Much more formidable were the foes by whom Germany was assailed. The Slavonians, a widely extended people, whose language is still spoken upon half the surface of Europe, had occupied the countries of Bohemia, Poland, and Pannonia, on the eastern confines of the empire, and from the time of Charlemagne acknowledged its superiority. But at the end of the ninth century, a Tatarian tribe, the Hungarians, overspreading that country which since has borne their name, and moving forward like a vast wave, brought a dreadful reverse upon Germany. All Italy, all Germany, and the south of France, felt the scourge; till Henry the Fowler, and Otto the Great, drove them back by successive victories within their own limits, where in a short time they learned peaceful arts, adopted the religion, and followed the policy of Christendom. [Illustration: A SLAVONIAN OF THE TENTH CENTURY] If any enemies could be more destructive than these Hungarians, they were the pirates of the north, known commonly by the name of Northmen (Normans). The love of a predatory life seems to have attracted adventurers of different nations to the Scandinavian seas, from whence they infested, not only by maritime piracy, but continual invasions, the northern coasts both of France and Germany. The causes of their sudden appearance are inexplicable, or at least could only be sought in the ancient traditions of Scandinavia. For undoubtedly the coasts of France and England were as little protected from depredations under the Merovingian kings, and those of the Heptarchy, as in subsequent times. Yet only one instance of an attack from this side is recorded, and that before the middle of the sixth century, till the age of Charlemagne. In 787, the Danes, as we call those northern plunderers, began to infest England, which lay most immediately open to their incursions. Soon afterwards they ravaged the coasts of France. Charlemagne repulsed them by means of his fleets; yet they pillaged a few places during his reign. It is said that, perceiving one day, from a port in the Mediterranean, some Norman vessels which had penetrated into that sea, he shed tears, in anticipation of the miseries which awaited his empire. In the ninth century, the Norman pirates not only ravaged the Balearic Isles, and nearer coasts of the Mediterranean, but even Greece. THE NORMANS IN FRANCE [Sidenote: [870-923 A.D.]]