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
