240 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



chiefs made war on each other and mismanaged 

 their own affairs with as little sense of allegiance 

 to the Byzantine suzerain as the rulers of Brit- 

 tany or Aquitaine felt for their degenerate Carlo- 

 vingian overlords. Thus on a superficial view the 

 conditions of order and turbulence, so to speak, 

 might have seemed very similar here to what they 

 were in the West ; and all that was needed for 

 the growth of a new national life might seem to 

 be the rise of a dominant tribe after the like- 

 ness of the Franks which in due course of time 

 should seize the falling Byzantine sceptre and as- 

 sert unquestioned sway over the whole peninsula. 

 Could something like this have happened, the 

 Eastern Question would probably never have come 

 up to perturb the politics of modern Europe, and 

 the entire careers of Russia and Austria must 

 have been essentially modified. But for the Hun- 

 garians, Grim Tatars, and Turks, something of 

 this sort might very likely have happened. As it 

 was, however, no sooner did one Slavonic com- 

 munity begin to rise to pre-eminence than some 

 fatal combination of invaders proceeded to cripple 

 its power, and this state of things continued un- 

 til the turbaned infidel made an easy prey of the 

 whole region. 

 In the ninth century the chronic agitation of 



