In the land lying on that narrow part of the Baltic which bore the special name of the Slavonic Gulf, the alternations of revolt and submission, from the ninth century to the twelfth, were endless. Here we can trace out native dynasties, one of which has lasted to our own day. ♦Kingdom of Sclavinia.♦ The mark of the Billungs[60] alternates with the kingdom of Sclavinia, and the kingdom of Sclavinia alternates between heathen and Christian princes. ♦Przemyslaf. 1161.
House of Mecklenburg.♦ At last, in the twelfth century, the last heathen King of the Wends became the first Christian Duke, the founder of the house of Mecklenburg. Part of this region, Western Pomerania and the island of Rügen, became, both in this and in later times, a special borderland of Germany and Scandinavia. ♦Rügen under Denmark. 1168-1325.♦ Rügen and the neighbouring coast became a Danish possession in the twelfth century, and so remained into the fourteenth. ♦1214-1223.♦ The kingdom of Sclavinia itself became Danish for a short season. A Scandinavian power appeared again in the same region in the seventeenth century. With these exceptions, the history of these lands from the twelfth century onward, is that of members of the German kingdom.
It was otherwise with the second group, with the Slaves who dwelled within the fence of the Giant Mountains, and with their neighbours to the north-east, on the upper course of the Oder as well as on the Wag and the northern Morava. ♦Kingdom of Bohemia.♦ Here a Slavonic kingdom has lived on to this day, though it early passed under German supremacy, and though it has been for ages ruled by German kings. ♦928.♦ Bohemia, the land of the Czechs, tributary to Charles the Great, part of the kingdom of Sviatopluk, became definitely a German fief through the wars of the Saxon kings. But this did not hinder Bohemia from becoming, later in the century, an advancing and conquering power, the seat of a short-lived dominion, like those of Samo and Sviatopluk. ♦Moravians and Slovaks.♦ To the east of the Czechs of Bohemia lie the Moravians and Slovaks, that branch of the Slavonic race which formed the centre of the kingdom of Sviatopluk, and which bore the main brunt of the Magyar invasion. ♦Magyar conquest of Moravia. 906-955.♦ A large part of the Slaves of this region fell permanently under Magyar rule; so did Moravia itself for a season. Since then Bohemia and Moravia have usually had a common destiny. ♦Advance of Bohemia. 973-999.♦ Later in the century the Czechish dominion reached to the Oder, and took in the Northern Chrobatia on the upper Vistula. This dominion passed away with the great growth of the Polish power. ♦Bohemia and Moravia under Poland. 1003-1004.
1003-1029.♦ Bohemia itself for a moment, Moravia for a somewhat longer time, became Polish dependencies, and the Magyar won a further land between the Wag and the Olzava. Later events led to another growth of Bohemia, in more forms than one, but always as a member of the Roman Empire and the German kingdom.
♦The Polish kingdom.♦
While our second group thus passed under German dominion without ceasing to be Slavonic, among the third group a great Slavonic power arose whose adhesion to the Western Church made it part of the general Western world, but which was never brought under the lasting supremacy of the Western Empire. ♦Its relations to Germany.♦ Large parts of the old Polish lands have passed under German rule; some parts have been largely Germanized. But Poland, as a whole, has never been either Germanized or brought under lasting German rule. Holding the most central position of any European state, Poland has had to struggle against enemies from every quarter, against the Swede from the Baltic and the Turk from the Danube. ♦Rivalry of Poland and Russia.♦ But the distinguishing feature of its history has been its abiding rivalry with the Slavonic land to the east of it. The common history of Poland and Russia is a history of conquest and partition, wrought by whichever power was at the time the stronger.
♦The Lechs or Poles.♦
Our first glimmerings of light in these parts show us a number of kindred tribes holding the land between Oder and Vistula, with the coast between the mouths of those rivers. East of the Vistula they are cut off from the sea by the Prussians; but in the inland region they stretch somewhat to the east of that river. To the west the Oder and Bober may be taken as their boundary. ♦White Chrobatia.♦ But the upper course of these rivers is the home of another kindred people, the northern branch of the Chrobatians or Croats, whose land of White Chrobatia stretched on both sides of the Carpathians. These Slaves of the central and lower Oder and Vistula would seem to be best distinguished as Lechs; Poland is the name of the land rather than of the people. ♦Polish tribes.♦ Mazovia, Cujavia, Silesia—the German Schlesien—with the sea land, Pomore, Pommern, or Pomerania, mark different districts held by kindred tribes. ♦Beginning of the Polish kingdom at Gnesen.♦ In the tenth century a considerable power arose for the first time in these regions, having its centre between the Warta and the Vistula, at Gniezno or Gnesen, the abiding metropolitan city of Poland. ♦931-992. Conversion of Poland.♦ The extent of the new power under the first Christian prince Mieczïslaf answered nearly to the later Great Poland, Mazovia, and Silesia. ♦Tributary to the Empire. 963.
973.♦ But the Polish duke became a vassal of the Empire for his lands west of Warta, and suffered some dismemberments to the advantage of Bohemia. ♦Conquests of Boleslaf. 996-1025.♦ Under his son Boleslaf, Poland rose to the same kind of momentary greatness as Moravia and Bohemia had already done. The dominions of Boleslaf took in, for longer or shorter times, Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia, Silesia, Pomerania, Prussia, part of Russia, and part of that middle Slavonic land which became the mark of Brandenburg, the districts of Barnim and Custrin. Of this great dominion some parts fell away during the life of Boleslaf, and other parts at his death. ♦Effects of his reign.♦ But he none the less established Poland as a power, and some of his conquests were abiding. ♦Chrobatia becomes Little Poland.♦ Western Pomerania, Silesia, Barnim and Custrin, were kept for a longer or shorter time; and Chrobatia north of the Carpathians—the southern part fell to the Magyar at his death—remained, under the name of Little Poland, as long as Poland lasted at all. It supplied the land with its second capital, Cracow. From this time Poland ranked sometimes as a kingdom, sometimes as a duchy.[61] ♦Internal divisions.♦ Constant divisions among members of the ruling house, occasional admissions of the outward supremacy of the Empire, did not destroy its national unity and independence. ♦The Polish state survives.♦ A Polish state always lived on. And from the end of the thirteenth century, it took its place as an important European kingdom, holding a distinctive position as the one Slavonic power at once attached to the Western Church and independent of the Western Empire.
♦Relations of Russia to the Eastern Church.♦
To the east of the Lechs and Chrobatians lay that great group of Slavonic tribes whose distinctive historical character is that they stood in the same relation to Eastern Christendom in which Poland stands to Western. Disciples of the Eastern Church, they were never vassals of the Eastern Empire. ♦Teutonic influence among eastern and western Slaves.♦ The Western Slaves were brought under Christian and under Teutonic influences by the same process, a process which implied submission, or attempted submission, to the Western Empire or to some of its princes. The Eastern Slaves were also brought under both Christian and Teutonic influences, but in wholly different shapes. The Teutonic influence came first. ♦Russia created by the Scandinavian settlement.♦ It did not take the form of submission to any existing Teutonic power; it was the creation of a new Slavonic power under Teutonic rulers. Christianity did not come till those Teutonic influences had died away, except in their results, and, coming from the Eastern centre of Christendom, it had the effect of keeping its disciples aloof from both the Christian and the Teutonic influences of the West. ♦The name Russian.♦ A group of Slavonic tribes, without losing their Slavonic character, grew up to national unity, and took up a national name from Scandinavian settlers and rulers, the Warangians or Russians of the Swedish peninsula.[62]
♦Origin of Russia. 862.
First seat at Novgorod. Russian advance.♦