THE SLAVS IN EASTERN EUROPE
Thus I have tried to give a picture in outline--a cinematograph, or
moving picture--of the world after the break up of Charlemagne's
Empire. We see the Turks pressing up against the Eastern Empire in
Asia Minor, with the result that the Emperor appeals to the West, and
that the first Crusade establishes, for nearly a hundred years, the
Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. African Mahommedans have possession of
the strip of North Africa running from Egypt--Egypt itself being held
by the Turks--till they meet another Mahommedan African people which
has possession of the southern part of Spain. That same power had
the whole of the Spanish peninsula in its grip a little earlier, but
its own divisions, of Arabs, Africans, and Syrians, made it weak, and
it was broken as soon as it came against any organised force. Then
in Italy we see that the Pope, aided by the Emperors and giving them
the aid of the growing power of the Church in return, is on the whole
establishing his temporal power in Rome more and more firmly. In the
south of Italy and in Sicily the enterprising Normans drive out the
Saracens and take possession. Northward, the great territory which,
together with Italy, had been Charlemagne's, has been split into the
two large divisions, the kingdoms of France and of Germany. But in
these so-called kingdoms the king was at this time only a little more
powerful than his lords, the barons and big {140} landowners. The
feudal system prevailed, and the king was constantly engaged with the
hard task of keeping his feudal lords in order. It was disorder,
rather than order, that was the rule all over the unhappy world.
England fared a little better, thanks to the Channel which cut it off
and made its conditions different from those of the Continent. But
now it has been conquered by the Norman, and we have to see how that
conquest had the result, for a very long while, of counteracting the
effect of the Channel as a separating barrier. England was soon
caught up into the continental turmoil.
We have to see how that came to pass. But there is still one side or
corner of the picture which we have left rather blank, and we had
best get that corner filled before we come to consider the part that
England played in the continental trouble. It is that corner which
is occupied by the large stretch of territory on the eastern fringe
of Charlemagne's Empire, from the southern shores of the Baltic right
down to Constantinople and the boundaries of the Eastern Empire.
You may have noticed that in the accounts of the Crusades--the first
and the second, which are all that have come into our story as yet--I
mentioned two names which had not appeared before, Hungary and the
Wends. The first was the name of a country through which the
Crusaders went to reach Constantinople; the second was the name of a
heathen tribe against which certain of the knights who had been
enrolled for the second Crusade obtained the sanction of the Pope to
go, instead of against the Saracen.
These Wends were a tribe or branch of a race that appears to have
increased in numbers very rapidly and, from a small territory to the
north of the Carpathian mountains, to have spread over all that large
tract just described from the Baltic to the neighbourhood of
Constantinople. It was a race of people called Slavs, {141} and even
to-day it is thought to number more than any other of the races of
man. It is not the first time that it has been mentioned in this
greatest of all stories. We saw, in the first volume, that a large
number of the serfs under the Roman Empire, especially in the East,
were of this people. So large were their numbers that it is from
their Latin name servus that we get our word "slave," which we use as
a translation of servus. These Slavonic "serfs" were members of the
Slav race who had been taken prisoners in battle.
[Sidenote: Military knights]
The Slavonic people from the East were constantly, as their numbers
grew, and perhaps as they too were pressed by Huns and Mongolians
from further East again, pressing in upon the Gothic, the Germanic
tribes; and now it was against one of the Slav tribes, these Wends,
that the knights of Northern Germany received leave to go on Crusade.
They took to themselves the name of Knights of the Sword.
[Illustration: A KNIGHT TEMPLAR.]
There were several of these bodies, or societies, at a later date
than this, who bound themselves together by vows, like the vows which
the monks took, and lived under one rule. They were formed, like the
monkish orders, for the advancement of the Christian religion, but
these Military Orders--the Knights Templar and the Knights
Hospitaller were perhaps the best known of them--enforced religion
with the sword as well as with the gospel-preaching, and were always
ready to fight on the Christian side against the pagans on the
boundaries of Christendom.
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Just at this moment, then, these Knights of the Sword, who were
afterwards amalgamated with the Knights of the Teutonic Order, went,
not against the Saracen but against the Wends. Now Wends was the
name that the Germans gave to all the Slavs, from this one tribe of
the Slavs which was called Wends. In like manner the name of Teutons
was, and sometimes still is, given to all Germans and even to all
peoples derived from the Gothic tribes, though originally it was the
name of one only of these tribes. And so now, with these Teutons and
Slavs thus opposing and thrusting at each other, we come into touch
with one of the great world struggles that has been going on ever
since, and was one of the causes of the Great War--the opposition of
Teuton and Slav. It is the opposition of German and Russian, for
most of the great population of Russia is Slavonic--that is, made up
of Slavs--and Russia became the name of most of the immense territory
occupied by the Slavs. It is said that the name of Russia had its
origin in three great leaders of men who came from a province called
Rus, in Sweden. If that be so, it appears that they again were some
of those masterful Northmen, or Normans, whom we have seen taking the
lead whenever they came in any number.
[Sidenote: Men of Rus]
The name of the country may have come from these men of Rus. That is
one story. But it is perhaps doubtful whether it may not be rather
from "rothsmen," meaning "oarsmen," that is "seafarers"; which is a
name likely to be given to any of those northern sea-rovers. It is
not often easy to know whether this or the other body of sea-faring
Northmen came from Sweden or Norway or Denmark; for these lands were
at different times united under one government, or under two, or,
again, separated, and each with its own government; and for a time,
as at the very moment when Canute was King of England, {143} Denmark
was united with the others and was the ruler in the union.
But there seems to be general agreement among historians that either
the men of Rus, or the people called Rothsmen, who became rulers of
Russia and gave the country its name, came from Sweden.
The Slavs, however, occupied territory outside what came to be called
Russia. The Kingdom of Poland was theirs; and it is chiefly by their
descendants that those various countries designated to-day by the
name of the "Balkan States" are peopled. So the Slavs held a vast
country reaching from the Baltic almost down to the Mediterranean
along the Eastern boundary of the Western Empire.
But even as early as the sixth century there was a large slice cut
out of this Slavonic territory, formed of that land which is now
called Hungary. The first conquerors, who thus thrust in and divided
the Slavs of the south from those in the north, were a people called
Avars, and they, with a certain force of the Huns, together gave to
the country the name of Hungary. In the next century we find that
the Germans are turning against the Avars, and that Hungary itself is
included in the Empire of Charlemagne. But after Charlemagne's
death, when his great possessions fell into hands less able to hold
them, Hungary is yet again invaded and conquered by a people from the
north-east, called Magyars, and what makes that conquest so notable
for us is that the Magyars are the dominating race in Hungary to-day.
On every side, and in every corner, of the world picture, in fact, we
are now beginning to see States and kingdoms and populations settling
down into the places and conditions in which we are able to recognise
them as we look at a modern map.
These Magyars, then, a people allied to the Finns, of Finland, and
coming from the east of the Ural {144} mountains, conquered Hungary
towards the close of the ninth century, and have been there ever
since. They were pagans, but in the eleventh century they became
Christians, and members of the Church of Rome. That is a point to
notice, that they joined the Church of which the Pope was the head.
The Slavs, that is to say all the peoples to the east of Germany,
with the exception of the Magyars, as they accepted Christianity
became members of the Greek Church, which had its chief bishop,
called the Patriarch, in Constantinople, the capital city of the
Eastern Empire.
And now, under the Western Empire, had come into power and been
raised to the importance of a duchy the State called Austria.
Austria means "Eastern." It was the eastern "mark," that is to say
"march" or "boundary," of the Empire. It "marched with," that is,
was next to, Hungary and some of the Slav country, and was therefore
a kind of fortress State against the enemies of Germany. Thus its
importance grew. It had its ancient city, now called Vienna, on the
great river, the Danube, which brought much trade and commerce into
the land. The valley of the Danube, moreover, was, as you may easily
understand by looking at the map of Europe, the route which folk
would be likely to follow between the centre of Germany and
Constantinople, which was the meeting-place for the Crusaders.
Therefore you may now see how it was that Hungary had to be named as
the country through which the Crusaders went, and also you may see
how there come into the story the Wends (often an alternative name,
as used by the Germans, for the Slavs) against whom went those
Knights of the Sword who were at first enrolled with the idea that
they should go to the Holy Places in Palestine.
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