LIV. shaken by those men who preserve the name without the CHAP. substance of religion, who indulge the licence without the temper of philosophy.42 CHAP. LV. The Bulgarians....Origin, Migrations, and Settlement of the Hungarians....Their Inroads in the East and West.... The Monarchy of Russia....Geography and Trade.... Wars of the Russians against the Greek Empire... Conversion of the Barbarians. LV. UNDER the reign of Constantine the grandson of CHAP. Heraclius, the ancient barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often restored, was irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of Barbarians. Their progress was favoured by the caliphs, their unknown and accidental auxiliaries: the Roman legions were occupied in Asia; and after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the Cæsars were twice reduced to the danger and disgrace of defending their capital against the Saracens. If in the account of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my transgression or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms; and the disciples of Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the Oriental world. But the same labour would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages, who, between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad, or perpetual emigration. Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful, their 42 I shall recommend to public animadversion two passages in Dr. Priestly, which betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276.) the priest; at the second (vol. ii. p. 484.) the magistrate, may tremble! 1 All the the passages of the Byzantine history which relate to the Barbarians are compiled, methodised, and transcribed, in a Latin version, by the CHAP. actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valour LV. brutal, and the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant. From the antiquities of, 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. Emigration of the ans, A. D. 680, &c. In his march to Italy, Theodoric2 the Ostrogoth had Bulgari trampled on the arms of the Bulgarians. After this defeat the name and the nation are lost during a century and an half; and it 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 Bulgaria3 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. laborious John Gotthelf Stritter, in his "Memoriæ Populcrum ad Danubium, Pontum Euxinum, Paludem Mæotidem, Caucasum, Mare Caspium, et inde magis ad Septemtriones incolentium." Petropoli, 1771...1779; in four tomes, or six volumes, in 4to. But the fashion has not enhanced the price of these raw materials. 2 Hist. vol. v. p. 8. 3 Theophanes, p. 296...299. 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. 4 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 Avi, p. 273, &c.). This Bulgarian colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and learned the Latin, without forgetting their native language. LV. The modern Bulgaria, along the southern banks of the Da- CHAP. nube, 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';5 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 properly Slavonian race; and the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians, Walachians, &c. followed either the standard 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 na tional appellation of the SLAVES? has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification of glory to that of servitude.10 5 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). 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. Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. l. i. c. 19. 23; and a Frenchman (d'Anville) is more accurately skilled in the geography of their own coury (Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions. tom. xxxi). 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), and elsewhere of the Bohemians (1. ii. p. 38). The same author has marked the separate idiom of the Hungarians. 8 See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, de Originibus Sclavicis Vindobonæ, 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 counseilor is not free from the prejudices of a Bohemian. 9 Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable derivation from Slava, laus, 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). 10 This conversion of a national into an appellative name appears to have arisen in the viith century, in the Oriental France, where the princes and bishops were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian (exclaim 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 Eẞ201, or Servians, with the Latin Servi, was still more fortunate and familiar (Constant. Porphyr, de administrando Imperio, c. 32. p. 99). LV. Croats or ans of &c. CHAP. Among these colonies, the Chrobatians," or Croats, who now attend the motions of an Austrian army, are the descendants of a mighty people, the conquerors and sovereigns Sclavoni- of Dalmatia. The maritime cities, and of these the infant Dalmatia, republic of Ragusa, implored the aid and instructions of the A. D. 900, 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 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. The glory of the Bulgarians 3 was confined to a narrow Bulgarians, scope both of time and place. In the ninth and tenth centuA. D. 640 ries, they reigned to the south of the Danube; but the more First king dom of the ...1017. 13 11 The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most accurate for his own times, most fabulous for preceding ages, describes the Sclavonians of Dalmatia (c. 29...36). 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 monu. ments of the history of Venice. 13 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). LV. powerful nations that had followed their emigration, repel- CHAP. led 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 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 in- A. D. 811. sult; 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 educated in the schools and palace of Constantinople; and Simeon,14 a youth of the royal line, was instructed in the rhetoric of Demosthenes and the logic of Aristotle. He relinquished the profession of a A. D. 888 monk for that of a king and warrior; and in his reign, of 932. more than forty years, Bulgaria assumed a rank among the civilized powers of the earth. The Greeks, whom he repeatedly attacked, derived a faint consolation from indulging 14 Simeonem semi-Græcum esse aiebant, eo quod a pueritia Byzantii Demosthenis rhetoricam et Aristotelis syllogismos didicerat. Liutprand, 1. iii. c. 8. He says in another place, Simeon, fortis bellator, Bulgariæ præerat; Christianus sed vicinis Græcis valde inimicus (1. i. c. 2). ...927, or |