch the bare limbs of the deeds themselves, with whatever
sack-cloth of eloquence I have, rather than cover them with learned
weavings.[24]

However, to convince readers of his superiority Guibert knew that
stylistic competence was necessary but not sufficient, particularly
because both Fulker and the author of the Gesta Francorum had