56 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
forward by the Avars. The number of Slav emigrants had been so great that a process of absorption commenced in these countries, by which the earlier inhabitants had become by the end of the twelfth century as much Slavic as they are now. William of Tyre says that in 1097, when the Crusaders passed through Dalmatia, the inhabitants of the coasts spoke Latin. Behind them, however, the people were Slav-speaking, and at the end of the twelfth century Slav had superseded Latin everywhere except at a few points on the coasts.
The forward movement of the Slav population extended throughout the Balkan peninsula. The Servians soon held possession on the Dalmatian coasts at Hagusa and Cattaro, and in the north have always been able to maintain their position. The isolated settlements of the Slavs in Macedonia, some of which had formed at one time an autonomous state,[1] either totally disappeared or were absorbed by the Greeks or the Bulgarians.
A new detachment of Bulgarians in the seventh century appeared and took possession of the delta of the Second irruption of Bulgarians. Danube, pushing on as far as Varna. They came from Black Bulgaria, a half-civilized state on the Volga, which disappeared in the thirteenth century during the Mongol invasion. They were probably a Uralian people allied to the Finns. On their re-entry into the peninsula they had to contend with the Slav population between the Danube and the Balkans, and soon became firmly established in the country they have ever since inhabited. The country north of the Danube, now called Roumania, and formed out of Wallachia and Moldavia, was often called Bulgaria by the Byzantine writers. There is, however, no reason to believe that the Bulgarians ever, in any considerable numbers, occupied it. Their extension was rather southward and westward at the expense of the Slavs, the Greeks, and other inhabitants of the empire. At the opening of the ninth century military
- ↑ The Drugubites occupied the plain of Macedonia. Spruner, in his map of the Byzantine empire at the time of the crusades, makes this Slav people occupy the centre of Macedonia from the Balkans to Edessa. It was probably never so extensive in either direction.
