RUMELIA.—THE TURK STOCK.—ZONES OF CONQUEST.—EARLY INTRUSIONS OF TURK POPULATIONS WESTWARD.—THRACIANS.—THE ANCIENT MACEDONIANS.—THE PELASGI OF MACEDONIA.—BOSNIA, HERZEGOVNA AND TURKISH CROATIA.—BULGARIA.
RUMELIA.—THE TURK STOCK.—ZONES OF CONQUEST.—EARLY INTRUSIONS OF TURK POPULATIONS WESTWARD.—THRACIANS.—THE ANCIENT MACEDONIANS.—THE PELASGI OF MACEDONIA.—BOSNIA, HERZEGOVNA AND TURKISH CROATIA.—BULGARIA.
THEEuropean population of the Ottoman Empire, laying aside Jews, Armenians, and other similarly non-indigenous populations, is fivefold—Turk, Greek, Slavonic, Rumanyo, and Albanian. The Albanian, however, it was necessary to consider in the first chapter.
Rumelia, the province which first comes into notice is, the true and proper area of the Turks, Ottomans, or Osmanlis; a family which, considered in respect toEuropeanethnology, is as unimportant from its numerical magnitude, as it is recent in respect to its introduction. Yet this is a fact which we are slow to perceive at first; since the Turkish empire is so great, that, unless we separate its ethnological from its political elements, we fail to realize the extent to which the Osmanlis are not only intrusive, but inconsiderable. It is only in one of its provinces that the numberof the Osmanli conquerors so nearly approaches that of the original Europeans, to give them the appearance of the natural occupants of the country; this being the province in question, coinciding, as nearly as possible, with the Valley of the ancient Hebrus, or the modern Maritza. It is a wide and fruitful plain, that Nature, perhaps, meant for tillage, but which the pastoral habits of its possessors have kept a grazing country. It is a plain, with the exception of the small mountain ridges on each side—the Despoto-Dagh and the Stanches-Dagh—a point worth remembering, because its physical conditions determine the probable permanence of its earlier populations—populations which, in all impracticable countries, are likely to have held their own in the mountains, and to have retreated before an invader in the plains.
AsA.D.1458 is the date of the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. it may also pass for the date of the commencement of the Osmanli sway in Europe, and the Osmanli preponderance in the particular occupation of the province of Rumelia; for the time, in short, when ancient Thrace became Turkish. But the preliminaries had been going on for some time before, and it was as early asA.D.1360 that the Hellespont was crossed by Amurath I. Till then, the Osmanli belonged to Asia Minor, Anatolia, or Roum, as it was calledfrom the declining power of the degenerate Romans of Constantinople. But they were not indigenous even there; since Roum or Anatolia was a conquered country, even as Rumelia was—conquered, too, from the same degenerate and fictitious Romans. Hence the stream of Ottoman blood that passed from Asia to Europe was by no means pure. The occupancy of Asia Minor was not the work of a day; on the contrary, the process of appropriation was upwards of four centuries in duration; since the conquest of the race of Seljuk began inA.D.1074. And this again was an extension of frontier from Persia; and Persia was never truly Turk. The stream that spread and wasted itself in Europe is not discovered at its fountain-head until we have traced it from Rumelia to Anatolia, from Anatolia to Persia, and from Persia to either Turkistan or further. Then, indeed, we find amongst the most southern members of the great Turk stock, amongst those whose blood has been most mixed, and amongst those who are farthest from the country of the Mongols of Mongolia, the great great ancestors of the family and followers of Othman.
It must be remembered that all the recorded movements that thus brought a conquering population from the Oxus to the Hebrus were military—marches of armies consisting of hosts of warriors. That anything approaching a nationalmigration wherein the females bore a reasonable proportion to the males ever took place in Turkish ethnology has not been shown; so that, on the mother’s side, the Osmanli must, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, be other than Turk—sometimes Persian, sometimes Armenian, sometimes Georgian or Circassian, sometimes Anatolian (for some such adjective is required to denote the population of Asia Minor), sometimes European—and when European, Greek, Wallachian, Albanian, or Slavonic.
I have enlarged upon this because the majority of the travellers who, in Independent Tartary, Siberia, Turcomania, or Bokhara, meet with the other members of the Turk stock, in their original homes, are struck by the extent to which they differ in physiognomy from the Osmanli or Ottoman of Europe. They are often smooth-skinned and beardless, glabrous and glaucous, with high-cheek bones and oblique eyes, and other similar characteristics of the Mongol. The inference from this has, too often, been the wrong way; and an infusion of Mongolian blood been presumed. The truth is, that it is the Turks of Europe that have been modified; at any rate, it is only with the European that an intermixture of blood at all proportionate to the differences of physical conformation can be shown as an historical fact.
As a general rule the Osmanli prefers pastoral to agricultural employment, and dominant idleness to either. There is a reason for his preference to flocks and herds rather than to corn and tillage. His own proper and original area, the parts to the east and north of the Caspian, is a steppe, fitted for the nomad, but unfitted for the husbandman. Here, and here only, he has not been an intruder and a conqueror. Here, and here only, has he been without a subject population to work for him. This he has in Europe, this he has in Bokhara, this he has in Egypt; so that his love for looking-on and enjoying the labour of others is what he shares with the rest of the world, whereas his preference of a shepherd’s life to a cultivator’s is a habit rather than instinct. In the few parts of the original Turk area, where the conditions of soil and climate are favourable to agriculture, and where he is no dominant lord, but only an ordinary occupant, the Turk is as good a farmer as the generality. If he be not so in Asia Minor it is due to the insecurity of the fruits of his industry. On the other hand, in the valley of the Gurgan (falling into the Caspian from the east) the pre-eminently Turk branch of the Goklan Turcomans is mainly employed upon agriculture—growing grain and rearing silkworms. This, it may be said, is a singular instance. It is so; but where, besides, does any member ofthe great Turk stock come under the conditions necessary for agricultural industry—a fit soil and climate, combined with security of possession, and the absence of a subject and inferior class? Like any other fact, however isolated, it sets aside the current notion of the unfitness of the Turk for regular and industrial labour; a habitude, which, like so many other points of ethnology, is connected with external circumstances far more than blood, pedigree, or race.
The intellectual development of the Turk stock in general has been that of the majority of the families of mankind—moderate, or less than moderate; for invention and originality are the exceptions rather than the rule. And here they are in the same predicament as they were in respect to their industry. In their original country they are far removed from the contact of any literature or science better than their own; for what are the models for the Turk of Independent Tartary? In the country of their conquests they have clever Greeks and Arabs to do their head-work for them. And we may add to these drawbacks, the unfavourable effects of their creed. The language that gave them the Koran can give them nothing useful for the Europe of the nineteenth century; whilst the Europe of the nineteenth century is, in their eyes, a Europe of infidels.
However much we may lament the bigotry,ignorance, and sensuality of the Osmanli, he is only what his creed, conquests, and other unfortunate conditions make him. Of the hardy and simple families of the world, as opposed to the effeminate and subtle, he belongs to the most typical. This is shown in his history. Of thematerialconquerors of the world, of the disturbers of things physical by physical force, the Turks are the greatest: since what they have won has been by hardihood of will and strength of arm far less than by diplomacy or the more indirect effects of their arts and literature—of which, indeed, they have had none. But because they have been thus material, they have not been permanent. Had they conquered, like the ancient Romans, Egypt and Barbary and Servia and Persia and Hindustan would be Turk, giving an area greater than that of the Anglo-Saxons or the Slavonians. Still, they are the great material conquerors of history.
Yet this is but a result of certain physical and geographical conditions:—no proof of any specific hardihood of nature. It is no fanciful imagination to say, that the areas of the great conquering nations of the world, are as definitely bounded by certain lines of latitude as are those of climate; and that such areas give uszones of conquest and subjugationas truly as the Temperate or the Frigid give us zones of climate.There area priorireasons for this; and there are proofs of it in every page of history. The effects of a northern latitude are to stunt the population, after the fashion of the Laplander; those of the tropics to enervate. Between these extremes the peoples that are at once hardy and well-grown strike, as with a two-edged sword, both upwards and downwards, north and south. The Germans, Slavonians, Turks, and Algonkins verify this. Sometimes a superior civilization, sometimes undeveloped energies, referable to some new influences, counteract this natural disposition (one of the nearest approaches to a law in ethnology) but the general rule is, as has been stated,—apparent exceptions, as are the Romans and Arabians.
The Turks pressed forward in the direction of Europe, even as the Sarmatians did towards India, earlier than they have the credit of doing. The Skoloti have been already considered. But what do we find in the early history of Asia Minor? A mountain throughout the Turk area isTaghorDagh. The mountain from which the 10,000 Greeks saw the sea wasThekh-es. This, perhaps, is accidental. But who dwelt around it? The Skythini, the Anatolian equivalents to the Russian Skythæ. But this proves too much, since Skythæ was no native name, but one of Sarmatian origin, and, as such, indicative of Sarmatians in the parts about. Otherwise, how couldit be used? These Sarmatians cannot be demonstrated. Nevertheless, the name in the Anabasis of the king of the Paphlagonian neighbours of theScythini, near the mountainThekhes, isKorylas, andKralis the Lithuanic forking. Butkingis a common, not a proper name. So isZupan(=chief,lord,or superior) in the present Slavonic. Yet Gibbon speaks ofZupanus, as a king so-called, by certain Slavonians of the Middle Danube. All this may be accidental. Such accidents, however, are stranger than the facts which explain them away.
Ottomans, Greeks, Romans, Goths, and Slavonians have all modified the original blood of Thrace; yet the present blood of Ottoman Rumelia is, probably, more Thracian than aught else, Thracian on the mothers’ side.
The old Thracian affinities are difficult; but not beyond investigation. A series of statements on the part of good classical authors tell us, that the Daci were what the Getæ were, and the Thracians what the Getæ; also, that the Phrygians spoke the same language as the Thracians, and the Armenians as the Phrygians. If so, either the ancient language of Hungary must have been spoken as far as the Caspian, or the ancient Armenian as far as the Theiss. Many facts are against this: indeed the evidence must be dealt with by attributing two languages to Phrygia, one approachingthe nearest tongue on the East, which would be the Armenian, and another standing in the same relation to the Thracian, on the west. This distinction being drawn, the rest is probable.
The evidence as to there having been members of the Thracian stock on both sides the Hellespont, is not limited to the Phrygians of Mysia. The Bithyni and others are in the same category. Which way was the migration? It is generally believed to have been from Asia to Europe; but the deduction of the Greeks from Italy, and that of the Sanskrit language from Europe, modifies this view. In truth, the present writer reads the whole history of Thrace backwards; seeing in the majority of the populations akin to the Thracians on the eastern side of the Hellespont signs of European intrusion. Signs, too, of European intrusion he sees in the world-wide tale of Troy; the historical basis of the great Homeric poems being not the struggle between the Greek and the Asiatic, but that between the Greek and Thracian, each fighting for a footing in Asia Minor. Perhaps the beginning of the Greek colonization was the end of the Sarmatian; for the ancient Thracians I believe to have belonged to this stock. Like the Lithuanians of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, they have effected their share of achievements in India; their conquests having been Bacchic, Thracian, and Slavonic, just as the Cimmerian inroads wereLithuanic. So that there was a double origin to the so-called Indo-Europeans of Hindostan and Persia; a trace of which maypossibly,—I do not sayprobably—exists at the present moment in the nameJat.[23]
Between the original Thracian basis and thepresent dominant population of Osmanlis, there have been the following elements of intermixture: Pelasgic (whatever that was), Semitic, Hellenic, Roman, Gothic, Slavonic, and Bulgarian.
So far as the Macedonians were other than Hellenic, they were either Skipetar or Slavonian,i.e., in the category of the ancient Albanians, or in the category of the ancient Thracians; or they may have been mixed in some unascertained manner. Even if we suppose them to have pressed southwards and eastwards from the head-waters of the Axius, and from the southern boundary of Servia, a place for them in the same great class with the Thracians is admissible; and, in all probability, southern Servia was their original locality. That they, too, pressed forwards in Asia is likely. That words so radically alike asMygdon-esandMacedon-es, are wholly unconnected, and that they resemble each other by accident, is what I am slow to believe; but that the line of demarcationbetween the Thracians and Macedonians is broad and trenchant for members of the same stock, is likely, since each was an encroaching population, and, as such, a population which obliterated transitional and intermediate varieties.
It is well known that of the three localities of the Pelasgian stock, known under that name within the period of authentic history, two are in Macedonia: one of these we get from Herodotus, the other from Thucydides.
1. Herodotus mentions the Pelasgi of Khreston—above the Tyrsênians.
2. Thucydides, those of Cleonæ, Dium, and Olophyxus on the peninsula of Mount Athos.
The Pelasgi of the third locality, the Asiatic Pelasgi, or the Herodotean Pelasgi of the parts about Plakia and Skylake, near Cyzicus, may reasonably be considered as settlers of comparatively recent origin, both from the general phenomena of ethnological distribution, and the most scientific interpretation of the fewdatawe possess for the ancient ethnology of Asia Minor.
But the Pelasgi of Chreston and Mount Athos, are in localities wherein they may as easily be aboriginal as intrusive. Which were they? I cannot make up my mind; I can only exhaust the two alternatives. If aboriginal, they were one of three things, Skipetar, Slavonic, or members of an extinct stock; if intrusive, members of someextinct stock, Asiatic or Italian. How they may have been, this is easily understood.
1. An eastern extension of the oldest Skipetar area would carry a population akin to the ancestors of the present Albanians as far as the Ægean.
2. A southern extension of the Thracian area would carry the ancient Thracian stock as far as Thessaly.
3. Semitic, or other Asiatic colonies, would give us a series of maritime settlements.
4. So would a series of very early Italian colonizations. These we may deduce from some part of Italy, different from the mother-country of the true Hellenic Greeks; and we may, also, assume a difference in the date of the movement. In such a case the Pelasgi may have been Hellenic, as the Anglo-Saxons were Scandinavian; in other words, out of two Italian colonizations one (the Pelasgic) may have been the analogue to the Angle, the other (the Hellenic) to the Danish invasion of Britain.
Of these alternatives I prefer the second and fourth to the first and third.
The name itself seems to have been applied to one stock only, not to several—though the evidence of this is by no means conclusive.
It seems not to have beennative. Native names are, usually, more specific and less general. It wasa name whichAgave toB, not one whichBgave itself.
It seems to have been originally other than Greek.
With a strong inclination to see in the Œnotrian conquest of Greece athirdrather asecondstream of population, and with the belief that the earliest displacement of the original Skipetar population was effected by movements from Thrace and Macedon (by members of the great Slavonic stock), the Greek occupancy being later than this; favouring, too, the idea that the Pelasgi of Macedon were, at one and the same time, indigenous to the soil, and members of the same stock as the Thracians (the stock being the Slavonic); I am opposed to the broad line of demarcation which so many recent authors have drawn between the Hellenic civilization and the Thracian, a line of demarcation which has led them, in many cases, to explain away rather than admit the evidence of several good writers of antiquity, as to the influence of the Thracian music and the Thracian poetry on early Greece.
To claim for the Homeric poems the same amount of Thracian elements that the Welshman claims for those of the cycle of King Arthur, would be to illustrate theobscurum per obscurius, inasmuch as the Welshman’s claim is of a somewhat impalpable nature. It cannot attach to thepoems themselves, in any known form. They are all in Norman-French, or German, or English, or Italian—none in Welsh. Neither are they translations of a Welsh original now lost. Neither is their subject-matter Welsh to the amount of one-third. Yet, the germ of the fiction is, in some way or other, Welsh, and the claim of the Welshman is, up to a certain point, valid.
Mutatis mutandis, let us ask whether the Trojan cycle may not, in the same sense, be Slavonic—assuming the Thracians to have belonged to that stock?
I.a.When we find the name of a non-historical person coincide with that of an historical people or an historical locality, it is a fair inference, all the world over, to consider that form as anepônymus.
b.It is also fair to connect such legends as attach to the name with the people or the locality.
c.Now several names in the early Greek epic cycles are thuseponymic—thus localized in Thracian and other similar localities—Teucer, Æneas, Dardanus, &c.
II. Again—the national poetry of the existing Slavonic nations, more nearly approaches—longo intervallo, I admit—that of the Homeric Greeks than does that of any other families of mankind.
III. The metres do the same.
IV. The Sanskrit metres are in the same categorywith the Slavonic; so that—the European origin of the Sanskrit being admitted—the similarity must be of great antiquity.
These points cannot be enlarged on. They form, however, the basis of some claim for the existence of Slavonic elements in the old heroic poetry of Greece; which—it must be remembered—originated on the Helleno-Slavonic debatable land of Æolic Asia.
The propounder of an hypothesis has no right to lay down, peremptorily, the laws by which his doctrine is to be tested. At the same time, he may fairly claim that the objections to it should rest on the same broad grounds on which it is based. The Homeric poems are Greek; and the Orlando Furioso is Italian. Yet there are Welsh and other non-Italian elements in the latter, and, it is submitted, that there are Slavonic and non-Hellenic elements in the former. Their amount I do not profess to measure.
Bosnia,Herzegovna,Turkish Croatia,—Slavonic in speech, and Slavonic in blood, the Bosnians and Herzegovnians differ from the Servians only in a few details—the chief being their Mahometan creed. Equally slight is the difference between the Turkish and Austrian Croatians.
Bulgariais Slavonic and Rumanyo in speech, Mœsian, Gothic, Turk, and Slavonic in blood.
AUSTRIA.—BUKHOVINIA, GALLICIA, AND LODOMIRIA.—BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA.—AUSTRIAN SILESIA.—DALMATIA.—CROATIA.—CARNIOLA.—CARINTHIA.—STYRIA.—SALTZBURG, THE TYROL, THE VORARLBERG.—UPPER AND LOWER AUSTRIA.—HUNGARY.
AUSTRIA.—BUKHOVINIA, GALLICIA, AND LODOMIRIA.—BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA.—AUSTRIAN SILESIA.—DALMATIA.—CROATIA.—CARNIOLA.—CARINTHIA.—STYRIA.—SALTZBURG, THE TYROL, THE VORARLBERG.—UPPER AND LOWER AUSTRIA.—HUNGARY.
Bukhovinia.—Bukhoviniawas part of the ancient Dacia, and the bulk of the population is, consequently, Rumanyo.
A smaller portion is common to Bukhovinia and Gallicia, and this is chiefly Russniak, but partly Pole.
Gallicia and Lodomiria.—At present these are Russniak areas encroached upon by Poles and Germans: indeed, it was from Gallicia, Lodomiria, and Bukhovinia, that the Malorussians seem to have originated, and Russia to have been conquered.
Gallicia, however, at one time seems to have been occupied, more or less partially, by the most south-western members of the Lithuanic family—the Gothini of Tacitus, whose language is stated to have beenGallic. I have suggested, elsewhere, the likehood of this meaningGallician—therebeing no reason to look upon that name as one of recent origin. More than this, without denying the existence of true Gauls on those several portions of the water-system of the middle Danube where they are placed by ancient writers under the name ofGalatæ, I am inclined to believe that they were ratherGallicianandGallic.
For Gallicia to have been Lithuanic, Volhynia must have been Lithuanic[24]also, unless we suppose theGothinito have been an isolated settlement; which, perhaps, they were.
Bohemia.—Whatever may be the inferences from the fact of Bohemia having been politically connected with the empire of the Germanic Marcomanni, whatever may be those from the elementBoio-, as connecting its population with theBoiiof Gaul and Bavaria (Baiovarii), the doctrine that the present Slavonic population of that kingdom—Tshekhsas they call themselves—is either recent in origin or secondary to any German or Keltic aborigines, is wholly unsupported by history. In other words, at the beginning of the historical period Bohemia was as Slavonic as it is now.
FromA.D.526 toA.D.550, Bohemia belonged to the great Thuringian empire. The notion that it was then Germanic (except in its political relations)is gratuitous. Nevertheless, Schaffarik’s account is, that the ancestors of the present Tshekhs came,probably, from White Croatia: which was either north of the Carpathians, or on each side of them. According to other writers, however, the parts above the river Kulpa in Croatia sent them forth. In Bohemian the verbceti=to begin, from which Dobrowsky derives the nameCzekh=the beginners,the foremost,i.e.the first Slavonians who passed westwards. The powerful Samo, the just Krok, and his daughter, the wise Libussa, the founder of Prague, begin the uncertain list of Bohemian kings,A.D.624-700. AboutA.D.722, a number of petty chiefs become united under P’remysl, the husband of Libussa. Under his son Nezamysl, occurs the first Constitutional Assembly at Wysegrad; and inA.D.845, Christianity was introduced. But it took no sure footing till aboutA.D.966. TillA.D.1471, the names of the Bohemian kings and heroes are Tshekh—Wenceslaus, Ottokar, Ziska, Podiebrad. InA.D.1564, the Austrian connexion and the process of Germanizing began.
Now, in considering the heroic age of Tshekh literature, Schaffarik himself, though firmly holding the doctrine of a previous Germanic population, remarks, that “there is no trace of any remnant of the German spirit having survived in Bohemia. The remains of such Germanic population as there were, must have been a weakremnant, and soon have become lost in the Slavonic nationality. Even the stronger most probably withdrew to the lonely hills.”
Moravia.—The history and ethnology of Moravia is nearly that of Bohemia, except that the Marcomannic Germans, the Turks, Huns, Avars, and other less important populations may have effected a greater amount of intermixture. Both populations are Tshekh, speaking the Tshekh language—the language, probably, of the ancient Quadi.
Austrian Silesia.—The basis of the population is Sorabian,i.e.akin to the Srbie, and Serskie of Lusatia. Like Gallicia, however, it has become Polish in language wherever it is not German.
Dalmatia.—The bulk of the present population is Slavonic, closely allied to the Servians, Bosnians, Herzegovnians, and Montenegriners. The foreign elements, however, are considerable.
First came the Roman conquest; then the Avar; then Germanic, then Arab, and then Venetian influences. Besides this there were Mongol inroads, and an absolute conquest of the neighbouring countries of Bosnia and Herzegovna by the Turks.
In Dalmatia we have a Slavonic population addicted to maritime habits. The Liburnians of old, the Narentines, the Uskoks, the Almissansduring the contests between Venice and the Turks are prominent in the history of piracy. On the other hand the history of more than one Republic—Ragusa, Poglizza—shows that the Dalmatian temper has not been dead to the spirit of political liberty.
Croatiais Slavonic nearly as Servia and Bosnia are Slavonic. The Croatian dialect, without the two being mutually unintelligible, differs from the so-called Illyrian of the Vinds, Slovenians, or Slovenzi of—
Istria,Carniola,Carinthia,and Styria, all truly Slavonic districts, though, of course, partially occupied by an encroaching population of Germans on the northern, and of Italians on the southern frontier.
Salzburg, the northern half of the Tyrol, and the VorarlbergI believe to have been originally as Slavonic as Carinthia, and also that they are at the present moment Slavonic in blood, though German in language.
Upper and Lower AustriaI believe to have been in the same predicament.
The southern half of the Tyrol had its affinities with the south rather than the north, and was originally, in part at least, Etruscan. It must be remembered that it by no means follows that because it was Etruscan it was necessarily other than Slavonic.
Hungary.—The complex ethnology of Hungary now remains for consideration.
The Banatis a mixture of recently introduced populations in the way of colonization.
Transylvaniais German, Rumanyo and Sekler, a term which will be noticed hereafter.
The central parts only are Majiar—Majiar meaning the population which speaks the Majiar language, which originated in Asia, and which in the tenth century effected intrusions and conquests in Hungary, just as the Osmanlis did in Rumelia. The details of the Majiar movements from the Ural Mountains to the Danube are obscure. They are said, however, to have been driven from their own locality by the Petschenagi. They are also mentioned as having taken that part of Russia which is called Susdal, in their way.
Sevenwas the number of the names of their patriarchs, who where Almus, the father of Arpad, Eleud of Zobolsu, Cundu of Curzan, Ound of Ete,[25]Tosu of Lelu, Huba of Zemera, Tahut of Horca; but the tribes, clans, or generations were far more numerous. In one of the traditions they amount to one hundred and eight. In the genealogies themselves we can trace more than one family to a single patriarch, since the tribes of Calan and Consoy are derived from Ete, the son of Ound. In these divisionsand subdivisions we see a far greater resemblance to an Asiatic than to a European state of society; indeed, we may easily imagine that it is Turks or Mongols that we are reading of.
I cannot find that they came to Europe accompanied by their wives and daughters. Their march was rapid, since it was game and fish that they subsisted on rather than on the produce of agriculture. “Every day they hunted, so that the Hungarians are skilful above other nations in the chase. By hunting and fishing they got their daily food.”
They are described as a people of excessive rudeness and cruelty. “The nation of the Hungarians, fiercer then any brute beast, killed but few with the sword, though many thousands with their arrows. These they shot from bows of horn with such skill that their blows could not be guarded against it. This mode of fighting was dangerous in proportion as it was novel. It was like that of the Britons, except that where the one used darts the other used arrows.”
The Majiars were darker-skinned than the Turks; such, at least, is the plain interpretation of the epithetblack, which is applied to them by Nestor; who calls them theblack Ugri(Ugri czerni) in contradistinction to thewhite Ugri(Ugri bjeli), by which he is supposed to mean the Khazars.
From aboutA.D.889 toA.D.955, the Majiars were the scourge of the countries along the Danube; and in Bavaria, Saxony, Thuringia, Franconia, Hesse, Alsatia, and even France, they fought battles with various success—at first as conquerors. Afterwards, however, the tide of success turned against them, and a signal victory near Merseburg, inA.D.934, first broke their power, which was afterwards limited to their present area by a more decisive victory on the Lech inA.D.955.
I have remarked upon the extent to which the division of the Majiars into tribes, families, clans, or generations, has a Turk or Mongol look; and I now add that it is possible that it may actually be so. There are numerous proofs of the presence of Turk tribes in Hungary—the three most, important of which are—1. The Avars; 2. The Petschenagi; and 3. The Kumanians.
This is no more than we expect: since there were not only the descendants of the Huns of Attila settled in the country, but several separate subsequent invasions from the east had occurred in the interval.
1. The Avars, for more than three centuries after the death of Attila, continued to be the chief population of Pannonia; a population engaged in perpetual wars with their neighbours inCroatia, Moravia, and Transylvania, and, frequently, extending their invasions to Bohemia, Germany, and even France. Whether they were the absolute descendants of the Huns of Attila, under a new name, or not, is unimportant; since, if they were not Huns in the strict sense of the term, they were a very closely allied population. I think they formed the bulk of the Pannonians during the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. But, as the strength of the Slavonians of Moravia, Upper Hungary, Croatia and Servia increased, the power of the Avars waned, and, weakened as they were at the time of the Majiar invasion, they lost their language and nationality and name soon after that event. Till then, however, they had a separate existence, though reduced in importance. In the time of Nestor the extinction of the Avars, whom the Russians callObri, was indicated by the following bye-word,—“they are gone even as theObri; neither kith nor kin remains.” Whether they were most amalgamated with the Slavonians or the Majiars is doubtful. Such Hun blood as runs in the veins of the present Hungarians is referable to the Avars; at least it is certain that unless we supposed the Huns of Attila to have remained in Hungary (Pannonia) under the name of Avar, we cannot well trace their continued existence in that country; besides which the wordsHunandAvar, are frequently used as synonymous—“Huniqui etAvaresdicuntur.”
2. The Petschenagi, a branch of the great Turk family, were, even in Asia, the nearest neighbours of the ancestors of the Majiars; their locality being the parts between the Jaik and the Uralian Mountains. Their invasion of Russia is placed by Nestor inA.D.915; their settlements being the parts between the Lower Dnieper and the mouths of the Danube. We find them in Hungary under the name ofBisseni.
3. The Kumanians appear in Europe rather later than the Petschenagi and Majiars,i.e., in the latter half of the eleventh century. Volhynia is the country where they more especially settled. Like the Petschenagi they were Turk, but not Mahometan. On the contrary, they are described as unclean Pagans, who ate all sorts of meat, and some of it raw.
4. The fourth section of the Turk stock which made settlements in Hungary were theKhazars. I should not, however, like to assert positively that they were not Avars under another name, or, at any rate, a closely allied population.
5. The fifth were theBulgarians. Without fixing the date of their advent, we may safely assume that it was subsequent to the conversion of some portion of the nation to Mahometanism,although previous to their adoption of the Slavonic language.
But the remarkable fact is the name of one of their leadersHeten,[26]a name which we see in the list of the proper Majiar patriarchs. This confirms the notion that the division into tribes and sub-tribes may have been less Majiar and more Turk than it seems to be.
TheBashkirsof Hungary are a difficult population. In the thirteenth century, the Arabian writer Jakut, writes that he found in the city of Aleppo some florid-faced Mahometans, who were called Bashkirs, and came from Hungary.
Now, the present Bashkirs are the occupants of those parts beyond the Uralian Mountains from which the Majiars came: their language being Turk. But, as there is satisfactory evidence that this is an adopted tongue, and that their original speech was Ugrian, they are reasonably supposed to represent in the thirteenth century, not the Majiars of Hungary, but the Majiars of the mother-country from which the invaders of Europe proceeded. If so, how came they to be Mahometans? Were they not rather the Bulgarians last mentioned? Their florid complexion is the chief fact against it. On the other hand, it must be remarked that though Jakut says that they were calledBashkirs(“audiebantBaschgardi”) he does not say that they called themselves so. Again, the number of their chiefs is seven—the number of the so-called Majiar patriarchs; amongst whom it must remembered we find theBulgarianHeten.
Hence, of a Bashkir intermixture, separate from the Bulgarians on one side, and the Majiars on the other, there is no satisfactory evidence.
The analysis as far as it has proceeded has given us—
The Majiar conquest converted a Turk into a Ugrian area: its date being the tenth century.
The Hun conquest converted a semi-romanized into a Turk area; its date being the fifth century.A.D.444 is a convenient epoch for this event. It was the year of the murder of Attila’s brother, and the sole supremacy of Attila himself.
We will first ask how AttilaleftHungary: next how hefoundit.
I am not at all satisfied with the reasons generally given for believing that, as his power fellto pieces at his death, so did the Hun blood in Hungary become extinct. Still less am I satisfied with the reasons which give any particular nation the credit of having destroyed it. The recovery of the province of Pannonia never took place. I cannot find that either the Goths of the Lower, or the Germans of the Upper, Danube made any permanent conquest. That the Slavonic tribes of the surrounding frontier pressed towards the interior is certain; but it is not certain that they ever made the country their own.
That the political power of the descendants of Attila was broken is certain; and for that very reason, I believe that the ethnological influence of the Huns remained. The son of Attila was not the king of theHuns, becauseHunseems to have been a collective name, and, perhaps, was not a native one. But he was king of several of the populations in detail, of which, along with others, the Hun power was made. The tribes most ready to avail themselves of the death of Attila were the Goths of the Lower Danube—Bulgaria, and (perhaps) Servia. Now these first attacked theSetagæof Lower Pannonia; and when Dinzic, the son of Attila knew of it he opposed them with the few tribes that still acknowledged his dominion, theUltzinzures, theAngesuritheBitugures, and theBardones. All these were particular Hun populations, who, aslong as the Hun power was at work on a large scale were merged in one general name, but who afterwards step forth as separate substantive members of that great confederacy, or empire.
Still there was great encroachment; the invading populations of the Avars and the Bulgarians—so far as they were not Huns—being like the Ultzinzures, &c. of Turk blood.
Before the remains of the Huns of Attila were extinguished—probably before they were notably diminished—the closely allied Avars (Huns, perhaps, under another name) conquered Pannonia, and held it from the end of the sixth to that of the eighth century.
What with the remains of Attila’s army, and what with the Avars and the Bulgarians, I think that when the Majiars entered Hungary they found it, at least, as much Turk as aught else,—as much, but not more; for the history of Hungary between the Hun and the Majiar conquests seems to have been as follows:—
a.There was some reaction on the part of the Romans, assisted by—
b.The Goths, and perhaps by—
c.The remains of the native population of the frontiers.
TheGepidæ, too, were amongst the subjects of Attila. After his death they rebelled against his son. Between the Danube, the Theiss, and theCarpathian Mountains, their power grew steadily until the rise of the Avars and Lombards; the union of which two nations was too strong for them. By the beginning of the eighth century their national existence had ceased.
I cannot say to what stock the Gepidæ belonged. Ithinkthey were Slavonians.
Be this, however, as it may, their power seems to have been in the inverse ratio to that of the Avars, and they must be admitted as an element in the ethnology of Hungary, without being supposed to be a very important one.
We may well, then, say that no European population is more heterogeneous than that of Hungary.
a.In the countries of Saala and Eisenberg we have a simple extension of the Carinthians.
b.In Upper Hungary the Slovaks.
c.On the Croatian frontier, Croatians—to say nothing about the political union of the two kingdoms.
d.In Slavonia, Servians and Russians—a variety of the Servian section.
e.The Banat has already been noticed. So has—
f.Transylvania. The non-Majiar populations of all these districts are separated from the Majiars by the outward and visible signs of difference of language; and their ethnology is, consequently,widely different from that of the Jaszag and Kunszag. Of these, though the former is Slavonic and the latter Turk, in blood, each is Majiar in language.
Different, however, from all are the Seklers.Theirpeculiarity is, that they were Majiars before the great Majiar invasion of the tenth century; Ugrians, probably, in the army of Attila, as they easily might have been, and as their own belief makes them, whilst a passage in Alfred mentions theSyssele east of the land of the Vends. The word meanssettlerin Majiar, and it is only by supposing an early Majiar invasion that its presence in the pages of Alfred can be explained.
It is in language that the Majiar is distinct from the rest of Europe. In blood there is but little difference. That a Majiar female ever made her way from the Ural Mountains to Hungary is more than I can find; the presumptions being against it. Hence, it is just possible that a whole-blooded Majiar was never born on the banks of the Danube. Whether the other elements are most Turk or most Slavonic is more than I venture to guess.
* * * *
Why do I give a Sarmatian origin to the ancient populations of the Lower and Middle Danube? The details are too lengthy for exhibition; a sketch only can be given. Specialtestimony places the Thracians, the Getæ, the Daci, and the Triballi in the same class. The reasons in favour of therecentorigin of the present Servians, Croatians, Carinthians, Slovaks, and Tshekhs, is inconclusive. The Jazyges of the Euxine were in the same category with the Jazyges of the Theiss,i.e.Slavonic. From these the intermediate populations cannot be separated.
But why carry the Slavonic area further west? In the Tyrol we have such geographical names as Scharn-itz, Gshnitz-thal, andVintsh-gau; in the Vorarlberg, Ked-nitzand Windisch-matrei. Even where the names are less definitely Slavonic, the compound sibilanttsh, so predominant in Slavonic, so exceptional in German, is of frequent occurrence. This, perhaps, is little, yet is more than can be found in any country known to have beennon-Slavonic. Besides which, there are no presumptions against the doctrine. Again—a Slavonic population in the Vorarlberg and Southern Bavaria best accounts for the nameVind-elicia.
* * * *
Malta, Crete, and several of the Greek Islands, are European in respect to their politics only. Ethnologically, they are African and Asiatic. In Malta the language of the common people is Arabic, and the blood is probably Arabic also—the superadded elements being numerous.
The aboriginal population of Crete is problematical.If we admit the reasonable presumption that it was an extension of that of the Continent, Egypt and Phœnicia have each a claim; as has Greece. ThatMinosrepresents a different person—historical or mythological—fromMenesis a current doctrine; but then the notion that any amount of similarity of name may occur within improbably narrow limits both of space and time is current also.
Hence, Egyptian, Phœnician, Anatolian, and perhaps other earlier elements are to be attributed to Crete anterior to the period of its Hellenization. Of the subsequent elements the Arabic is the most important. In each and all, too, of the other isles, the basis isnon-Hellenic.
I have no opinion as to the original blood of Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic isles. The last are Spanish in speech, the other two Italian, Arabic elements having been superadded—those introduced by the Roman conquest, and by the Phœnician having preceded them.
* * * *
If the ethnological analyses of the preceding pages be true, the extent to which the phenomena of what is calledraceare liable to over-valuation is considerable; so rare and exceptional is any approach to pure blood, and so little do pedigree and nationality coincide. The most powerful nations are the most heterogeneous. Yet theinference that mixture favours social development would be as unsafe as the exaggeration of the effects of purity. The conditions which are least favourable for a prominent place in the world’s history are the best for the preservation of old characters. The purest populations of Europe are the Basques, the Lapps, the Poles, and the Frisians; yet who can predicate any important character common to them all?
To attribute national aptitudes and inaptitudes or national predilections and antipathies to the unknown influences of blood, as long as the patent facts of history and external circumstances remain unexhausted, is to cut the Gordian Knot rather than to untie it. That there is something in pedigree is probable; but, in the mind of the analytical ethnologist, this something is much nearer to nothing than to everything.
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