CHAPTER XI.

THE BALTIC LANDS.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.