Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/72

 CHAPTER II THE QUEST FOE INDIA BY SEA 1418 - 1499 European nations had not stood idle spectators -L of this collapse of their mediaeval Eastern com- merce. At first indeed the dim masses in Central Asia appeared to Christian princes as possible allies in their struggle for the Holy Places against the nearer Sara- cens. In 1245 Pope Clement IV sent a Franciscan agent to the Tartars in Persia, and two years after- wards another friar to the Tartar camp on the Volga. St. Louis during his ill-fated crusade (1248 - 1254) found the Tartar hordes advancing on the common enemy from the East. The casual concurrence seemed to prom- ise an identity of interest, and envoys passed between the Tartar chief in Persia and the French king. About the same time St. Louis despatched William de Ru- bruquis, a Minorite friar, to the Tartar Khan on the Black Sea (1253). Rubruquis's narrative formed the delight of mediae- val students, Roger Bacon among them; and its veracity is attested by modern geographical research. At first passed to the learned world in manuscript, it has been repeatedly printed in whole or in part. But it failed to enlighten Christian diplomacy as to the true character