learn is whether
Macedonia, even then a kaleidoscope of races, was more or less
completely under the shadow and the brilliance of his sword, more or
less completely subjugated. Four centuries later the Serbs were to
have a Macedonian empire which, like Simeon's, dissolved on the death
of its founder. To these old empires the Serb and the Bulgar of our
day are looking back, and it would be interesting to know if harassed
Macedonia was calmly content to be first Bulgarian and then Serbian,
or whether it was a calm of that Eastern kind which means that a
ruler's assaults upon the people are infrequent.

WHAT ARE THE BULGARS?

And now, as the matter is in dispute, it is necessary to examine the
origin of the Bulgarian people. A band of Turanian or Bulgarian
warriors, probably not over 10,000 in number and led by one Asperouch
or Isperich, had crossed the Danube in the year 679, had subdued the
Slav tribes in those parts--for the newcomers reaped the advantage of
being a well-disciplined people--and by the end of the eighth century
had settled down in their tents of felt along the banks of the Danube.
Then, after another hundred years, in the district bounded by Varna,
Rustchuk and the Balkans, one may say that the original Turanians, a
branch of the Huns, had been absorbed by the Slavs. "The forefathers
of the Bulgars," says the great Slavist, Dr. Constantine Jire[vc]ek of
Prague, in his _History of the Bulgars_, "are not the handful of
Bulgars who conquered in 679 a part of Moesia along the Danube, but
the Slavs who much earlier had settled in Moesia, as well as in
Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus and almost the whole Peninsula." With regard
to the retention of the name there is an analogy in France, where the
Gauls came under the subjection of German Franks, who ultimately
disappeared, but left their name to the country. So, too, the Greeks
in Turkey who call themselves Romei, the name of their former rulers,
and their language Romeica, though they are not Romans and do not
speak Latin. To such an extent have the original Bulgars been absorbed
by the Yugoslavs that even the most ancient known form of the
Bulgarian language, dating from the ninth century, retains hardly any
relics of the original Bulgarian tongue; and this tongue has in our
time, with the exception of a word or two, been entirely lost: there
is a celebrated old MS. in Moscow[11] which orientalists and
historians have pondered over and which has now been expla