Jacques de Vitry, cardinal and chronicler, wrote the most wide-ranging contemporary account of the Crusades: The first book, the Oriental History, after a passage on Melchizedek and Mohammed, covers the history of the Crusader Kingdom through the First Crusade, the taking of Jerusalem, its loss to Saladin, the failure of the Third Crusade to recover the city to the marriage of John of Brienne to the heiress of the Kingdom beyond the Sea; in the process it vividly describes the natural history, manners, and economy of the Kingdom. The second book, the Occidental History, excoriates the sins of European Christendom which have produced and merited the disaster in the Levant. The third book, which may not be Vitry's own, continues the story through the siege of Damietta. This translation, one of the few of any part of this into a modern language, is by François Guizot, the historian and statesman.