[Footnote 11: I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians from
Ennodius, (in Panegyr. Theodorici, Opp. Sirmond, tom. i. p.
1598, 1599,) Jornandes, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 5, p. 194, et
de Regn. Successione, p. 242,) Theophanes, (p. 185,) and the
Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Marcellinus. The name of Huns
is too vague; the tribes of the Cutturgurians and
Utturgurians are too minute and too harsh.
Note: The Bulgarians are first mentioned among the writers
of the West in the Panegyric on Theodoric by Ennodius,
Bishop of Pavia. Though they perhaps took part in the
conquests of the Huns, they did not advance to the Danube
till after the dismemberment of that monarchy on the death
of Attila. But the Bulgarians are mentioned much earlier by
the Armenian writers. Above 600 years before Christ, a tribe
of Bulgarians, driven from their native possessions beyond
the Caspian, occupied a part of Armenia, north of the
Araxes. They were of the Finnish race; part of the nation,
in the fifth century, moved westward, and reached the modern
Bulgaria; part remained along the Volga, which is called
Etel, Etil, or Athil, in all the Tartar languages, but from
the Bulgarians, the Volga. The power of the eastern
Bulgarians was broken by Batou, son of Tchingiz Khan; that
of the western will appear in the course of the history.
From St. Martin, vol. vii p. 141. Malte-Brun, on the
contrary, conceives that the Bulgarians took their name from
the river. According to the Byzantine historians they were a
branch of the Ougres, (Thunmann, Hist. of the People to the
East of Europe,) but they have more resemblance to the
Turks. Their first country, Great Bulgaria, was washed by
the Volga. Some remains of their capital are still shown
near Kasan. They afterwards dwelt in Kuban, and finally on
the Danube, where they subdued (about the year 500) the
Slavo-Servians established on the Lower Danube. Conquered in
their turn by the Avars, they freed themselves from that
yoke in 635; their empire then comprised the Cutturgurians,
the remains of the Huns established on the Palus Maeotis.
The Danubian Bulgaria, a dismemberment of this vast state,
was long formidable to the Byzantine empire. Malte-Brun,
Prec. de Geog Univ. vol. i. p. 419. - M.
According to Shafarik, the Danubian Bulgaria was peopled by
a Slavo Bulgarian race. The Slavish population was
conquered by the Bulgarian (of Uralian and Finnish descent,)
and incorporated with them. This mingled race are the
Bulgarians bordering on the Byzantine empire. Shafarik, ii
152, et seq. - M. 1845]