Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/171

Rh the important cities of the empire, at the time immediately preceding the Latin conquest.

Among the foreigners who had been longest established in Constantinople in 1204 were the Warings, or Varangians.

Warings related to English.

They were kinsmen of our own, and on this account may be allowed a fuller description than the immediate object in hand would justify. Tacitus speaks of "Angli et Varini," the English and the Warings. Both were, in his time, the inhabitants of the country south of the Baltic, or, as it came to be called at a later period, the Waring Sea. When the great movement began which caused the English to emigrate to Britain, some of the Warings took part in it. With them also were others whom Bede speaks of as Rugians or Russians. At a later period the name Waring and Russian appears to have been applied indifferently to the same people, the truth possibly being, as the Russian monk Nestor says, that some of the Warings were called Russians. Many traces of Waring emigration into England exist, of which the names of Warwick or Waeringrwick, Warnford, and Warington are examples. The record of their history shows them to be closely akin to the English, though whether through the Teutonic or the Horse element of our people may be open to doubt. Their appearance was like that of Englishmen or Danes. Their language was virtually the same. Their exploits at sea, their legends, their habits, their very names, all convey the irresistible impression that we are reading of the kinsmen of our ancestors.

Their progress from the Baltic.

While the English went westward, the Warings spread themselves along the eastern shores of the Baltic, or went southward. They levied tribute from the neighbourig tribes, and especially from the Slavs. The Dwina and the Dniester were the great highways for