Emigration of the Bulgarians,

3

I. Bulgarians, II. Hungarians, and, III. Russians, I shall content myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be remembered. The conquests of the, IV. NORMANS, and the monarchy of the, V. TURKS, will naturally terminate in the memorable Crusades to the Holy Land and the double fall of the city and empire of Constantine. I. In his march to Italy, Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, had trampled on the arms of the Bulgarians. After this defeat the name and the nation are lost during a century and a half; and it A.D. 690, &c. may be suspected that the same or a similar appellation was revived by strange colonies from the Borysthenes, the Tanais, or the Volga. A king of the ancient Bulgaria bequeathed to his five sons a last lesson of moderation and concord. It was received as youth has ever received the counsels of age and experience: the five princes buried their father; divided his subjects and cattle; forgot his advice; separated from each other; and wandered in quest of fortune, till we find the most adventurous in the heart of Italy, under the protection of the exarch of Ravenna. But the stream of emigration was directed or impelled towards the capital. The modern Bulgaria, along the southern banks of the Danube, was stamped with the name and image which it has retained to the present hour: the new conquerors successively acquired, by war or treaty, the Roman provinces of Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epirus'; the ecclesiastical supremacy was translated from the native city of Justinian ; and, in their prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida, was honoured with the throne of a king and a patriarch." The unquestionable evidence of language attests the descent of the Bulgarians from the original stock of the Sclavonian, or more pro

2 Hist. vol. v. p. 8.

3 Theophanes, p. 296-299 [tom. i. p. 544-550, ed. Bonn]; Anastasius, p. 113; Nicephorus, C. P. p. 22, 23. Theophanes places the old Bulgaria on the banks of the Atell or Volga; but he deprives himself of all geographical credit by discharging that river into the Euxine Sea.

Paul. Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. 1. v. c. 29, p. 881, 882. The apparent difference between the Lombard historian and the above-mentioned Greeks is easily reconciled by Camillo Pellegrino (de Ducatû Beneventano, dissert. vii. in the Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 186, 187) and Beretti (Chorograph. Italiæ medii Ævi, p. 273, &c.). This Bulgarian colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and learned the Latin without forgetting their native language.

These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire are assigned to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 869, No. 75).

6 The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida, are clearly expressed in Cedrenus (p. 713 [tom. ii. p. 468, ed. Bonn]). The removal of an archbishop or patriarch from Justinianea prima to Lychnidus, and at length to Ternovo, has produced some perplexity in the ideas or language of the Greeks (Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. ii. c. 2, p. 14, 15 [tom. i. p. 27, ed. Bonn]; Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. 1. i. c. 19, 23); and a Frenchman (D'Anville) is more accurately skilled in the geography of their own country (Hist. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxi.).

perly Slavonian, race; and the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians, Wallachians, b &c., followed either the standard

8

7 Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the identity of the language of the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, Poles (de Rebus Turcicis, 1. x. p. 283 [ed. Par.; p. 530, ed. Bonn]), and elsewhere of the Bohemians (1. ii. p. 38 [p. 73, ed. Bonn]). The same author has marked the separate idiom of the Hungarians.

See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, de Originibus Sclavicis, Vindobonæ,

This is a mistake. Gibbon has been misled by the present language of the Bulgarians, which is Slavonic, but was not so originally. The authority of Chalcocondyles, whom Gibbon quotes in his note, is of no value for an earlier period, as he lived in the fifteenth century, after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. In a previous chapter (vol. v. p. 167, 168) Gibbon had correctly identified the Bulgarians and the Huns, and had observed, in a note, "I adopt the appel"lation of Bulgarians from Ennodius, Jornandes, Theophanes, and the Chro"nicles of Cassiodorus and Marcellinus. "The name of Huns is too vague; the "tribes of Cutturgurians and Utturgu"rians are too minute and too harsh." That the Bulgarians were Huns has been clearly proved by Zeuss, and they consequently belonged to the Turkish, and not the Slavonic race; for there can be no doubt that the Huns were Turks. (See Editor's note, vol. iii. p. 306.) It may be regarded as an historical fact that the Bulgarians were the remains of the Huns, who, after their defeat on the death of Attila, retreated eastward to the Euxine and the lake Mæotis. The Bulgarians are first mentioned by name by Ennodius, in his panegyrical oration addressed to the Gothic king Theodoric, their conqueror; but he speaks of them as a well-known and terrible nation, not as one which now appeared for the first time. ("Hæc est "natio, cujus ante te fuit omne quod "voluit... quæ prolixis temporibus solo "bella consummavit excursu.... His ante mundus pervius esse credebatur." Ennod. ap. Opp. Sirm. tom. i. p. 1598, 1599.) In a letter of the Gothic king Athalaric, the Bulgarians are plainly identified with the Huns. (Cassiod. Var. viii, 10.) Procopius never mentions Bulgarians, only Huns; but certain deeds ascribed by Procopius to Huns are attributed by Jornandes and others to Bulgarians. (For the proofs, see Zeuss, p. 711.) Further, Bulgarian, like Hun, was a collective name; and thus we find the same tribes called Bulgarians in one author and Huns in another.

In the sixth century several tribes of

VOL. VII.

the Bulgarians were subject to the Avars; but, in 634, Cubrat, a friend of the Romans, threw off the yoke of the Avars. A few years afterwards (about 670) the Bulgarians appear as enemies of the Romans; and, to the great terror of Constantinople, they crossed the Danube, and, uniting themselves with the Slavonic inhabitants, founded the Bulgarian kingdom between this river and the Hamus. The name of the conquerors still continues, but their language has long given way to that of the Slavonians. A portion, however, of the Bulgarians remained in their earlier abodes, to the eastward; and Theophanes, in a passage quoted by Gibbon (note 3), correctly places old Bulgaria on the Etel, or Atal, or the Volga, the former being the name of this river in the Tatar languages, while the latter probably comes from the Bulgarians. The Bulgarian kingdom upon the Volga is called by the Russian historians Great Bulgaria, and the Danubian Bulgaria sometimes takes the name of Little Bulgaria. Great Bulgaria extended from the confluence of the Kama and the Volga to the shores of the Euxine and the Caspian. The ruins of its capital city, Bolgari, have been discovered on the banks of the Danube. In the middle ages this kingdom became one of considerable importance, and an active commerce was carried on between the east and the north of Europe through the country of the Bulgarians and the rivers which traversed it. In the tenth century the Bulgarians were Mahometans, and, as we learn from Nestor, attempted to convert the Czar Vladimir of Russia with his people to the religion of the prophet. The Bulgarians are frequently mentioned by the Arabs, who visited their country for the purposes of commerce, and they continued a powerful people till they were overwhelmed by the invasion of the Mongols. See Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme, p. 710, seq.; Prichard, Physical History of Mankind, vol. iv. p. 325, seq.; Schafarik, Slawische Alterthümer, vol. ii. p. 152, seq.-S.

b This, again, is a mistake. The Wallachians are not akin to the Servians,

F

Croats or Sclavonians of Dalmatia,

9

10

or the example of the leading tribe. From the Euxine to the Adriatic, in the state of captives, or subjects, or allies, or enemies, of the Greek empire, they overspread the land; and the national appellation of the SLAVES has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification of glory to that of servitude. Among these colonies, the Chrobatians," or Croats, who now attend the motions A.D. 900, &c. of an Austrian army, are the descendants of a mighty people, the conquerors and sovereigns of Dalmatia. The maritime cities, and of these the infant republic of Ragusa, implored the aid and instructions of the Byzantine court: they were advised by the magnanimous Basil to reserve a small acknowledgment of their fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease, by an annual tribute, the wrath of these irresistible barbarians. The kingdom of Croatia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords; and their united forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot. A long sea-coast, indented with capacious harbours, covered with a string of islands, and almost in sight of the Italian shores, disposed both the natives and strangers to the practice of navigation. The boats or brigantines of the Croats were constructed after the fashion of the old Liburnians: one hundred and eighty vessels may excite the idea of a respectable navy; but our seamen will smile at the allowance of ten, or twenty, or forty men, for each of these ships of war. They were gradually converted to the more

1745, in four parts, or two volumes in folio. His collections and researches are useful to elucidate the antiquities of Bohemia and the adjacent countries; but his plan is narrow, his style barbarous, his criticism shallow, and the Aulic counsellor is not free from the prejudices of a Bohemian."

9 Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable derivation from Slava, lans, gloria, a word of familiar use in the different dialects and parts of speech, and which forms the termination of the most illustrious names (de Originibus Sclavicis, pars i. p. 40, pars iv. p. 101, 102).b

10 This conversion of a national into an appellative name appears to have arisen in the viiith century, in the Oriental France, where the princes and bishops were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian (exclaims Jordan), but of Sorabian race, From thence the word was extended to general use, to the modern languages, and even to the style of the last Byzantines (see the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange). The confusion of the Ego, or Servians, with the Latin Servi, was still more fortunate and familiar (Constant. Porphyr. de Administrando Imperio, c. 32, p. 99 [tom. iii. p. 152, ed. Bonn]).

The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most accurate for his own times, most fabulous for preceding ages, describes the Sclavonians of Dalmatia ([de Admin. Imp.] c. 29-36).

Bosnians, and other Slavonic nations. They are a Romance people, speaking a language derived from the Latin, like the French, Italian, and Spanish. They still call themselves Rumunjè, Romans. The name of Wallachians, i, e. Wälschen or Welch, was first given to them by the Germans.-S.

a We have at length a profound and satisfactory work on the Slavonian races, Schafarik, Slawische Alterthümer, vols. Leipzig, 1843.-M. 1845.

b On the origin of the word Slavi, and on the Slavonic languages in general, see Editor's note, vol. v. p. 167.-S.

honourable service of commerce; yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and dangerous; and it was not before the close of the tenth century that the freedom and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually vindicated by the Venetian republic. 12 The ancestors of these Dalmatian kings were equally removed from the use and abuse of navigation: they dwelt in the White Croatia, in the inland regions of Silesia and Little Poland, thirty days' journey, according to the Greek computation, from the sea of darkness.

13

dom of the

The glory of the Bulgarians was confined to a narrow scope both of time and place. In the ninth and tenth centuries First kingthey reigned to the south of the Danube, but the more Bulgarians, powerful nations that had followed their emigration repelled AD640-1017. all return to the north and all progress to the west. Yet in the obscure catalogue of their exploits they might boast an honour which had hitherto been appropriated to the Goths, that of slaying in battle one of the successors of Augustus and Constantine. The emperor Nicephorus had lost his fame in the Arabian, he lost his life in the Sclavonian, war. In his first operations he advanced with boldness and success into the centre of Bulgaria, and burnt the royal court, which was probably no more than an edifice and village of timber. But while he searched the spoil and refused all offers of treaty, his enemies collected their spirits and their forces; the passes of retreat were insuperably barred, and the trembling Nicephorus was heard to exclaim, "Alas, alas! unless we could assume the wings of birds, "we cannot hope to escape." Two days he waited his fate in the inactivity of despair, but, on the morning of the third, the Bulgarians surprised the camp, and the Roman prince, with the great officers of the empire, were slaughtered in their tents. The body of Valens had been saved from insult, but the head of Nicephorus was exposed on a spear, and his skull, enchased with gold, was often replenished in the feasts of victory. The Greeks bewailed the dishonour of the throne, but they acknowledged the just punishment of avarice and cruelty. This savage cup was deeply tinctured with the manners of the Scythian wilderness, but they were softened before the end of the same century by a peaceful intercourse with the Greeks, the possession of a cultivated region, and the introduction of the Christian worship. The nobles of Bulgaria were

A.D. 811.

12 See the anonymous Chronicle of the xith century, ascribed to John Sagorninus (p. 94-102), and that composed in the xivth by the Doge Andrew Dandolo (Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xii. p. 227-230)-the two oldest monuments of the history of Venice.

The first kingdom of the Bulgarians may be found, under the proper dates, in the Annals of Cedrenus and Zonaras. The Byzantine materials are collected by Stritter (Memoria Populorum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 441-647); and the series of their kings is disposed and settled by Ducange (Fam. Byzant. p. 305-318).

A.D. 888-927

or 932.

educated in the schools and palace of Constantinople, and Simeon, a youth of the royal line, was instructed in the rhetoric of Demosthenes and the logic of Aristotle. He relinquished the profession of a monk for that of a king and warrior, and in his reign of more than forty years Bulgaria assumed a rank among the civilised powers of the earth. The Greeks, whom he repeatedly attacked, derived a faint consolation from indulging themselves in the reproaches of perfidy and sacrilege. They purchased the aid of the pagan Turks, but Simeon, in a second battle, redeemed the loss of the first, at a time when it was esteemed a victory to elude the arms of that formidable nation. The Servians were overthrown, made captive, and dispersed; and those who visited the country before their restoration could discover no more than fifty vagrants, without women or children, who extorted a precarious subsistence from the chase. On classic ground, on the banks of the Achelöus. the Greeks were defeated: their horn was broken by the strength of the barbaric Hercules. He formed the siege of Constantinople, and, in a personal conference with the emperor, Simeon imposed the conditions of peace. They met with the most jealous precautions: the royal galley was drawn close to an artificial and well-fortified platform, and the majesty of the purple was emulated by the pomp of the Bulgarian. "Are you a Christian?" said the humble Romanus ; "it is your duty to abstain from the blood of your fellow -Christians. "Has the thirst of riches seduced you from the blessings of peace? "Sheathe your sword, open your hand, and I will satiate the utmost "measure of your desires." The reconciliation was sealed by a domestic alliance; the freedom of trade was granted or restored; the first honours of the court were secured to the friends of Bulgaria,

14 Simeonem semi-Græcum esse aiebant, eo quod à pueritiâ Byzantii Demosthenis rhetoricam et Aristotelis syllogismos didicerat. Liutprand, 1. iii. c. 8. He says, in another place, Simeon, fortis bellator, Bulgaria [Bulgaris] præerat; Christianus, sed vicinis Græcis valde inimicus (1. i. c. 2).

15

Rigidum fera dextera cornu

Dum tenet infregit, truncâque à fronte revellit.

Ovid (Metamorph. ix. 1-100) has boldly painted the combat of the river-god and the hero-the native and the stranger.

He was a patron of Slavonic literature, and was the earliest Slavonic author of the royal family. Schafarik, Slawische Alterthümer, vol. ii. p. 186.-S.

These Turks were the Patzinaks or Petcheneges. Respecting this people, see below, noted, p. 79.-S.

It was not on the banks of the Achelous, but at a place of that name in Bul

garia, near Anchialus, that the battle was fought. See Finlay, Byzantine Empire, vol. i. p. 342, who remarks," The name "Achelous seems to have misled Gibbon "into a singular complication of errors. "He transports the battle into Greece; "calls the Asiatic troops of Phocas "Greeks; and grows more poetical than "Ovid, whom he quotes."-S.