Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/163

151 CRUSADE PREACHED AGAINST THE TARTARS. 151 could find now and then, some peas, onions, or garlick, in the gardens of the ruined villages, — otherwise we had to support ourselves on roots. In about a week after leaving the forest, we arrived at Alba, where we found nothing but human bones, and the walls of the churches and palaces, still stained with Christian blood. " Ten miles off, there was near a wood a country house, commonly called Frata, and four miles from this forest a high mountain, where many individuals of both sexes had taken refuse. When we reached it the fugitives congratulated us with tears in their eyes, and questioned us concerning the perils we had encountered. They offered us black bread, made of a mixture of flour with oak bark, and we thought it the most delicious thing we had ever eaten." * The horrible devastations committed by the Mongols in Poland and Hungary had spread particular terror through the whole empire of Germany, and a crusade was preached against the barbarians, who seemed eager for the destruction of the very name of the Christians. The letters which Gregory the Ninth addressed to the people, to animate them to the holy war, paint in lively colours his grief and alarm. " Many affairs of grave importance," he writes, " are at this time incessantly occupying our thoughts ; the melancholy state of the Holy Land ; the tribulations of the Church ; the de- plorable condition of the Roman Empire. But we con- fess, we forget all these causes of affliction, and even what most particularly concerns us, when we think of the evils caused by the Tartars ; for the bare thought that the Christian name might be destroyed by them in L 4
 * Rogerii, " Miserabile Carmen."