Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/156

144 144 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. occupying our frontiers. The misfortunes predicted for the sins of men, in the Holy Scriptures, are over- whelming us on every side ; " and after having painted, in the liveliest colours, the ravages exercised by the Tartars in the neighbouring countries, he entreats his father-in-law to send him troops promptly, since he has been informed that the barbarians intend entering Bohemia, at the approaching festival of Easter (1241). " The people of both north and south," he says, in conclusion, " are so oppressed by calamity, that never, since the beginning of the world, were they so cruelly scourged." * There was no exaggeration in this account. The very name of the Tartars made people shudder f, and the sight of them often produced the most painful effects. The sovereigns of Europe and Asia felt themselves tottering on their thrones, and they dispatched emissaries one to another, to concert measures for resisting this formid- able invasion. The Emperor Frederick II. wrote a curious letter to the King of England, in which he takes occasion, with much self-complacency, to indulge his taste for rhetoric. The picture which he draws of the Tartars, however, is remarkable for truth and precision. " A people issuing from the utmost confines of the world, where they had long been hidden under a frightful climate, has sud- denly and violently seized on the countries of the north, and multiplied there like grasshoppers. One knows not whence this savage race derives the name of Tartar, f " Toutes les gens de Orient en eurent si grand paour et si grand hide, que le seul nom des Tartres et la hideur de les oyr nommer par les villes et les chateaulx faisuit les dames enchaintes abortir de peur et de hide."
 * Odor Baynald, " Annal. Eccl. ad Annum 1241."