142 THE DECLINE AXD FALL 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. Ertibiishment After a long pilffrimaffe of flieht or victory, the Turkish hordes and inroads of oioc? cd •-' the Hun- approachcd the common limits of the French and Byzantine 889 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-. 2-* 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 the failure of his legitimate line, the dukes of Moravia forgot their obedience and tribute to the monarchs of Oriental France.*** The bastard Arnulph was provoked to invite the arms of the Turks ; they rushed through the real or figurative wall which his indiscretion had thrown open ; and the king of Germany has been justW reproached as a traitor to the civil and ecclesiastical society of the Christians. During the life of Arnulph, the Hun- garians were checked by gratitude or fear ; but in the infancy of his son Lewis they discovered and invaded Bavaria ; and such was their Scythian speed that, in a single day, a circuit of fifty miles was stripped and consumed. In the battle of Augsburg, the Christians maintained their advantage till the seventh hour of the day ; they were deceived and vanquished by the flying stratagems of the Turkish cavalry. The conflagration spread over the provinces of Bavaria, Swabia, and Francouia ; and the Hungarians ^^ promoted the reign of anarchy by forcing the ^See Katona, Hist. Ducum Hungar. p. 321-352. [One of the most important consequences of the Hungarian invasion and final settlement in these regions was the permanent separation of the Northern from the Southern Slavs. In the eighth and ninth centuiies the Slavs formed an unbroken line from the Baltic to the Cretan sea. This line was broken by the Magyar wedge.]
- '[In the latter part of the ninth centur>-, Moravia under Sviatopolk or Svatopluk
was a great power, the most formidable neighbour of the Western Empire. It looked as if he were going to found a great Slavonic empire. For the adoption of the Christian faith see Appendi.x 12. He died in 894, and under his incompetent son the power of Great Moravia declined, and was blotted out from the number of independent states by the Hungarians about A. D. 906. The annihilation of Moravia might be a relief to the Franks who had originally (before Svatopluk's death) called in the Magyars against the Moravians, but they found — at least for some time to come — more terrible foes in the Mag)'ars.] ■^1 Hungarorum gens, cujus omnes fere nationes expertce [sunt] ssevitiam, &c., is the preface of Liutprand (1. i. c. 2 [=c. 5]). who frequently expatiates on the calamities of his own times. See 1. i. c. 5 [= c. 13] ; 1. ii. c. i, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 [= c. 2-5, 8 s</c/. 21] ;
