Written source · Portuguese

Mendes Pinto's Peregrination: a Portuguese adventurer's claimed journey through China and Tartary

A famous and unreliable Portuguese memoir (written c. 1569 to 1578, printed 1614) claiming capture by a 'King of Tartary' besieging Beijing in 1544.

Full title Peregrination of Fernão Mendes Pinto, giving account of many very strange things seen and heard in the kingdoms of China, Tartary, Siam, Calaminhan, Pegu and Martaban

Fernão Mendes Pinto

Read the 5 passages Open the original book

Fernão Mendes Pinto (c. 1509 to 1583) spent some twenty years as a trader, soldier and envoy in Asia and later wrote the Peregrinaçam, published after his death in Lisbon in 1614. Its trading episodes rest on real experience, but his account of being enslaved in China, working on the Great Wall, and being taken by a vast Tartar army besieging Beijing in 1544 and travelling through Tartary is widely regarded as invented or built from hearsay. The corpus holds the 1614 first edition (quoted here) and a 1725 edition (the bundle's source pages).

How they knew: Part eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here: A 'King of Tartary' ruling an empire north of China, with a capital 'Lançame' and a Buddhist-style religious centre; probably a literary composite of the Mongols (perhaps echoing Altan Khan's 1550 raid on Beijing), with touches of Tibet.
Why read it: A classic case of 'claimed travel': a bestseller that gave Europeans a vivid but fictional Tartary of giant armies, captured idols and royal tombs.
Watch out: Chronology, place names and numbers cannot be reconciled with history; use it to show what Europeans read about Tartary, not what Tartary was like.

What it says: 5 passages

Cities China (unidentified city 'Quansy')1544 (claimed)

A Tartar general storms Quansy and burns it to the ground

Editorial contextPinto describes the Tartars setting more than two thousand scaling ladders against the walls of the city where he was held, breaking the four gates with iron-bound beams, killing the governor and, he says, more than sixty thousand people, then burning every house and temple and carrying off gold and silver. He presents himself as a captive eyewitness.

they rushed at them with so terrible a shout that it seemed heaven and earth were coming together, and setting up more than two thousand ladders which they had brought for the purpose, they assaulted it all around, on every side they could, climbing up the ladders very resolutely and without any fear
Working translation
Original wording
arremeteraõ a elles com hũa grita taõ espantosa que parecia que se ajuntaua o Ceo com a terra, & aruorando mais de duas mil escadas que para isso trazião, lhe deraõ o assalto a toda em roda, por todas as partes que puderaõ, subindo pelas escadas acima muyto determinadamente, & sem nenhum medo

Fernão Mendes Pinto (Peregrinaçam, Lisbon 1614)

See the original page (p. 139)

About Tartar army of the 'Nauticor of Lançame'

Keep in mind

Pinto's Tartar episodes are widely regarded as fictional or built from hearsay; treat as claimed travel. The city and general cannot be identified.

OCR normalized (checked in part against the page image).

Buildings Tartary ('Lechune', unidentified)1544 (claimed)

The Tartar 'Rome': 27 royal tombs and 280 monasteries

Editorial contextTravelling on with the Tartars, Pinto describes Lechune, 'head of the false religion of this heathendom, as Rome is among us', with a sumptuous temple holding the tombs of twenty-seven kings or emperors 'of this Tartar monarchy' in chapels lined with silver, and nearby a walled enclosure of 280 monasteries with 42,000 priests. It is a vivid and entirely unverifiable picture of Tartar monumental building.

we came to a city called Lechune, which is the head of the false religion of this heathendom, as Rome is among us, in which there is a very sumptuous temple, with very remarkable buildings, in which twenty-seven kings or emperors of this Tartar monarchy are buried, in very rich chapel tombs
Working translation
Original wording
chegamos a hũa cidade que se chamaua Lechune, que he cabeça da falsa religião desta gentilidade, como o he Roma entre nos, na qual està hũ templo muyto sumptuoso, & de edificios muyto notaueis, em que estão sepultados vinte & sete Reys ou Emperadores desta Tartara Monarchia, em jazigos de capellas muyto ricas

Fernão Mendes Pinto (Peregrinaçam, Lisbon 1614)

See the original page

About Tartar 'monarchy' and its priests

Keep in mind

Pinto's Tartar episodes are widely regarded as fictional or built from hearsay; treat as claimed travel. Lechune may blend reports of Tibetan or Chinese Buddhist centres.

Transcribed from the page image; long s and abbreviations normalized.

Buildings Great Wall of China1540s (claimed)

The wall between China and Tartary, 'which I saw and measured'

Editorial contextPinto says a Chinese king, after wars with the Tartar, closed the whole border of the two empires with a wall, built in 27 years by 750,000 men over 315 leagues. He claims to have seen and measured it: six fathoms high and forty palms thick, with an earth rampart faced with mortar at its foot, and watchtowers of two storeys on black ironwood posts instead of towers.

This wall I saw several times, and measured it, and it is generally throughout six fathoms high and forty palms wide in the thickness of the wall, but from four fathoms down there runs a fill like an earthen rampart, sloped on the outer face with a cement like mortar
Working translation
Original wording
Este muro vy eu algũas vezes, & o medy, que he por todo geralmente de seis braças dalto, & quarenta palmos de largo no mociço da parede, mas das quatro braças para baixo corre hum entulho a modo de terrapleno, alamborado da face de fora de hũ betume como argamassa

Fernão Mendes Pinto (Peregrinaçam, Lisbon 1614)

See the original page (p. 107)

About Chinese builders; Tartars as the enemy

Keep in mind

Pinto's Tartar episodes are widely regarded as fictional or built from hearsay; treat as claimed travel. His 'Chinese chronicle' history of the wall is unreliable.

Transcribed from the page image; long s and abbreviations normalized.

Strange tales Beijing13 July 1544 (claimed)

The biggest army since Adam marches on Beijing

Editorial contextPinto says that while he was a captive in China, news came at midnight that 'the King of Tartary' was before Beijing with the largest army any king had gathered 'since the time of Adam': twenty-seven kings and 1,800,000 men, 600,000 of them cavalry, with 80,000 rhinoceroses carrying supplies, and the Chinese emperor had fled to Nanjing. The numbers are fantastic and the event cannot be matched to 1544.

there was certain news that the King of Tartary was before the city of Peking with the greatest force of people that any other king had ever gathered in the world, from the time of Adam until that hour, in which it was affirmed that twenty-seven kings were coming, and it was said that they brought with them one million eight hundred thousand men, of whom six hundred thousand were on horseback
Working translation
Original wording
auia noua certa de estar el Rey da Tartaria sobre a cidade do Pequim, co mais grosso poder de gente q nenhum outro Rey nũca ajuntara no mundo, desde o tempo de Adão até aquella hora, no qual se affirmaua que vinhaõ vinte & sete Reys, & q se dezia q trazião comsigo hũ conto & oitocentos mil homẽs, de q os seiscẽtos mil eraõ de cauallo

Fernão Mendes Pinto (Peregrinaçam, Lisbon 1614)

See the original page

About 'The King of Tartary' (Mongol forces, possibly echoing Altan Khan)

Keep in mind

Pinto reports this as rumour in the city; the numbers are impossible, and no such siege took place in 1544 (Altan Khan's raid on Beijing was in 1550).

Transcribed from the page image; long s and abbreviations normalized.

Show 1 more passage

Strange tales Tartar camp before Beijing (claimed)1544 (claimed)

360 giant bronze gods, one for each day, carried off as trophies

Editorial contextBrought before the Tartar king, Pinto describes a square courtyard lined with four rows of bronze statues of men 'like savages' with maces and crowns, gilded, 27 palms high, with frizzy hair 'like Kaffirs'. The Tartars told them these were the 360 gods who made the days of the year, taken from a great temple in a Chinese city 'to triumph over them' and show the world he had captured China's gods.

in which there were four rows of bronze statues in the form of men like savages, with maces and crowns of the same, but all gilded, which idols, or giants, or whatever they were, were twenty-seven palms high and six wide at the chest ... and when we asked the Tartars the meaning of those figures, they told us they were the three hundred and sixty gods
Working translation
Original wording
no qual estauão quatro fileyras de estatuas de bronzo em figura de homens a modo de saluagens com maças, & coroas do mesmo, porem tudo cozido em ouro, os quais idolos, ou gigantes, ou o que quer q eraõ, tinhão daltura vinte & sete palmos, & seys de largo nos peytos … & pregũtando nòs aos Tartaros pela significação daquellas figuras, nos disseraõ que eraõ os trezẽtos & sessenta deoses

Fernão Mendes Pinto (Peregrinaçam, Lisbon 1614)

See the original page (p. 145)

About 'Tartars' and their king

Keep in mind

Pinto's Tartar episodes are widely regarded as fictional or built from hearsay; treat as claimed travel.

Transcribed from the page image; long s and abbreviations normalized.

The fine print

How we know

claimed or disputed Authorship, date or authenticity is claimed or contested.

disputed/claimed travel: Pinto claims capture in China, forced labour on the Great Wall, capture by the 'Tartar' army besieging Beijing and a journey through Tartary and 'Cauchenchina' (c. 1542-1544); the Tartar and Beijing episodes are widely regarded as fictionalised, while the Far Eastern trading episodes rest on real experience

Research notes

Edited posthumously by Francisco de Andrade; internal chronology impossible; Tartar episode probably built from hearsay about the 1550 Altan Khan siege of Beijing and from Gaspar da Cruz. Category: claimed travel.

Why it matters

The most famous Iberian 'claimed travel' in Tartary: an influential but unreliable picture of a Tartar king warring on China in the 1540s; useful precisely as a documented case of fabricated or borrowed Tartary material in a bestseller.

Places named

China (Nanjing, Beijing, Great Wall, claimed); Tartary (claimed); Cochinchina; Siam; Pegu; Japan; Malacca

Peoples named

Named only as Tartars or Tatars

Tartars or Tatars (as named)

Chinese dynasties and states

Ming dynasty

Other East, South and Southeast Asian peoples

European peoples and powers

Portuguese

Tartars (a Tartar king besieging Pequim, claimed); Ming China; Siamese; Burmese; Japanese; Portuguese traders

Keep exploring

The witness before

1530 to 1549Michalo the Lithuanian on the customs of the Tartars, Lithuanians and MuscovitesA Lithuanian envoy who had been in the Crimean khanate holds up the Crimean Tatars as a mirror of sober virtue to shame his own nobles, c. 1550.Part eyewitness · 12 passages

The witness after

1549 to 1556Gaspar da Cruz's treatise on ChinaThe first European book devoted to China, by a Portuguese friar who was in Canton in 1556, with a chapter on China's Tartar neighbours and the Wall.Part eyewitness · 10 passages

Or take a chance