Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/75

 SLAVS AND rATCIIINAKS. 57 colonies had been established along the vhole length of the Balkans on the Bulgarian frontier. During that century the enipire Avas engaged in a continual struggle against the Bul- garians, but, while any great advance southward was prevented, they pushed across the peninsula as far as Durazzo. When they had thus won their position they had not yet become Shxvicized, though Slavic names begin to appear at a very early period, and ultimately their own language was entirely forgotten. During the tenth century they were attacked on all sides, but held their own. In the eleventh century the Byzantine emperors tried something like a policy of extermi- nation, and Basil the Bulgaroctone, or Bulgarian slayer, com- menced the execution of this policy by making a broad belt of waste country across the peninsula to Durazzo. In the twelfth century we find the Bulgarians settled in isolated colonies in the neighborhood of the capital itself, just as they are to-day. In like manner there were Slav colonies in various parts of the southern portion of the peninsula. In the neigh- borhood of Mount Olympus, which is now principally occupied by Wallachians, there w^as also a Slav people. Indeed, the peninsula was dotted over with small settlements of the races which had invaded the empire. At one time the interior of the Balkan peninsula was constantly spoken of as Slavinia. The Bulgarians, however, were a numerous and powerful peo- ple, the boundaries of whose territory, though continually shift- ing, were always wide; and, np to the moment of the Latin conquest, were always a source of weakness to the empire. Another stream of people which had passed into the empire ThePatchi- '^^loug the broad tract to the north of the Black Sea uake. were the Patchinaks. Like the Iluns, they, too, were of Turkish origin. They had occupied Wallachia and Moldavia, which for centuries was the battle-ground of the races coming from Asia, of those who had already arrived, and of the empire. They had on one side of them the Iluns or Magyars from whom they had conquered their territory, while on the other they were pressed by a new division of Turkish orio^in, namely, the Uzes. The latter came in such The Uzes. o -> j i numbers that, in the eleventh century, the Patchi-