EIGHTH CENTURY.

(700-800.)

THE end of this century finds three great empires in Europe and Eastern Asia: the SARACENIC EMPIRE, the EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE, and the EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE.

SARACENS. Since the date of the last map the Saracens complete, in 709, the subjection of North Africa, cross in 710 to Spain, where they defeat the Visigoths and overrun the whole peninsula, except where the Goths still hold the Christian kingdom of the ASTURIAS. The Saracens cross the Pyrenees and try to subdue the Franks, but are defeated (battle of Tours, 732) and driven back into Spain. In 755 the vast dominion controlled by the Saracens divides into the Caliphate of Cordova and the Caliphate of Bagdad (762).

FRANKS. The Franks win victories over the Lombards in Italy. The territory known as the Exarchate of Ravenna is ceded to the Pope in 756. Charlemagne extends the Frankish power by conquests among the Saxons; by victories over the Slavonians, Bavarians, Avars, and other tribes; by annexing the whole territory from the Adriatic to the Baltic (modern Germany and Austria); by incorporating the greater part of Italy (774); and by taking from the Saracens the region north of the Ebro (778). On Christmas day, 800 (see next century), Charlemagne is crowned "Emperor of the West," a sovereignty equal in extent to that of the old Roman Empire. EASTERN EMPIRE. Though the boundaries of the Eastern Empire are subject to fluctuations from incursions of the Slavic tribes, etc., they remain substantially as at the end of the preceding century.

BRITAIN is still divided into petty kingdoms.

The NORTHMEN begin, towards the close of this century, to make their power felt by their marauding expeditions.

LOMBARDS. The Lombards conquer the Exarchate of Ravenna, but the Lombard kingdom is itself overthrown by Charlemagne in 774. (See above, under FRANKS.)

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE SARACENS.

THE Saracens continued the career of conquest which

they carried on in the last century, and, having completed in 709 the subjection of North Africa, they crossed from Africa to Spain, where they defeated the Visigoths under Roderick, the "last of the Goths," at Xeres in 710,—

Fatal to Goths are Xeres' sunny fields (BYRON), —

and took possession of the entire peninsula, except the mountainous region in the north, where a remnant of the Goths kept up the Christian kingdom of the Asturias.

If any country might have been thought safe from the Saracens, it was Spain. The Visigoths had been nearly three centuries in possession of it; during that time the independent kingdoms which were founded by the first conquerors had been formed into one great monarchy, more extensive and more powerful than any other existing at the same time in Europe; they and the conquered were blended into one people; their languages were intermingled, and the religion and laws of the peninsula had received that character which they retain even to the present day. The Visigoths themselves were a more formidable enemy than the Mahometans had yet encountered; in Persia, Syria, and Egypt they had found a race always accustomed to oppression, and ready for the yoke of the strongest; among the Greeks, a vicious and effeminated people, a government at once feeble and

tyrannical, and generals who either by their treachery or incapacity afforded them an easy conquest; in Africa they overrun provinces which had not yet recovered from the destructive victories of Belisarius. But the Spanish Goths were a nation of freemen, and their strength and reputation unimpaired. Yet in two battles their monarchy was subverted, their cities fell as fast as they were summoned, and in almost as little time as the Moors could travel over the kingdom, they became masters of the whole, except only those mountainous regions in which the language of the first Spaniards found an asylum from the Romans, and which were now destined to preserve the liberties and institutions of the Goths. SOUTHEY.

They come they come! I see the groaning lands
White with the turbans of each Arab horde;
Swart Zaarah joins her misbelieving bands,

Alla and Mahomet their battle-word:

The choice they yield — the Koran or the sword.
See how the Christians rush to arms amain!

In yonder shout the voice of conflict roared;

The shadowy hosts are closing on the plain-
Now, God and St. Iago strike, for the good cause of Spain!

By heaven, the Moors prevail! the Christians yield!
Their coward leader gives for flight the sign!

And like a cloud of locusts, whom the South
Wafts from the plains of wasted Africa,

The Mussulmen upon Iberia's shore
Descend. A countless multitude;

Syrian, Moor, Saracen, Greek renegade,

Persian, and Copt, and Tartar, in one bond

Of erring faith conjoined,

And heat of zeal,

strong in the youth

- a dreadful brotherhood.

Nor were the chiefs

Of victory less assured, by long success
Elate, and proud of that o'erwhelming strength
Which, surely they believed, as it had rolled
Thus far unchecked, would roll victorious on,
Till, like the Orient, the subjected West

Should bow in reverence at Mohammed's name;
And pilgrims from remotest Arctic shores
Tread with religious feet the burning sands
Of Araby and Mecca's stony soil.

SOUTHEY.

SCOTT.