day of Ramadhan,...  Hadst thou but seen thy Knights trodden under the hoofs of the horses! thy palaces invaded by plunderers and ransacked for booty! thy treasures weighed out by the hundredweight! thy ladies (Damataka, ‘tes DAMES’) bought and sold with thine own gear, at four for a dinar! hadst thou but seen thy churches demolished, thy crosses sawn in sunder, thy garbled Gospels hawked about before the sun, the tombs of thy nobles cast to the ground; thy foe the Moslem treading thy Holy of the Holies; the monk, the priest, the deacon slaughtered on the Altar; the rich given up to misery; princes of royal blood reduced to slavery!  Couldst thou but have seen the flames devouring thy halls; thy dead cast into the fires temporal with the fires eternal hard at hand; the churches of Paul and of Cosmas rocking and going down—­, then wouldst thou have said, ‘Would God that I were dust!’ ...  As not a man hath escaped to tell thee the tale, I TELL IT THEE!”

A little later, when a mission went to treat with Boemond, Bibars himself accompanied it in disguise, to have a look at the defences of Tripoli.  In drawing out the terms, the Envoys styled Boemond Count, not Prince, as in the letter just quoted.  He lost patience at their persistence, and made a movement which alarmed them.  Bibars nudged the Envoy Mohiuddin (who tells the story) with his foot to give up the point, and the treaty was made.  On their way back the Sultan laughed heartily at their narrow escape, “sending to the devil all the counts and princes on the face of the earth.”

(Quatremere’s Makrizi, II. 92-101, and 190 seqq.; J.  As. ser.  I. tom. xi. p. 89; D’Ohsson, III. 459-474; Marino Sanuto in Bongars, 224-226, etc.)

NOTE 4.—­The ruling Master of the Temple was Thomas Berard (1256-1273), but there is little detail about the Order in the East at this time.  They had, however, considerable possessions and great influence in Cilician Armenia, and how much they were mixed up in its affairs is shown by a circumstance related by Makrizi.  In 1285, when Sultan Mansur, the successor of Bundukdar, was besieging the Castle of Markab, there arrived in Camp the Commander of the Temple (Kamandur-ul Dewet) of the Country of Armenia, charged to negotiate on the part of the King of Sis (i.e. of Lesser Armenia, Leon III. 1268-1289, successor of Hayton I. 1224-1268), and bringing presents from him and from the Master of the Temple, Berard’s successor, William de Beaujeu (1273-1291). (III. 201.)—­H.  Y. and H. C.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW MESSER NICOLO AND MESSER MAFFEO POLO, ACCOMPANIED BY MARK, TRAVELLED TO THE COURT OF THE GREAT KAAN.