Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/209

197 st. louis's reply to iltciiikadai. 197 opposed to the Mussulmans : and there appeared, therefore, some ground for the expectation that the expedition of St. Louis would be undertaken in con- cert with the Tartars. What might have been the consequences of such an alliance, it would be difficult to calculate. Possibly the Mussulman power might have been entirely broken and destroyed ; but it is also within the limits of possibility that Europe would have fallen entirely under the yoke of the Tartars, and God knows what aspect Europe might now pre- sent if the Mongol characteristics had been added to so many other elements of barbarism. St. Louis hastened to reply to the communication, real or supposed, of the Tartar prince Iltciiikadai, by sending off an embassy composed of three Dominicans, Andre de Longumel, Jean de Carcassonne, and Wil- liam. The first, a Frenchman by birth, was acquainted, says Joinville, with the Saracen language, had pre- viously accompanied Brother Anselm to the camp of Baidjou. Two secular clerks and two of the king's officers were added to the party, one of whom J. Co- lumna, in his " Sea of Histories," states himself to have known in his extreme old age. He was then sub-chanter in the church of Chartres, and was named Robert.* David had hinted to King Louis that the most ac- ceptable gift to the Mongol emperor would be a chapel in the form of a tent, and the king sent him one ; " very rich and well made, of fine scarlet, and embroi- dered in needlework with all the articles of our faith ; the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel, the Nativity, o 3
 * "Mare historiarum mon. Lat.," fol. 412.