s, overspread the modern dominions of Prussia,
Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient marks of obedience have tempted
the French historian to extend the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula.
The conquest or conversion of those countries is of a more recent age;
but the first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be justly
ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or
Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they had inflicted on the
nations. Their rings, the wooden fortifications which encircled their
districts and villages, were broken down by the triple effort of a
French army, that was poured into their country by land and water,
through the Carpathian mountains and along the plain of the Danube.
After a bloody conflict of eight years, the loss of some French generals
was avenged by the slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics of the
nation submitted the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and
unknown; and the treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty years,
enriched the victorious troops, or decorated the churches of Italy and
Gaul. [111] After the reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne
was bounded only by the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the
Save: the provinces of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy,
though unprofitable, accession; and it was an effect of his moderation,
that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty
of the Greeks. But these distant possessions added more to the
reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any
ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant
life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of communication between the
rivers, the Saone and the Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly
attempted. [112] Their execution would have vivified the empire; and
more cost and labor were often wasted in the structure of a cathedral.
[1121]

[Footnote 105: See the concise, but correct and original, work of
D'Anville, (Etats Formes en Europe apres la Chute de l'Empire Romain
en Occident, Paris, 1771, in 4to.,) whose map includes the empire of
Charlemagne; the different parts are illustrated, by Valesius (Notitia
Galliacum) for France, Beretti (Dissertatio Chorographica) for Italy, De
Marca (Marca Hispanica) for Spain. For the middle geography of Germany,
I confess myself poor and destitute.]

[Footnote 106: After a brief relation of his wars an