Slavery in History

by Adam Gurowski

The fighting-men, or warriors, who subdued and enslaved other tribes, or transformed into schalks the weaker members of their own tribe, frequently located some of them on lands or homesteads which they permitted them to cultivate for their own use, on condition of paying a rent, generally in kind, and performing various other acts of servitude. Such was the origin of the German liti, who afterward constituted the common people.

The free, that is originally the strong, the subduer, was at the summit of the whole German social structure. He was free because he was absolute master over the weak, who had no power or strength in himself or family, and therefore was rightless. The genuine meaning of the word frow (from which is derived fri, free, freedom,) is "the right to own" land, liti and schalks. From frow comes the frowen "freemen," "rulers," "masters,"—the caste for which all others existed. Land and schalks constituted the wealth of frowen or nobleman, and to acquire them the German tribes exerted all their warlike energies. All the remote Teutonic invasions, as well as those of the mediæval times, were made principally for the acquisition of land and slaves. The lands, conquered by the swords of the frowen, were worked by the schalks.

The slave traffic existed and was highly developed among the primitive Germans. It was carried on at the time of Tacitus, and some investigators maintain that for long centuries it was the only traffic known among the barbarous Germans; and slavery in its worst form was in full blast in Germany when her tribes dashed themselves against the Western empire. The slaves constituted more than half of the whole Germanic population. Wirth, the most conscientious investigator of the primitive social condition of the Germanic race, estimates the proportion of freemen to slaves as one to twenty-four. All of them—frowen, adelings, nobles of all degrees, followers, vassals, liti and schalks, lived the same simple, agrestic life. Rude in mind and of vigorous bodies, in comparatively small numbers they shattered in pieces the rotting Roman empire.

First the incursions, then the definite invasions and conquests—Attila's forays from one end of Europe to the other—gave a vigorous impulse to slavery, both abroad and at home. Abroad, the invaders enslaved all that they reached—destroying, burning, devastating, impoverishing the population, and increasing the number of those forced to seek in chattelhood a remedy against starvation. At home, immense tracts of land were depopulated and abandoned, and old and new frowen, masters, seized upon them. Of course schalks were in demand, and were supplied by traffic and kidnapping.

The wars among the Germanic tribes, which were continued more or less vigorously, and the wars with neighboring populations, increased the number of slaves thrown upon the market.

The transition of a great part of Europe from the Roman to what may be called the German world, was so terrible that for several centuries the most unparalleled destruction, desolation, and slavery constituted the principal characteristics of the first mediæval epoch.

But Europe, the Christian world, and humanity were not to be submerged in the foul mire of chattelism. The awful crisis lasted through many generations, and bloodshed and superhuman suffering were their lot. But finally, the turning-point of the disease was reached: the disorder began to yield. Often after such a crisis the malignant symptoms do not abate at once, nay, they sometimes reappear with renewed force, and a long period is needed for a complete recovery. So in the evolution of Europe, overflowed by the German tribes, the most malignant symptoms of chattelhood continued and reappeared for a long time in their worst characteristics, before the social body entered the stage of convalescence.

The bloody throes of the German world redounded to the benefit of the nobles abroad and at home. Liti and schalks increased, and land rapidly accumulated in the hands of the few during the first centuries of the German Christian era. Thus Saxony belonged to twenty, some say to twelve nobles, who kept thereon half-free vassals, liti, and schalks.

As the oligarchs of Greece and Rome and Gaul, so the German frowen, the powerful, the rich, in all possible ways, per fas et nefas, seized upon the homesteads of the poor; and the impoverished freemen or ahrimen, smaller nobles, and vassals, became liti and schalks. Analogous conditions produce analogous results in usages as in institutions and laws; and often that which appears to have been borrowed by one nation or people from another, is only a domestic outgrowth germinating from similar circumstances.

When the German lay and clerical founders of the feudal system possessed more land than they could cultivate, and when the iron hand of Charlemagne prevented domestic feuds and the supply of slaves from that source, then they kidnapped right and left, heathen and Christian, poor freeman or schalk. Some of the feudal barons of the time of Charlemagne owned as many as twenty thousand liti and schalks.