256 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. tianily had been so difficult, he wrote to the bishops, enjoining them to preach a crusade against the Tartars and their accomplices, by which he meant the Russians, whose troops formed part of the army of Batou. The aversion felt by Western Europeans to any alliance with the Tartars is shown still more strongly in a letter of Alexander IV. to Bela, King of Hungary, on the occasion of a proposal made to the latter by Bereka, the successor of Batou. He had sent ambas- sadors to offer to Bela an alliance to be cemented by the marriage of their children. Under this arrange- ment the son of the King of Hungary was to march with a certain number of Hungarian troops, as an auxiliary of the Tartars, and to receive the fifth part of all the booty that was made in the war. Hungary was also to be exempt from all tribute, and the Tartars were to respect her frontier. These liberal offers how- ever were accompanied, in case of refusal, with menaces of a cruel war, and of the total destruction of the country. Bela, who, on the first irruption of the Mongols, had only been able to offer them a feeble resistance, and who subsequently had only owed to their spontaneous retreat the possibility of resuming his throne, had recourse in this new perplexity to his customary refuge. He wrote to Rome for help and counsel, and did not forget to remind the Pope that in similar circumstances, Gregory IX. had abandoned him to the fury of the Mongols. " The complaints* contained in the beginning of your letter," replies Alexander, " have rent our heart.
- Odor Raynald, " Annal. Eccl." vol. xiv. No. 33. p. 50.
