BULGARIA AND THE DEATH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Probably not the least part of the interest which the traveller or the
student will take in Bulgaria is the fact that it was the arena in
which were fought the great battles of races declaring the doom of the
Roman Empire. Fortunately, from old Gothic chronicles it is possible
to get pictures--valuable for vivid colouring rather than strict
accuracy--which bring very close to us that curious tragedy of
civilisation, the destruction of the power of Rome and the overrunning
of Europe by successive waves of barbarians.
In the fifth century before Christ, what is now Bulgaria was practically
a Greek colony, and its trading relations with the North gave possibly
the first hint to the Goths of the easiest path by which to invade the
Roman Empire. The present Bulgarian towns of Varna (on the Black Sea)
and Kustendji (which has a literary history in that it was later a place
of banishment for Ovid the poet) can be traced back as Greek trading
towns through which passed traffic from the Mediterranean to the
"Scythians," _i.e._ the Goths of the North. Amber and furs came from the
north of the river valleys, and caravans from the south brought in
return silver and gold and bronze.
Towards the dawn of the Christian era there began a swelling-over of the
Goths from the Baltic shores, sending one wave of invasion down towards
Italy, another towards the Black Sea and the Aegean. Jordanes, the
earliest Gothic historian, writing in the sixth century gives this
account--derived from Gothic folk-songs--of the movement of the invasion
towards the Balkan Peninsula (probably about A.D. 170):
In the reign of the fifth King after Berig, Filimer, son of
Gadariges, the people had so greatly increased in numbers that
they all agreed in the conclusion that the army of the Goths
should move forward with their families in quest of more fitting
abodes. Thus they came to those regions of Scythia which in
their tongue are called Oium, whose great fertility pleased them
much. But there was a bridge there by which the army essayed
to cross a river, and when half of the army had passed, that
bridge fell down in irreparable ruin, nor could any one either
go forward or return. For that place is said to be girt round
with a whirlpool, shut in with quivering morasses, and thus by
her confusion of the two elements, land and water, Nature has
rendered it inaccessible. But in truth, even to this day, if you
may trust the evidence of passers-by, though they go not nigh
the place, the far-off voices of cattle may be heard and traces
of men may be discerned.
That part of the Goths therefore which under the leadership of
Filimer crossed the river and reached the lands of Oium,
obtained the longed-for soil. Then without delay they came to
the nation of the Spali, with whom they engaged in battle and
therein gained the victory. Thence they came forth as
conquerors, and hastened to the farthest part of Scythia which
borders on the Black Sea.
[Illustration: A PEASANT AT WORK, DISTRICT OF TSARIBROD]
The people whom these Teutonic Goths displaced were Slavs. The Goths
settled down first on the Black Sea between the mouths of the Danube and
of the Dniester and beyond that river almost to the Don, becoming thus
neighbours of the Huns on the east, of the Roman Empire's Balkan
colonies on the west, and of the Slavs on the north. It is reasonable to
suppose that to some extent they mingled their blood somewhat with the
Slavs whom they dispossessed, and that they came into some contact with
the Huns also. It was in the third century of the Christian era that
these Goths, who had been for some time subsidised by the Roman emperors
on the condition that they kept the peace, crossed the Danube and
devastated Moesia and Thrace. An incident of this invasion was the
successful resistance of the garrison of Marcianople--now Schumla--to
the invaders. In a following campaign the Goths crossed the Danube at
Novae (now Novo-grad) and besieged Philippopolis, a city which still
keeps its name and now, as then, is an important strategical point
commanding the Thracian Plain. (It was Philippopolis which would have
been the objective of the Turkish attack upon Bulgaria in 1912-1913 if
Turkey had been given a chance in that war to develop a forward
movement.) This city was taken by the Goths, and the first notable
Balkan massacre is recorded, over 100,000 people being put to the sword
within its walls. Later in the campaign the Emperor Decius was defeated
and killed by the Goths in a battle waged on marshy ground near the
mouth of the Danube. This was the second of the three great disasters
which marked the doom of the Roman Empire: the first was the defeat of
Varus in Germany; the third was to be the defeat and death of the
Emperor Valens before Adrianople. Bulgaria, the scene of the second and
third disasters, can accurately be described as having provided the
death-arena for Rome.
[Illustration: WOMEN OF PORDIM, IN THE PLEVNA DISTRICT]
From the defeat of Decius (A.D. 251) may be said to date the Gothic
colonisation of the Balkan Peninsula. True, after that event the Goths
often retired behind the Danube for a time, but, as a rule, thereafter
they were steadily encroaching on the Roman territory, carrying on a
maritime war in the Black Sea as well as land forays across the Danube.
It was because of the successes of the Goths in the Balkans that the
decision was ultimately arrived at to move the capital of the Roman
Empire from Rome to Constantinople. During the first Gothic attack,
after the death of Decius, Byzantium itself was threatened, and the
cities around the Sea of Marmora sacked. An incident of this invasion
which has been chronicled is that the Goths enjoyed hugely the warm
baths they found at Anchialus--"there were certain warm springs renowned
above all others in the world for their healing virtues, and greatly did
the Goths delight to wash therein. And having tarried there many days
they thence returned home." Now Anchialus is clearly identifiable as
the present Bulgarian town of Bourgas, a flourishing seaport connected
by rail with Jambouli and still noted for its baths.
In a later Gothic campaign (A.D. 262), based on a naval expedition from
the Black Sea, Byzantium was taken, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus
destroyed, and Athens sacked. A German historian pictures this last
incident:
The streets and squares which at other times were enlivened only
by the noisy crowds of the ever-restless citizens, and of the
students who flocked thither from all parts of the Graeco-Roman
world, now resounded with the dull roar of the German bull-horns
and the war-cry of the Goths. Instead of the red cloak of the
Sophists, and the dark hoods of the Philosophers, the skin-coats
of the barbarians fluttered in the breeze. Wodan and Donar had
gotten the victory over Zeus and Athene.
It was in regard to this capture of Athens that the story was first
told--it has been told of half a dozen different sackings since--that a
band of Goths came upon a library and were making a bonfire of its
contents when one of their leaders interposed:
"Not so, my sons; leave these scrolls untouched, that the Greeks
may in time to come, as they have in time past, waste their
manhood in poring over their wearisome contents. So will they
ever fall, as now, an easy prey to the strong unlearned sons of
the North."
In the ultimate result the Goths were driven out of Athens by a small
force led by Dexippus, a soldier and a scholar whose exploit revived
memory of the deeds of Greece in her greatness. The capture of Athens
deeply stirred the civilised world of the day, and "Goth" still survives
as a term of destructive barbarism.
A few years later (A.D. 269) the Goths began a systematic invasion of
the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire, attacking the Roman territory
both by sea and by land. The tide of victory sometimes turned for a
while, and at Naissus (now Nish in Servia, near the border of Bulgaria)
the Goths were defeated by the Emperor Claudius. Their defeated army was
then shut up in the Balkan Mountains for a winter, and the Gothic power
in the Balkans temporarily crushed. The Emperor Claudius, who took the
surname Gothicus in celebration of his victory, announced it
grandiloquently to the governor of Illyricum:
_Claudius to Brocchus._
We have destroyed 320,000 of the Goths; we have sunk 2000 of
their ships. The rivers are bridged over with shields; with
swords and lances all the shores are covered. The fields are
hidden from sight under the superincumbent bones; no road is
free from them; an immense encampment of waggons is deserted. We
have taken such a number of women that each soldier can have two
or three concubines allotted to him.
[Illustration: IN THE HARVEST FIELDS NEAR SOFIA]
But the succeeding Emperor, Aurelian, gave up all Dacia to the Goths and
withdrew the Romanised Dacians into the province of Moesia--made up of
what is now Eastern Servia and Western Bulgaria. This province was
divided into two and renamed Dacia. One part, Dacia Mediterranea, had
for its capital Sardica, now Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Then
followed a period of comparative peace. The Roman emperors saw that on
the Balkan frontier their Empire had to be won or lost, and strengthened
the defences there. Thus Diocletian made his headquarters at Nicomedia.
Finally, Constantine moved the capital altogether to Constantinople.
Goth and Roman at this time showed a disposition to a peaceful
amalgamation, and the Bulgarian population was rapidly becoming a
Romano-Gothic one. Christianity had been introduced, and the Gothic
historian Jordanes tells of a Gothic people living upon the northern
side of the Balkan Mountains:
There were also certain other Goths, who are called Minores, an
immense people, with their bishop and primate Vulfila, who is
said, moreover, to have taught them letters; and they are at
this day dwelling in Moesia, in the district called
Nicopolitana[1] at the foot of Mount Haemus, a numerous race,
but poor and unwarlike, abounding only in cattle of divers
kinds, and rich in pastures and forest timber, having little
wheat, though the earth is fertile in producing other crops.
They do not appear to have any vineyards: those who want wine
buy it of their neighbours; but most of them drink only milk.
[1] Around the modern town of Tirnova.
A contemporary of the saintly Ulfilas (who surely should be accepted as
the first national hero of the Bulgarians) states that Ulfilas had
originally lived on the other side of the Danube and had been driven by
persecution to settle in Bulgaria. This contemporary, Auxentius,
records:
And when, through the envy and mighty working of the enemy,
there was kindled a persecution of the Christians by an
irreligious and sacrilegious Judge of the Goths, who spread
tyrannous affright through the barbarian land, it came to pass
that Satan, who desired to do evil, unwillingly did good; that
those whom he sought to make deserters became confessors of the
faith; that the persecutor was conquered, and his victims wore
the wreath of victory. Then, after the glorious martyrdom of
many servants and handmaids of Christ, as the persecution still
raged vehemently, after seven years of his episcopate were
expired, the blessed Ulfilas being driven from "Varbaricum" with
a great multitude of confessors, was honourably received on the
soil of Roumania by the Emperor Constantius of blessed memory.
Thus as God by the hand of Moses delivered His people from the
violence of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and made them pass
through the Red Sea, and ordained that they should serve Him [on
Mount Sinai], even so by means of Ulfilas did God deliver the
confessors of His only-begotten Son from the "Varbarian" land,
and cause them to cross over the Danube, and serve Him upon the
mountains [of Haemus] like his saints of old.
Ulfilas civilised as well as Christianised the Goths of Bulgaria, and
was responsible for the earliest Gothic alphabet--the Moeso-Gothic. He
translated most of the Scriptures into Gothic, leaving out of his
translation only such war stories as "the Book of Kings," judging that
these would be too exciting for his Gothic flock and would incite them
to war.
[Illustration: A SHOP WOMAN OF THE DISTRICT OF SOFIA]
After a century of peace war broke out again between the Goths and the
Roman Empire--which may now be called rather the Greek Empire--in A.D.
369. The course of the war was at first favourable to the Emperor
Valens. All the independent Goths were driven back behind the Danube
boundary, but were allowed to live there in peace. The Roman orator
Themistius, in congratulating the Emperor Valens, put on record the
extent of his achievement and of his magnanimity:
But now, along almost all the frontiers of the Empire, peace
reigns, and all the preparation for war is perfect; for the
Emperor knows that they most truly work for peace who thoroughly
prepare for war. The Danube-shore teems with fortresses, the
fortresses with soldiers, the soldiers with arms, the arms both
beautiful and terrible. Luxury is banished from the legions, but
there is an abundance of all necessary stores, so that there is
now no need for the soldier to eke out his deficient rations by
raids on the peaceful villagers. There was a time when the
legions were terrible to the provincials, and afraid of the
barbarians. Now all that is changed: they despise the barbarians
and fear the complaint of one plundered husbandman more than an
innumerable multitude of Goths.
To conclude, then, as I began. We celebrate this victory by
numbering not our slaughtered foes but our living and tamed
antagonists. If we regret to hear of the entire destruction even
of any kind of animal, if we mourn that elephants should be
disappearing from the province of Africa, lions from Thessaly,
and hippopotami from the marshes of the Nile, how much rather,
when a whole nation of men, barbarians it is true, but still
men, lies prostrate at our feet, confessing that it is entirely
at our mercy, ought we not instead of extirpating, to preserve
it, and make it our own by showing it compassion?
Valens restored Bulgaria to the position of a wholly Roman province,
even the Gothic Minores being driven across the Danube. But there was
now to come another racial element into the making of Bulgaria--the
Huns.
I can still recall the resentment and indignation of the Bulgarian
officers in 1913 because a French war correspondent had, in a despatch
which had escaped the Censor, likened the crossing of the Thracian Plain
by the great convoys of Bulgarian ox-wagons to the passage of the Danube
by the Huns in the fourth century. The Bulgarians, always inclined to be
sensitive, thought that the allusion made them out to be barbarians. But
it was intended rather, I think, to show the writer's knowledge of the
early history of the Balkan Peninsula and of the close racial ties
between the Bulgarians of to-day and the original Huns. We have seen how
the Gothic invasion, coming from the Baltic to the Black Sea, pushed on
to the borders of the Hun people living east of the Volga. These Huns
now prepared an answering wave of invasion.
To the Goths the Huns--the first of the Tartar hordes to invade
Europe--were a source of superstitious terror. The Gothic historian
Jordanes writes with frank horror of them:
We have ascertained that the nation of the Huns, who surpassed
all others in atrocity, came thus into being. When Filimer,
fifth king of the Goths, after their departure from Sweden, was
entering Scythia, with his people, as we have before described,
he found among them certain sorcerer-women, whom they call in
their native tongue Haliorunnas, whom he suspected and drove
forth from his army into the wilderness. The unclean spirits
that wander up and down in desert places, seeing these women,
made concubines of them; and from this union sprang that most
fierce people, the Huns, who were at first little, foul,
emaciated creatures, dwelling among the swamps and possessing
only the shadow of human speech by way of language.
According to Priscus they settled first on the eastern shore of
the Sea of Azof, lived by hunting, and increased their substance
by no kind of labour, but only by defrauding and plundering
their neighbours.
Once upon a time when they were out hunting beside the Sea of
Azof, a hind suddenly appeared before them, and having entered
the water of that shallow sea, now stopping, now dashing
forward, seemed to invite the hunters to follow on foot. They
did so, through what they had before supposed to be trackless
sea with no land beyond it, till at length the shore of Scythia
lay before them. As soon as they set foot upon it, the stag that
had guided them thus far mysteriously disappeared. This, I trow,
was done by those evil spirits that begat them, for the injury
of the Goths. But the hunters who had lived in complete
ignorance of any other land beyond the Sea of Azof were struck
with admiration of the Scythian land and deemed that a path
known to no previous age had been divinely revealed to them.
They returned to their comrades to tell them what had happened,
and the whole nation resolved to follow the track thus opened
out before them. They crossed that vast pool, they fell like a
human whirlwind on the nations inhabiting that part of Scythia,
and offering up the first tribes whom they overcame, as a
sacrifice to victory, suffered the others to remain alive, but
in servitude.
With the Alani especially, who were as good warriors as
themselves, but somewhat less brutal in appearance and manner of
life, they had many a struggle, but at length they wearied out
and subdued them. For, in truth, they derived an unfair
advantage from the intense hideousness of their countenances.
Nations whom they would never have vanquished in fair fight fled
horrified from those frightful--faces I can hardly call them,
but rather--shapeless black collops of flesh, with little points
instead of eyes. No hair on their cheeks or chins gives grace to
adolescence or dignity to age, but deep furrowed scars instead,
down the sides of their faces, show the impress of the iron
which with characteristic ferocity they apply to every male
child that is born among them, drawing blood from its cheeks
before it is allowed its first taste of milk. They are little in
stature, but lithe and active in their motions, and especially
skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good at the use of the bow
and arrows, with sinewy necks, and always holding their heads
high in their pride. To sum up, these beings under the form of
man hide the fierce nature of the beast.
That was a view very much coloured by race prejudice and the
superstitious fears of the time. It suggests that at a very early period
of Balkan history the different races there had learned how to abuse one
another. English readers might contrast it with Matthew Arnold's picture
of a Tartar camp in _Sohrab and Rustum_:
The sun by this had risen, and clear'd the fog
From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands.
And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed
Into the open plain; so Haman bade--
Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa ruled
The host, and still was in his lusty prime.
From their black tents, long files of horse, they stream'd;
As when some grey November morn the files,
In marching order spread, of long-neck'd cranes
Stream over Casbin and the southern slopes
Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries,
Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, southward bound
For the warm Persian sea-board--so they stream'd.
The Tartars of the Oxus, the King's guard,
First, with black sheep-skin caps and with long spears;
Large men, large steeds; who from Bokhara come
And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.
Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south,
The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,
And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands;
Light men and on light steeds, who only drink
The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came
From far, and a more doubtful service own'd;
The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks
Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards
And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes
Who roam o'er Kipchak and the northern waste,
Kalmucks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes who stray
Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes,
Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere;
These all filed out from camp into the plain.
Matthew Arnold gives to the Tartar camp tents of lattice-work,
thick-piled carpets; to the Tartar leaders woollen coats, sandals,
and the sheep-skin cap which is still the national head-dress of the
Bulgarians. More important, in proof of his idea of their civilisation,
he credits them with a high sense of chivalry and a faithful regard for
facts. _Sohrab and Rustum_ is, of course, a flight of poetic fancy; but
its "local colour" is founded on good evidence. Probably the Huns,
despite the terrors of their name, the echoes of which still come down
the corridors of time; despite the awful titles which their leaders won
(such as Attila, "the Scourge of God"), were not on a very much lower
plane of civilisation than the Goths with whom they fought, or with the
other barbarians who tore at the prostrate body of the Roman Empire. One
may see people of very much the same type to-day on the outer edges of
Islam in some desert quarters; one may see and, if one has such taste
for the wild and the free in life as has Cunninghame Graham, one may
admire:
There in the Sahara the wild old life, the life in which man and
the animals seem to be nearer to each other than in the
countries where we have changed beasts into meat-producing
engines deprived of individuality, still takes its course, as it
has done from immemorial time. Children respect their parents,
wives look at their husbands almost as gods, and at the tent
door elders administer what they imagine justice, stroking their
long white beards, and as impressed with their judicial
functions as if their dirty turbans or ropes of camels' hair
bound round their heads, were horse-hair wigs, and the torn mat
on which they sit a woolsack or a judge's bench, with a carved
wooden canopy above it, decked with the royal arms.
Thus, when the blue baft-clad, thin, wiry desert-dweller on his
lean horse or mangy camel comes into a town, the townsmen look
on him as we should look on one of Cromwell's Ironsides, or on a
Highlander, of those who marched to Derby and set King George's
teeth, in pudding time, on edge.
The Huns' movement from the north-east was the first Asiatic invasion of
Europe since the fall of the Persian Empire. Almost simultaneously with
it the Saracen first entered from the south, as the ally of the
Christian Emperor against the Goths; and another Gothic chronicler,
Ammianus, tells how the Saracen warriors inspired also a lively horror
in the Gothic mind. They came into battle almost naked, and having
sprung upon a foe "with a hoarse and melancholy howl, sucked his
life-blood from his throat." The Saracen of Ammianus was the forerunner
of the Turk, the Hun of Jordanes, the forerunner of the Bulgarian. In
neither case, of course, can the Gothic chronicler be accepted as an
unprejudiced witness. But it is interesting to note how the first
warriors from the Asiatic steppes impressed their contemporaries!
The first effect of the invasion of the country of the Goths by the Huns
was to force the Goths to recross the Danube and trespass again on Roman
territory. They sought leave from the Emperor Valens to do this. A
contemporary historian records:
The multitude of the Scythians escaping from the murderous
savagery of the Huns, who spared not the life of woman or of
child, amounted to not less than 200,000 men of fighting age
[besides old men, women, and children]. These, standing upon the
river-bank in a state of great excitement, stretched out their
hands from afar with loud lamentations, and earnestly
supplicated that they might be allowed to cross over the river,
bewailing the calamity that had befallen them, and promising
that they would faithfully adhere to the Imperial alliance if
this boon were granted them.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THRACE, OF THE SHOP TRIBE, AND OF MACEDONIA
The Shops inhabit the Mountain District of Sofia]
The Emperor Valens allowed the Gothic host to cross the Danube into
Bulgaria and Thrace, and having given them shelter, starved them and
treated them so harshly and cruelly that they were close to rebellion
when another great Gothic host, under King Fritigern, crossed the Danube
without leave and came down as far as Marcianople (now Schumla). Here he
was entertained at a "friendly" banquet by the Roman general Lupicinus.
But whilst the banquet was in progress disorder arose among the Goths
and the Romans outside the hall. The Gothic historians tell:
News of this disturbance was brought to Lupicinus as he was
sitting at his gorgeous banquet, watching the comic performers
and heavy with wine and sleep. He at once ordered that all the
Gothic soldiers, who, partly to do honour to their rank, and
partly as a guard to their persons, had accompanied the generals
into the palace, should be put to death. Thus, while Fritigern
was at the banquet, he heard the cry of men in mortal agony, and
soon ascertained that it proceeded from his own followers shut
up in another part of the palace, whom the Roman soldiers at the
command of their general were attempting to butcher. He drew his
sword in the midst of the banqueters, exclaimed that he alone
could pacify the tumult which had been raised among his
followers, and rushed out of the dining-hall with his
companions. They were received with shouts of joy by their
countrymen outside; they mounted their horses and rode away,
determined to revenge their slaughtered comrades.
Delighted to march once more under the generalship of one of the
bravest of men, and to exchange the prospect of death by hunger
for death on the battlefield, the Goths at once rose in arms.
Lupicinus, with no proper preparation, joined battle with them
at the ninth milestone from Marcianople, was defeated, and only
saved himself by a shameful flight. The barbarians equipped
themselves with the arms of the slain legionaries, and in truth
that day ended in one blow the hunger of the Goths and the
security of the Romans; for the Goths began thenceforward to
comport themselves no longer as strangers but as inhabitants,
and as lords to lay their commands upon the tillers of the soil
throughout all the Northern provinces.
That began a war which inflicted the third great blow on the Roman
Empire--the defeat and death of the Emperor Valens before Adrianople.
The Goths in this campaign seem to have brought in some of their old
enemies, the Huns, as allies--pretty clear proof of the contention I
have set up that the Huns were not such desperate savages; but these
Asiatics made the war rather more brutal than was usual for those days,
without a doubt. Theodosius, the younger (son of that brave general who
had just won back Britain for the Roman Empire), restored somewhat the
Roman power in the provinces south of the Balkans for a time. But in
the year 380 the Romans made peace again with the Goths, allowing them
to settle in Bulgaria as well as north of the Danube as allies of the
Roman Power.
In the latter part of the fourth century and the first half of the fifth
century the Huns fill the pages of Bulgarian history. Then came the
Slavs; and then, in the seventh century, the Bulgars, almost certainly a
Hun tribe, but Huns modified by two centuries of time. But the death of
Valens may be said to have ended the Roman Empire as a World Power. Let
us retrace our steps a little and give the chief facts as to how a
Bulgarian Empire for a time--a very short time--replaced the Roman
Empire over a great area of the Balkan Peninsula.