horseback. He instituted tournaments and created an order of knighthood,
and is thus generally regarded as the founder of chivalry, that fairest
fruit of mediaeval times, which did so much to preserve honor and
tenderness and respect for womankind.[10]

[Footnote 10: See _Growth and Decadence of Chivalry_.]

When he felt all prepared, Henry deliberately defied and insulted the
Hungarians, and so provoked from them a combined national invasion,
which he met and completely overthrew in the battle of Merseburg (933).
A generation later the Huns felt themselves strong enough to try again;
but Henry's son, Otto the Great, repeated the chastisement. He then
formed a boundary colony or "East-mark" from which sprang Austria; and
this border kingdom was always able to keep the weakened Huns in check.

At the same time there was growing up in Russia a Slavic civilization,
which received Christianity[11] from the South as it had received
Teutonic dominion from the North, and so developed along very similar
lines to Western Europe. The Russian states served as a barrier against
later Asiatic hordes; and this, combined with the civilizing of the last
remnants of the Scandinavians in the North, and the fading of Saracenic
power in the South, left the tottering civilization of the West free
from further barbarian invasion. We shall find destruction threatened
again in later ages by Tartar and by Turk; but the intruders never reach
beyond the frontier. The Teutons and the half-Romanized ancients with
whom they had assimilated were left to work out their own problems. All
the ingredients, even to the last, the Northmen, had been poured into
the caldron. There remains to see what the intermingling has brought
forth.