In the North, p. 92, and shews the extreme
difficulty of any attempt to give an accurate edition of
The whole
work, if that should be thought of, as it would require critical skill
not only in Hebrew, but in the languages of the different countries to
which the travels refer. - E.
CHAP. VI.
Travels of an Englishman into Tartary, and thence into Poland, Hungary,
and Germany, in 1243.[1]
This earliest remaining direct account of the Tartars, or Mongols receiving
that name, which is extremely short and inconclusive, is recorded by
Matthew Paris, in a letter from Yvo de Narbonne to the archbishop of
Bourdeaux, and is here given as a literary curiosity.
* * * * *
Provoked by the sins of the Christians, the Lord hath become as it were a
destroying enemy, and a dreadful avenger; having sent among us a
prodigiously numerous, most barbarous, and inhuman people, whose law is
lawless, and whose wrath is furious, even as the rod of God's anger,
overrunning and utterly ruining infinite countries, and cruelly destroying
every thing where they come with fire and sword. This present summer, that
nation which is called Tartars, leaving Hungary, which they had surprised
by treason, laid siege, with many thousand soldiers, to the town of
Newstadt, in which I then dwelt, in which there were not above fifty men at
arms, and twenty cross-bow-men, left in garrison. All these observing from
certain high places the vast army of the enemy, and abhorring the beastly
cruelty of the accomplices of Antichrist, signified to the governor the
hideous lamentations of his Christian subjects, who, in all the adjoining
provinces, were surprised and cruelly destroyed, without any respect of
rank, fortune, age, or sex.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 188 of 810
Words from 51853 to 52140
of 222093
