was maintained
in the foremost ranks, but their charge was driven forwards by the
impatient pressure of succeeding crowds. They pursued, headlong and
rash, with loosened reins and horrific outcries; but, if they fled, with
real or dissembled fear, the ardor of a pursuing foe was checked and
chastised by the same habits of irregular speed and sudden evolution.
In the abuse of victory, they astonished Europe, yet smarting from the
wounds of the Saracen and the Dane: mercy they rarely asked, and more
rarely bestowed: both sexes were accused is equally inaccessible to
pity, and their appetite for raw flesh might countenance the popular
tale, that they drank the blood, and feasted on the hearts of the slain.
Yet the Hungarians were not devoid of those principles of justice and
humanity, which nature has implanted in every bosom. The license of
public and private injuries was restrained by laws and punishments; and
in the security of an open camp, theft is the most tempting and
most dangerous offence. Among the Barbarians there were many, whose
spontaneous virtue supplied their laws and corrected their manners, who
performed the duties, and sympathized with the affections, of social
life.

[Footnote 29: Leo has observed, that the government of the Turks was
monarchical, and that their punishments were rigorous, (Tactic. p. 896)
Rhegino (in Chron. A.D. 889) mentions theft as a capital crime, and his
jurisprudence is confirmed by the original code of St. Stephen, (A.D.
1016.) If a slave were guilty, he was chastised, for the first time,
with the loss of his nose, or a fine of five heifers; for the second,
with the loss of his ears, or a similar fine; for the third, with death;
which the freeman did not incur till the fourth offence, as his first
penalty was the loss of liberty, (Katona, Hist. Regum Hungar tom. i. p.
231, 232.)]

After a long pilgrimage of flight or victory, the Turkish hordes
approached the common limits of the French and Byzantine empires. Their
first conquests and final settlements extended on either side of the
Danube above Vienna, below Belgrade, and beyond the measure of the Roman
province of Pannonia, or the modern kingdom of Hungary. [30] That ample
and fertile land was loosely occupied by the Moravians, a Sclavonian
name and tribe, which were driven by the invaders into the compass of a
narrow province. Charlemagne had stretched a vague and nominal empire
as far as the edge of Transylvania; but, after