224 THE RACES OF THE DANUBE. [xi. 



while the connection with the East was finally 

 severed. 



If we consider the eastern half of the empire at 

 this time or, at least, so" much of it as was com- 

 prised in Europe, the remainder having been mostly 

 torn away by the Saracens we find it undergoing a 

 gradual process of Slavonisation quite analogous to 

 the Teutonic reconstruction which was just culmi- 

 nating in the West. Pretty much the whole of what 

 is now European Turkey had become filled with a 

 Slavic population. For the most part this popula- 

 tion had been converted to the Greek or so-called 

 Orthodox form of Christianity, though in remote 

 parts of Serbia paganism lingered till the thirteenth 

 century. There was probably some sense, though 

 slight, of a community of race throughout the penin- 

 sula. The interests of the Slavs, on the whole, were 

 concerned in the protection of the imperial system 

 against external attack, although the various chiefs 

 made war on each other and mismanaged their own 

 affairs with as little sense of allegiance to the Byzan- 

 tine suzerain as the rulers of Brittany or Aquitaine 

 felt for their degenerate Carlovingian overlords. Thus 

 on a superficial view the conditions of order and tur- 

 bulence, so to speak, might have seemed very similar 

 here to what they were in the West ; and all that was 



