The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

The movements of the sixth century began to bring into notice a branch of the Aryan family of nations which was to play an important part in the affairs both of the East and of the West. ♦Movements of the Slaves.♦ These nations were the Slaves. It is needless for our purpose to attempt to trace their earlier history; but the movements of the Avars in the sixth century seem to have had much the same effect upon the Slaves which the movements of the Huns in the fourth century had upon the Teutons. The inroads of the Avars had, as we have seen, checked the growth of Teutonic powers on the Lower Danube, and had led to the Lombard settlement in Italy. But the Avars only formed the vanguard of a number of Turanian nations, some at least of them Turkish, which were now pressing westward. ♦Kingdom of the Avars.
Magyars, &c.♦ The Avars formed a great kingdom in the lands north of the Danube; to the east of these, along the northern coasts of the Euxine, bordering on the outlying possessions and allies of the Empire in those regions, lay Magyars, Patzinaks, and the greater dominion of the Chazars. All these play a part in Byzantine history; and the Avars were in the seventh century the most dangerous invaders and ravagers of the Roman territory. But south of the Danube they appeared mainly as ravagers; geography knows them only in their settled kingdom to the north of that river. Even that kingdom lasted no very great time; the real importance of all these migrations consists in the effect which they had on the great Aryan race which now begins to take its part in history. ♦North-western and South-western Slaves.♦ The Slaves seem to have been driven by the Turanian incursions in two directions; to the North-west and to the South-west. The North-western division gave rise to more than one European state, and their relations with Germany form an important part of the history of the Western Empire. These North-western Slaves do not become of importance till a little later. But the South-western division plays a great part in the history of the sixth and seventh centuries. ♦Analogy between Teutons and Slaves.♦ Their position with regard to the Eastern Empire is a kind of shadow of the position held by the Teutonic nations with regard to the Western Empire. The Slaves play in the East, though less thoroughly and less brilliantly, the same part, half conquerors, half disciples, which the Teutons played in the West. During the sixth century they appear only as ravagers; in the seventh they appear as settlers. ♦Slavonic settlements under Heraclius. c. 620.♦ There seems no doubt that Heraclius encouraged Slavonic settlements south of the Danube, doubtless with a view to defence against the more dangerous Avars. Much like the Teutonic settlers in the West, the Slaves came in at first as colonists under Imperial authority, and presently became practically independent. A number of Slavonic states thus arose in the lands north and east of the Hadriatic, as Servia, Chrobatia or Croatia, Carinthia, of which the first two are historically connected with the Eastern, and the third with the Western Empire. Istria and Dalmatia now became Slavonic, with the exception of the maritime cities, which, among many vicissitudes, clave to the Empire. And even among them considerable revolutions took place. ♦Destruction of Salona, 639.♦ Thus Salona was destroyed, and out of Diocletian’s palace in its neighbourhood arose the new city of Spalato. ♦Origin of Spalato and Ragusa.♦ The Dalmatian Epidauros was also destroyed, and Ragusa took its place. In many of these inroads Slaves and Avars were mixed up together; but the lasting settlements were all Slavonic. And the state of things which thus began has been lasting; the north-eastern coast of the Hadriatic is still a Slavonic land with an Italian fringe.

♦Displacement of the Illyrians.♦

In these migrations the Slaves displaced whatever remnants were left of the old Illyrian race in the lands near the Danube. They have themselves to some extent taken the Illyrian name, a change which has sometimes led to confusion. But at the time the movement went much further south than this. ♦Extent of Slavonic settlement.♦ The Slaves pressed on into a large part of Macedonia and Greece, and, during the seventh and eighth centuries, the whole of those countries, except the fortified cities and a fringe along the coast, were practically cut off from the Empire. The name of Slavinia reached from the Danube to Peloponnêsos, leaving to the Empire only islands and detached points of coast from Venice round to Thessalonica. Their settlements in these regions gave a new meaning to an ancient name, and the word Macedonian now began to mean Slavonic. ♦Albanians.♦ And it must have been at this time that the Illyrians, the Skipetar or Albanians, pressed southward and formed those colonies in Greece, some of which still keep the Albanian language, while the Slavonic language has vanished from those lands for ages. ♦Nature of Slavonic settlement in Greece.♦ The Slavonic occupation of Greece is a fact which must neither be forgotten nor exaggerated. It certainly did not amount to an extirpation of the Greek nation; but it certainly did amount to an occupation of a large part of the country, which was Hellenized afresh from those cities and districts which remained Greek or Roman. While these changes were going on in the Hadriatic and Ægæan lands, another immigration later in the seventh century took place in the lands south of the lower Danube, and drove back the Imperial frontier to Haimos. ♦Settlement of the Bulgarians, c. 679.♦ This was the incursion of the Bulgarians, another Turanian people, but one whose history has been different from that of most of the Turanian immigrants. By mixture with Slavonic subjects and neighbours they became practically Slavonic, and they still remain a people speaking a Slavonic language. ♦The Eastern Empire cut short in its own peninsula.♦ Thus the Empire, though it still kept its possessions in Italy with the great Mediterranean islands, though its hold on Western Africa lasted on into the eighth century, though it still kept outlying possessions on the northern and eastern coasts of the Euxine, was cut short in that great peninsula which seems made to be the immediate possession of the New Rome.

♦Moral influence of Constantinople.♦

But, exactly as happened in the West, the loss of political dominion carried with it the growth of moral dominion. The nations which pressed into these provinces gradually accepted Christianity in its Eastern form, and they have always looked up to the New Rome with a feeling the same in kind, but less strong in degree, as that with which the West has looked up to the Old Rome. ♦Extent of the Eastern Empire.♦ But, at the beginning of the eighth century, though the Imperial power still held posts here and there from the pillars of Hêraklês to the Kimmerian Bosporos, Saracens on the one side and Slaves on the other had cut short the continuous Roman dominion to a comparatively narrow space. The unbroken possessions of Cæsar were now confined to Thrace and that solid peninsula of Asia Minor which the Saracens constantly ravaged, but never conquered. Mountains had taken place of rivers as the great boundaries of the Empire: instead of the Danube and the Euphrates, the Roman Terminus had fallen back to Haimos and Tauros.

§ 5. The Transfer of the Western Empire to the Franks.

♦Growth of the Franks.♦

Meanwhile we must go back to the West, and trace the growth of the great power which was there growing up, a power which, while the elder Empire was thus cut short in the East, was in the end to supplant it in the West by the creation of a rival Empire. For a while the Franks and the Empire had only occasional dealings with each other. Next to Britain, which had altogether ceased to be part of the Roman world, the part of the Western Empire which was least affected by the re-awakening of the Roman power in the East was the former province of Transalpine Gaul. The power of the Franks was fast spreading, both in their old home in Germany and in their new home in Gaul. ♦Frankish conquest of the Alemanni, 496;♦ The victory of Chlodwig over the Alemanni made the Franks the leading people of Germany. The two German powers which had so long been the chief enemies of the Roman power along the Rhine were now united. Throughout the sixth century the German dominion of the Franks was growing. ♦of the Thuringians, c. 530;
of Bavaria.♦ The Frankish supremacy was extended over Thuringia, and later in the century over Bavaria. The Bavaria of this age, it must be remembered, has a much wider extent than the name has in modern geography, reaching to the northern borders of Italy. The Bavarians seem to have been themselves but recent settlers in the land between the Alps and the Danube; but their immigration and their reduction under Frankish supremacy made the lands immediately south of the Danube thoroughly Teutonic, as the earlier Frankish conquests had done by the lands immediately west of the Rhine. Long before this time, the Franks had greatly extended their dominions in Gaul also. ♦Conquest of Aquitaine [507-511] and Burgundy. 532-534.♦ In the later years of Chlodwig the greater part of Aquitaine was won from the West-Goths. Further conquests at their expense were afterwards made, and about the same time Burgundy came under Frankish supremacy.

The Franks now held, either in possession or dependence, the whole oceanic coast of Gaul; but they were still shut out from the Mediterranean. The West-Goths still kept the land from the Pyrenees to the Rhone, the land of Septimania or Gothia, to which the last name clave as being now the only Gothic part of Gaul. The land which was specially Provincia, the first Roman possession in Transalpine Gaul, the coast from the Rhone to the Alps, formed part of the East-Gothic dominions of Theodoric. An invasion of Italy during the long wars between the Goths and Romans failed to establish a Frankish dominion on the Italian side of the Alps. But as the Franks, by their conquest of Burgundy, were now neighbours of Italy, it led to a further enlargement of their Gaulish dominions, and to their first acquisition of a Mediterranean sea-board. ♦Cession of Provence. 536.♦ It was now that Massalia, Arelate, and the rest of the Province were, by an Imperial grant, one of the last exercises of Imperial power in those regions, added to the kingdom of the Franks. ♦Extent of the Frankish dominions.♦ By the time that the Roman reconquest of Italy was completed, the Frankish dominion, united for a moment under a single head, took in the whole of Gaul, except the small remaining West-Gothic territory, together with central Germany and a supremacy over the Southern German lands. To the north lay the still independent tribes of the Low-Dutch stock, Frisian and Saxon.

♦Position of the Franks.♦