NOTE 6.—­There continues in this narrative, with a general truth as to the course of events, a greater amount of error as to particulars than we should have expected.  The Sung Emperor Tu Tsong, a debauched and effeminate prince, to whom Polo seems to refer, had died in 1274, leaving young children only.  Chaohien, the second son, a boy of four years of age, was put on the throne, with his grandmother Siechi, as regent.  The approach of Bayan caused the greatest alarm; the Sung Court made humble propositions, but they were not listened to.  The brothers of the young emperor were sent off by sea into the southern provinces; the empress regent was also pressed to make her escape with the young emperor, but, after consenting, she changed her mind and would not move.  The Mongols arrived before King-sze, and the empress sent the great seal of the empire to Bayan.  He entered the city without resistance in the third month (say April), 1276, riding at the head of his whole staff with the standard of the general-in-chief before him.  It is remarked that he went to look at the tide in the River Tsien Tang, which is noted for its bore.  He declined to meet the regent and her grandson, pleading that he was ignorant of the etiquettes proper to such an interview.  Before his entrance Bayan had nominated a joint-commission of Mongol and Chinese officers to the government of the city, and appointed a committee to take charge of all the public documents, maps, drawings, records of courts, and seals of all public offices, and to plant sentinels at necessary points.  The emperor, his mother, and the rest of the Sung princes and princesses, were despatched to the Mongol capital.  A desperate attempt was made, at Kwa-chau (infra, ch. lxxii.) to recapture the young emperor, but it failed.  On their arrival at Ta-tu, Kublai’s chief queen, Jamui Khatun, treated them with delicate consideration.  This amiable lady, on being shown the spoils that came from Lin-ngan, only wept, and said to her husband, “So also shall it be with the Mongol empire one day!” The eldest of the two boys who had escaped was proclaimed emperor by his adherents at Fu-chau, in Fo-kien, but they were speedily driven from that province (where the local histories, as Mr. G. Phillips informs me, preserve traces of their adventures in the Islands of Amoy Harbour), and the young emperor died on a desert island off the Canton coast in 1278.  His younger brother took his place, but a battle, in the beginning of 1279 finally extinguished these efforts of the expiring dynasty, and the minister jumped with his young lord into the sea.  It is curious that Rashiduddin, with all his opportunities of knowledge, writing at least twenty years later, was not aware of this, for he speaks of the Prince of Manzi as still a fugitive in the forests between Zayton and Canton. (Gaubil; D’Ohsson; De Mailla; Cathay, p. 272.) [See Parker, supra, p. 148 and 149.—­H.C.]

There is a curious account in the Lettres Edifiantes (xxiv. 45 seqq.) by P. Parrenin of a kind of Pariah caste at Shao-hing (see ch. lxxix. note 1), who were popularly believed to be the descendants of the great lords of the Sung Court, condemned to that degraded condition for obstinately resisting the Mongols.  Another notice, however, makes the degraded body rebels against the Sung. (Milne, p. 218.)