But besides the Slaves of Poland and Russia, our survey takes in also the ancient races by which both Poland and Russia were so largely cut off from the Baltic. Down to the middle of the twelfth century, notwithstanding occasional Polish or Scandinavian occupations, those races still kept their hold of the whole Baltic north-eastwards from the mouth of the Vistula. ♦Fins in Livland and Esthland.♦ The non-Aryan Fins, besides their seats to the north, still kept the coast of Esthland and Lifland, in Latin shape Esthonia and Livonia, from the Finnish Gulf to the Duna and slightly beyond, taking in a small strip of the opposite peninsula. ♦The Lettic nations.♦ The inland part of the later Livland was held by the Letts, the most northern branch of the ancient Aryan settlers in this region. ♦Curland.
Samogitia.
Lithuania.♦ Of this family were the tribes of Curland in their own peninsula, of Samigola or Semigallia, the Samaites of Samogitia to the south, the proper Lithuanians south of them, the Jatwages, Jatwingi—in many spellings—forming a Lithuanian wedge between the Slavonic lands of Mazovia and Black Russia. ♦Prussia.♦ The Lithuanians, strictly so called, reached the coast just north of the Niemen; from the mouth of the Niemen to the mouth of the Vistula the coast was held by the Prussians. Of these nations, Aryan and non-Aryan, the Lithuanians alone founded a national dominion in historic times. The history of the rest is simply the history of their bondage, sometimes of their uprooting.
♦Survey in the twelfth century.♦
Taking a general survey of the lands round the Baltic about the middle of the twelfth century, we see the three Scandinavian kingdoms, the first fully formed states in these regions, all living and vigorous powers, but with fluctuating boundaries. Their western colonies are still Scandinavian. East and south of the Baltic they have not got beyond isolated and temporary enterprises. The Slavonic nations on the middle Elbe have fallen under German dominion; to the south Bohemia and its dependencies keep their Slavonic nationality under German supremacy. Poland, often divided and no longer conquering, still keeps its frontier, and its position as the one independent Slavonic power belonging to the Western Church. Russia, the great Eastern Slavonic power, has risen to unity and greatness under Scandinavian masters, and has again broken up into states connected only by a feeble tie. The submission of Russia to barbarian invaders comes later than our immediate survey; but the weakening of the Russian power both by division and by submission is an essential element in the state of things which now begins. ♦Teutonic advance, German and Scandinavian.♦ This is the spread in different ways of Teutonic dominion, German and Scandinavian, over the southern and eastern coasts of the Baltic, largely at the expense of the Slaves, still more largely at the expense of the primitive nations, Aryan and non-Aryan.
§ 3. The German Dominion on the Baltic.
♦Time of Teutonic conquest.♦
In the first half of the twelfth century, no Teutonic power, German or Scandinavian, had any lasting hold on any part of the eastern coast of the Baltic or its gulfs, nor had any such power made any great advances on the southern coast. Early in the fourteenth century the whole of these coasts had been brought into different degrees of submission to several Teutonic powers, German and Scandinavian. ♦German influence stronger than Scandinavian.♦ Of the two influences the German has been the more abiding. Scandinavian dominion has now wholly passed away from these coasts, and it is only in the lands north of the Finnish Gulf that it can be said to have ever been really lasting. ♦Extent of German dominion.♦ But German influence has destroyed, assimilated, or brought to submission, the whole of the earlier inhabitants, from Wagria to Esthland. In our own day the whole coast, from the isle of Rügen to the head of the gulf of Bothnia, is in the possession of two powers, one German, one Slavonic. ♦German influence abiding.♦ But German influence abides beyond the bounds of German rule. Not only have Pomerania and Prussia become German in every sense, but Curland, Livland, and Esthland, under the dominion of Russia, are still spoken of as German provinces.
This great change was brought about by a singular union of mercantile, missionary, and military enterprise. ♦Beginning of Swedish conquest in Finland. 1155.♦ The beginning came from Scandinavia, when the Swedish King Saint Eric undertook the conquest and conversion of the proper Finland, east of the Gulf of Bothnia. Here, in the space of about a century, a great province was added to the Swedish kingdom, a province whose eastern boundary greatly shifted, but the greater part of which remained Swedish down to the present century. To the south of the Gulf of Finland the changes of possession have been endless. The settled dominion of Sweden in those lands comes later; Danish occupation, though longer, was only temporary. ♦German conquest in Livland.♦ Soon after the beginning of Swedish conquest in Finland began the work of German mercantile enterprise, followed fifty years later by German conquest and conversion, in Livland and the neighbouring lands. This hindered the growth of any native power on those coasts. ♦Its effect on Lithuania and Russia.♦ Even Lithuania in the days of its greatness was cut off from the sea. Whatever tendencies towards Russian supremacy had arisen in those parts were hindered from growing into Russian dominion. ♦The Military Orders.♦ The Knights of the Sword in Livland were followed by the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, and the two orders became one. ♦Danish advance.♦ Further west, the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century saw a great, but mostly short-lived, extension of Danish power over both German and Slavonic lands. ♦The Scandinavian kingdoms.♦ While the coasts are thus changing hands, the relations of Scandinavian kingdoms to one another are ever shifting. ♦Polish gains and losses.♦ Poland is ever losing territory to the west, and, still more after the beginning of its connexion with Lithuania, ever gaining it to the east. ♦The Hansa.♦ And, alongside of princes and sovereign orders, this time is marked by the appearance of the first germs of the great German commercial league, which, without becoming a strictly territorial power, exercised the greatest influence on the disposal of power among all its neighbours.
♦Scania Swedish. 1332-1360.♦
In Scandinavia itself the chief strictly geographical change was a temporary transfer to Sweden in the fourteenth century of the Danish lands within the northern peninsula. ♦Union of Calmar. 1396.♦ At the end of that century came the union of Calmar, the principle of which was that the three kingdoms, remaining separate states, should be joined under a common sovereign. But this union was never firmly established, and the arrangements of the three crowns were shifting throughout the fifteenth century; a lasting state of things came only with the final breach of the union in the sixteenth century. ♦Sweden separated, Denmark and Norway united. 1520.♦ From that time, Sweden, under the house of Vasa, forms one power; Denmark and Norway, under the house of Oldenburg, form another.
♦Loss of oceanic colonies.♦