and fourteenth centuries we observe a strong and unremitting tide
of German peasants, burghers and knights flowing through and over
Brandenburg, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Silesia, the Prussian duchies,
and even into Lithuania, Curland, Livonia and Esthonia. We have here
an explanation of the want of interest taken by the Germans in the
Crusades. While the kings of England and France, the barons and counts
of Brabant and Italy, were wasting their substance and the blood of
their subjects in hopeless attempts to overthrow Mohammedanism on its
own ground, the Germans were laying the foundations--unconsciously, it
is true--of a new empire. The lands wrested from the Slaves were to
be the kingdom of Frederick the Great. The work was done thoroughly,
almost as thoroughly as the Saxon conquest of Britain. The Obotrites,
Wiltzi, Ukern, Prussians, Serbs and Vends were annihilated or
absorbed. The only traces of their existence now to be found are the
scattered remnants of dialects spoken in remote villages or small
districts, and the countless names of towns bequeathed by them
to their conquerors. These names are often recognizable by the
terminations _in_ and _itz_. The most conspicuous factor in this labor
of colonization was the Teutonic order of chivalry, transferred to
the Baltic from Palestine. Königsberg, Dantzic, Memel, Thorn and Revel
were the centres or the advanced posts of the movement. At the end
of the reign of the grand master Winrich von Kniprode (1382) the
Germanization of the region between the Elbe and the Niemen--the
Polish province of Posen perhaps excepted--may be regarded, for all
practical purposes, as finished. The acquisition of Brandenburg by the
Hohenzollerns only solidified the conquest and guaranteed its future.
It is safe to assume that even a large share, perhaps the greater
share, of Poland itself would have been overrun in like manner but for
the Hussite wars and the Thirty Years' war. The unfortunate Peace
of Thorn (1466), whereby the lands of the Teutonic order and of the