The Balkans | Page 7

walls of Constantinople in 626 and the final triumph of the emperor over the Persians in
628, the influence and power of the Greeks began to reassert itself throughout the
peninsula as far north as the Danube; this process was coincident with the decline of the
might of the Avars. It was the custom of the astute Byzantine diplomacy to look on and
speak of lands which had been occupied by the various barbarian invaders as grants made
to them through the generosity of the emperor; by this means, by dint also of lavishing
titles and substantial incomes to the invaders' chiefs, by making the most of their mutual
jealousies, and also by enlisting regiments of Slavonic mercenaries in the imperial armies,
the supremacy of Constantinople was regained far more effectively than it could have
been by the continual and exhausting use of force.

BULGARIA

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_The Arrival of the Bulgars in the Balkan Peninsula,_ 600-700
The progress of the Bulgars towards the Balkan peninsula, and indeed all their
movements until their final establishment there in the seventh century, are involved in
obscurity. They are first mentioned by name in classical and Armenian sources in 482 as
living in the steppes to the north of the Black Sea amongst other Asiatic tribes, and it has
been assumed by some that at the end of the fifth and throughout the sixth century they
were associated first with the Huns and later with the Avars and Slavs in the various
incursions into and invasions of the eastern empire which have already been enumerated.
It is the tendency of Bulgarian historians, who scornfully point to the fact that the history
of Russia only dates from the ninth century, to exaggerate the antiquity of their own and
to claim as early a date as possible for the authentic appearance of their ancestors on the
kaleidoscopic stage of the Balkan theatre. They are also unwilling to admit that they were
anticipated by the Slavs; they prefer to think that the Slavs only insinuated themselves
there thanks to the energy of the Bulgars' offensive against the Greeks, and that as soon
as the Bulgars had leisure to look about them they found all the best places already
occupied by the anarchic Slavs.
Of course it is very difficult to say positively whether Bulgars were or were not present in
the welter of Asiatic nations which swept westwards into Europe with little intermission
throughout the fifth and sixth centuries, but even if they were, they do not seem to have
settled down as early as that anywhere south of the Danube; it seems certain that they did
not do so until the seventh century, and therefore that the Slavs were definitely installed
in the Balkan peninsula a whole century before the Bulgars crossed the Danube for good.
The Bulgars, like the Huns and the Avars who preceded them, and like the Magyars and
the Turks who followed them, were a tribe from eastern Asia, of the stock known as
Mongol or Tartar. The tendency of all these peoples was to move westwards from Asia
into Europe, and this they did at considerable and irregular intervals, though in alarming
and apparently inexhaustible numbers, roughly from the fourth till the fourteenth
centuries. The distance was great, but the journey, thanks to the flat, grassy, treeless, and
well-watered character of the steppes of southern Russia which they had to cross, was
easy. They often halted for considerable periods by the way, and some never moved
further westwards than Russia. Thus at one time the Bulgars settled in large numbers on
the Volga, near its confluence with the Kama, and it is presumed that they were well
established there in the fifth century. They formed a community of considerable strength
and importance, known as Great or White Bulgaria. These Bulgars fused with later Tartar
immigrants from Asia and eventually were consolidated into the powerful kingdom of
Kazan, which was only crushed by the Tsar Ivan IV in 1552. According to Bulgarian
historians, the basins of the rivers Volga and Don and the steppes of eastern Russia
proved too confined a space for the legitimate development of Bulgarian energy, and
expansion to the west was decided on. A large number of Bulgars therefore detached
themselves and began to move south-westwards. During the sixth century they seem to
have been settled in the country to the north of the Black Sea, forming a colony known as
Black Bulgaria. It is very doubtful whether the Bulgars did take part, as they are
supposed to have done, in the ambitious but unsuccessful attack on Constantinople in 559

under Zabergan, chief of another Tartar tribe; but it is fairly certain that they did in the
equally formidable but equally unsuccessful attacks by the Slavs and Avars against