Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/289

277 UNION BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND TARTARS. 277 the Tartars ; but on her arrival at Cesarea she heard of his death. She continued her journey nevertheless, and arriving at the court of Abaga, was married by him, and thus became a Queen of the Mongols. She had, it appears, some interest in the glory of her religion, for she petitioned her father to send two painters to deco- rate the Greek church of Tauris. Abaga, however, would in all probability scarcely have been induced by his wife's feelings of piety to make common cause with the Europeans, had not the Sultan of Egypt, eager to avenge on the Christians the evils they had brought upon Islam, attacked the King of Armenia, at the same time that he laid siege to Antioch. One of the vassals of the Mongol sovereignty, and the most powerful of the principalities founded by the Crusaders, being thus menaced at the same moment, the common danger unavoidably led to a union between the Christians and the Tartars ; and Europe saw with joy the Mussulman power of Egypt engaged with a formidable enemy who had extended his frontiers to the confines of Syria. The less she was herself disposed, at that epoch, when the enthusiasm for the Crusades was almost extinct, to make any efforts for the succour of the Syrian colonies, the more she was inclined to count on the assistance of the Mongols. On the other hand, the effects of the division of the Mongol empire began to be felt. The Tartar princes could not as sovereigns dispose of such armies as they had commanded as generals of the Grand Khan, and their neighbours on the North and East, instead of being auxiliaries, as they were formerly, now often had interests opposed to theirs. The Sultan of Egypt found means to excite the jealousy of the Khans of Kiptchak, T 3