who were seated in the southern provinces of Poland.* The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship of the emperors; and at the solicitation of Justinian, they passed the Danube, to reduce, according to their treaty, the cities of Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia. But the spirit of rapine soon tempted them beyond these ample Limits; they wandered along the coast of the Hadriatic as far as Dyrrachium, and presumed, with familiar rudeness, to enter the towns and houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the captives who had escaped from their audacious hands. These acts of hostility, the sallies, as it might be pretended, of some loose adventurers, were disowned by the nation, and excused by the emperor; but the arms of the Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest of thirty years, which was terminated only by the extirpation of the Gepida. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause before the throne of Constantinople; and the crafty Justinian, to whom the barbarians were almost equally odious, pronounced a partial and ambiguous sentence, and dexterously protracted the war by slow and ineffectual succours. Their strength was formidable, since the Lombards, who sent into the field several myriads of soldiers, still claimed, as the weaker side, the protection of the Romans. Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the uncertainty of courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck with a panic: they fled from each other, and the rival kings remained with their guards in the midst of an empty plain. A short truce was obtained; but their mutual resentment again kindled; and the remembrance of their shame rendered the next encounter more desperate and bloody. Forty thousand of the barbarians perished in the decisive battle, which broke the power of the Gepidæ, transferred the fears and wishes of Justinian, and first displayed the character of Alboin, the youthful prince of the Lombards, and the future conqueror of Italy:†

defended by Grotius (Prolegom. ad Hist. Goth. p. 28, &c.) the Swedish ambassador. *Two facts in the narrative of Paul. Diaconus (1. 1, c. 20) are expressive of national manners. 1. Dum ad tabulam luderet while he played at draughts. 2. Camporum viridantia lina. The cultivation of flax supposes property, commerce, agriculture, and manufactures. I have used, without undertaking to reconcile, the facts in Procopius (Goth. 1. 2, c. 14; 1. 3, c. 33, 34; Ĭ. 4

The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian, under the two great families of the BULGARIANS * and the SCLAVONIANS. According to the Greek

c. 18. 25), Paul Diaconus (de Gestis Langobard. 1. 1, c. 1-23, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i, p. 405-419), and Jornandes (de Success. Regnorum, p. 242). The patient reader may draw some light from Mascou (Hist. of the Germans, and Annotat. 23) and De Buat. (Hist. des Peuples, &c. tom. ix-xi.)

*I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians, from Ennodius, (in Panegyr. Theodorici, Opp. Sirmond. tom. i, p. 1598, 1599) Jornandes, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 5, p. 194, et de Regn. Successione, p. 242) Theophanes, (p. 185) and the Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Marcellinus. The name of Huns is too vague; the tribes of the Cutturgurians and Utturgurians are too minute and too harsh. ["The Bulgarians, according to the Byzantine writers, were a branch of the Ongri. (Thunmann, History of Eastern Europe, p. 36.) But they more nearly resemble the Turks (Engel. Hist. Germ. xxix, 252. 298). Their name was undoubtedly derived from the river near which they dwelt. Great Bulgaria, their original seat, was watered by the Wolga. Near Kasan, the remains of their capital are seen. They afterwards took up their abode on the Kuban and then on the Danube, where, about the year 500, they subjugated the Slavonic Servians, who had established themselves on the Lower Danube. Overcome in their turn by the Avars, they regained their independence in 635. Their empire then comprehended the Cutturguri, à remnant of the Huns, near the Palus Mæotis. Danubian Bulgaria, a dismembered portion of this large state, was long formidable to the Byzantine empire." Malte Brun, i, 35.-GUIZOT.] [To this it should be added that the third European stem-race were the Slaven or Sclavonians (see vol. i, p. 271-273), whom the Greeks called Sauromatæ, and the Romans Sarmatæ. In their own language, their name denotes the Renowned. Of this race the Bulgarians were a division or tribe. Schlözer admits this (Nordische Geschichte, 1. 240), and says that the ancient people of this name were Turks. So long as the power of Rome kept the Gothic nations back, the Slaven were also fixed in their positions about the Wolga and the Caspian Sea, extending towards the Carpathian mountains and the Vistula. But as room was made for them, they advanced gradually farther into Europe. The extent of country over which they spread, is indicated by still-existing names. Sclavonia, to the south of Hungary, now confined to the district within the Danube, the Save and the Drave, once included all Croatia, Dalmatia, Romania, Servia, and Bulgaria. On the shores of the Baltic and the banks of the Niemen, the tracts around Memel and Tilsit are called Schlauen or Sclavonien. Considerable territories in the northern and eastern parts of Germany were also possessed by them. They had three main divisions, the Wenden, Anten, and Czechen, who were again subdivided into minor sections. The Bulgarians were among them. They came from the neighbourhood of

writers, the former, who touched the Euxine and the lake of Mæotis, derived from the Huns their name or descent; and it is needless to renew the simple and well-known picture of Tartar manners. They were bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the flesh, of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were practised in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation was divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the friendship or rather the gifts of the emperor; and the distinction which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and the rapacious wolf, was applied by an ambassador who received only verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince.* The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted by Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian name, and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic sea, or the extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same race of Sclavonians appears to have maintained, in every age, the possession of the same countries. Their numerous tribes, however distant or adverse, used one common language (it was harsh and irregular), and were known by the resemblance of their form, which deviated from the swarthy Tartar, and approached without attaining, the lofty stature and fair complexion of the German. Four thousand six hundred villlagest were scattered over the provinces of

Kasan, in Asiatic Russia, where the ruins and inscriptions found in the village of Bolgharu, attest their long ancient residence. (Ersch and Gruber, 14. 2.) The name of the Wolga is most probably derived from them. This river had only been heard of as the Rha by Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela and Ammianus Marcellinus, as quoted by Cellarius (2.755), who admits, however, that the Romans knew little of what existed north of the Caspian sea. It was called Edel by the Tartars, and Thamar by the Armenians. The Bulgarians had appeared long before it was known by the name of Wolga.-ED.]

* Procopius. (Goth. 1. 4, c. 19.) His verbal message (he owns himself an illiterate barbarian) is delivered as an epistle. The style is savage, figurative, and original. This sum is the result

of a particular list, in a curious MS. fragment of the year 550, found in the library of Milan. The obscure geography of the times provokes and exercises the patience of the count de Buat (tom. xi, p. 69—189). The French minister often loses himself in a wilderness which requires

Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron. Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the banks of rivers, or the edge of morasses, we may, not perhaps without flattery, compare them to the architecture of the beaver; which they resembled in a double issue to the land and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitants, an animal less cleanly less diligent, and less social, than that marvellous quadruped. The fertility of the soil, rather than the labour of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians. Their sheep and horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which they sowed with millet and panic,* afforded in the place of bread, a coarse and less nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their neighbours compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but on the appearance of a stranger, it was freely imparted, by a people whose unfavourable character is qualified by the epithets of chaste, patient, and hospitable. As their supreme god, they adored an invisible master of the thunder. The rivers and the nymphs obtained their subordinate honours, and the popular worship was expressed in vows and sacrifice. The Sclavonians disdained to obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate; but their experience was too narrow, their passions too headstrong, to compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some voluntary respect was yielded to age and valour; but each tribe or village existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where none could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and, except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armour: their weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows, and a long rope, which they dextera Saxon and Polish guide.

* Panicum, milium. See Columella, 1. 2, c. 9, p. 430, edit. Gesner. Plin. Hist. Natur. 18. 24, 25. The Sarmatians made a pap of millet, mingled with mare's milk or blood. In the wealth of modern husbandry, our millet feeds poultry, and not heroes. See the dictionaries of Bomare and Miller. [Millet and panic were not the peculiar food of the Bulgarians, but were commonly used in ancient times. The latter, especially, is said by Pliny (18. 25) to have been preferred by the people of Pontus to any other kind of sustenance; and to have been largely consumed in Aquitanian Gaul; to the south of the Po also, it was eaten by the Italians, mixed with beans. Husbandmen were forbidden to sow both these grains among vines or fruit-trees, because they exhausted the soil. modern Germans introduce millet into soups, but it is not a nutritious

The

ously threw from a distance, and entangled their enemy in a running noose. In the field the Sclavonian infantry was dangerous by their speed, agility, and hardiness: they swam, they dived, they remained under water, drawing their breath through a hollow cane; and a river or lake was often the scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But these were the achievements of spies and stragglers; the military art was unknown to the Sclavonians; their name was obscure, and their conquests were inglorious.*

I have marked the faint and general outline of the Sclavonians and Bulgarians, without attempting to define their intermediate boundaries, which were not accurately known, or respected, by the barbarians themselves. Their importance was measured by their vicinity to the empire; and the level country of Moldavia and Walachia was occupied by the Antes,t a Sclavonian tribe, which swelled the titles of Justinian with an epithet of conquest. Against the Antes he erected the fortifications of the Lower Danube; and laboured to secure the alliance of a people seated in the direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the Euxine sea. But the Antes wanted power and inclination to stem the fury of the torrent: and the light-armed Sclavonians, from a hundred tribes, pursued with almost equal speed the footsteps of the Bulgarian horse. The payment of one piece of gold for each soldier, procured a safe and easy retreat through the country of the Gepida, who

viand.-ED.] * For the name and nation, the situation and manners, of the Sclavonians, see the original evidence of the sixth century, in Procopius (Goth. 1. 2, c. 26; 1. 3, c. 14), and the emperor Mauritius or Maurice. (Stratagemat. 1. 2, c. 5, apud Mascou, Annotat. 31.) The Stratagems of Maurice have been printed, only, as I understand, at the end of Scheffer's edition of Arrian's Tactics, at Upsal, 1664 (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. 1. 4, c. 8, tom. iii, p. 278), a scarce, and hitherto, to me, an inaccessible book.

Antes eorum fortissimi. . . Taysis qui rapidus et vorticosus in Histri fluenta furens devolvitur. (Jornandes, c. 5, p. 194, edit. Murator. Procopius, Goth. 1. 3, c. 14, et de Edific. 1. 4, c. 7.) Yet the same Procopius mentions the Goths and Huns as neighbours, yeɩtovouvra, to the Danube. (De Edific. 1. 4,c. 1.) [Procopius here may have been right, for there were still Goths not expelled from Moesia, and Huns on the northern side of the Danube.-ED.]

The national title of Anticus, in the laws and inscriptions of Justinian, was adopted by his successors, and is justified by the pious