First, thanks for a concise summation of that part of human history.

It so happens that I am currently reading a history of the "Habsburg Empire" (that became the Austro-Hungarian Empire) that was an attempt at a single geopolitical entity including Germanic and Slavic peoples. One surprising thing I have learned from it, though, is that Hungary had a constitutionalist tradition very similar to that of England that began with a document much like Magna Carta only a few decades after it. Apparently, however, the Magyars were an insular, "greedy and expansionist" people who came to dominate all others as far as they could.

Still, a person has to ask what, then, accounts for the "greedy and expansionist national character" of the Western European nations?