E. H. Parker (_China Review_,
February-March, 1901, 136) relates that the inhabitants of a part of
Kwang-si boiled and ate a Chinese officer who had been sent to pacify
them. "The idea underlying this horrible act [cannibalism] is, that by
eating a portion of the victim, especially the heart, one acquires the
valour with which he was endowed." (_Dennys' Folk-lore of China_, 67.)--H.
C.]

Hayton, the Armenian, after relating the treason of a Saracen, called
Parwana (he was an Iconian Turk), against Abaka Khan, says: "He was taken
and cut in two, and orders were issued that in all the food eaten by Abaka
there should be put a portion of the traitor's flesh. Of this Abaka
himself ate, and caused all his barons to partake. _And this was in
accordance with the custom of the Tartars_." The same story is related
independently and differently by Friar Ricold, thus: "When the army of
Abaga ran away from the Saracens in Syria, a certain great Tartar baron
was arrested who had been guilty of treason. And when the Emperor Khan was
giving the order for his execution the Tartar ladies and women interposed,
and begged that he might be made over to them. Having got hold of the
prisoner they boiled him alive, and cutting his body up into mince-meat
gave it to eat to the whole army, as an example to others." Vincent of
Beauvais makes a like statement: "When they capture any one who is at
bitter enmity with them, they gather together and eat him in vengeance of
his revolt, and like infernal leeches suck his blood," a custom of which a
modern Mongol writer thinks that he finds a trace in a surviving proverb.
Among more remote and ignorant Franks the cannibalism of the Tartars was a
general belief. Ivo of Narbonne, in his letter written during the great
Tartar invasion of Europe (1242), declares that the Tartar chiefs, with
their dog's head followers and other _Lotophagi_ (!), ate the bodies of
their victims like so much bread; whilst a Venetian chronicler, speaking
of the council of Lyons in 1274, says there was a discussion about making
a general move against the Tartars, "_porce qu'il manjuent la char
humaine._" These latter writers no doubt rehearsed mere popular beliefs,
but Hayton and Ricold were both intelligent persons well acquainted with
the Tartars, and Hayton at least not prejudiced against them.

The old belief was revived in Prussia during the Seven Years' War, in
regard to the Kalmaks of the Russian army; and Bergmann says th