the Saale and the Elbe. Had they been later conquerors, they must have stood above the župans, but here the župans (Avars and Bulgars) were the foremost rank, and therefore the latest conquerors, and at the time of the German domination the vićazi took rank next beneath them as feudal peasants liable to cavalry service and standing with the župans under feudal law. In West and South Europe too the Vikings on stolen horses were, as is well known, as terrible horsemen on the land as they were pirates by sea.
Thus we find both among the Alp-Slavs and the Slavs on the Elbe a peasant State in immediate proximity to župan States. Either then the peasant revolution was only successful in places, or the Avars having rallied and enslaved the peasantry of Styria afresh remained there as župans, and then together with the peasantry fell under German dominion. "Fredegar" says: "At this time Samo, a Frank, joined himself with several merchants, went to these Slavs to trade, and accompanied their army against the Avars. He shewed remarkable bravery, an enormous number of Avars fell, he was chosen king, ruled successfully thirty-five years, and beat the Avars in all following wars."
The "Fredegar" compilation incorrectly puts this event under the year 623, for the author of this chapter wrote in 642 or 643, and at that time Samo must have been already dead.[1] If the length of his reign is correctly given, the revolt must have taken place in 605 at the latest. In the year 601 the Avars were depopulated by a disease just as the Khagan had driven Constantinople to such straits that the citizens were making ready to migrate to Chalcedon in Asia Minor. Soon after he was almost destroyed in five defeats at the hands of the Romans in Hungary itself, the heart of Avardom. These plunderers were already face to face with extinction when the Emperor Maurice was dethroned in 602, and were only saved from destruction by the incapacity of his successor Phocas. But their supremacy was now at an end. Samo's revolt thus falls between 602 and 605, most probably in the year 603. Then followed the revolt of the Croats and the Serbs, and finally the Bulgar khan Kubrat on the lower Danube made himself free between 635 and 641.
Of Samo's State only this is certain, that it bordered on Thuringia,[2]
- ↑ Schnürer, in Collectanea friburgensia, fasc. IX. pp. 113, 233.
- ↑ Fredegar, pp. 74 f. [631] "it was told to the Frankish king Dagobert that an army of the Wends (Slavs) had broken into Thuringia. ... Then appeared envoys of the [then still free] Saxons before Dagobert. ... They promised to oppose the Wends and to protect the Frankish territory on the Wend border. ... [632] Then the Wends at the command of Samo ... harried Thuringia and other provinces. ..." This proves that Samo's kingdom bordered on the Thuringian province and did not lie in Bohemia, which lies too far from the Thuringian Gau (pagus) for attacks from that quarter (v. map). Older historians placed Wogastisburg, one of Samo's strongholds, at Taus (at the foot of the Böhmerwald) — called in older sources Tugast — the point at which invaders often entered Bohemia from Bavaria. The Burberg near Kaaden in North-West
