till noon.  But at the last, by God’s pleasure and the right that was on his side, the Great Khan had the victory, and Nayan lost the battle and was utterly routed.  For the army of the Great Kaan performed such feats of arms that Nayan and his host could stand against them no longer, so they turned and fled.  But this availed nothing for Nayan; for he and all the barons with him were taken prisoners, and had to surrender to the Kaan with all their arms.

Now you must know that Nayan was a baptized Christian, and bore the cross on his banner; but this nought availed him, seeing how grievously he had done amiss in rebelling against his Lord.  For he was the Great Kaan’s liegeman,[NOTE 5] and was bound to hold his lands of him like all his ancestors before him.[NOTE 6]

NOTE 1.—­“Une grande bretesche.” Bretesche, Bertisca (whence old English Brattice, and Bartizan), was a term applied to any boarded structure of defence or attack, but especially to the timber parapets and roofs often placed on the top of the flanking-towers in mediaeval fortifications; and this use quite explains the sort of structure here intended.  The term and its derivative Bartizan came later to be applied to projecting guerites or watch-towers of masonry. Brattice in English is now applied to a fence round a pit or dangerous machinery. (See Muratori, Dissert. I. 334; Wedgwood’s Dict. of Etym. sub. v. Brattice; Viollet le Duc, by Macdermott, p. 40; La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Dict.; F.  Godefroy, Dict.)

[John Ranking (Hist.  Res. on the Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans) in a note regarding this battle writes (p. 60):  “It appears that it is an old custom in Persia, to use four elephants a-breast.”  The Senate decreed Gordian III. to represent him triumphing after the Persian mode, with chariots drawn with four elephants. Augustan Hist. vol. ii. p. 65.  See plate, p. 52.—­H.  C.]

NOTE 2.—­This circumstance is mentioned in the extract below from Gaubil.  He may have taken it from Polo, as it is not in Pauthier’s Chinese extracts; but Gaubil has other facts not noticed in these.

[Elephants came from the Indo-Chinese Kingdoms, Burma, Siam, Ciampa.  —­H.  C.]

NOTE 3.—­The specification of the Tartar instrument of two strings is peculiar to Pauthier’s texts.  It was no doubt what Dr. Clarke calls “the balalaika or two-stringed lyre,” the most common instrument among the Kalmaks.

The sounding of the Nakkara as the signal of action is an old Pan-Asiatic custom, but I cannot find that this very striking circumstance of the whole host of Tartars playing and singing in chorus, when ordered for battle and waiting the signal from the boom of the Big Drum, is mentioned by any other author.