The 1967 reprint of the entire collection by Gregg Press can also be found in major libraries, and there are also full-text PDF files available online, which have been made available by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Gallica project.
According to the introductory Report[2] to the first volume of the Western Historians, this collection brings up to date the previous collection published in 1611 by Jacques Bongars under the title Gesta Dei per Francos,[3] due to "the discovery of many literary and historical monuments which Bongars could not have suspected the existence", including those published in the collections of Duchesne, Archery, Mabillon, Martène and many other foreign compilers.
The editors of this collection have chosen to consider 1291 as the end date of the Crusades, since the fall of Saint-Jean-d'Acre completed the ruin of Christian institutions in Palestine.
Were also excluded works more literary than historical, like novels on the Crusades, and also the narration related to the conquest of Constantinople by the French and the Venetians, because they did take almost no part in the events of Palestine.
Neither was included Joinville's Histoire, because the commission of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres did class this author among France's general historians.