Leon VI., the ex-king, into
whose mouth Froissart puts some extraordinary geography, had a pension of
1000l. a year granted him by our Richard II., and died at Paris in 1398.
[Illustration: Coin of King Hetum and his Queen Isabel.]
The chief remaining vestige of this little monarchy is the continued
existence of a Catholicos of part of the Armenian Church at Sis, which
was the royal residence. Some Armenian communities still remain both in
hills and plains; and the former, the more independent and industrious,
still speak a corrupt Armenian.
Polo's contemporary, Marino Sanuto, compares the kingdom of the Pope's
faithful Armenians to one between the teeth of four fierce beasts, the
Lion Tartar, the Panther Soldan, the Turkish Wolf, the Corsair
Serpent.
(Dulaurier, in J. As. ser. V. tom. xvii.; St. Martin, Arm.; Mar.
San. p. 32; Froissart, Bk. II. ch. xxii. seqq.; Langlois, V. en
Cilicie, 1861, p. 19.)
NOTE 2. - "Maintes villes et maint chasteaux" This is a constantly
recurring phrase, and I have generally translated it as here, believing
chasteaux (castelli) to be used in the frequent old Italian sense of a
walled village or small walled town, or like the Eastern Kala' applied
in Khorasan "to everything - town, village, or private residence -
surrounded by a wall of earth." (Ferrier, p. 292; see also A. Conolly,
I. p. 211.) Martini, in his Atlas Sinensis, uses "Urbes, oppida,
castella," to indicate the three classes of Chinese administrative cities.
