XI.] The Races of the Danube. 207 



Koran in Oxford as one of the consequences that 

 might have ensued had Charles the Hammer been 

 overthrown at Tours by the Arabs. Under the 

 grandson of this doughty hero — Charles the Great — 

 the entire strength of Germany became enlisted in 

 the service of the Christianised Empire, and among 

 the results of this were the conversion of the newly- 

 arriving Magyars, Poles, and Bohemians, and the 

 conquest of Prussia by the Teutonic knights. By 

 the thirteenth century the fabric of European civilisa- 

 tion had become so solid that a barbaric power not 

 inferior to Attila's was hardly able to make any im- 

 pression upon it. Batu, with his fifteen hundred 

 thousand Mongols, gained a victory at Liegnitz in 

 1241, such as Attila had fought for in vain at Chalons; 

 but it came some centuries too late, for the contest 

 between stable nationality and nomadic barbarism 

 was by this time settled for ever. The most the 

 greasy Mongol could accomplish was to check for a 

 few generations the growth of a national life among 

 the Slavic tribes of Russia. 



But though Chalons and Tours demonstrated that 

 Christian civilisation could hold its own, whether 

 against the barbarian or the infidel, the latter never- 

 theless twice succeeded in making serious encroach- 

 ments on Roman territory. 



