s
later passed southwards. After desultory warfare with Constantinople, from
660 onwards, his successor finally overcame the Greeks, who were at that
time at war with the Arabs, captured Varna, and definitely established
himself between the Danube and the Balkan range in the year 679. From that
year the Danube ceased to be the frontier of the eastern empire.

The numbers of the Bulgars who settled south of the Danube are not known,
but what happened to them is notorious. The well-known process, by which
the Franks in Gaul were absorbed by the far more numerous indigenous
population which they had conquered, was repeated, and the Bulgars became
fused with the Slavs. So complete was the fusion, and so preponderating
the influence of the subject nationality, that beyond a few personal names
no traces of the language of the Bulgars have survived. Modern Bulgarian,
except for the Turkish words introduced into it later during the Ottoman
rule, is purely Slavonic. Not so the Bulgarian nationality; as is so often
the case with mongrel products, this race, compared with the Serbs, who
are purely Slav, has shown considerably greater virility, cohesion, and
driving-power, though it must be conceded that its problems have been
infinitely simpler.

5

_The Early Years of Bulgaria and the Introduction of Christianity_,
700-893

From the time of their establishment in the country to which they have
given their name the Bulgars became a thorn in the side of the Greeks, and
ever since both peoples have looked on one another as natural and
hereditary enemies. The Bulgars, like all the barbarians who had preceded
them, were fascinated by the honey-pot of Constantinople, and, though they
never succeeded in taking it, they never grew tired of making the attempt.

For two hundred years after the death of Asparukh, in 661, the Bulgars
were perpetually fighting either against the Greeks or else amongst
themselves. At times a diversion was caused by the Bulgars taking the part
of the Greeks, as in 718, when they 'delivered' Constantinople, at the
invocation of the Emperor Leo, from the Arabs, who were besieging it. From
about this time the Bulgarian monarchy, which had been hereditary, became
elective, and the anarchy of the many, which the Bulgars found when they
arrived, and which their first few autocratic rulers had been able to
control, was replaced by an anarchy of the few. Prince succeeded prince,
war followed war, at the will