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Defensive Power of the Slavs

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And in their despairing and incomparably brave defence they too might have kept off the German colossus could they have reconciled themselves to the Cross, which was made hateful to them by the oppression of the German Government. At the same time it must be clearly noted that they were not aggressors but a thoroughly industrious peasant people. The Avar dominant class which had become Slavised in the course of time was not numerous enough for offence against the German power and the equally invincible Danish vikings; it became much reduced in the continuous defensive wars, and also lost its former ferocity because it was squeezed into narrow tribal bounds, so that it had at last to give up the wandering herdsman life. The Spanish Jew Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub who made a journey in these parts in the year 965 says: "In general the Slavs are intrepid and warlike and were they not at variance among themselves, no people on earth could measure themselves against them. The lands inhabited by them are the most fruitful and richest of all, and they devote themselves zealously to agriculture and other kinds of industry wherein they surpass all northern peoples." According to Herbord, Pomerania had an abundance of honey, wheat, hemp, poppy, vegetables of all kinds, and fruit-trees. Yet the lands between the Elbe and the Vistula are only made fertile by industrious cultivation.

The type of the Slav method of warfare is the powerful Polish leader Boleslav Khrobry (992-1025), who created a kingdom that stretched from the Dnieper to the Elbe, and from the Baltic to the Danube and Theiss. He carried on bloody wars with all his neighbours, especially with the German king Henry II. But Boleslav did not confront the German army in open battle; his strength lay in masterly manoeuvring and in the heroic defence of strong positions. "Never says his unfriendly contemporary Thietmar have I heard of besieged men who made exertions to defend themselves with greater endurance and more clever circumspection." The sources of Boleslav's strength we know from Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in the year 965: "The land of Meshko [Boleslav's father] is rich in grain and meat and honey and fields. . . . And he has 3000 ... warriors, a hundred of whom are a match for a thousand others. And he gives these people clothes and horses and weapons and all that they need. And when a child is born to one of them he at once orders ... a salary to be assigned to the same... and when he reaches full age he

1 Evidence in Schafarik, II. p. 542, Note 2. The heathen Slav looked down upon the Christian as upon a barbarian. "We have nothing in common with you. The laws which we inherited from our fathers we will not give up, we are content with the religion which we have. Among the Christians there are thieves and robbers, whose feet are cut off and eyes poked out; the Christian practises all kinds of crime and punishments upon the Christian. Far from us be such a religion" answered the Pomeranians to Otto of Bamberg. Among them there were no beggars, no locks and keys; they were highly surprised at the fastened chests of the bishop. Their table was always decked with food, and every stranger could enter and satisfy himself. Herbord, 11. Chaps. 10, 25, 40.

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The Elbe Slavs and the Vikings

procures him a wife and pays for him the marriage gift to the maiden's father.... And the marriage takes place with the approbation of the king. ... And he is like a tender father to his subjects." This standing army is not native, for it is landless; it consists of foreign mercenaries, evidently Norse vikings.

It is clear that the Polish Slavs, like the Russian, were from the earliest times strongly influenced by the vikings and their plundering raids and settlements. For the vikings who ravaged all the coasts of Europe cannot have left alone the river-mouths of the Baltic. According to Iomsvikinga-saga, in the vicinity of the Slav sea and commercial town Volin (Slav), Winetha (Saxon), Iulin or Iumin (Danish), mentioned by Ibrahim and the German chroniclers, the Iomsburg, a sea fort, was built by Danish pirates [about 970], and according to Orderic Vitalis (b. 1075) the German gods Wodan, Thor, and Frigg were worshipped in a district of the Lyutitzi at the mouth of the Oder. All three however had also their worship in the Upsala temple among the Swedes.

This viking admixture is clearest among the Baltic Slavs-especially those of the Island of Rügen - and gave them the appearance of a pirate people. Helmold reports that the men of Rügen were [1168] tributary to the Danes, but they revolted, and occupied the rich Danish islands, " and the Danes cannot easily protect themselves from the sudden attacks of the pirates, for there are creeks there in which the Slavs can keep well hidden, and from which they can break out unperceived to attack and plunder the unwary. For the Slavs are particularly strong in sudden surprises. Hence even up to recent times this custom of robbing has such possession of them that they are always ready for maritime enterprises to the entire disregard of the profits of agriculture, for their whole hope and all their wealth depend on their ships. Indeed they do not even trouble themselves much about house-building; rather they fashion for themselves huts of wicker-work, as they only seek shelter at need from storm and rain. As often as war threatens to break out, they thresh all the grain and bury it in holes together with all gold and silver and what precious things they possess; their women and children however they take into their fortified places or at least into the forests, so that nothing remains for the enemy to plunder but the huts, the loss of which they very easily bear. They pay no regard to the attacks of the Danes, indeed they consider it sport to measure themselves against them." We see here a remarkable fusion of the viking pirates, Altaian herdsmen, and Slav peasants on the Island of Rügen. But could the most terrible of all pirates, the Danes, who fill the gloomiest pages in British history, here stand helpless before Slav pirates? It is more likely that Danish vikings were here opposed by Slavised vikings. So too the Narentanian pirates of Dalmatia, called Pagani, seem to be Norse vikings transplanted by the Avars, for here too we find a noble class of vitezi.

Giesebrecht excellently characterises the Baltic Slavs: "A mixed

Political Impotence of the Slavs

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race, not seldom fluctuating in sharp contradiction in their belief, law, and customs, the Wends were already a fallen nation when they came into contact with the Franks. Thus from them could proceed much that was energetic as far as it could be carried out by individuals, families, or associations, but nothing that presupposed national unity."

More favourable conditions for a thriving development were obtained by those Slav peoples among whom either the Altaian or the German dominating class destroyed the other. The Russian Slavs with the Varangians whom they absorbed finally reached a national and social harmony, while the Bohemians and a part of the Alpine Slavs overcame their Avar oppressors. But they found it a still harder task to build up their rude freedom into an orderly State. This the Carinthians brilliantly performed, remaining in true freedom without a nobility for a long time. Even under German dominion, under far less favourable conditions, they were an equal match for the Germans of Ditmarschen in Holstein.

As a people who for immemorial ages were deprived of justice and politically broken the Slavs longed only for an ordered legal State. An early example of this is afforded with an objectivity extremely rare among medieval chroniclers by the author of Chapters XLVIII and LXVIII of the "Fredegar" Chronicle (Chronist B). In Samo's kingdom Frankish merchants were robbed and killed and King Dagobert demanded redress. Samo "only agreed on a reciprocal legal procedure on this and similar disagreements which had arisen on both sides. Hereupon Sycharius in the manner of an arrogant envoy let ... fall threats to the effect that Samo and his whole people had to be subject to Dagobert." Samo replied, "The land we inhabit and we ourselves are Dagobert's, yet only in case he will maintain friendship with us." Sycharius: "It is not possible for Christians, the servants of God, to stand in friendship with dogs." Samo: "If you are the servants of God, and we are God's dogs, we are permitted to bite you when you ceaselessly act against his will." This led to Dagobert's crushing defeat at Wogastisburg.

The appeal to law and not to the sword is the basis of Old Slavonic thought and aspiration; the principal task of the Slav princes was to secure a passable administration of justice - the Russian Slavs actually appealed to Norse pirates. The chronicler Cosmas pictures the oldest Bohemian princes as simple judges, and by their memorable ritual the Carinthians hoped to secure the necessary foundation of justice, but this was an ideal not always attainable among a people where no man was willing to subordinate himself to another without an army capable of breaking down resistance. And as the Slavs lacked everything in the remotest way like this, they often became the prey of their warlike neighbours and perished in impotent rebellions to gain the human. rights denied them. Mighty Slav States arose indeed, but without the co-operation of the people themselves, whose endeavours were early directed to social questions. This was a favourable soil for social

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religious dreams of an evangelical way of life, and the Slav temperament reached its greatest perfection in an offshoot of the Hussite movement fanned into flame by the teaching of Wyclif - in the venerable Unity of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. This movement was democratic, not communistic — a wonderful theoretic union of human perfection with spiritual purity in the midst of a society saturated with selfishness. Their chief representative, well known in England also, was the founder of the new pedagogy, John Amos Comenius (Komenský), the teacher of the peoples of Europe.

CHAPTER XV

(A)

KELTIC HEATHENISM IN GAUL

THE purpose of this chapter is to give a short account of the religion of the Gauls, that is to say the inhabitants of the district bounded by the Rhine, the Pyrenees, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean.

We have to gather our information about this religion from incomplete and vague documents which do not belong to Gaul strictly speaking: that is from the historians of Greece and Rome (Posidonius, Caesar, Strabo, Diodorus, Mela, Lucan, etc.). There are also monuments (bas-reliefs, bronzes, and inscriptions) dating from the time when Gaul already formed part of the Roman Empire, and had been influenced by Rome. Both these sources of information shew us, not the pure and true Gallic religion, but this religion either as it was more or less correctly interpreted by strangers, or more or less transformed by imported beliefs.

Another difficulty arises from the fact that under the term Gallic, the ancients included both the original inhabitants of Gaul and other peoples of quite a different character. There were Aquitanians south of the Garonne, related to the Iberians or Cantabrians of Spain: Ligurians in the Alpine districts, and Germans in the Moselle and Meuse valleys. The rest really belonged to the so-called Gauls, and concerning them two things must be said: first that they fall into two groups, the Kelts between the Marne and the Garonne, who were the earlier settlers, and the Belgae, between the Marne and the Ardennes forest, more recent comers and less civilised. Secondly the Belgae and Kelts, or Gauls as they are sometimes called, do not represent a homogeneous people; but the name must be taken to cover both a very ancient race (usually known as Ligurians) and a smaller group of conquerors or immigrants, who were the Belgae or Kelts proper. This country of Gaul was then composed of as various elements as the Francia of the time of Clovis, and each of these groups of peoples doubtless possessed their own gods and rites. Therefore when the Gallic religion is referred to, it must be understood to imply the religion practised in a definite district, and not by a definite race.

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