Throughout the first century B.C. conflicts raged with varying fortune between the invaders and all the native races living between the Adriatic and the Danube.

It was only by dint of paying them huge sums of money that the invaders were kept away from the coast.

These invasions became more frequent during the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (527-65), and culminated in 559 in a great combined attack of all the invaders on Constantinople under a certain Zabergan, which was brilliantly defeated by the veteran Byzantine general Belisarius.

During the second half of the sixth century all the military energies of Constantinople were diverted to Persia, so that the invaders of the Balkan peninsula had the field very much to themselves.

Bulgaria, further east, is, on the whole, less mountainous, in spite of the Balkan range which stretches the whole length of it; for this reason, and also on account of its geographical position, any invaders coming from the north or north-east, especially if aiming at Constantinople or Salonika, were bound to sweep over it.

The Serbs, who had already had an unsuccessful brush with the advance guard of the new invaders near Demotika in 1351, met them again on the Maritsa river in 1371, and were completely defeated.

At sight of this all thoughts of further revenge were abandoned, and the Huzarehs hastily quitting the field made the best of their way home, not without having, though at the expense of the life of their leader, inflicted a severe punishment on the invaders of their peaceful country,"[*]

It was first the capital of their northern invaders, and afterwards that, of course, of the English Government.

The ferocity of the invaders communicated itself to the invaded, and the whole history is one confused and continual chronicle of horrors and barbarities.

In the former the invaders and natives became after a while more or less assimilated, and, under Canute, an orderly government, composed of both nationalities, was, we know, established.

The following spring, in the month of May, the first instalment of the invaders arrived under Robert FitzStephen, a small fleet of Welsh boats landing them in a creek of the bay of Bannow, where a chasm between the rocks was long known as "FitzStephen's stride.

After this, finding that the country at large was beginning to take some note of their proceedings, the invaders fell back upon Ferns, which they fortified according to the science of the age under the superintendence of Robert FitzStephen.

By force, or according to Giraldus, by a pretended tale of the destruction of all the other invaders, the Wexford men seized possession of him and the other English, and had them flung into a dungeon.

The jealousy shown by Henry and his sons towards the earliest invaders of Ireland is doubtless the reason why Giraldusfor a courtier and an ecclesiastic upon his promotionis so remarkably explicit upon their royal failings.

Even the De Lacys and several of the other Norman colonists threw in their lot with the invaders.

In most cases, however, the victorious invaders merely intruded themselves among the original and far more numerous owners of the land, ruled over them, and were absorbed by them.

By the Frankish and Visigothic invasions another strain of blood was added, to be speedily absorbed; while the invaders took the language of the conquered people, and established themselves as the ruling class.

Speaking broadly, they have mixed but little with the English (as distinguished from the French and Spanish) invaders.

The Anglo-Norman invaders also seized the seaports.

The great keeps of the midland lords, the towers of Granuaile on the west coast, and the traders' towers on the east coast, especially those of Down, afford ample material for a study of the early colonizing efforts of different invaders, as well as providing incidents of heroism and romance.

The waters that had been Ireland's protection now became the high roads of the invaders.

In 812 they drove off the invaders with great slaughter, only to find fresh hordes descending a year or two later.

About this time the invaders made lodgments along the caasts, passed inward through the island, burned and looted religious houses and schools of learning, levied tribute upon the inhabitants, and at length established themselves firmly at Limerick, Waterford, Dublin, Wexford, and Carlingford.

In the Isle of Man, one of the fortresses in which the Celtic language and lore longest held out against the siege of the Saxon invaders, the first of November, Old Style, has been regarded as New Year's day down to recent times.

I assure you, sir, I try hard to get my people to understand that it is time to stop calling those who come and add themselves to the community, aliens, interlopers, invaders.