Menaced, however, by Louis' brother-in-law, Otto the Great, and excommunicated by the council of Ingelheim (948), the powerful vassal was forced to make submission and to restore Laon to his sovereign.
Sicily, too, was again menaced by Carthage.
At this time the Visigoths who settled in Spain early in the 5th century were menaced by two powerful enemies, the Suevi who had a small kingdom in the north-west of the peninsula, and the Byzantines who had answered Athanagild's appeal for help by taking possession of a stretch of country in the south-east.
The Turks succeeded in surrounding Peter the Great near the Pruth, and his army was menaced with total destruction, when the Turkish commander, the grand vizier Baltaji Mahommed Pasha, was induced by the presents and entreaties of the empress Catherine to sign the preliminary treaty of the Pruth (July 21, 1711), granting terms of peace far more favourable than were justified by the situation of the Russians.
Owing to the dissensions among the ruling family of Riad, the towns of eastern Nejd gradually reverted to their former condition of independence, but menaced in turn by the growing power of Hail, they formed a coalition under the leadership of Zamil, sheik of Aneza, and in the spring of 1891, Aneza, Bureda, Shakra, Ras and Riad assembled their contingents to contest with Ibn Rashid the supremacy in Nejd.
