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 THE LIVES

OF

CELEBRATED TRAVELLERS.

WILLIAM DE RUBRUQUIS.

Born about 1220.—Died after 1293.

The conquests of Genghis Khan and his successors, extending from the Amoor and the Chinese Wall to the confines of Poland and Hungary, having excited extraordinary terror in the minds of the Christian princes of Europe, many of them, and particularly the pope and the King of France, despatched ambassadors into Tartary, rather as spies to observe the strength and weakness of the country, and the real character of its inhabitants, than for any genuine diplomatic purposes. Innocent IV. commenced those anomalous negotiations, by sending, in 1246 and 1247, ambassadors into Mongolia to the Great Khan, as well as to his lieutenant in Persia. These ambassadors, as might be expected, were monks, religious men being in those times almost the only persons possessing any talent for observation, or the knowledge necessary to record their observations for the benefit of those who sent them. The first embassy from the pope terminated unsuccessfully, as did likewise the maiden effort of St. Louis; but this pious monarch, whose zeal overpowered his good sense, still imagined that the conversion of the Great Khan, which formed an important part of his