The successors of Ottocar reigned only over Bohemia and Moravia. Early in the next century the Bohemian crown passed to the house of Luxemburg. Under them Bohemia became a powerful state, but a state becoming more and more German, less and less Slavonic. ♦Silesia, 1355.♦ The gradual extension of Bohemian superiority over Silesia led to its formal incorporation. ♦Lusatia. 1320-1370.♦ In the same century Lusatia, High and Low, was won from Brandenburg. ♦Brandenburg. 1373-1417.♦ The mark of Brandenburg itself became for a while a Bohemian possession, before it passed to the burgraves of Nürnberg. ♦1353.♦ The Bohemian possession of the Upper Palatinate lies out of our Slavonic range. Among the revolutions of the fifteenth century, we find the Bohemian crown at one time held conjointly with that of Hungary, at another time held by a Polish prince. ♦Conquests of Matthias Corvinus, 1478-1490.♦ Later in the century the victories of Matthias Corvinus took away Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, from the Bohemian crown. ♦Bohemia and Austria.
Its losses. 1635.
1740.♦ But it was the fourfold dominion of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, which finally passed to the House of Austria, to be shorn of its northern and eastern lands to the profit, first of Saxony, and then of Brandenburg or Prussia.
Thus far the Teutonic advance, both on the actual Baltic coast and on the inland Slavonic region, had been made to the profit, partly of the Scandinavian kingdoms, partly of the princes of the Empire. ♦German corporations.♦ But there were two other forms of Teutonic influence and dominion, which fell to the share, not of princes, but of corporate bodies, mercantile and military or religious. ♦The Hansa.♦ The Hanseatic League was indeed a power in these regions, but it hardly has a place on the map. ♦Second foundation of Lübeck. 1158.♦ Even before the second foundation of Lübeck by Henry the Lion, German mercantile settlements had begun at Novgorod, in Gotland, and in London. ♦Extent of the League.♦ Gradually, in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the League into which the union of the merchant towns of Germany grew spread itself over the Baltic, the Westfalian, and the Netherlandish lands. A specially close tie bound together the five Wendish towns, Lübeck, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, and Greifswald. ♦Nature of the union.♦ But the union of a town with the Hansa did not necessarily affect its political position. It might, at least in the later stages of the League, be a free city of the Empire, a town subject to some prince of the Empire, or a town subject to a prince beyond its bounds. Not only the Pomeranian and Prussian cities under the rule of the Knights, but Revel in Esthland under Danish rule formed part of the League. ♦The Hansa not a territorial power.♦ The League waged wars, made peace, overthrew and set up kings, as suited its interests; but territorial dominion, strictly so called, was not its object. Still in some cases privileges grew into something like dominion; in others military occupation might pass for temporary dominion. ♦The Hansa in Gotland and Scania.
1361.
1368-1385.♦ Thus in the isle of Gotland the Hansa had an ascendency which was overthrown by the conquest of the island by the Danish king Waldemar, a conquest avenged by a temporary Hanseatic occupation of Scania. In fact the nature of the League, the relations of the cities to one another, geographical as well as political, hindered the Hansa from ever becoming a territorial power like Switzerland and the United Provinces. In the history of the Baltic lands it takes for some ages a position at least equal to that of any kingdom. But it is only casually and occasionally that its triumphs can be marked on the map.
The other great German corporation was not commercial, but military and religious. ♦The Swordbearers and the Teutonic Order.♦ The conquests of the Order of Christ and of the Order of Saint Mary—better known as the Sword-brothers and the Teutonic Order—were essentially territorial. These orders became masters of a great part of the Baltic coast, and wherever they spread their dominion, Christianity and German national life were, by whatever means, established. ♦Their connexion with the Empire.♦ As both the chiefs of the Order and the Livonian prelates ranked as princes of the Empire, the conquests of the Knights were in some sort an extension of the bounds of the Empire. Yet we can hardly look on Livonia and Prussia as coming geographically within the Empire in the same sense as Pomerania and Silesia. ♦Effects of their rule.♦ But whether strictly an extension of the Western Empire or not, the conquests of the Knights were an extension of the Western Church, the Western world, and the German nation, as against both heathendom and Eastern Christianity, as against all the other Baltic nationalities, non-Aryan and Aryan.
♦The Swordbearers in Livland. 1201.♦
The first settlement began in Livland. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Knights of the Order of Christ were called in as temporal helpers by Bishop Albert of Riga, and they gradually won the dominion of the lands on the gulf called from his city. ♦The Danes in Esthland.♦ For a while they had a partner in the Danish crown, which held part of Esthland. ♦Extent of their dominion.
Dago and Oesel.♦ But the rest of Esthland, Livland in the narrower sense, Curland, Semigola, the special Lettish land, and the Russian territory on the Duna, made up this Livonian dominion, which was afterwards enlarged by the isles of Dago and Oesel and by the Danish portion of Esthland. ♦Esthland. 1346.♦ Riga and Revel became great commercial cities, and Riga became an ecclesiastical metropolis under a prince-archbishop. The natives were reduced to bondage, and the Russian powers of Novgorod and Polotsk were effectually kept away from the gulf.
♦The Teutonic Order in Prussia. 1226.♦
The dominion of the Knights of Saint Mary, the Teutonic Order, in Prussia and in a small part of Lithuania, began a little later than that of the Sword-brothers in Livland. Invited by a Polish prince, Conrad of Mazovia, they received from him their first Polish possession, the palatinate of Culm. ♦Union of the Orders. 1237.♦ Eleven years later the Prussian and Livonian orders were united. Their dominion grew. ♦Purchase of Pomerelia. 1311.♦ The acquisition of Pomerelia, the eastern part of the old Pomore, immediately west of the lower Vistula, cut off Poland from the sea. ♦Conquest of Samogitia. 1384.♦ Later in the century, Lithuania was equally cut off by the cession of Samogitia. ♦Occupation of Gotland. 1398-1408.
The New Mark pledged to the Order. 1402.♦ The isle of Gotland was held for a while; the New Mark of Brandenburg was pledged by King Sigismund. ♦Their coast line.♦ The whole coast from Narva on the Finnish gulf to the point where the Pomeranian coast trends south-west formed the unbroken sea-board of the Order.
♦Losses of the Prussian Knights.♦
Of the two seats of the Order the northern one proved the stronger and more lasting. Livland remained untouched long after Poland had won back her lost ground from the Prussian Knights. ♦Samogitia restored to Lithuania. 1410.♦ The battle of Tannenberg won back Samogitia for Lithuania, and again parted the Livonian and Prussian lands of the Order. ♦Peace of Thorn. 1646.♦ By the peace of Thorn its Prussian dominion was altogether cut short. ♦Cessions of the Order to Poland.♦ Culm and Pomerelia, with the cities of Danzig and Thorn, went back to Poland. And a large part of Prussia itself, the bishopric of Ermeland, a district running deep into the land still left to the knights, was added to Poland. ♦Vassalage of the Order.♦ The rest of Prussia was left to the Order as a Polish fief.
The thirteenth century was the special time when Teutonic dominion spread itself over the Baltic lands. ♦Advance of Christianity.♦ It was also the time when heathendom gave way to Christianity at nearly every point of those lands where it still held out. But, while the old creeds and the old races were giving way, a single one among them stood forth for a while as an independent and conquering state, the last heathen power in Europe. ♦Lithuania the last heathen power.♦ While all their kinsfolk and neighbours were passing under the yoke, the Lithuanians, strictly so called, showed themselves the mightiest of conquerors in all lands from the Baltic to the Euxine. ♦Advance of Lithuania. c. 1220.♦ From their own land on the Niemen they began, under their prince Mendog, to advance at the expense of the Russian lands to the south. ♦Mendog king. 1252.♦ Mendog embraced Christianity, and was crowned King of Lithuania, a realm which now stretched from the Duna to beyond the Priepetz. But heathendom again won the upper hand, and the next century saw the great advance of the Lithuanian power, the momentary rule of old Aryan heathendom alike over Christendom and over Islam. ♦Conquests from Russia. 1315-1340. 1345-1377.♦ Under two conquering princes, Gedymin and Olgierd, further conquests were made from the surrounding Russian lands. ♦1315-1360.♦ The Lithuanian dominion was extended at the expense of Novgorod and Smolensk; the Lithuanian frontier stretched far beyond both the Duna and the Dnieper; Kief was a Lithuanian possession. ♦Volhynia and Podolia.♦ The kingdom of Galicia lost Volhynia and Podolia, which became a land disputed between Lithuania and Poland. These last conquests carried the Lithuanian frontier to the Dniester, and opened a wholly new set of relations among the powers on the Euxine. ♦Perekop. 1363.♦ By the conquest of the Tartar dominion of Perekop, Lithuania, cut off from the Baltic, reached to the Euxine.