ng regiments of Slavonic mercenaries in the imperial armies, the
supremacy of Constantinople was regained far more effectively than it
could have been by the continual and exhausting use of force.

BULGARIA

4

_The Arrival of the Bulgars in the Balkan Peninsula,_ 600-700

The progress of the Bulgars towards the Balkan peninsula, and indeed all
their movements until their final establishment there in the seventh
century, are involved in obscurity. They are first mentioned by name in
classical and Armenian sources in 482 as living in the steppes to the
north of the Black Sea amongst other Asiatic tribes, and it has been
assumed by some that at the end of the fifth and throughout the sixth
century they were associated first with the Huns and later with the Avars
and Slavs in the various incursions into and invasions of the eastern
empire which have already been enumerated. It is the tendency of Bulgarian
historians, who scornfully point to the fact that the history of Russia
only dates from the ninth century, to exaggerate the antiquity of their
own and to claim as early a date as possible for the authentic appearance
of their ancestors on the kaleidoscopic stage of the Balkan theatre. They
are also unwilling to admit that they were anticipated by the Slavs; they
prefer to think that the Slavs only insinuated themselves there thanks to
the energy of the Bulgars' offensive against the Greeks, and that as soon
as the Bulgars had leisure to look about them they found all the best
places already occupied by the anarchic Slavs.

Of course it is very difficult to say positively whether Bulgars were or
were not present in the welter of Asiatic nations which swept westwards
into Europe with little intermission throughout the fifth and sixth
centuries, but even if they were, they do not seem to have settled down as
early as that anywhere south of the Danube; it seems certain that they did
not do so until the seventh century, and therefore that the Slavs were
definitely installed in the Balkan peninsula a whole century before the
Bulgars crossed the Danube for good.

The Bulgars, like the Huns and the Avars who preceded them, and like the
Magyars and the Turks who followed them, were a tribe from eastern Asia,
of the stock known as Mongol or Tartar. The tendency of all these peoples
was to move westwards from Asia into Europe, and this they did at
considerable and irregular intervals, though in alarming and apparen