were taken from the
Welsh chiefs, and were kept in English castles for several years. But
the last lesson had proved effectual. The Welsh settled down peaceably
on their lands and generally adopted the English customs. Except a few
great lords, their gentry were still the representatives of their old
families. Only five men in all had received the last punishment of the
law for sanguinary rebellions extending over eighteen years of the
King's reign. Of any massacre of the bards, or any measures taken to
repress them, history knows nothing.

Never was conquest more merciful than Edward's, and the fault lies
with his officers, not with the King, if many years still passed
before the old quarrel between Wales and England was obliterated from
the hearts of the conquered people.

JAPANESE REPEL THE TARTARS

A.D. 1281

E.H. PARKER

MARCO POLO

Kublai Khan, the first of the Mongol emperors who reigned at
Peking, and Kameyama, the ninetieth emperor--as reputed--of
Japan, are supposed to have come to their respective thrones
in the same year, 1260. At this period the Japanese rulers
(_mikados_) were mere puppets in the hands of their
_shoguns_--hereditary commanders-in-chief of the army--and
the shoguns themselves were tools of the regents of the Hojo
dynasty.

Corea had lately been made tributary to the Tartar or Mongol
power, when some of the Coreans in the service of Kublai
Khan suggested to him that his way was now open to Japan,
1265. Next year Kublai selected a chief envoy whose name, as
Parker says, appears in Chinese characters precisely the
same as that of Sir Robert Hart,[75] and whom the author of
the narrative immediately following, in order to avoid
uncouth names, designates as "Hart." By this envoy Kublai
sent a letter to Japan, and this act was the beginning of
the execution of his designs against that country, formed
upon the advice of the Coreans. In this letter the Mongol
Emperor called upon Japan to return to the vassal duty which
for centuries, he claimed, she had formerly owned to China.
--EDWARD HARPER PARKER

The King of Corea, who had meanwhile been instructed to show the road
to the Mongol mission, provided it with two high officers as escort.
In 1267, however, Hart and his staff returned to Peking from their
wanderings, _re injecta_, faithfully accompanied by their Core