ppellation of the slaves has been degraded by chance
or malice from the signification of glory to that of servitude. Among
these colonies, the Chrobatians, 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. 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 was confined to a narrow 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 suc