Wends

In 1241 we find Lübeck and Hamburg agreeing to safeguard the important road connecting the Baltic and the North Sea.

The first known meeting of the maritime towns, later known as the Wendish Group, and including Lübeck, Hamburg, Lüneburg, Wismar, Rostock and Stalsund, took place in 1256.

The Saxon towns, during the following century, were joining to protect their common interests, and indeed at this period town confederacies in Germany, both north and south, were so considerable as to call for the declaration against them in the Golden Bull of 1356.

The decline of the imperial power and the growing opposition between the towns and the territorial princes justified these defensive town alliances, which in South Germany took on a peculiarly political character.

It legislated on matters relating to common trade interests, and in the case of the regulation of 1287 concerning shipwrecked goods, we find it imposing this legislation on the towns under the penalty of exclusion from the association.

But with the extension of the east and west trade beyond the confines of the Baltic, this association by the end of the century was losing its position of leadership.

Its inheritance passed to the gradually forming union of towns, chiefly those known as Wendish, which looked to Lübeck as their head.

In 1293 the Saxon and Wendish merchants at Rostock decided that all appeals from Novgorod be taken to Lübeck instead of to Visby, and six years later the Wendish and Westphalian towns meeting at Lübeck ordered that the Gotland association should no longer use a common seal.

In September he was joined by the pope at Goslar and went with him to Bodfeld, a royal hunting seat in the Harz Forest.

While staying there the terrible tidings came that a Saxon host sent against the Wends had been almost destroyed by the enemy, and that the leaders had perished in the overthrow.

The news of this disaster was such a shock to the emperor that it brought on a fatal attack of fever.

Conscious that his end was near, he declared his forgiveness of all his enemies, and required the pope, bishops and nobles who were present to renew their allegiance to the young Henry, whom with the empress he commended to the pope's special care.

The strong and warlike races on the eastern frontier, which had been harnessed to the car of the Frankish monarchy, were rapidly breaking their bonds.

The Wends beyond the Elbe, under a Frankish commercial traveller named Samo, who had made himself their king, and who had twelve wives and thirty-seven children, had inflicted a crushing defeat on Dagobert.

Dagobert's son, Sigebert, had been defeated by Radolphus, king of the Thuringians, with such a fearful slaughter of the Franks as moved the youthful king to tears.

The Alamanni were growing restless.

The latter was the second son of the deceased King Eric Eingoth.

His successful administration of Schleswig and his close alliance with the German King Lothar, who had bestowed the land of the Wends on Canute as a fief and crowned him King of the Abodriti, aroused the mistrust of his weak uncle, Niels.

His son, Magnus, killed Canute Lavard on Christmas, eleven thirty-one.

Eric, the brother of the slain man, took up arms to avenge his death.

As a result, Canute and Valdemar were proclaimed kings in Jutland.

When Svein attacked them, his soldiers deserted him, and he had to flee to Germany.

With the aid of the Wends and the Saxon duke, he succeeded in having his lands partly restored to him.

According to agreement, Svein was to retain Scania, but Canute was to rule in Zealand and Valdemar on the mainland.

In 1241 we find Lübeck and Hamburg agreeing to safeguard the important road connecting the Baltic and the North Sea.

The first known meeting of the maritime towns, later known as the Wendish Group, and including Lübeck, Hamburg, Lüneburg, Wismar, Rostock and Stalsund, took place in 1256.

The Saxon towns, during the following century, were joining to protect their common interests, and indeed at this period town confederacies in Germany, both north and south, were so considerable as to call for the declaration against them in the Golden Bull of 1356.

The decline of the imperial power and the growing opposition between the towns and the territorial princes justified these defensive town alliances, which in South Germany took on a peculiarly political character.

It legislated on matters relating to common trade interests, and in the case of the regulation of 1287 concerning shipwrecked goods, we find it imposing this legislation on the towns under the penalty of exclusion from the association.

But with the extension of the east and west trade beyond the confines of the Baltic, this association by the end of the century was losing its position of leadership.

Its inheritance passed to the gradually forming union of towns, chiefly those known as Wendish, which looked to Lübeck as their head.

In 1293 the Saxon and Wendish merchants at Rostock decided that all appeals from Novgorod be taken to Lübeck instead of to Visby, and six years later the Wendish and Westphalian towns meeting at Lübeck ordered that the Gotland Association should no longer use a common seal.

Eastern Germany, the Austrian states, Poland, and Russia had been Nordic lands before the Slavs emerged after the fall of Rome.

Whether the occupation of Teutonic lands by the Wends and Slavs in Eastern Europe was an infiltration or a conquest is not known, but the conviction is growing that, like other movements which preceded and followed, it was caused by Mongoloid pressure.

That the Western Slavs or Wends had been long Nordicized in speech is indicated by the thoroughly Aryan character of the Slavic languages.

They found in the lands they occupied an underlying Teutonic population.

They cannot be regarded as the original owners of Poland, Bohemia, Silesia, or other Wendish provinces of Eastern Germany and Austria.

Today the need of statesmanship is great, and greater still is the need for thorough knowledge of history.

All over the world the first has been lacking, and in the passions of the great war the lessons of the past have been forgotten both here and in Europe.

The establishment of a chain of Alpine states from the Baltic to the Adriatic, as a sequel to the war, all of them organized at the expense of Nordic ruling classes, may bring Europe back to the days when Charlemagne, marching from the Rhine to the Elbe, found the valley of that river inhabited by heathen Wends.

Lotharingia submitted in 925.

In 928 he defeated the Wends and took their stronghold, Brennebar, Brandenburg, while in 929 he subdued Bohemia and crushed a formidable Wendish revolt in the Battle of Lenzen.

By the year 932 the land between Elbe and Oda owned the East Frankish king as lord.

When in 933 the truce ended and the Magyars once more invaded Saxony, Henry with his trained horsemen won a decisive victory over them.

Scarcely had the young king been crowned at Aachen when a struggle over the regency began.

Henry the Quarrelsome reappeared on the scene, claimed as nearest male kinsman to rule in Otto's name, and even put forward pretensions to the crown on his own behalf.

The dukes of Bohemia and Poland on the eastern frontier and the king of the French to the west were ready to take advantage of the divided state of Germany, while in the north the Wends shook off the German yoke and abjured the Christian faith.

Chiefly owing to the loyalty of the Saxons and Franconians, led by Willigis, Archbishop of Mainz, Henry the Quarrelsome was forced to yield and to entrust the guardianship of the king to his mother, Theophano, though he was invested once more with the Bavarian duchy.

For what purpose?

I'm tracing the original Wendish roots of antiquity.

I believe they may be found in around the Rodopre district.

Yes? Well, that's it.

We know from Procopius that among the Heruli, a Teutonic tribe, the sick and old were regularly slain at their own request and then burned on a pyre.

The Wends used to kill their aged parents and other kinsfolk.

Having killed them, they boiled and ate their bodies, and the old folks preferred to die thus rather than to drag out a weary life of weakness and decrepitude.

End of section two.