C.A. Bloss' Heroines of the Crusades is a comprehensive history of the mostly untold stories of women and their participation in the famous campaigns of the Middle Ages. From the preface: "But though the Crusades are so important to the historian as involving the politics of all nations; to the philosopher as fraught with consequences affecting the happiness of succeeding generations; and to the scholar as commencing the era when Genius, brooding over the ruins of the Past, rose Phoenix-like from the ashes of Arabian splendor, [Pg ix] and soaring in the clearer light of Christianity, scattered from her wing the dew of refinement upon the barbarians of the North; yet the general reader feels that his knowledge of them is so vague as to detract materially from his pleasure in allusions to them, and continually to force upon his mind a painful sense of ignorance upon points where he ought to be informed. In some measure to supply a deficiency which common history cannot obviate, to make the period of the Crusades interesting, by giving to it the tangible thread of authentic narrative, these biographies of the 'Heroines' who inspired the troubadour, animated the warrior, or in person 'took the cross, ' have, with much care and labor, been selected and compiled."