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, Í 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 2 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 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 3 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;5 the ecclesiastical supremacy

2 Hist. vol. iv. p. 11.

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 abovementioned 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.

5 These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire are assigned to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction

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was translated from the native city of Justinian; and, in their prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida, was honored 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 national appellation of the SLAVES9 has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification of glory to that of servitude.10 Among these colonies, the

between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A. D. 869, No. 75.)

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. 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.)

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.*

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 counsellor is not free from the prejudices of a Bohemian.†

• 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 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

The Slavonian languages are no doubt Indo-European, though an original branch of that great family, comprehending the various dialects named by Gibbon and others. Shafarik, t. 33. - M. 1845.

+ We have at length a profound and satisfactory work on the Slavonian races, Shafarik, Slawische Alterthümer, B. 2, Leipzig, 1843.- M. 1845.

Chrobatians,11 or Croats, who now attend the motions 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 harbors, 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 honorable 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 13 was confined to a narrow

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 Zeoß201, or Servians, with the Latin Servi, was still more fortunate and familiar, (Constant. Porphyr. de Administrando Imperio, c. 32, p. 99.)

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 monuments 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

scope both of time and place. In the ninth and tenth centuries, they reigned to the south of the Danube; but the more powerful nations that had followed their emigration repelled all return to the north and all progress to the west. Yet in the obscure catalogue of their exploits, they might boast an honor 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 dishonor 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 monk for that of a king and warrior; and in his reign of more

materials are collected by Stritter, (Memoriæ 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.)

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, Bulgariæ præerat; Christianus, sed vicinis Græcis valde inimicus, -(l. i. c. 2.)

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 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.15 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 fellowChristians. 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 honors of the court were secured to the friends of Bulgaria, above the ambas sadors of enemies or strangers; 16 and her princes were dignified with the high and invidious title of Basileus, or emperor. But this friendship was soon disturbed: after the death of Simeon, the nations were again in arms; his feeble succes

25

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.

16 The ambassador of Otho was provoked by the Greek excuses, cum Christopheri filiam Petrus Bulgarorum Vasileus conjugem duceret, Symphona, id est consonantia, scripto juramento firmata sunt, ut omnium gentium Apostolis, id est nunciis, penes nos Bulgarorum Apostoli præponantur, honorertur, diligantur, (Liutprand in Legatione, p. 482.) See the Ceremoniale of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, tom. i. p. 82, tom. ii. p. 429, 430, 43 435, 443, 444, 446, 447, with the annotations of Reiske.