Edward A. Freeman

THE BALTIC LANDS.

?Lands beyond the two Empires.?

Our survey of the two Empires and of the powers which sprang out of them has still left out of sight a large part of Europe, including some lands which formed part of the elder Empire. It is only indirectly that we have spoken of the extreme north, the extreme east, or the extreme west, of Europe. ?Quasi-Imperial position of certain powers.? In all these regions powers have risen and fallen which might pass for shadows of the two Empires of Rome. ?The British islands.? Thus in the north-west lie two great islands with a following of smaller ones, of which the elder Empire never held more than part of the greater island and those of the smaller ones which could not be separated from it. Britain passed for a world of its own, and the princes who rose to a quasi-Imperial position within that world took, by a kind of analogy, the titles of Empire.[51] ?Scandinavia.? In the extreme north are a larger and smaller peninsula, with their attendant islands, which lay wholly beyond the elder Empire, and of which the later Western Empire took in only a very small part for a short time. ?Empire of Cnut.? The momentary union of these two insular and peninsular systems, of Britain and Scandinavia, formed more truly a third Empire of the North, fully the fellow of those of the East and West.[52] ?Spain.? In the south-west of Europe again lay another great peninsula, which had been fully incorporated with the elder Empire, parts of which—at two opposite ends—had belonged to the Empire of Justinian and to the Empire of Charles, but whose history, as a whole, stands apart from that of either the Eastern or the Western Roman power. And in Spain also, as being, like Britain, in some sort a world of its own, the leading power asserted an Imperial rank. ?Castilian Emperors.? As Wessex had its Emperors, so had Castile.

?History of the lands beyond the Empires.?

Britain, Scandinavia, and Spain, thus form three marked geographical wholes, three great divisions of that part of Europe which lay outside the bounds of either Empire at the time of the separation. But the geographical position of the three regions has led to marked differences in their history. Insular Britain is wholly oceanic. ?Geographical comparison of Scandinavia and Spain.? Peninsular Spain and Scandinavia have each an oceanic side; but each has also a side towards one of the great inland seas of Europe—Spain towards the Mediterranean, Scandinavia towards the northern Mediterranean, the Baltic. But the Baltic side of Scandinavia has been of far greater relative importance than the Mediterranean side of Spain. ?Position of Aragon in the Mediterranean.? Of the three chief Spanish kingdoms Aragon alone has a Mediterranean history; the seaward course of Castile and Portugal was oceanic. Of the three Scandinavian kingdoms Norway alone is wholly oceanic. ?Position of Sweden in the Baltic.? Denmark is more Baltic than oceanic; the whole historic life of Sweden lies on the Baltic coasts. The Mediterranean position of Aragon enabled her to win whole kingdoms as her dependencies. But they were not geographically continuous, and they never could be incorporated. Sweden, on the other hand, was able to establish a continuous dominion on both sides of the great northern gulfs, and to make at least a nearer approach to the incorporation of her conquests than Aragon could ever make. ?Growth and decline of Sweden.? The history of Sweden mainly consists in the growth and the loss of her dominion in the Baltic lands out of her own peninsula. It is only in quite modern times that the union of the crowns, though not of the kingdoms, of Sweden and Norway has created a power wholly peninsular and equally Baltic and oceanic.

?Eastern and western aspects of Scandinavia.?

This eastern aspect of Scandinavian history needs the more to be insisted on, because there is another side of it with which we are naturally more likely to be struck. Scandinavian inroads and conquests—inroads and conquests, that is, from Denmark and Norway—make up a large part of the early history of Gaul and Britain. When this phase of their history ends, the Scandinavian kingdoms are apt to pass out of our sight, till we are perhaps surprised at the great part which they suddenly play in Europe in the seventeenth century. But both Denmark and Sweden had meanwhile been running their course in the lands north, east, and south of the Baltic. And it is this Baltic side of their history which is of primary importance in our general European view.

?The Baltic lands generally.?

It follows then that, for the purposes of our present survey, while the British islands and the Spanish peninsula will each claim a distinct treatment, we cannot separate the Scandinavian peninsulas from the general mass of the Baltic lands. ?The Northern Slavonic lands.? We must look at Scandinavia in close geographical connexion with the region which stretches from the centre to the extreme east of Europe, a region which, while by no means wholly Slavonic, is best marked as containing the seats of the northern branch of the Slavonic race. This region has a constant connexion with both German and Scandinavian history. ?Germanized Slavonic lands.? It takes in those wide lands, once Slavonic, which have at various times been more or less thoroughly incorporated with Germany, but which did not become German without vigorous efforts to make large parts of them Scandinavian. In another part of our survey we have watched them join on to the Teutonic body; we must now watch them drop off from the Slavonic body. ?Northern Slaves under Hungary or Austria.? And with them we must take another glimpse at those among the Northern Slaves who passed under the power of the Magyar, and of that composite dominion which claims the Magyar crown among many others. These North-Slavonic lands which have passed to non-Slavonic rulers form a region stretching from Holstein to the Austrian kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and to the Slovak and Ruthenian districts of Hungary. But above all, this North-Slavonic region takes in those two branches of the Slavonic race which have in turn lorded it over one another, neither of which passed permanently under the lordship of either Empire, but one of which owed its unity and national life to settlers from the Scandinavian north. ?Characteristics of Poland and Russia.? That is to say, it is the land of the Pole and the Russian, the land of the two branches of the Slavonic race which passed severally under the spiritual dominion of the elder and the younger Rome without passing under the temporal dominion of either. ?The primitive nations.? And within the same region we have to deal with the remnant that is left of those ancient nations, Aryan and non-Aryan, which so long refused all obedience to either Church as well as to either Empire. ?Aryan nations; Prussians and Lithuanians.? The region at which we now look takes in the land of those elder brethren of the European family whose speech has changed less than any other European tongue from the Aryan speech once common to all. Alongside of the Orthodox Russian, of the Catholic Pole, of the Swede first Catholic and then Lutheran, we have to look on the long abiding heathendom of the Lithuanian and the Prussian.[53] ?Non-Aryan Fins.? And at their side we have to look on older races still, on the prÆ-Aryan nations on either side of the Bothnian and Finnish gulfs. The history of the eastern coast of the Baltic is the history of the struggle for the rule or the destruction of these ancient nations at the hands of their Teutonic and Slavonic neighbours.

?Central position of the North-Slavonic lands.?

The whole North-Slavonic region, north-eastern rather than central with regard to Europe in general, has still a central character of its own. It is connected with the history of northern, of western, and of south-eastern Europe. The falling away of so many Slavonic lands to Germany is of itself no small part of German history. But besides this, the strictly Polish and Russian area marches at once on the Western Empire, on the lands which fringe the Eastern Empire, on the Scandinavian North, and on the barbarian lands to the north-east. This last feature is a characteristic both of the North-Slavonic region and of the Scandinavian peninsula. ?Barbarian neighbours of Russia and Scandinavia.? Norway, Sweden, Russia, are the only European powers whose land has always marched on the land of barbarian neighbours, and have therefore been able to conquer and colonize in barbarian lands simply by extending their own frontiers. This was done by Norway and Sweden as far as their geographical position allowed them; but it has been done on a far greater scale by Russia. ?Russian conquest and colonization by land.? While other European nations have conquered and colonized by sea, Russia, the one European state of later times which has marched upon Asia, has found a boundless field for conquest and colonization by land. She has had her India, her Canada, and her Australia, her Mexico, her Brazil, her Java, and her Algeria, geographically continuous with her European territory. This fact is the key to much in the later history of Russia.

?Relation of the Baltic lands to the two Empires.?

With regard to the two Empires, the lands round the Baltic show us several relations. ?Norway always independent.? In Scandinavia, Norway stands alone in never having had anything to do with the Roman power in any of its forms. ?Relations of Sweden and Denmark to the Empire.? Sweden itself has always been equally independent; but in later times Swedish kings have held fiefs within the Western Empire. The position of Denmark has naturally caused it to have much more to do with its Roman or German neighbour. In earlier times some Danish kings became vassals of the Empire for the Danish crown; others made conquests within the lands of the Empire. In later times Danish kings have held fiefs within the German kingdom and have been members of the more modern Confederation. ?The Empire and the West-Slavonic lands.? The western parts of the Slavonic region became formally part of the Western Empire. But this was after the Empire had put on the character of a German state; these lands were not drawn to it from its strictly Imperial side. ?Poland and the Empire.? Poland sometimes passed in early days for a fief of the German kingdom; in later days it was divided between the two chief powers which arose out of that kingdom. ?Relations of Russia to the Eastern Church and Empire.? Russia, on the other hand, the pupil of the Eastern Empire, has never been the subject or the vassal of either Empire. When Russia had an external overlord, he was an Asiatic barbarian. ?Imperial style of Russia.? The peculiar relation between Russia and Constantinople, spiritual submission combined with temporal independence, has led to the appearance in Russia of Imperial ideas and titles with a somewhat different meaning from that with which they were taken in Spain and in Britain. The Russian prince claims the Imperial style and bearings, not so much as holding an Imperial position in a world of his own, as because the most powerful prince of the Eastern Church in some sort inherits the position of the Eastern Emperor in the general world of Europe.

§ 1. The Scandinavian Lands after the Separation of the Empires.

At the end of the eighth century the Scandinavian and Slavonic inhabitants of the Baltic lands as yet hardly touched one another. The most northern Scandinavians and the most northern Slaves were still far apart; if the two races anywhere marched on one another, it must have been at the extreme south-western corner of the Baltic coast. ?The Baltic still mainly held by the earlier races.? The greater part of that coast, all its northern and eastern parts, was still held by the earlier nations, Aryan and non-Aryan. ?Formation of the Scandinavian kingdoms.? But, within the two Scandinavian peninsulas, the three Scandinavian nations were fast forming. A number of kindred tribes were settling down into the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,[54] which, sometimes separate, sometimes united, have existed ever since.

Of these three, Denmark, the only one which had a frontier towards the Empire, was naturally the first to play a part in general European history. ?Formation of the Danish kingdom.? In the course of the tenth century, under the half-mythical Gorm and his successors Harold and Sven, the Danish kingdom itself, as distinguished from other lands held in after times by its kings, reached nearly its full historical extent in the two peninsulas and the islands between them. ?Denmark in the northern peninsula.? Halland and SkÅne or Scania, it must always be remembered, are from the beginning at least as Danish as Zealand and Jutland. ?Frontier of the Eider.
The Danish March. 934-1027.? The Eider remained the frontier towards the Empire, save during part of the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the Danish frontier withdrew to the Dannewerk, and the land between the two boundaries formed the Danish March of the Empire. Under Cnut the old frontier was restored.

The name of Northmen,[55] which the Franks used in a laxer way for the Scandinavian nations generally, was confined to the people of Norway. ?Formation of the kingdom of Norway.? These were formed into a single kingdom under Harold Harfagra late in the ninth century. The Norwegian realm of that day stretched far beyond the bounds of the later Norway, having an indefinite extension over tributary Finnish tribes as far as the White Sea. The central part of the eastern side of the northern peninsula, between Denmark to the south and the Finnish nations to the north, was held by two Scandinavian settlements which grew into the Swedish kingdom. ?The Swedes and Gauts.? These were those of the Swedes strictly so called, and of the GeÁtas or Gauts. This last name has naturally been confounded with that of the Goths, and has given the title of King of the Goths to the princes of Sweden. Gothland, east and west, lay on each side of Lake Wettern. Swithiod or Svealand, Sweden proper, lay on both sides of the great arm of the sea whose entrance is guarded by the modern capital. ?The Swedish kingdom.? The union of Svealand and Gothland made up the kingdom of Sweden. ?Fluctuations towards Norway and Denmark. 1111.? Its early boundaries towards both Denmark and Norway were fluctuating. Wermeland, immediately to the north of Lake Wenern, and Jamteland farther to the north, were long a debateable land. At the beginning of the twelfth century Wermeland passed finally to Sweden, and Jamteland for several ages to Norway. Bleking again, at the south-east corner of the peninsula, was a debateable land between Sweden and Denmark which passed to Denmark. ?Growth to the north.? For a land thus bounded the natural course of extension by land lay to the north, along the west coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. In the course of the eleventh century at the latest, Sweden began to spread itself in that direction over Helsingland.

Sweden had thus a better opportunity than Denmark and Norway for extension of her own borders by land. ?Western expeditions of the Danes and Northmen.? Meanwhile Denmark and Norway, looking to the west, had their great time of Oceanic conquest and colonization in the ninth and tenth centuries.[56] These two processes must be distinguished. ?Conquests.? Some lands, like the Northumbrian and East-Anglian kingdoms in Britain and the duchy of Normandy in Gaul, received Scandinavian princes and a Scandinavian element in their population, without the geographical area of Scandinavia being extended. ?Colonies.? But that area may be looked on as being extended by colonies like those of Orkney, Shetland, Faroe, the islands off the western coast of Scotland, Man, Iceland, Greenland. Some of these were actually discovered and settled for the first time by the Northmen. ?Settlements in Ireland.? The settlements on the east coast of Ireland, Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, may also pass as outposts of Scandinavia on Celtic ground. Of these outlying Scandinavian lands, some of the islands, specially Iceland, have remained Scandinavian; the settlements on the mainland of Britain and Ireland, and on the islands nearest to them, have been merged in the British kingdoms or have become dependencies of the British crown.

?Expedition to the east.?

Against this vast range of Oceanic settlement there is as yet little to set in the form of Baltic conquest on the part of Norway and Denmark. Norway indeed hardly could become a Baltic power. ?Danes in Samland. 950.? But there was a Danish occupation of Samland in Prussia in the tenth century, which caused that land to be reckoned among the kingdoms which made up the Northern Empire of Cnut.[56] ?Jomsburg. 935-1043.? There is also the famous settlement of the Jomsburg Wikings at the mouth of the Oder. But the great eastern extension of Danish power came later. Nor did the lasting Swedish occupation of the lands east of the gulf of Bothnia begin till the twelfth century. But there is no doubt that, long before this, there were Swedish inroads and occasional Swedish conquests in other parts of the Baltic lands. ?Swedish conquest of Curland.? Thus Curland is said to have been won for a while by Sweden, and to have been again won back by its own Lettic people.[57] The ninth century indeed saw a wonderful extension of Scandinavian dominion far to the east and far to the south. But it was neither ordinary conquest nor ordinary settlement. No new Scandinavian people was planted, as in Orkney and Iceland. Nor were Scandinavian outposts planted, as in Ireland. ?Scandinavians in Russia.? But Scandinavian princes, who in three generations lost all trace of their Scandinavian origin, created, under the name of Russia, the greatest of Slavonic powers. The vast results of their establishment have been results on the history and geography of the Slaves; on Scandinavian geography it had no direct effect at all. Still it forms a connecting link between the Scandinavian lands west and north of the Baltic and the Slavonic region to the east and south of that sea.

§ 2. The Lands East and South of the Baltic at the Separation of the Empires.

?Slaves between Elbe and Dnieper.?

At the beginning of the ninth century the inland region stretching from the Elbe a little beyond the Dnieper was continuously held by various Slavonic nations. Their land marched on the German kingdom at one end, and on various Finnish and Turkish nations at the other. ?Their lack of sea-board.? But their sea-board was comparatively small. Wholly cut off from the Euxine, from the northern Ocean, and from the great gulfs of the Baltic, their only coast was that which reaches from the modern haven of Kiel to the mouth of the Vistula. And this Slavonic coast was gradually brought under German influence and dominion, and has been in the end fully incorporated with the German state. It follows then that, in tracing the history of the chief Slavonic powers in this region, of Bohemia, Poland, and Russia, we are dealing with powers which are almost wholly inland. At the time of the separation of the Empires, there was no one great Slavonic power in these parts. One such, with Bohemia for its centre, had shown itself for a moment in the seventh century. ?Bohemian kingdom of Samo. 623.? This was the kingdom of Samo, which, if its founder was really of Frankish birth, forms an exact parallel to Bulgaria and Russia, also Slavonic powers created by foreign princes.[58] ?Great-Moravia. 884.? The next considerable power which arose nearly on the same ground was the Great Moravian kingdom of Sviatopluk, which passed away before the advance of the Magyars. Before its fall the Russian power had already begun to form itself far to the north-east. ?Four Slavonic groups.? Looking at the map just before the beginning of the momentary Moravian and the lasting Russian power, the North-Slavonic nations fall into four main historical groups. ?North-western group; thoroughly Germanized.? There are, first, the tribes to the north-west, whose lands, answering roughly to the modern Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Saxony, have been thoroughly Germanized. ?South-western group under German supremacy? Secondly, there are the tribes to the south-west in Bohemia, Moravia, and Lusatia, which were brought under German dominion or supremacy, but from which Slavonic nationality has not in the same sort passed away. Silesia, connected in different ways with both these groups, forms the link between them and the third group. ?Central group; Polish.? This is formed by the central tribes of the whole region, lying between the Magyar to the south and the Prussian to the north, whose union made up the original Polish kingdom. ?Eastern group; Russian.? Lastly, to the east lie the tribes which joined to form the original Russian state. Looking at these groups in our own time, we may say that from the first of them all signs of Slavonic nationality have passed away. The second and third, speaking roughly, keep nationality without political independence. The fourth group has grown into the one great modern power whose ruling nationality is Slavonic.

With regard to the first group, we have now to trace from the Slavonic side the same changes of frontier which we have already slightly glanced at from the German side. ?Polabic group.? In the land between the Elbe and the Oder, taking the upper course of those rivers as represented by their tributaries the Saale and the Bober, we find that division of the Slaves which their own historian marks off as Polabic.[59] These again fall under three groups. ?Sorabi.? First, to the south, in the modern Saxony, are the Sorabi, the northern Serbs, cut off for ever from their southern brethren by the Magyar inroad. ?Leuticii.? To the north of them lie the Leuticii, Weleti, Weletabi, or Wiltsi, and other tribes stretching to the Baltic in modern Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. ?Obotrites:? In the north-west corner, in Mecklenburg and eastern Holstein, were the Obotrites, Wagri, and other tribes. ?their relations to the Empire.? Through the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries the relations between these lands and the Western Empire was not unlike the relation of the southern Slaves to the Eastern Empire during the same ages. Only the Western Emperors never had such a rival on their immediate border as the Bulgaria of Simeon or Samuel. ?Fluctuations of tribute and independence. 921-968.? The Slavonic tribes on the north-eastern border of the Western Empire were tributary or independent, according as the Empire was strong or weak. Tributary under Charles the Great, tributary again under the great Saxon kings, they had an intermediate period of independence. The German dominion, which fell back in the latter part of the tenth century, was again asserted by the Saxon dukes and margraves in the eleventh and twelfth. ?Final conquest.? Long before the end of the twelfth century the work was done. The German dominion, and with it the Christian religion, had been forced on the Slaves between Elbe and Oder.

?Conquest of the Sorabi.?

The Serbs between Elbe and Saale seem to have been the earliest and the most thoroughly conquered. They never won back their full independence after the victories of the first Saxon kings. The Serbs between Elbe and Bober, sometimes tributary to the Empire, were also sometimes independent, sometimes under the superiority of kindred powers like Poland or Bohemia. ?Meissen.? The lands included in the mark of Meissen were thoroughly Germanized by the twelfth century. ?Lusatia.? But in the lands included in the mark of Lusatia the Slavonic speech and nationality still keep a firm hold.

?The Leuticians.?

The Leutician land to the north was lost and won over and over again. ?927-1157.? Branibor, the German Brandenburg, was often taken and retaken during a space of two hundred years. ?983.? Late in the tenth century the whole land won back its freedom. ?1030-1101.? In the eleventh it came under the Polish power. ?1134-1157.? At last, the reign of Albert the Bear finally added to Germany the land which was to contain the latest German capital, and made Brandenburg a German mark.

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.?

The Russian power began by the Scandinavian leaders obtaining, in the latter half of the ninth century, the dominion of the most northern members of the Slavonic race, the Slaves of Novgorod on the Ilmen. Thence they pushed their dominion southwards. ?Extent of the eastern Slavonic lands.? East and north-east of the Lechs and Chrobatians lay a crowd of Slavonic tribes stretching beyond the Dnieper as far as the upper course of the Oka. Cut off from the Baltic by the Fins and Letts, they were cut off from the Euxine by various Turanian races in turn, first Magyars, then Patzinaks. To the south-east, from the Dnieper to the Caspian, lay the Chazar dominion, to which the Slaves east of Dnieper were tributary. To the north-east lay a crowd of Finnish tribes, among which is only one Finnish power of historic name, the kingdom of Great or White Bulgaria on the Volga. ?Union of the eastern Slaves. 862-912.? Within this region, in the space of fifty years, the various Slavonic tribes joined in different degrees of unity to form the new power, called Russian from its Scandinavian leaders. ?Advance against Chazars and Fins.? The tribes who were tributary to the Chazars were set free, and the Russian power was spread over a certain Finnish area on the Upper Volga and its tributaries, nearly as far north as Lake Bielo. ?Second centre at Kief.? The centres of the new power were, first Novgorod, and then Kief on the Dnieper.

?The rulers of Russia become Slavonic.
957-972.?

How early the Scandinavian rulers of the new Slavonic power became themselves practically Slavonic is shown by the name of the prince Sviatoslaf, of whom we have already heard in the Danubian Bulgaria. ?Russian enterprise. Euxine.? Already had Russian enterprise taken the direction which it took in far later days. It was needful for the developement of the new Russian nation to have free access to the Euxine. From this they were cut off by a strange fate for nine hundred years. But from the very beginning more than one attempt was made on Constantinople, though the Tzargrad, the Imperial city, could be reached only by sailing down the Dnieper through an enemy’s country. ?Conquests on the Caspian.
Vladimir takes Cherson.? Sviatoslaf also appears as a conqueror in the lands by the Caucasus and the Caspian, and Vladimir, the first Christian prince, won his way to baptism by an attack on the Imperial city of Cherson.

?Isolation of Russia.?

The oldest Russia was thus, like the oldest Poland, emphatically an inland state; but it was far more isolated than Poland. Its ecclesiastical position kept it from sharing the history of the Western Slaves. Its geographical position kept it from sharing the history of the Servians and Bulgarians. ?Russian lands west of Dnieper.? And it must not be forgotten that the oldest Russia was formed mainly of lands which afterwards passed under the rule of Poland and Lithuania. Little Russia, Black Russia, White Russia, Red Russia, all came under foreign rule. The Dnieper, from which Russia was afterwards cut off, was the great central river of the elder Russia; of the Don and the Volga she held only the upper course. The northern frontier barely passed the great lakes of Ladoga and Onega, and the Gulf of Finland itself. It seems not to have reached what was to be the Gulf of Riga, but some of the Russian princes held a certain supremacy over the Finnish and Lettish tribes of that region.

In the course of the eleventh century, the Russian state, like that of Poland, was divided among princes of the reigning family, acknowledging the superiority of the great prince of Kief. ?of the Northern Vladimir, 1169.? In the next century the chief power passed from Kief to the northern Vladimir on the Kiasma. ?Susdal Russian.? Thus the former Finnish land of Susdal on the upper tributaries of the Volga became the cradle of the second Russian power. ?Commonwealths at Novgorod and Pskof.? Novgorod the Great meanwhile, under elective princes, claimed, like its neighbour Pskof, to rank among commonwealths. Its dominion was spread far over the Finnish tribes to the north and east; the White Sea, and, far more precious, the Finnish Gulf, had now a Russian seaboard. It was out of Vladimir and Novgorod that the Russia of the future was to grow. ?The principalities.? Meanwhile a crowd of principalities, Polotsk, Smolensk, the Severian Novgorod, Tchernigof, and others, arose on the Duna and Dnieper. ?Commonwealth of Viatka. 1174.
Halicz or Galicia. 1186.? Far to the east across the commonwealth of Viatka, and on the frontiers of Poland and Hungary arose the principality of Halicz or Galicia, which afterwards grew for a while into a powerful kingdom.

Meanwhile in the lands on the Euxine the old enemies, Patzinaks and Chazars, gave way to the Cumans,[63] known in Russian history as Polovtzi and Parthi. They spread themselves from the Ural river to the borders of Servia and Danubian Bulgaria, cutting off Russia from the Caspian. ?1223.
Mongol invasion.? In the next century Russians and Cumans—momentary allies—fell before the advance of the Mongols, commonly known in European history as Tartars. Known only as ravagers in the lands more to the west, over Russia they become overlords for two hundred and fifty years. ?Russia tributary to the Mongols.? All that escaped absorption by the Lithuanian became tributary to the Mongol. ?1240.? Still the relation was only a tributary one; Russia was never incorporated in the Mongol dominion, as Servia and Bulgaria were incorporated in the Ottoman dominion. ?Russia represented by Novgorod.? But Kief was overthrown; Vladimir became dependent; Novgorod remained the true representative of free Russia in the Baltic lands.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With regard to the more distant relations of the three kingdoms, this period is marked by the gradual withdrawal of Scandinavian power from the oceanic lands. ?Iceland and Greenland united to Norway. 1261-1262.? The union of Iceland and Greenland with Norway was the union of one Scandinavian land with another. But Greenland, the most distant Scandinavian land, vanishes from history about the time of the Calmar union. The Scandinavian settlements in and about the British Islands all passed away. ?Ireland.? The Ostmen of Ireland were lost in the mass of the Teutonic settlers who passed from England into Ireland. ?The Western Isles. Man. 1264.? The Western Isles were sold to Scotland; Man passed under Scottish and English supremacy. ?Orkney pledged. 1468.? Orkney and Shetland were pledged to the Scottish crown; and, though never formally ceded, they have become incorporated with the British kingdom.

East of the Gulf of Bothnia Swedish rule advanced. Attempts at conquest both in Russia and in Esthland failed, but Finland and Carelia were fully subdued, and the Swedish power reached to Lake Ladoga. ?Esthland Danish. 1238-1346.? Denmark made a more lasting, but still short-lived, settlement in Esthland. ?Short-lived greatness of Denmark.? The growth of Denmark at the other end of the Baltic lands began earlier and was checked sooner. But at the beginning of the thirteenth century things looked as if Denmark was about to become the chief power on all the Baltic coasts.

South of the boundary stream of the Eider the lands which make up the modern Holstein formed three settlements, two Teutonic and one Slavonic. ?Ditmarschen.? To the west lay the free Frisian land of Ditmarschen. ?Holstein.? In the middle were the lands of the Saxons beyond the Elbe—the HoltsÆtan—with Stormarn immediately on the Elbe. ?Wagria.? On the Baltic side lay the Slavonic land of Wagria, which at the beginning of the twelfth century formed part of the kingdom of Sclavinia, a kingdom stretching from the haven of Kiel to the islands at the mouth of the Oder. ?Danish conquest of Sclavinia. 1168-1189.? In these lands began the eastern advance of Denmark in the latter half of the twelfth century. All Sclavinia was won, with at least a supremacy over the Pomeranian land as far as the Riddow. Thus far the Danish conquests, won mainly over Slaves, continue the chain of occasional Scandinavian occupation on those coasts, from the tenth century to the nineteenth. In another point of view, the Christian advance, the overthrow of the chief centre of Slavonic heathendom in RÜgen, carries on the work of the Saxon Dukes. ?Danish advance in Germany.? But in the first years of the next century began a Danish occupation of German ground. Holstein, and LÜbeck itself, were won; a claim was set up to the free land of Ditmarschen; and all these conquests were confirmed by an Imperial grant.[64] ?1214.? The Danish kings now took the title of Kings of the Slaves, afterwards of the Vandals or Wends. ?Fall of the Danish power. 1223-1227.? But this dominion was soon broken up by the captivity of the Danish king Waldemar. The Eider became again the boundary. ?Denmark keeps RÜgen, till ceded 1325, 1438.? Of her Slavonic dominion Denmark kept only an outlying fragment, the isle of RÜgen and the neighbouring coast. This remained Danish for a hundred years longer, nominally for a hundred years longer still.

The next changes tended to draw the lands immediately on each side of the Eider into close connexion with one another. ?Duchy of South Jutland. 1232.? The southern part of the Danish peninsula, from the Eider to the Aa, became a distinct fief of the Danish crown, held by a Danish prince under the name of the duchy of South-Jutland—Jutia or Sunder-Jutia. ?United with Holstein. 1325.? In the next century this duchy and the county of Holstein are found in the hands of the same prince, and it is held that his grant of the Danish duchy contained a promise that it should never be united with the Danish crown. ?Duchy of Sleswick.? Henceforth South-Jutland begins to be spoken of as the duchy of Sleswick. But of the lands held together, Sleswick remained a fief of Denmark, while Holstein remained a fief of the Empire. ?Fluctuations of Sleswick and Holstein.? The duchy was several times united to the crown and again granted out. ?1424.? At one moment of union the Roman King Sigismund expressly confirmed the union, and acknowledged Sleswick as a Danish land. ?1448.? At the next grant of the duchy, its perpetual separation from the crown is alleged to have been again confirmed by Christian the First. ?1460.? Yet Christian himself, already king of the three kingdoms, was afterwards elected Duke of Sleswick and Count of Holstein. The election was accompanied by a declaration that the two principalities, though the one was held of the Empire and the other of the Danish crown, should never be separated. ?Duchy of Holstein. 1474.? In the same reign an Imperial grant raised the counties of Holstein and Stormarn with the land of Ditmarsh to the rank of a duchy. But the dominions of its duke were not a continuous territory stretching from sea to sea. ?Freedom in Ditmarschen.
Bishopric of LÜbeck.? To the west, Ditmarschen—notwithstanding a renewed Imperial grant—remained free; to the east, some districts of the old Wagria formed the bishopric of LÜbeck. ?Denmark, Sleswick, and Holstein under Christian.? But now for the first time the same prince reigned in the threefold character of King of Denmark, Duke of the Danish fief of Sleswick, and Duke of the Imperial fief of Holstein. Endless shiftings, divisions, and reunions of various parts of the two duchies followed. ?Royal and Ducal lines. 1580.? In the partitions between the royal and ducal lines of the house of Oldenburg, the several portions of the Kings of Denmark and of the Dukes of Gottorp paid no regard to the boundary of the Eider, but each was made up of detached parts of both duchies. ?Conquest of Ditmarschen. 1559.? Meanwhile the freedom of Ditmarschen came to an end, and the old Frisian land became part of the royal share of the duchy of Holstein. ?Acquisition of Dago and Oesel.? And, as we began our story of Danish advance with the settlement in Esthland, we have to end it for the present with the acquisition of the islands of Dago and Oesel off the same coasts.

After the loss of RÜgen, Denmark had little to do with the Slavonic lands, except so far as the possession of Holstein carried with it the possession of the old Slavonic land of Wagria. Still the advance of Denmark at the end of the twelfth century had a lasting effect on the Slavonic lands by altogether shaking the Polish dominion on the Baltic. But it shook it to the advantage, not of Scandinavia, but of Germany. Between the twelfth century and the fourteenth Poland lost all its western dominions. Pomore, Pommern, Pomerania, the seaboard of the Lechish Slaves, is strictly the land between the mouth of the Vistula and the mouth of the Oder; but the name had already spread further to the West. ?Pomerania falls away from Poland.? After the fall of the Danish power on this coast, Pomerania west of the Riddow altogether fell away from Poland. ?Duchy of Slavia.? As the duchy of Slavia, it became, like Mecklenburg, a land of the Empire, though ruled by Slavonic princes. ?1298-1305. Loss of western territory by Poland.? But the eastern part of Pomerania, Cassubia and the mark of Gdansk or Danzig, remained under Polish superiority till the beginning of the fourteenth century. Then the greater part fell away, partly for ever, to the Pomeranian duchy of Wolgast, partly, for a season only, to the Teutonic Knights. ?1220-1260.? To the south Barnim and Custrin passed, after some shiftings, to the mark of Brandenburg. ?Silesia. 1289-1327.? Further to the south, Silesia, divided among princes of the house of Piast, gradually fell under Bohemian supremacy. Thus the whole western part of the Polish kingdom passed into the hands of princes of the Empire, and was included within the bounds of the German realm.

The fate of Silesia brings us again to the history of the inland Slavonic land of the Czechs. Bohemia went on, as duchy and kingdom,[65] ruled by native princes as vassals of the Empire. Moravia was a fief of Bohemia. In the end Bohemia passed to German kings, but not till it had become again the centre of a dominion which recalls the fleeting powers of Samo and Sviatopluk. ?Bohemia and Ottocar. 1269-1278.? Ottocar the Second united the long-severed branches of the Slavonic race by annexing the German lands which lay between them. ?His German dominion.? Lord of Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, the Czech king reigned on the upper Oder and the middle Danube as far as the Hadriatic. The same lands were in after times to be again united, but from the opposite side.

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 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 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.

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.

Meanwhile Poland, from a collection of duchies under a nominal head, had again grown into a consolidated and powerful kingdom. The western frontier had been cut short by various German powers, and the Teutonic Order shut off the kingdom from the sea. Mazovia and Cujavia remained separate duchies; but Great and Little Poland remained firmly united, and were ready to enlarge their borders to the eastward. ?Conquests of Casimir the Great. 1333-1370.
Red Russia. 1340.? Casimir the Great added Podlachia, the land of the Jatvingi, and in the break-up of the Galician kingdom, he incorporated Red Russia as being a former possession of Poland. ?Annexed to Hungary. 1377.? But, as it had also been a former possession of Hungary,[66] Lewis the Great, the common sovereign of Hungary and Poland, annexed it to his southern kingdom.

The two powers which had thus grown up were now to be gradually fused into one. ?1386.? The heathen Lithuanian prince Jagiello became, by marriage and conversion, a Christian King of Poland. ?Volhynia and Podolia added to Poland.? He enlarged the kingdom at the expense of the duchy, by incorporating Podolia and Volhynia with Poland, making Poland as well as Lithuania the possessor of a large extent of Russian soil. ?Recovery of Red Russia. 1392.
Moldavia.
Pledge of Zips. 1412.? The older Russian territory of Poland, Red Russia, was won back from Hungary; Moldavia began to transfer its fleeting allegiance from Hungary to Poland; within Hungary itself part of the county of Zips was pledged to the Polish crown. ?Recovery of the Polish duchies. 1401.? The Polish duchies now began to fall back to the kingdom. ?1463-1476.? Cujavia came in early in the fifteenth century, and parts of Mazovia in its course. Of the relation of the kingdom to the Teutonic order we have already spoken. Lithuania meanwhile, as part of Western Christendom, remained, under its separate grand dukes of the now royal house, the rival both of Islam and of Eastern Christendom. ?Conquests of Witold. 1392-1430.? Under Witold the advance on Russian ground was greater than ever. Smolensk and all Severia became Lithuanian; Kief was in the heart of the grand duchy; Moscow did not seem far from its borders. ?Loss of Perekop, 1474.? Lithuania was presently cut short further to the south by the loss of its Euxine dominion. ?Closer union of Poland and Lithuania. 1501.? At the beginning of the sixteenth century Poland and Lithuania were united as distinct states under a common sovereign. But by that time a new state of things had begun in the lands on the Duna and the Dnieper.

While the military orders had thus established themselves on the Baltic coast, and had already largely given way to the combined Polish and Lithuanian power behind them, a new Russia was growing up behind them all. ?Power of Moscow.? Cut off from all dealings with Western Europe, save with its immediate western neighbours, cut off from its own ecclesiastical centre by the advance of Mussulman dominion, the new power of Moscow was schooling itself to take in course of time a greater place than had ever been held by the elder power of Kief. The Mongol conquest had placed the Russian principalities in much the same position as that through which most of the south-eastern lands passed before they were finally swallowed up by the Ottoman. ?The Russian princes dependent on the Golden Horde.? The princes of Russia were dependent on the Tartar dominion of Kiptchak, which stretched from the Dniester north-eastwards over boundless barbarian lands as far as the lower course of the Jenisei. Its capital, the centre of the Golden Horde, was at Sarai on the lower course of the Volga. ?Homage of Novgorod. 1252-1263.? Even Novgorod, under its great prince Alexander Nevsky, did homage to the Khan. But this dependent relation did not, like the Lithuanian conquests to the west, affect the geographical frontiers of Russia. The Russian centre at the time of the Mongol conquest was the northern Vladimir. ?Moscow the new centre, c. 1328.? Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Moskva, on the river of that name, grew into importance, and early in the next century it became the centre of Russian life. ?Name of Muscovy.? From Moskva or Moscow comes the old name of Muscovy, a name which historically describes the growth of the second Russian power. Muscovy was to Russia what France in the older sense was to the whole land which came to bear that name. Moscow was to Russia all, and more than all, that Paris was to France. It was to Moscow as the centre that the separate Russian principalities fell in; it was from Moscow as the centre that the lost Russian lands were won back. ?Other Russian states.? Besides Novgorod, there still were the separate states of Viatka, Pskof, Tver, and Riazan. Disunion and dependence lasted till late in the fifteenth century. ?Decline of the Mongol power.? But the Tartar power had already begun to grow weaker before the end of the fourteenth, and the invasion of Timour, while making Russia for a moment more completely subject, led to the dissolution of the dominion of the older Khans.

In the course of the fifteenth century the great power of the Golden Horde broke up into a number of smaller khanats. ?Khanat of Crim;? The khanat of Crim—the old Tauric ChersonÊsos—stretched from its peninsula inwards along the greater part of the course of the Don. ?of Kazan, 1438;? The khanat of Kazan on the Volga supplanted the old kingdom of White Bulgaria. ?of Siberia;? Far to the east, on the lower course of the Obi, was the khanat of Siberia. ?of Astrakhan.? The Golden Horde itself was represented by the khanat of Astrakhan on the lower Volga, with its capital at the mouth of that river. Of these Crim and Kasan were immediate neighbours of the Muscovite state. ?Deliverance of Russia. 1480.? The yoke was at last broken by Ivan the Great. ?1487.? Seven years later he placed a tributary prince on the throne of Kazan, and himself took the title of Prince of Bulgaria. ?Crim dependent on the Ottoman.? By this time the khans of Crim had become dependents of the Ottoman Sultans, the beginning of the long strife between Russia and the Turk in Europe.

But before Muscovy thus became an independent power, it had taken the greatest of steps towards growing into Russia. ?Annexation of Novgorod. 1470;? Novgorod the Great, the only Russian rival of Moscow, first lost its northern territory, and then itself became part of the Muscovite dominion. ?of Viatka, 1478;
of Tver, 1493.? The commonwealth of Viatka, the principality of Tver, and some small appanages of the house of Moscow followed. ?Reign of Basil Ivanovitch, 1505-1533.
Annexation of Pskof and Riazan.? The annexation of what remained, as Pskof and Riazan, was only a question of time, and it came in the next reign. Of the three works which were needful for the full growth of the new Russia, two were accomplished. ?Russia united and independent.? The Russian state was one, and it was independent. And the third work, that of winning back the lost Russian lands, had already begun.

Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century, five powers held the Baltic coast. Sweden held the west coast from the Danish frontier northward, with both sides of the gulf of Bothnia and both sides of the gulf of Finland. Denmark held the extreme western coast and the isle of Gotland. Poland and Lithuania had a small seaboard indeed compared to their inland extent. Poland had only the Pomeranian and Prussian coast which she had just won from the Knights. Lithuania barely touched the sea between Prussia and Curland. To the west of the Polish coast lay the now Germanized lands of Pomerania and Mecklenburg. To the north-west lay the coast of the German military Order, under Polish vassalage in Prussia, independent in its northern possessions. Thus almost the whole Baltic coast was held by Teutonic powers; the Slavonic powers still lie mainly inland. The Polish frontier towards the Empire has been cut down to the limit which it kept till the end. Pomerania, Silesia, a great part of the mark of Brandenburg, have fallen away from the Polish realm. On the other hand, that realm and its confederate Lithuania have grown wonderfully to the east at the cost of divided and dependent Russia, and have begun to fall back again before Russia one and independent. Bohemia, enlarged by Silesia and Lusatia, has entered so thoroughly into the German world as almost to pass out of our sight.

§ 4. The Growth of Russia and Sweden.

The work of the last four centuries on the Baltic coast has been to drive back the Scandinavian power, after a vast momentary advance, wholly to the west of the Baltic—to give nearly the whole eastern coast to Russia—to make the whole southern coast German. These changes involve the wiping out, first of the German military Order, and then of Poland and Lithuania. ?Growth of Russia and creation of Prussia.? This last change involves the growth of Russia, and the creation of Prussia in the modern sense, a sense so strangely different from its earlier meaning. These two have been the powers by which Sweden and Denmark have been cut short, by which Poland and Lithuania have been swallowed up. In this last work they indeed had a third confederate. Still the share of Austria in the overthrow of Poland was in a manner incidental. But the existence of such a Polish and Lithuanian state as stood at the end of the fifteenth, or even of the seventeenth, century was inconsistent with the existence of either Russia or Prussia as great European powers.

The period with which we have now to deal takes in only the former stage of this process. Russia advances; Prussia in the modern sense comes into being. ?Greatness of Sweden.? But Sweden is still the most advancing power of all; and, if Denmark falls back, it is before the power of Sweden. The Hansa too and the Knights pass away; Sweden is the ruling power of the Baltic.

The sixteenth century saw the fall of both branches of the Teutonic Order. Out of the fall of one of them came the beginnings of modern Prussia. ?Separation of the Prussian and Livonian knights. 1515.? The two branches of the Order were separated; the Livonian lands had an independent Master. ?Beginning of the Duchy of Prussia. 1525.? Before long the Prussian Grand Master, Albert of Brandenburg, changed from the head of a Catholic religious order into a Lutheran temporal prince, holding the hereditary duchy of Prussia as a Polish fief. ?Geographical position of Prussia.? That duchy had so strange a frontier towards the kingdom that it could not fail sooner or later either to be swallowed up by the kingdom which hemmed it in, or else to make its way out of its geographical bonds. ?Union of Prussia and Brandenburg. 1611.? When the Prussian duchy and the mark of Brandenburg came into the hands of one prince, when the dominions of that prince were enlarged by the union of Brandenburg and Pomerania, the second of these solutions became only a question of time. ?Prussia independent of Poland. 1647.? The first formal step towards it was the release of the duchy from all dependence on Poland. Prussia became a distinct state, one now essentially German, but lying beyond the bounds of the Empire.

As the rights of the Empire had been formally cut short when Prussia passed under Polish vassalage, they were also formally cut short by the dissolution of the northern branch of the Teutonic order. ?Fall of the Livonian Order. 1558-1561.? The rule of the Livonian Knights survived the secularization of the Prussian duchy by forty years; their dominion then fell asunder. ?Duchy of Curland.? As in the case of Prussia, part of their territory, Curland and Semigallia, was kept by the Livonian Master Godhard Kettler, as an hereditary duchy under Polish vassalage. The rest of the lands of the order were parted out among the chief powers of the Baltic. ?Momentary kingdom of Livonia.? A Livonian kingdom under the Danish prince Magnus was but for a moment. ?Denmark takes Dago and Oesel.? Denmark in the end received the islands of Dago and Oesel, her last conquests east of the Baltic. ?Sweden takes Esthland.? Sweden advanced south of the Finnish gulf, taking the greater part of Esthland. ?Livland goes to Poland and Russia.? Northern Livland fell to Russia, the southern part to Poland. ?All Livland Polish. 1582.? Twenty years later all Livland became a Polish possession.

This acquisition of Livland and of the superiority over Prussia and Curland raised the united power of Poland and Lithuania to its greatest extent on the Baltic coast. ?Union of Lublin, 1569.? Meanwhile the union of Lublin joined the kingdom and the grand duchy yet more closely together. But, long before this time, the eastern frontier of Lithuania had begun to fall back. ?Russian advance.? The central advance of Russia to the west had begun. ?Its causes.? A revived state, such as Russia was at the end of the fifteenth century, must advance, unless it be artificially hindered; and the new Russian state was driven to advance if it was to exist at all. It had no sea-board, except on the White Sea; it did not hold the mouth of any one of its great rivers, except the Northern Dvina, a stream thoroughly cut off from European life. The dominions of Sweden, Lithuania, and the Knights cut Russia off from the Baltic and from central Europe. To the south and east she was cut off from the Euxine and the Caspian, from the mouths of the Don and the Volga, by the powers which represented her old barbarian masters. Russia was thus not only driven to advance, but driven to advance in various directions. She had to win back her lost lands; she had, if she was really to become an European power, to win her way to the Baltic and to the Euxine. ?Advance to the north-east.? Her position made it almost equally needful to win her way to the Caspian, and made it unavoidable that she should spread her power over the barbarian lands to the north-east. Of these several fields of advance the path to the Euxine was the longest barred. ?Order of Russian advances.? First, at the end of the fifteenth century, began the recovery of the lost lands, a work spread over the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Then, in the sixteenth, came the eastern extension at the cost of the now weakened Mongol enemy. Strictly Baltic extension was in the sixteenth century merely momentary; it did not become lasting till the beginning of the eighteenth. ?The Euxine reached last.? But Russia had been established on the Caspian for more than two centuries, she had become a Baltic power for more than two generations, before she made her way to the oldest scene of her seafaring enterprise.

The recovery of the lands which had been lost to Lithuania began before the end of the fifteenth century. Ivan the Great won back Severia, with Tchernigof and the Severian Novgorod and part of the territory of Smolensk. ?1514.
1563.? Under Basil Smolensk itself followed; under Ivan the Terrible Polotsk again became Russian. Then the tide turned for a season. Russia first lost her newly-won territory in Livland. ?Recovery of Smolensk by Poland. 1582.
Polish conquest of Russia, 1606.? The recovery of Smolensk by Poland was followed by the momentary Polish conquest of independent Russia, and the occupation of the throne of Moscow by a Polish prince. ?Second revival of Russia, and second advance.? The Muscovite state came again to life; but it was shorn of a large part of the national territory, which had to be won again by a second advance. ?Cessions to Poland.? Smolensk, Tchernigof, and the greater part of the Lithuanian conquests beyond the Dnieper, were again surrendered to the united Polish and Lithuanian state. In the middle of the century came the renewed Russian advance. ?Lands recovered by the Peace of Andraszovo, 1667.? The Treaty of Andraszovo gave back to Russia most of the lands which had been surrendered fifty years before. ?Recovery of Kief. 1686.? By the last advance in the seventeenth century Russia won back a small territory west of the Dnieper, including her ancient capital of Kief. ?Superiority over the Ukraine Cossacks.? At the same time Poland finally gave up to Russia the superiority over the Cossacks of Ukraine, between the Bug and the Lower Dnieper. ?Russian lands still kept by Poland.? But, with this exception, Poland and Lithuania still kept all the Russian lands south of Duna and west of Dnieper, with some districts beyond those rivers. Nor was Russia the only power to which Poland had to give way on her south-eastern frontier. ?Podolia lost to the Turk.? In this quarter the Ottoman for the last time won a new province from a Christian state by the acquisition of Kamienetz and all Podolia.[67]

But Poland had during this period to give way at other points also. This was the time of the great growth of the Swedish power. ?Growth of Sweden and Russia compared.? The contrast between the growth of Sweden and the contemporary growth of Russia is instructive. The revived power of Moscow was partly winning back its own lost lands, partly advancing in directions which were needful for national growth, almost for national being. The growth of Sweden in so many directions was almost wholly a growth beyond her own borders. ?Russian advance lasting.
Swedish advance temporary.? Hence doubtless it came that the advance of Russia has been lasting, while the advance of Sweden was only for a season. Sweden has lost by far the greater part of her conquests; she has kept only those parts of them which went to complete her position in her own peninsula.

On the Swedish conquest of Esthland followed a series of shiftings of the frontiers of Sweden and Russia which lasted into the present century. ?Advance under and after Gustavus Adolphus. 1611-1660.? During the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, and the period which we might almost call the continuation of his reign after his death, Sweden advanced both in her own peninsula and east of the Baltic, while she also gained a wholly new footing on German ground, both on the Baltic and on the Ocean. ?Wars between Sweden and Russia. 1576-1617.
Peace of Stalbova.? A long period of alternate war and peace, a time in which Novgorod the Great passed for a moment into Swedish hands, was ended, as far as Sweden and Russia were concerned, by the peace of Stalbova. ?Sweden gains Ingermanland.? The Swedish frontier thus fixed took in all Carelia and Ingermanland, and wholly cut off Russia from the Baltic and its gulfs. Such an advance could not fail to lead to further advance, though at the expense of another enemy. ?Wars between Sweden and Poland. 1619-1660.
Swedish conquest of Livland, 1621-1625;? The long war between Sweden and Poland gave to Sweden Riga and the greater part of Livland. ?of Dago and Oesel, 1645.? Her conquests in this region were completed by winning the islands of Dago and Oesel from Denmark.

This last acquisition, geographically connected with the Swedish conquests from Russia and Poland, was politically part of an equally great advance which Sweden was making at the cost of the rival Scandinavian power, the united realms of Denmark and Norway. ?Conquest of Gotland and Bornholm. 1645.
Of JÄmteland.? Along with the two eastern islands, Denmark lost the isle of Gotland for ever and that of Bornholm for a moment,[68] and the Norwegian provinces east of the mountains, JÄmteland and Hertjedalen. The treaty of Roskild yet further enlarged Sweden at the expense of Norway. ?Of TrondhjemlÄn. 1658.? By the cession of TrondhjemlÄn the Norwegian kingdom was split asunder; the ancient metropolis was lost, and Sweden reached to the Ocean. ?Of BohuslÄn, and Scania, &c.? With Trondhjem Sweden also received BohuslÄn, the southern province of Norway, and, more than all, the ancient possessions of Denmark in the northern peninsula, with her old metropolis of Lund. Here comes in the application of the rule. ?Trondhjem restored to Norway. 1660.? In annexing Trondhjem Sweden had overshot her mark; it was restored within two years. It was otherwise with BohuslÄn, Scania, and her other conquests within what might seem to be her natural borders; they have remained Swedish to this day.

The Swedish acquisition of the eastern lands of Denmark was made more necessary by the position which Sweden had now taken on the central mainland. The peace of Westfalia had confirmed her in the possession of RÜgen and Western Pomerania on the Baltic, and of the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden which made her a power on the Ocean. These lands were not strictly an addition to the Swedish realm; they were fiefs of the Empire held by the Swedish king. Here again comes in the geographical law. The Swedish possession of the German lands on the Ocean was short; part of the German lands on the Baltic was kept into the present century.

The peace of Roskild, which cut short the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway in the northern peninsula, also marks an epoch in the controverted history of the duchies of Sleswick and Holstein. ?Denmark gives up the sovereignty of the Gottorp lands. 1658.? The Danish king gave up the sovereignty of the Gottorp districts of the duchies. Even if that cession implied the surrender of his own feudal superiority over the Gottorp districts of Sleswick, he could not alienate any part of the Imperial rights over Holstein. ?Fluctuations in the duchies. 1675-1700.? This sovereignty, in whatever it consisted, was lost and won several times between king and Duke before the end of the century. ?Danish possession of Oldenburg. 1678.? Meanwhile the Danish crown became possessed of the outlying duchies of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, which in some sort balanced the Swedish possession of Bremen and Verden.

The wars and treaties which were ended by the peace of Oliva fixed the boundaries of the Baltic lands for a season. They fixed the home extent of Sweden down to the present century. They cut off Denmark, save its one outpost of Bornholm, from the Baltic itself, as distinguished from the narrow seas which lead to it. They fixed the extent of Poland down to the partitions. What they failed to do for any length of time was to cut off Russia from the Baltic, and to establish Sweden on the Ocean. But for the present we leave Sweden ruling over the whole western and the greater part of the eastern coast of the Northern Mediterranean, and holding smaller possessions both on its southern coast and on the Ocean. The rest of the eastern and southern coast of the Baltic is divided between the Polish fief of Curland, the dominions of the common ruler of Pomerania and Prussia,—now an independent prince in his eastern duchy,—and the small piece of Polish coast placed invitingly between the two parts of his dominions. In her own peninsula Sweden has reached her natural frontier, and has given back what she won for a moment beyond it. While Sweden has this vast extent of coast with comparatively little extent inland, the vast inland region of Poland and Lithuania has hardly any seaboard, and the still vaster inland region of Russia has none at all in Europe, except on the White Sea. Thus the most striking feature of this period is the advance of Sweden; but we have seen that it was also a time of great advance on the part of Russia. It was a time of yet greater advance on that side of her dominion where Russia had no European rivals.

In the case of Russia, the only European power which could conquer and colonize by land in barbarian regions,[69] her earlier barbarian conquests were absolutely necessary to her existence. No hard line can be drawn between her earliest and her latest conquests, between the first advance of Novgorod and the last conquests in Turkestan. But the advance which immediately followed the deliverance from the Tartar yoke marks a great epoch. The smaller khanats into which the dominion of the Golden Horde had been broken up still kept Russia from the Euxine and the Caspian. ?Conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan. 1552-1554.? The two khanats on the Volga, Kazan and Astrakhan, were subdued by Ivan the Terrible. The coast of the Caspian was now reached. But the khans of Crim remained, unsubdued and dangerous enemies, still cutting off Russia from the Euxine. ?Superiority over the Don Cossacks. 1577.? Yet, even in this direction an advance was made when the Russian supremacy was acknowledged by the Cossacks of the Don. ?Beginning of Siberian conquest. 1581.
1592-1706.? The conquest of the Siberian khanat, with its capital Tobolsk, next followed, and thence, in the course of the next century, the boundless extent of northern Asia was added to the Russian dominion.

§ 5. The Decline of Sweden and Poland.

In the last section we traced out the greatest advance of Sweden and a large advance of Russia, both made at the cost of Poland, that of Sweden also at the cost of Denmark. We saw also the beginnings of a power which we still called Brandenburg rather than Prussia. ?Growth of Prussia.? In the present section, describing the work of the eighteenth century, we have to trace the growth of this last power, which now definitely takes the Prussian name, and which we have to look at in its Prussian character. ?Decline of Sweden.
Extinction of Poland.? The period is marked by the decline of Sweden and the utter wiping out of Poland and Lithuania, Russia and Prussia in different degrees being chief actors in both cases. ?Kingdom of Prussia. 1701.? At the beginning of the period Prussia becomes a kingdom—a sign of advance, though not accompanied by any immediate increase of territory. ?Empire of Russia. 1721.? A little later the ruler of Russia, already Imperial in his own tongue,[70] more definitely takes the Imperial style as Emperor of all the Russias. This might pass as a challenge of the Russian lands, Black, White, and Red, which were still held by Poland.

But more pressing than the recovery of these lands was the breaking down of the barrier by which Sweden kept Russia away from the Baltic. To a very slight extent this was a recovery of old Russian territory; but the position now won by Russia was wholly new. ?Wars of Charles and Peter. 1700-1721.
Foundation of Saint Petersburg. 1703.? The war with Charles the Twelfth made Russia a great Baltic power, and Peter the Great, early in the struggle, set up the great trophy of his victory in the foundation of his new capital of Saint Petersburg on ground won from Sweden. ?Cession of Livland, &c., by Sweden.? The peace of Nystad confirmed Russia in the possession of Swedish Livland, Esthland, Ingermanland, part of Carelia, and a small part of Finland itself. ?Further advance of Russia. 1741-1743.? Another war, ended by the Peace of Åbo, gave Russia another small extension in Finland.

At the same time Sweden was cut short in her other outlying possessions. ?Sweden loses Bremen, Verden, and part of Pomerania.? Of her German fiefs, the duchies of Bremen and Verden passed, first to Denmark, then to Hannover. But her Baltic possessions were only partly lost, to the profit of Brandenburg. The frontier of Swedish Pomerania fell back to the north-west, losing Stettin, but keeping Stralsund, Wolgast, and RÜgen. Denmark meanwhile advanced in the debateable land on her southern frontier. ?Danish conquest of the Gottorp lands. 1713-1715.? The Danish occupation of Bremen and Verden was only momentary; but the Gottorp share of Sleswick and Holstein was conquered, and the possession of all Sleswick was guaranteed to Denmark by England and France. ?The Gottorp lands in Holstein restored.? But the Gottorp share of Holstein, as an Imperial fief, was given back to its Duke. ?They pass to Denmark in exchange for Oldenburg. 1767-1773.? Lastly, when the house of Gottorp had mounted the throne of Russia, the Gottorp portion of Holstein was ceded to Denmark in exchange for Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, which were at once given to another branch of the family.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the three partitions of Poland brought about the all but complete recovery of the lands which the Lithuanian dukes had won from Russia. ?Russian share.? The first partition gave Russia Polish Livland, and all the lands which Poland still kept beyond Duna and Dnieper. The greater part of White Russia was thus won back. ?Prussian share.
Brandenburg and Prussia geographically united.? At the same time the house of Hohenzollern gained its great territorial need, the geographical union of the kingdom of Prussia with the lands of Brandenburg and Pomerania, now increased by nearly all Silesia. This union was made by Poland giving up West Prussia—Danzig remaining an outlying city of Poland—and part of Great Poland and Cujavia, known as the Netz District.[71] ?Austrian share.
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.? The Austrian share, the new kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, was a kind of commemoration of the conquests of Lewis the Great:[72] but, while it did not take in all Red Russia, it took in part of Podolia and of Little Poland south of the Vistula, making Cracow a frontier city. ?Russian territory held by Austria.? Austria thus became possessed of a part of the old Russian territory, most of which she has kept ever since.

The Polish state was thus maimed on all sides; but it still kept a considerable territorial extent. The second partition, the work of Russia and Prussia only, could only be a preparation for the final death-blow. ?Russian share.? It gave to Russia the rest of Podolia and Ukraine, and part of Volhynia and Podlasia. Little Russia and White Russia were thus wholly won back, and the Russian frontier was advanced within the old Lithuanian duchy. ?Prussian share.? Prussia took nearly all that was left of the oldest Polish state, the rest of Great Poland and Cujavia, and part of Mazovia, forming the South Prussia of the new nomenclature. Gnesen, the oldest Polish capital, the metropolis of the Polish Church, now passed away from Poland.

The remnant that was left to Poland took in the greater part of Little Poland, part of Mazovia, the greater part of the old Lithuania with the fragment still left of its Russian territory, Samogitia and the fief of Curland. ?Third partition. 1795.? The final division was delayed only two years. This time all three partners joined. ?Russian share.? Russia took all Lithuania east of the Niemen, with its capital Vilna, also Curland and Samogitia to the north, and the old Russian remnant to the south. ?Austrian share.? Austria took Cracow, with nearly all the rest of Little Poland, as also part of Mazovia, by the name of New Galicia. ?Prussian share.? Prussia took Danzig and Thorn, as also a small piece of Little Poland to improve the frontiers of South Prussia and Silesia, perhaps without thinking that this last process was an advance of the Roman Terminus. The capital Warsaw, with the remnant of Mazovia and the strip of Lithuania west of the Niemen, also fell to Prussia. The names of Poland and Lithuania now passed away from the map.

It is important to remember that the three partitions gave no part of the original Polish realm to Russia. Russia took back the Russian territory which had been long before won by Lithuania, and added the greater part of Lithuania itself, with the lands immediately to the north. ?The old Poland divided between Prussia and Austria.? The ancient kingdom of Poland was divided between Prussia and Austria, and the oldest Poland of all fell to the lot of Prussia. ?Poland passes to Prussia,? Great Poland, Silesia, Pomerania, the Polish lands which had passed to the mark of Brandenburg, once united under Polish rule, were again united under the power to which they had gradually fallen away. ?Chrobatia to Austria.? Austria or Hungary meanwhile took the rest of the northern Chrobatia, seven hundred years after the acquisition of the former part, and also the Russian land which had been twice before added to the Magyar kingdom.

Meanwhile Russia made advances in other quarters of nearly equal extent. As the remnant of the Saracen at Granada cut off the Castilian from his southern coast or the Mediterranean, for more than two hundred years, so did the remnant of the Tartar in Crim cut off the Russian for as long a time from his southern coast on the Euxine. ?Occupation of Azof. 1696-1711.? Peter the Great first made his way, if not to the Euxine, at least to its inland gulf, by the taking of Azof. But the new conquest was only temporary. After seventy years more the work was done. ?Independence of Crim 1774.
Annexation of Crim. 1783.? First came the nominal independence of the Crimean khanat, then its incorporation with Russia. The work at which Megarian and Genoese colonists had laboured was now done; the northern coast of the Euxine was won for Europe.[73] The road through which so many Turanian invaders had pressed into the Aryan continent was blocked for ever. ?Conquest of Jedisan. 1791.? The next advance, the limit of Russian advance made strictly at the expense of the barbarian as distinguished from his Christian vassals, carried the Russian frontier from the Bug to the Dniester.

The chief Asiatic acquisition of Russia in the eighteenth century took a strange form. It was conquest beyond the sea, though only beyond the inland Caspian. Turk and Russian joined to dismember Persia, and for some years Russia held the south coast of that great lake, the lands of Daghestan, Ghilan, and Mazanderan. ?Superiority over Georgia. 1783.? Later in the century the ancient Christian kingdom of Georgia passed under Russian superiority, the earnest of much Russian conquest on both sides of Caucasus. ?Superiority over the Kirghis. 1773.? And nearly at the same time as the first steps towards the acquisition of Crim, the Russian dominion was spread over the Kirghis hordes west of the river Ural, winning a coast on the eastern Caspian, the sea of Aral, and the Baltash lake.

Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century, the Swedish power has fallen back. Its territory east of the Baltic is less than it was at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Denmark, on the other hand, has grown by an advance in the debateable southern duchies. All Sleswick is added to the Danish crown; all Holstein is held by the Danish king. Poland has vanished. The anomalous power on the middle Danube, whose princes, it must be remembered, still wore the crown of the Empire, has thrust itself into the very heart of the old Polish land. But the power which has gained most by the extinction of Poland has been the new kingdom of Prussia. If part of her annexations lasted only a few years, she made her Baltic coast continuous for ever. But Prussia and Austria alike, by joining to wipe out the central state of the whole region, have given themselves a mighty neighbour. Russia has wholly cast aside her character as a mere inland power, intermediate between Europe and Asia. She has won her way, after so many ages, to her old position and much more. She has a Baltic and an Euxine seaboard. Her recovery of her old lands on the Duna and the Dnieper, her conquest of new lands on the Niemen, have brought her into the heart of Europe. And she has opened the path which was also to lead her into the heart of Asia, and to establish her in the intermediate mountain land between the Euxine and the Caspian.

§ 6. The Modern Geography of the Baltic Lands.

The territorial arrangements of Northern and Eastern Europe were not affected by the French revolutionary wars till after the fall of the Western Empire. At that moment the frontier of Germany and Denmark was still what it had been under Charles the Great; “Eidora Romani terminus Imperii.” Only now the Danish king ruled to the south of the boundary stream in the character of a prince of the Empire. ?Holstein incorporated with Denmark, and Swedish Pomerania with Sweden. 1806.? The fall of the Empire put an end to this relation, and the duchy of Holstein was incorporated with the Danish realm. In the like sort, the Swedish kingdom was extended to the central mainland of Europe, by the incorporation of the Pomeranian dominions of the Swedish king. ?Russian conquest of Finland, 1809.? Before long, the last war between Sweden and Russia was ended by the peace of Friderikshamn, when Sweden gave up all her territory east of the gulf as far as the river Tornea, together with the isles of Aland. ?Grand Duchy of Finland.? These lands passed to the Russian Emperor as a separate and privileged dominion, the Grand Duchy of Finland. Thus Sweden withdrew to her own side of the Baltic, while Russia at last became mistress of the whole eastern coast from the Prussian border northward. ?Union of Sweden and Norway. 1814-1815.? The general peace left this arrangement untouched, but decreed the separation of Norway from Denmark and its union with Sweden. This was carried out so far as to effect the union of Sweden and Norway as independent kingdoms under a single king. ?Swedish Pomerania passes to Denmark.? Denmark got in compensation, as diplomacy calls it, a scrap of its old Slavonic realm, RÜgen and Swedish Pomerania. ?Exchanged with Prussia for Lauenburg.? These detached lands were presently exchanged with Prussia for a land adjoining Holstein, the duchy of Lauenburg, the representative of ancient Saxony.[74] ?Heligoland passes to England.? Denmark kept Iceland, but the Frisian island of Heligoland off the coast of Sleswick passed to England. Thus the common king of Sweden and Norway reigns over the whole of the northern peninsula and over nothing out of it. No such great change had affected the Scandinavian kingdoms since the union of Calmar.

Meanwhile the king of Denmark, remaining the independent sovereign of Denmark, Iceland, and Sleswick, entered the German Confederation for his duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg. ?Disputes and wars in the Duchies.? Disputes and wars made no geographical change till the war which followed the accession of the present king. The changes which then followed have been told elsewhere.[75] ?Transfer of Sleswick and Holstein, with Lauenburg to Prussia. 1864-1866.? They amount to the transfer to Prussia of Lauenburg, Holstein, and Sleswick, with a slight change of frontier and a redistribution of the smaller islands. A conditional engagement for the restoration of northern Sleswick to Denmark was not fulfilled, and has been formally annulled.

In the lands which had been Poland and Lithuania, the immediate result of the French wars was the creation of a new Polish state; their final result was a great extension of the dominion of Russia. Prussia had to surrender its whole Polish territory, save West Prussia.[76] ?Bialystok added to Russia.
Danzig a commonwealth.? A small Lithuanian territory, the district of Bialystok, was given to Russia; Danzig became a separate commonwealth. ?Duchy of Warsaw? The rest of the Prussian share of Poland formed the new Duchy of Warsaw. This state was really no bad representative of the oldest Poland of all. Silesia was gone; but the new duchy took in Great Poland and Cujavia, with parts of Little Poland, Mazovia, and Lithuania. It took in the oldest capital at Gnesen and the newest at Warsaw. ?Enlarged by part of Austrian Poland. 1810.? The new state was presently enlarged by the addition of the territory added to Austria by the last partition. Cracow, with the greater part of Little Poland, was again joined to Great Poland. ?Extent of the Duchy.? Speaking roughly, the duchy took in nearly the whole of the old Polish kingdom, without Silesia, but with some small Lithuanian and Russian territory added.

It was the Poland thus formed, a state which answered much more nearly to the Poland of the fourteenth than to the Poland of the eighteenth century, which, by the arrangements of the Vienna Congress, first received a Russian sovereign. ?Danzig and Posen restored to Prussia.? Prussia now again rounded off her West-Prussian province by the recovery of Danzig and Thorn, and she rounded off her southern frontier by the recovery of Posen and Gnesen, which had been part of her South-Prussian province. The Grand Duchy of Posen became again part of the Prussian state. ?Cracow a commonwealth. Annexed by Austria. 1846.? Cracow became a republic, to be annexed by Austria thirty years later. ?Kingdom of Poland united to Russia. 1831-1863.? The remainder of the Duchy of Warsaw, under the style of the Kingdom of Poland, became a separate kingdom, but with the Russian Emperor as its king. ?Russia takes old Polish territory for the first time.? Later events have destroyed, first its constitution, then its separate being; and now all ancient Poland, except the part of Great Poland kept by Prussia and the part of Little Poland kept by Austria, is merged in the Russian Empire. Thus the Russian acquisition of strictly Polish, as distinguished from old-Russian and Lithuanian territory, dates, not from the partitions, but from the Congress of Vienna. It was to the behoof of Prussia and Austria, not of Russia, that the old kingdom of the Piasts was broken in pieces.

The changes of the nineteenth century with regard to the lands on the European coasts of the Euxine have been told elsewhere.[77] ?Fluctuation of the Russian frontier towards Moldavia. 1812-1878.? They amount, as far as the geographical boundaries of Russia are concerned, to her advance to the Pruth and the Danube, her partial withdrawal, her second partial advance. ?Advance in the Caucasus.? Meanwhile the Russian advance in the nineteenth century on the Asiatic shores of the Euxine and in the lands on and beyond the Caspian has been far greater than her advance during the eighteenth. It is in our own century that Russia has taken up her commanding position between the Euxine and the Caspian seas, one which in some sort amounts to an enlargement of Europe at the expense of Asia. The old frontier on the Caspian, which had hardly changed since the conquest of Astrakhan, reached to the Terek. The annexation of Crim made the Kuban the boundary on the side of the Euxine. ?Incorporation of Georgia. 1800.? The incorporation of the Georgian kingdom gave Russia an outlying territory south of the Caucasus on the upper course of the Kur. ?Advance on the Caspian. 1802.? Next came the acquisition of the Caspian coast from the mouth of the Terek to the mouth of the Kur, the land of Daghestan and Shirwan, including part of the territory which had been held for a few years in the eighteenth century. ?Advance in Armenia and Circassia. 1829.? The Persian and Turkish wars gave Russia the Armenian land of Erivan as far as the Araxes, Mingrelia and Immeretia, and the nominal cession of the Euxine coast between them and the older frontier. ?1859.? But it was thirty years before the mountain region of Circassia was fully subdued. ?1878.? The last changes have extended the Trans-Caucasian frontier of Russia to the south by the addition of Batoum and Kars.

In the lands east of the Caspian the new province of Turkestan gradually grew up in the lands on the Jaxartes, reaching southward to Samarkand. ?1875.? Khokand to the south-east followed, while Khiva and Bokhara, the lands on the Oxus, have passed under Russian influence. The Turcoman tribes immediately east of the Caspian have also been annexed. The Caspian has thus nearly become a Russian lake. Hardly anything remains to Persia except the extreme southern coast which was once for a moment Russian.

Far again to the east, Russia has added a large territory on the Chinese border on the river Amoor. ?Extent and character of the Russian dominion.? All these conquests form the greatest continuous extent of territory by land which the world has ever seen, unless during the transient dominion of the old Mongols. No other European power in any age has, or could have had, such a continuous dominion, because no other European power has ever had the unknown barbarian world lying in the same way at its side. Nowhere again has any European power held a dominion so physically unbroken as that which stretches from the gulf of Riga to the gulf of Okhotsk. The greater part of the Asiatic dominion of Russia belongs to that part of Asia which has least likeness to Europe. It is only on the Frozen Ocean that we find a kind of mockery of inland seas, islands, and peninsulas. Massive unbroken extent by land is its leading character. And as this character extends to a large part of European Russia also, Russia is the only European land where there can be any doubt where Europe ends. The barbarian dominion of other European states, a dominion beyond the sea, has been a dominion of choice. The barbarian dominion of Russia in lands adjoining her European territory is a dominion forced on her by geographical necessity. The annexation of Kamtschatka became a question of time when the first successors of Ruric made their earliest advance towards the Finnish north.

Alongside of this continuous dominion in Europe and Asia, the Russian occupation of territory in a third continent, an occupation made by sea after the manner of other European powers, has not been lasting. The Russian territory in the north-west corner of America, the only part of the world where Russia and England marched on one another, has been sold to the United States.

To return to Europe, the events of the nineteenth century have, in the lands with which we are dealing, carried on the work of the eighteenth by the further aggrandizement of Russia and Prussia. The Scandinavian powers have withdrawn into the two Scandinavian peninsulas and the adjoining islands, and in the southern peninsula the power of Denmark has been cut short to the gain of Prussia. The Prussian power meanwhile, formed in the eighteenth century by the union of the detached lands of Prussia and Brandenburg, has in the nineteenth grown into the imperial power of Germany, and has, even as a local kingdom, become, by the acquisition of Swedish Pomerania, Holstein, and Sleswick, the dominant power on the southern Baltic. The acquisition of the duchies too, not only of Sleswick and Holstein, but of Bremen and Verden also, as parts of the annexed kingdom of Hannover, have given her a part of the former oceanic position both of Denmark and Sweden. Russia has acquired the same position on the gulfs of the Baltic which Prussia has on the south coast of the Baltic itself. The acquisition of the new Poland has brought her frontier into the very midst of Europe; it has made her a neighbour, not merely of Prussia as such, but of Germany. The third sharer in the partition has drawn back from her northern advance, but she has increased her scrap of Russia, her scrap of Little Poland, her scrap of Moldavia,[78] by the suppression of a free city. The southern advance of Russia on European ground has been during this century an advance less of territory than of influence. The frontier of 1878 is the restored frontier of 1812. It is in the lands out of Europe that Russia has in the meanwhile advanced by strides which look startling on the map, but which in truth spring naturally from the geographical position of the one modern European power which cannot help being Asiatic as well.