ANDREW
OF LONGJUMEAU (Longumeau, Lonjumel, &c.), a French Dominican, explorer
and diplomatist. He accompanied the mission under Friar Ascehn, sent
by Pope Innocent IV. to the Mongols in 1247; at the Tatar camp near Kars
he met a certain David, who next year (1248) appeared at the court of King
Louis IX. of France in Cyprus. Andrew, who was now with St Louis,
interpreted to the king David's message, a real or pretended offer of alliance
from the Mongol general
Ilchikdai (Ilchikadai), and a proposal of a joint attack upon the Islamic
powers for the conquest of Syria. In
reply to this the French sovereign despatched Andrew as his ambassador
to the great Khan Kuyuk; with Longjumeau went his
brother (a monk) and several others - John Goderiche, John of Carcassonne,
Herbert ``le sommelier,'' Gerbert of Sens,
Robert a clerk, a certain William, and an unnamed clerk of Poissy.
The party set out about the 16th of February 1249,
with letters from King Louis and the papal legate, and rich presents,
including a chapel-tent, lined with scarlet cloth
and embroidered with sacred pictures. From Cyprus they went to
the port of Antioch in Syria, and thence travelled for
a year to the khan's court, going ten leagues a day. Their route
led them through Persia, along the southern and eastern
shores of the Caspian (whose inland character, unconnected with the
outer ocean, their journey helped to demonstrate),
and probably through Talas, north-east of Tashkent. On arrival
at the supreme Mongol court - either that on the
Imyl river (near Lake Ala-kul and the present Russo-Chinese frontier
in the Altai), or more probably at or near Karakorum
itself, south-west of Lake Baikah - Andrew found Kuyuk Khan dead, poisoned,
as the envoy supposed, by Batu's agents.
The regent-mother Ogul Gaimish (the ``Camus'' of Rubruquis) seems to
have received and dismissed him with presents and
a letter for Louis IX., the latter a fine specimen of Mongol insolence.
But it is certain that before the friar had
quitted ``Tartary''' Mangu Khan, Kuyuk's successor, had been elected.
Andrew's report to his sovereign, whom he rejoined
in 1251 at Caesarea in Palestine, appears to have been a mixture of
history and fable; the latter affects his narrative
of the Mongols' rise to greatness, and the struggles of their leader,
evidently Jenghiz Khan, with Prester John; it is still
more evident in the position assigned to the Tatar homeland, close
to the prison of Gog and Magog. On the other hand,
the envoy's account of Tatar manners is fairly accurate, and his statements
about Mongol Christianity and its prosperity,
though perhaps exaggerated (e.g. as to the 800 chapels on wheels in
the nomadic host), are based on fact. Mounds
of bones marked his road, witnesses of devastations which other historians
record in detail; Christian
prisoners, from
Germany, he found in the heart of ``Tartary''
(at Talas); the ceremony of passing between two fires he was compelled
to observe, as a bringer of gifts to a dead khan, gifts which were
of course treated by the Mongols as evidence of
submission. This insulting behaviour, and the language of the
letter with which Andrew reappeared, marked the mission
a failure: King Louis, says Joinville, ``se repenti fort.''
We only know of Andrew through references in other writers: see especially
William of Rubruquis in Recueil de voyages, iv. (Paris, 1839), pp.
261, 265, 279, 296, 310, 353, 363, 370; Joinville, ed. Francisque
Michel (1858, &c.), pp. 142, &c.; Jean Pierre Sarrasin, in same
vol., pp. 254-235; William of Nangis in Recueil des historiens des Gaules,
xx. 359-367; . Remusat,
Memoires sur les relations politiques des princes chretiens
. . . avec les . . . Mongols (1822, &c.), p. 52. (C. R.
B.)
Charles
R. Beazley
Eleventh
edition, vol i,