♦Greatest extent of Saracen provinces.♦ With the conquest of Spain the undivided Saracenic Empire, the dominion of the single Caliph, reached its greatest extent in the three continents. Detached conquests in Europe were made long after, but on the whole the Saracen power went back. ♦750.♦ Forty years later they lost _Sind_, their furthest possession to the East. ♦Separation of Spain. 755.♦ Five years later Spain became the seat of a rival dynasty, which after a while grew into a rival Caliphate. In the same year the Saracen dominion for the first time went back in Europe. ♦Battle of Tours. 732. | Frankish conquest of Septimania. 755.♦ The battle of Tours answers to the repulse of Attila at Châlons; it did not make changes, but hindered them; but before long the one province which the Saracens held beyond the Pyrenees, that of _Septimania_ or _Gothia_, was won from them by the Franks. § 4. _Settlements of the Slavonic Nations._ The movements of the sixth century began to bring into notice a branch of the Aryan family of nations which was to play an important part in the affairs both of the East and of the West. ♦Movements of the Slaves.♦ These nations were the _Slaves_. It is needless for our purpose to attempt to trace their earlier history; but the movements of the _Avars_ in the sixth century seem to have had much the same effect upon the Slaves which the movements of the Huns in the fourth century had upon the Teutons. The inroads of the Avars had, as we have seen, checked the growth of Teutonic powers on the Lower Danube, and had led to the Lombard settlement in Italy. But the Avars only formed the vanguard of a number of Turanian nations, some at least of them Turkish, which were now pressing westward. ♦Kingdom of the Avars. | Magyars, &c.♦ The Avars formed a great kingdom in the lands north of the Danube; to the east of these, along the northern coasts of the Euxine, bordering on the outlying possessions and allies of the Empire in those regions, lay _Magyars_, _Patzinaks_, and the greater dominion of the _Chazars_. All these play a part in Byzantine history; and the Avars were in the seventh century the most dangerous invaders and ravagers of the Roman territory. But south of the Danube they appeared mainly as ravagers; geography knows them only in their settled kingdom to the north of that river. Even that kingdom lasted no very great time; the real importance of all these migrations consists in the effect which they had on the great Aryan race which now begins to take its part in history. ♦North-western and South-western Slaves.♦ The Slaves seem to have been driven by the Turanian incursions in two directions; to the North-west and to the South-west. The North-western division gave rise to more than one European state, and their relations with Germany form an important part of the history of the Western Empire. These North-western Slaves do not become of importance till a little later.