leventh century the peninsula was invaded frequently
by the Tartar Pechenegs and Kumans, whose aid was invoked both by Greeks
and Bulgars; the result of these incursions was not always favourable to
those who had promoted them; the barbarians invariably stayed longer and
did more damage than had been bargained for, and usually left some of
their number behind as unwelcome settlers.

In this way the ethnological map of the Balkan peninsula became ever more
variegated. To the Tartar settlers were added colonies of Armenians and
Vlakhs by various emperors. The last touch was given by the arrival of the
Normans in 1081 and the passage of the crusaders in 1096. The wholesale
depredations of the latter naturally made the inhabitants of the Balkan
peninsula anything but sympathetically disposed towards their cause. One
of the results of all this turmoil and of the heavy hand of the Greeks was
a great increase in the vitality of the Bogomil heresy already referred to;
it became a refuge for patriotism and an outlet for its expression. The
Emperor Alexis Comnenus instituted a bitter persecution of it, which only
led to its growth and rapid propagation westwards into Serbia from its
centre Philippopolis.

The reason of the complete overthrow of the Bulgarian monarchy by the
Greeks was of course that the nation itself was totally lacking in
cohesion and organization, and could only achieve any lasting success when
an exceptionally gifted ruler managed to discount the centrifugal
tendencies of the feudal nobles, as Simeon and Samuel had done. Other
discouraging factors wore the permeation of the Church and State by
Byzantine influence, the lack of a large standing army, the spread of the
anarchic Bogomil heresy, and the fact that the bulk of the Slav population
had no desire for foreign adventure or national aggrandizement.

8

_The Rise and Fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire,_ 1186-1258

From 1186 to 1258 Bulgaria experienced temporary resuscitation, the
brevity of which was more than compensated for by the stirring nature of
the events that crowded it. The exactions and oppressions of the Greeks
culminated in a revolt on the part of the Bulgars, which had its centre in
Tirnovo on the river Yantra in northern Bulgaria--a position of great
natural strength and strategic importance, commanding the outlets of
several of the most important passes over the Balkan range. This revolt
coincided with the growing weakness of the