Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/211

199 DEPARTURE OF THE EMBASSY OF ST. LOUIS. 199 The embassy traversed Persia on their way to the camp of Iltchikadai, and thence proceeded to the Mongol court, which they reached towards the end of that year, or the beginning of the next. " The mes- sengers," says Joinville, " put to sea, and disembarked at the port of Antioch ; and to travel from there, to the place where the great King of Tartary was, took them a year. They went ten leagues a day, and they found all the lands that they traversed subject to the Tartars ; and in the countries they passed they found, in many places, heaps of ruins that had been towns or cities, as well as piles of dead men's bones." * When the envoys of St. Louis arrived at the imperial court, Couyouk was dead, but had not yet been replaced by a successor; and it was the Queen Regent Ogoul who received them. This princess and her son, having seen the king's presents, received the monks with dis- tinction, but interpreted their coming into an acknow- ledgment on the part of the King of France that he was tributary to the Tartars. The presents were, therefore, accepted as tokens of submission to the authority which the Kha-kan arrogated to himself over all the sovereigns of the earth. According to Joinville, the Khan also afterwards showed the tent to other princes whom he wished to subjugate, saying that the King of France had acknowledged allegiance to him, and had sent him that in pledge of his fidelity ; and that several princes were really by that means induced to submit. In return for the gifts she had received, the Regent Ogoul presented to the envoys various articles, amongst o 4
 * " Hist, de St. Louis," p. 90.