King Wenzel I (1230-1253), who was German in feeling,
was ashamed of his origin, causing his peasant kinsmen to be driven
from Staditzi and giving the village to the Germans.
was ashamed of his origin, causing his peasant kinsmen to be driven
from Staditzi and giving the village to the Germans.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
210.
## p. 441 (#473) ############################################
The Roumanians living with the Slavs 441
winter wherever was convenient for them. We know most about the Old
Servian State, where the Vlakhs constituted an important element and
a rich source of income for the sovereign and the other landlords. By
them the larger mountain pastures were made the most of and indeed
devastated and disforested by the reckless grazing-off of the new growth,
by the searing of the grass to freshen the pasturage, and by the peeling
of young beech-trees as a substitute for honey to sweeten milk foods1.
They provided the State with excellent horses, of small stature but
hardy, and good cavalry for the army. They managed also the com-
merce, for it had to be a caravan trade with pack-horses, because most
of the mountain ranges run parallel with the sea and were then impassable
for wagons. The Vlakhs themselves traded in wool, skins and the famous
Vlakhish cheese which had to have a definite weight for Ragusa, and even
served as a substitute for money. In return they chiefly brought sea-
salt. By this trading the Vlakhs acquired knowledge of the world, and
became far superior in experience and shrewdness to the boorish Slav
peasant. They grazed the mountain pastures (planina) to the height of
3000 ft. , from the end of April to the middle of September, and then
slowly made their way, often taking two months, to winter on the coasts
on account of the mild snowless climate and the salt which splendidly
nourishes the sheep. They lived chiefly on milk and cheese. Their
chief enemy was the ice when it locked up the grass in early spring.
Thousands of sheep then starved and the richest man might become a
beggar in a few days. As they had no fixed settlements, they could not
easily be enslaved by the landlords, and after payment of the grazing-tax
they enjoyed freedom of movement without restraint. They themselves
were a heavy burden for the peasantry, especially through their destruc-
tion of the cornfields. Thus peasants and herdsmen were in opposition,
there was no intermarriage between them, and the State had to regulate
the wandering people and to protect the peasants with draconic laws.
The Emperor Dushan's law-book of 1349 states: "Where a Vlakh or an
Albanian camps in a village district, there another who comes after him
shall not camp; if he camps there by force, he shall pay the fighting-fine
(100 hyperpyres, that is fifty gold ducats) besides the value of what he
has grazed off". '" Even the Ragusans in Dalmatia, although they were
entirely dependent for their trade with the interior on the Vlakh caravans,
complained bitterly of the mischief they did when they wintered in
Ragusan territories, and finally forbade them to winter there.
All the more must the Avar nomads have oppressed the subjugated
Slav peasantry, for here the Avar was master, and the peasant was without
rights and protection. The Avar tribes as wandering herdsmen amongst
1 Roumanian herdsman life described by Ponqueville, Voyage, 11. pp. 208 ff. , 2nd
ed- pp. 382 ff. Jirecek, Das Furxtentum Bu/garien, pp. 181 ff. —The almost universal
bareness of the soil on the chalk mountains is much more due to the wandering
herdsmen than to the Venetian demand for timber for shipbuilding.
## p. 442 (#474) ############################################
442 Avars with the Slavs
the West Slavs could not graze their herds in connected winter-quarters
as in the steppes, because the snow lies deeper and longer in central
Europe. Neither had they there, as in Dalmatia, mild coasts rich in
salt and free from snow—the best imaginable winter-pasture—and so
they had to break up and live scattered in the Slav villages where the
peasantry had to store up grain and hay for them during the summer
and convert even the villages into suitable cattle-pens. This is pointed
to by the very small Slavonic round villages with one single exit, which
are common in Bohemia and as far as the Baltic, and which still preserve
the character of closable cattle-pens1.
Compared with the Slavs, the Avar oppressors were very few in
number, and could not therefore always master them. Now and then
these became restive, and refused obedience. The Khagan, occupied in
many distant places, did not always find leisure to chastise them, and
thus many Slav tribes gained their liberty.
There were, however, differences among the Avars themselves, who
were only held together by the iron hand of the Khagan. They were
but a mixed multitude. Where there was a prospect of rich booty they
followed him joyfully, but where no treasure allured them—e. g. in 602
against the poor but warlike Antae—they simply refused obedience and
deserted to the Romans. According to " Mauricius" such desertion was
a common event, and it helps to explain why the Khagan did not repeat
his victorious marches against the Frankish kingdom till the year 596a.
Avar hordes were indeed very loosely held together, and some fell
away and established small States on the old basis of Slav servitude.
The dissolution began as early as 608 in consequence of the successful
revolution of a part of the north-west Slavs and the formation of a Slav
union under Samo. By this the Avar hordes distributed among the
Elbe Slavs between Bohemia and the Baltic were permanently cut off
from the main horde in Hungary.
After the dissolution of the great Avar State the Avars and the
Bulgars themselves remained as a noble class, which finally became
Slavised and nationally absorbed in the subjected peasantry. In
Dalmatia as late as the tenth century the Avars were still sharply dis-
tinguished from the Croats. The mare-milking grand-prince north of
the Carpathians in the ninth century may indeed already have become
Slav, but by origin he must have been Avar. Strange was the fate of a
Bulgar horde which later than 641 fled to Dagobert. The Bavarians
1 Illustrated by Meitzen, Siedlung, i. p. 52, n. pp. 259, 362, 450-6, 485, Atlas 87
and explanatory map.
2 This irruption of the Avars into Thuringia in 596 was due to outside pressure, for
since 593 the Avar Slavs in what is now Roumania had been hard pressed by the
Romans, and even the Avars' own territory in the Hungarian steppe was threatened.
Something very pressing in the north-west of the Avar State must have therefore
occurred to compel the Khagan to abandon the south-east and to leave the Slavs
there to themselves.
>
## p. 443 (#475) ############################################
Dissolution of the Avar Empire. The Zupans 443
massacred them and only seven hundred escaped with their families
under Alciocus into the Marca Winidorum (Carantania), where they
lived many years with the Slav prince Walluc. This Alciocus must be
identical with the Alzeco who with his entire army—evidently stragglers
from Hungary—came peaceably to Italy and received from the Lombard
king Grimoald (662-672) extensive waste territory in the Abruzzi
mountains north-east of Naples. Although these Bulgars learnt vulgar
Latin, at the time of Paulus Diaconus they still retained their mother
tongue intact. This is natural, for only when they wintered in Apulia
did they find it necessary to use the vulgar Latin of the peasants, while
in the summer-pastures on the mountains they were by themselves. It
is therefore quite conceivable that their descendants did not forget their
original language till much later.
The organisation of the South and West Slavs in the centuries that
followed is also Avar and Bulgarian. A number of titles of rank of the
Altaians, Bulgars, Avars, Chazars and other West and East Turks (in
Chinese Turkestan), Utigurs and Mongols, have survived, and many of
these were borrowed early from Iranians and particularly Persians.
Many of these titles, some peculiar to the Altaians, some borrowed by
them from Iranians, are to be found among the Slavs. At the head of
an Altaian empire was the Khagan (East Turks, Avars, Chazars, etc. )
or Khan (Bulgars, Cumans, etc. ), and as successors of the Chazar Khagans
as conquerors of the Russian Slavs, the first princes of the Scandinavian
Varangians-Russ bore the title Kogan (in Arabian sources khaqan Ros).
The Turkish title boyla (Magnate) is found in Bulgar-Slavic and
Russian (bolyarin). The common Slav word for " Sir," gospodar, came
from Altaic, where it is a Persian loan-word—Middle Persian gospand-
dar, "owner of sheep"—the Altaian masters of the Slavs were indeed
shepherds; hence the change in the significance of the word. Of the
remaining titles which have come from Altaian into Slav the most
important are hipan (pronounced zhoopan) and pan (the latter coming
from gUpanU). Both are to be found in the forms tywirav and Koiravos
in inscriptions on monuments which the Bulgar khan Omurtag (814-831)
had erected to his deceased high officials who bore these titles. Both
are obviously Persian loan-words in Altaian, although the original
Persian words cannot be restored. The second (Jcopan) occurs among
the Patzinaks (xottov) also, but zupan was common to several Altaian
peoples in various pronunciations. An important historic criterion is
offered by the fact that certain titles of rank are pronounced yabgu,
yugur (Avar), yopan (Avar) in Eastern Turkish, but in western
dialects jabgu, %ovpyov (Bulg. ), frvrrdv (Bulg. ). Among the Slavs whom
the Avar khagan Baian had settled on the west front of his Empire, we
find on the Elbe and Saale, and then in the Alps and on the Adriatic,
zupans; but in the centre on the Danube in the district of Linz, a
iopan (pronounced yopan) Physso is mentioned in the year 777. This
## p. 444 (#476) ############################################
444 Zupans and Zupa
means that Baian placed the right wing of his west front against the
Saxons and Franks, and the left wing against the Lombards, under
Bulgarian zupans, but the centre against the Bavarians, under Avar
yopans. How important it was for Baian to settle his western front
against the Germans with warlike elements can be seen from the appear-
ance of a second warrior class, that of the Germanic vikings, among the
Sorbs on the Saale {vicazi), and among the Serbo-Croatians in Illyria
(vitezi). But it is also possible that before the invasion of the Avars
this Slav folk dominated by vikings had been subjected by a Bulgarian
horde, who set themselves over them as zupans, somewhere in their
home in Transcarpathia, and were then dismembered by Baian, and
transplanted together with his zupans and vikings to distant regions.
Before the time of Bulgars and Avars there were still no zupans
among the Slavs with whom the Byzantines came into contact, but
Germanic rlkses, and not till the year 952 is there a statement by Con-
stantine Porphyrogenitus, "These peoples, Croats, Serbs, have no princes
(op^oj/Ta? ) but zupans as a kind of elders (fovn-avot/? yipovra^) just as
the other Slav lands have. 11 In 965 Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub says exactly the
same of the "Awbaba11 [of Wollin] dwelling on the Baltic at the other
end of the Slav world, though he does not actually use the word hipan.
Among the Alpine Slavs (Slovenes) neighbouring on the Croats in
South Styria we also meet with a very numerous zupan class in
the fifteenth century under which the common peasantry were
placed. Among the Servians the "zoupanoi gerontes" mentioned by
Constantine were the princes of the individual clans, and one of them
made himself grand-zupan (archon, archezoupanos, megas zoupanos,
magnus comes) of the whole people. Similarly, the independent princes of
the Elbe Slavs (not yet subjugated by the Germans) were named by the
chroniclers duces, principes, sehiores, promiscuously; Ibrahim calls them
the elders. After the German subjugation the seniores = eldesten = supani
of the Elbe Slavs, namely the Sorbs in the modern kingdom of Saxony,
were still the highest class of the Slav population, having their posses-
sions in fief, being under feudal law, dispensing justice, and only pledged
to serve their lord in war on horseback; thus they came nearer to the
German nobility than to the other Slav peasantry. In Mecklenburg,
the land of the Obodritzi, the feudal village magistrates—the former
zupans—were expressly reckoned among the vassals of the country.
It cannot therefore be doubted that the zupans of the Elbe Slavs
also were principes, dornini, landlords before their subjugation.
With zupan is connected zupa (Slav, zupa, Lat. suppa), that is the
district under a zupan, which among the Serbs was a principality, but
among the Slovenes of Lower Styria at the time of the German dominion
zupa denoted only a village district. Here the zupans finally dwindled
to village-chiefs, and then the word signified their office, officium suppae
or the zupan estate. The great Servian tribal-ifwpa and the little
## p. 445 (#477) ############################################
The Zupa. The Alpine Slavs (Slovenes) 445
Slovenish xillage-zupa formed in a certain sense an economic whole, in that
all dwellers in the zupa-district possessed right of pasture; consequently
the zupa was here an undivided grazing-district throughout which
the agricultural rotation proceeded as long as there were no permanent
fields, and as long as the cornfields opened by clearing or the burning of
a piece of forest and again abandoned after their exhaustion became
derelict and once more forest-land. In consequence of this general right
of use by the inhabitants the word zupa in Servia became personified,
and signified also the whole of the inhabitants entitled to the right of
pasture—and formally of clearing too—the compastores, conterranei, so
to speak. So long as the Avars were lords in the land, and so long as
they remained wandering herdsmen, the requirements of their pasturing
and their tyranny were decisive; the enslaved Slav peasantry could place
their fields only where it suited their masters, and there could be no idea
of a peasant right of clearing. In the Balkan peninsula the nomad
shepherds wintered with their herds on sunny snowless sea shores, and
for this reason in Dalmatia the word zupa denotes a sunny land where
snow does not fall or where it melts rapidly. Some such districts—
standing winter-quarters of the nomads—finally retained the word as
their name. Among the Carinthian, Bohemian, and Polish Slavs we
find no such zupans and no such zupan, for here peasant dynasties
arose through peasant revolutions and the zupans had to give way.
But the name itself remained, or was borrowed anew from neighbouring
Slavs, and htpan in Bohemia signified a high state official, and zupa on
the one hand is beneficium, and on the other the office connected
with it. The members of the highest Bohemian and Polish nobility
had the title pan (originally gupari). This word has no connexion
with zupan, but arose from a title kopan attested by a Bulgarian
inscription as before mentioned.
The Avars and Bulgars naturally tolerated no other dominus among
the directly dominated Slavs, they were themselves the zupans, and as
zupans remained as domini after the break-up of the Avar Empire,
and indeed among the Sorbs and Alpine Slavs, and here and there
were very numerous, so that they are to be considered as the Avar and
Bulgar dominating class Slavised by the lapse of time, and no longer
nationally different from the subject people.
From the conglomeration of Slavs planted by the Avars in the
Eastern Alps was formed the people of the Slovenes (Carantani). They
extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Danube, and from East Tyrol
deep into Hungary. As they had the Avar main horde at hand on the
Danube and the Theiss, they were most deeply enslaved. Alter the/
destruction of the Avar kingdom by Charles the Great their social)
organisation appears greatly changed. In Lower Styria south of Cilli
as late as the fifteenth century they were under an uncommonly numerous
hereditary zupan class, and even in the smallest hamlet there were one,
## p. 446 (#478) ############################################
446 Social History of the Slovenes
two, three, or four zupans. On the other hand, south of this in some
districts of Carniola and north of the Drave in Lower Styria (in the
dominium of Arnfels) there was no such zupan class at all. There (in
Carniola) the village-presidents (also called zupans) were chosen, but
only village-magistrates—likewise called zupans—appointed for a fixed
period of time, by the village peasantry, here (in the Arnfels dominium)
they were nominated for a certain time by the landlord. In what is
now Eastern Carinthia too there was no zupan class; the land was
ruled by a peasant duke.
In the various doomsday books (Urbar) we find all the villages
belonging to the landlord concerned with a definite statement of
the number of the peasant estates, and the enrolled zupans with all
the dues and services. These villages originated at various times, some
before and some after the German occupation, and we can determine
many which were Old Slavic. Those which were first established by the
Germans, even when they were colonised with Slav peasants, are for the
most part large and often very regularly and artistically laid out in
German fashion, and their dues too are purely German. They cover most
of the broad valleys and river plains. The carefully planned villages of
the plains are therefore new. In another area of the large districts
their origin is uncertain; their nucleus may be old, but they were
remodelled, and enlarged by the attachment of new clearings. Yet
other districts are so markedly non-German that they must be pre-
German. These are not really villages, but tiny hamlets. Large
villages were unknown to the early Slavs, and the districts of the Elbe
Slavs are thickly set with little villages; the Serbs likewise, for the
most part, live in hamlets and isolated farms; the Bohemian and Polish
large villages are later foundations after the German fashion, and the large
Russian villages were only formed from small villages in modern times.
At the head of almost every village in Lower Styria and Carniola
whether large or small, old or new, there is a zupan, and even the mayor
of Laibach (Slav. Lyublyana), the capital of Carniola, bears this title.
Thus, since the German occupation, the expression zupan covers various
meanings among the Slovenes to which the magistrate's office is common,
but with different rights and duties. In a Slovene village first established
by the Germans—usually large—the zupan is nothing more than an
ordinary magistrate^W&r, magister villae, living in a farm exempt from
taxes, as a rule two hides (praedia, mansi, hubae). But in tiny little hamlets
of the TufFer domain, the zupan—who here too has everywhere two hides
(praedia)—cannot be a judex, magister villae, as he pays tribute, and in
certain hamlets he is the only inhabitant, and therefore has no one to
preside over. Indeed, in the neighbouring domain, Rann-Lichtenwald,
in 1309 there were also villages with two, and in 1448 with even three
and four zupans; two magistrates in a village belonging to one and the
same landlord would be absurd. Here the zupans considerably increased
## p. 447 (#479) ############################################
V
The Zupans in Lower Styria 447
during the 1S9 years, and, where there was formerly one, three or four
occupied the paternal inheritance either undivided or in divided estates.
As they all bore the title, but only one of them could be magistrate of
the village, zupan here signified the member of an hereditary class and
not the holder of an office. These zupans paid far more tribute than
the peasants on estates of equal size, the higher taxation consisting in
swine, subsidiarily swine-pence—this proves that they had greater rights
of pasture than the peasants.
The old Slovene zupan is a village-magistrate only where there (
are peasants under him. What was he originally? What he was
among the Elbe Slavs (senior) and the Serbs (princeps, dominus), viz.
landlord, as descendant of the Avaro-Bulgar herdsman class. Under the
German dominion he lost his former seigniorial character; the Germans
seized a considerable part of the territory, especially what was unculti-
vated, including the wasted plains and valleys, and left what remained
to those whom they found there—up to that time nomad zupans and
their Slav peasants—reckoning two hides (praedia) for a zupan and one
for a peasant. In consequence the zupans were so huddled together
that they were forced to give up the wandering herdsman life, and as
they could no longer keep large herds, they had to adapt themselves to
husbandry, contenting themselves with a smaller flock of sheep, and
finding compensation in swine-breeding. Their former monopoly in
cattle-breeding was also abolished, as under the Germans the peasants
also were allowed to engage in cattle-breeding though not to the same
extent as the zupans. This is shewn by the taxation. The peasants
still remained subordinated to the zupans, but they were newly dis-
tributed among them, with the land, so that a precisely defined number
of peasants was allotted to a definite group of zupans. Thereupon each
group of zupans shared the peasantry allotted to them according to a
definite principle—evidently hereditary. This follows from the fact that
the percentage of zupans and peasant hides is repeated in several districts
remote from one another, although the individual zupans appear so very
unequally provided with peasants, some indeed having none at all.
Thus we can see how the German domination forced the former
wandering herdsman to become a settled cattle-breeder and little by
little a grower of grain, and how the cattle-breeding of these zupans
was preponderant up to late times. Their social position was in earlier
times by no means slight: in a list of witnesses (1322) a zupan was not
cited among the peasant witnesses but mentioned before the burghers
of Laibach1—thus he was at least equal to them in rank. In the
thirteenth century in the manorial estates of Tuffer and Lichtenwald
one of the village zupans acted as Schepho—chief official of a larger
administrative district—and this also points to the higher position of
a zupan.
1 Levee, in. p. 73, or Peisker, Beziehungen, 159 [345].
## p. 448 (#480) ############################################
448 The Carinthian Peasant-State
As has been already mentioned, in many districts of Camiola and
Styria there was no zupan class at all and no permanent zupans, but one
of the peasants was made village-magistrate—equally called zupan—
from time to time and enjoyed in return a certain remission of dues1.
But this has nothing to do with the hereditary zupan of Tuffer and
Lichtenwald, where there were settled zupans paying large taxes, even
four in one and the same village belonging to one and the same landlord.
It will have been seen that a change took place in the signification
of the word zupan, and at the same time a change in the position of the
peasant population in general, a change different according to place and
time, and further developed and differentiated by the unequal pressure
of their lords, by continual colonisation under new conditions, and by
the decay and resettlement of entire villages. The unpretending peasant
who was entrusted for a time with the office of village-magistrate had
as little in common with the old Slovene zupan as the Frankish horse-
boy (marescallus) with a great French or German marshal.
While thus the former Avaro-Bulgar herdsman nobility,even if divested
of overlordship and turned into a peasantry, maintained itself under
the German domination in the sixteenth century in a position distinct
from the remaining peasantry and in certain districts of Lower Styria as
a numerous hereditary class, it disappeared in the neighbouring province
of Carinthia long before the German occupation through revolts of the
enslaved peasantry. As we have already seen, these latter had heavy
burdens to bear in providing their tormentors with supplies of food and
fodder, and giving themselves up to be massacred as befulci in countless
wars, while the Avar harnessed their wives and daughters like beasts to
his wagon, violated them systematically, destroying their family life and
indeed reducing their whole existence to the level of brutes. Thus,
destitute of all social ties the peasantry revolted; though many risings
were stifled in blood before one was successful. And now after ages of
servitude a part of the great Slav world was cheered by the sun of a
golden freedom, not this time to fade into anarchy. From the midst of
the victorious peasantry a prince was chosen to be a just judge and to
guarantee the husbandry of the people, and especially the cattle-breeding
till then forbidden to them. And that things should ever remain so, a
wonderfully ingenious ritual was devised for the installation of each new
prince—always a peasant. And as there was as yet no fixed hereditary
succession, and a certain time always elapsed before a new prince was
installed, the interregnum was provided for by recognition of the
eldest member of a certain peasant family as eo ipso vicegerent. So
tenaciously did the people cling to this ritual that even the splendid
German dukes of Carinthia had to humble themselves to assume the
1 Milkowicz, in MitteUungen, u. pp. 23 ff. ; Peisker, Die Mere Sozial- und
Wirtschaflsverfassung der Alpenslaven, iv. pp. 32 f.
## p. 449 (#481) ############################################
Installation of the Prince in Carinthia 449
ducal throne as peasants. In the year 1286 the ritual—markedly
modernised and relaxed—was of the following nature:
For the installation of the duke the oldest member of a certain
peasant family, the so-called duke-peasant, had to sit on the "prince's
stone" which lies in the Zollfeld near Klagenfurt. The new duke, in a
coarse peasant's dress with a staff in his hand and leading a bull and a
mare, is conducted by four nobles before the carelessly seated peasant,
who has to question those nobles in the Slovene tongue and to find out
who the man is, whether he is a just judge, mindful of the country's
well-being, of free standing and full of zeal for the Christian faith.
This they must swear to. Thereupon the peasant says: "By what
right shall he remove me from this my seat? " They answer: "With
60 pfennigs, these two brindled beasts, and the peasant dress which he
is wearing; he will also make thy house tax-free. " Thereupon the peasant
gives the duke a light cuff on the cheek, bids him be a good judge,
vacates the seat for him, and takes the beasts. The duke takes his seat
upon the stonfe and swings his drawn sword in all directions. He also
takes a drinjfc of fresh water.
successful revolt of these Slovenes from the Avars took place, as
we shallWee presently, about 608. The first prince of the Carinthians
whose nawie is known was Walluc (after 641), dux in Marca Vinedorum,
independent of the Avars as well as of the Bavarians and I,ombards.
About th«e year 745 the Avars attempted to subjugate the Carinthians
afresh, ar*ld their duke, Borut, sought help from the Bavarians. These
indeed djjjove off the Avars but made the Carinthians dependent on the
FrankisMf king, under native princes, of whom the last mentioned is
WoinimMir in 796; and Arnulf (emperor 896), if not the first, was one
of the JiOfirst German princes who as duke of Carinthia submitted (in
880) toM the peasant ceremony.
The** peasant revolt was not limited to Carinthia, rather it
eaibracJHed a great part of the Avar Slavdom from the Alps to the
Erzjw'flfcirge and the Vistula, for the Bohemian dynasty of the Premyslids
and *Jjthe Polish dynasty of the Piasts were of peasant origin. The
Pivn^iyslids were always conscious of this, and Lutold (died 1112),
vaW ll prince of Znaim (Slav. Znoyem), had the chapel which he built
decorated with frescoes which still remain, among them the
of the election of his ancestor with the hazel-stick, the bast-bag,
bast-shoes. Pulkava, court-chronicler to the Emperor Charles IV,
; of Bohemia (1346-1378), states that Pfemysl's bast-shoes and bast-
were " to this day" carefully preserved. "And on the day of the
coronation of the Bohemian king, the canons and prelates in procession
receive the king that is to be and shew him the bast-shoes and lay the
bast-bag on his shoulders so that he may be mindful that he sprang
from poverty and may not be presumptuous. " This is a poor survival of
a more ample ritual which, unlike the Carinthian, had lost all its original
<:. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XIV. 29
## p. 450 (#482) ############################################
450 Peasant-Princes in Bohemia and Poland
significance, for it did not originate in Prague but was transferred
there after the union of the State of the Lemusi with that of the
Chekhs of Central Bohemia. And it was disagreeable to the later
Pfemyslids.
King Wenzel I (1230-1253), who was German in feeling,
was ashamed of his origin, causing his peasant kinsmen to be driven
from Staditzi and giving the village to the Germans. But he does not
seem to have touched the bast relics; the kinsmen appear to have
recovered their heritage, for in the year 1359 the Emperor Charles IV,
as king of Bohemia, declared to the sons of Radosta, co-heirs of Staditzi,
that they and their forefathers had always been free heirs of their
tax-free estates; but as these had not long since been illegally given
away and burdened with taxation by his father, the blind King John
(who fell at Crecy, 1346), Charles IV now restores their rights, but
retains as crown-land the field which Pfemysl had once tilled single-
handed (it is to this day called the "king's field") and charges the
petitioners with the care of Premysl's hazel stock, all the nuts from
which they have to present yearly at the royal table as a n>emorial of an
event so remarkable. \
The peasant origin of the Pfemyslids and the Piasts cannot bean
invention of the chroniclers. No high-born dynasty would believe such
a story, rather it would make short work of such blasphemy aagainst its
kingly majesty. The chroniclers merely decked the fact outfwith the
fruits of their reading in ancient classics, and the Church interpreted it
in the sense of Christian humility. w
The peasant prince, Premysl, was not prince of the whole of Bohemia—
which even much later consisted of several little States—but tJf^riguially
only of the little people of the Lemusi round Bilin in Norf*th-West
Bohemia, in immediate proximity to the Sorb clan Glomachi (\ German
Daleminzen) in the modern kingdom of Saxony. These Glomjx^hi like
the Lower Styrians remained under zupans, but their social organisation
was more complicated. Under German domination they fell iff lto the
three classes: (1) Supani (Lat. seniores, German eldesten), (2) H^Biiluwii
(Slav, x'icazi) in equis servientes (servants on horseback, esquires).
(3) the Smurdi, correctly smrdi, that is the "stinkers,"" the coi
peasant-folk. In addition, there were corresponding to the Gei'
occupation members of German nationality: (4) the Censuales (Ge:
lazze), and (5) the Proprii (heyeri). The three Slav classes were
the special jurisdiction of zupans with Slavonic as official langu!
The Daleminzian zupans and smurdi corresponded to the two Lo
Styrian classes, the zupans as former domini (seniores) of AvarO'
origin; they were likewise very numerous but their percentage cannot
now be ascertained. On the other hand, the Withasii were of Germanic \j
Norse origin. The Vikings somewhere in Russia must have subjected
the forefathers of the Glomachi, and been transplanted with them by the
Avars after the year 563 to serve as a barrier against the Franks on
-
## p. 451 (#483) ############################################
The Sorbs. Peasant Revolution in North Bavaria 451
the Saale and the Elbe. Had they been later conquerors, they must
have stood above the zupans, but here the zupans (Avars and Bulgars) were
the foremost rank, and therefore the latest conquerors, and at the time
of the German domination the vicazi took rank next beneath them as
feudal peasants liable to cavalry service and standing with the zupans
under feudal law. In West and South Europe too the Vikings on
stolen horses were, as is well known, as terrible horsemen on the land
as they were pirates by sea.
Thus we find both among the Alp-Slavs and the Slavs on the Elbe
a. peasant State in immediate proximity to hipan States. Either then
the peasant revolution was only successful in places, or the Avars having
rallied and enslaved the peasantry of Styria afresh remained there as
zupans, and then together with the peasantry fell under German
dominion. "Fredegar11 says: "At this time Samo, a Frank, joined himself
with several merchants, went to these Slavs to trade, and accompanied
their army against the Avars. He shewed remarkable bravery, an
enormous number of Avars fell, he was chosen king, ruled successfully
thirty-five years, and beat the Avars in all following wars. '"
The "Fredegar " compilation incorrectly puts this event under the year
623, for the author of this chapter wrote in 642 or 643, and at that
time Samo must have been already dead1. If the length of his reign is
correctly given, the revolt must have taken place in 605 at the latest.
In the year 601 the Avars were depopulated by a disease just as the
Khagan had driven Constantinople to such straits that the citizens were
making ready to migrate to Chalcedon in Asia Minor. Soon after he
was almost destroyed in five defeats at the hands of the Romans in
Hungary itself, the heart of Avardom. These plunderers were already
face to face with extinction when the Emperor Maurice was dethroned
in 602, and were only saved from destruction by the incapacity of his
successor Phocas. But their supremacy was now at an end. Samo's
revolt thus falls between 602 and 605, most probably in the year 603.
Then followed the revolt of the Croats and the Serbs, and finally the
Bulgar khan Kubrat on the lower Danube made himself free between
635 and 641.
Of Samo's State only this is certain, that it bordered on Thuringia*,
1 Schniirer, in Collectanea Jriburgensia, fasc. ix. pp. 113, 233.
2 Fredegar, pp. 74 f. [631] "it was told to the Frankish king Dagobert that an
army of the Wends (Slavs) had hroken into Thuringia. . . . Then appeared envoys of the
[then still free] Saxons before Dagobert. . . . They promised to oppose the Wends and
to protect the Frankish territory on the Wend border. . . . [632] Then the Wends at the
command of Samo. . . harried Thuringia and other provinces. . . . " This proves that Samo's
kingdom bordered on the Thnringian province and did not lie in Bohemia, which
lies too far from the Thuringian Gau (jpagus) for attacks from that quarter (v. map).
Older historians placed Wogastisburg, one of Samo's strongholds, at Tans (at the
foot of the Bohmerwald)—called in older sources Tugast—the point at which invaders
often entered Bohemia from Bavaria. The Burberg near Kaaden in North-West
ch. xiv. 29—2
## p. 452 (#484) ############################################
452 The Slav Kingdom of Samo
and embraced the Main and Kedantz (Regnitz) Slavs'. Thus it lay in
what had been Frankish territory, for Samo himself acknowledged:
"The land we inhabit and we ourselves are Dagoberfs, yet only
in case he will maintain friendship with us. " Before the irruption
of the Avars into the Frankish kingdom in 562, it extended over
the Saale to the Elbe. The Sorbs on the Saale and the Elbe as well
as the Slavs on the Main and Regnitz were not transplanted (by the
Avars) into this previously Frankish district till later. Thus from this
time to the founding of Samo's State scarcely forty-four years elapsed,
so that he could not have ceased to be conscious of the fact that his
land was really Frankish property. Here, in the country of the Regnitz
Slavs, the traces of the wintering of the Avars are to this day inefface-
able. On the lower Aisch, which flows from the south-west into the
Regnitz between Erlangen and Bamberg, broad visages with protruding
cheek-bones, deep-set eyes, and black hair are still to be met with.
But the Slavs were originally blue-eyed and fair, and were only
black-haired and mongoloid where their women were systematically
violated by the Altaian conquerors, and this "Fredegar'" attests expressly
of Samo's Slavs. The Avars (or Bulgars) must therefore have wintered
here also. The same is the case with the Bohemian Slavs, whose black
hair struck the traveller Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in 965 as peculiar. Whether,
or how far, Samo's kingdom extended into Bohemia is not known; it is,
indeed, improbable that it did so, for even in historic times no State
has ever existed on both sides of the Fichtelgebirge and the Bohmerwald.
As late as the ninth century several independent Slav clans existed in
Bohemia, and they assuredly took part in the Slav revolt against the Avars,
for there is as little trace of a zupan class in Bohemia as in Carinthia.
It is therefore to be presumed that the Slav tribes did not proceed singly
but in combination against the Avars, and that an ephemeral federation
was formed, with Samo at its head. But we have no right to speak of
'Samo's Empire, and the assumption that his kingdom embraced Caran-
Ijania, the country of the Alpine Slavs, rests only upon the Arumymuxix
COnvermme Bagariorum et Carantanorum—a party production of the
Salzburg Church directed against the Slav apostle St Methodius, and
employing for its own purposes Fredegar's notice of Samo—for the
association of Samo with the Carinthian Slavs would prove the latter
to be members of the Frankish kingdom, and therefore of the Salzburg
diocese.
Bohemia, Chekh: Uhoit, is now proposed. The first suggestion is based on the con-
jecture Togastitburg and is therefore to be rejected, the second overlooks the fact that
tlhoii was then pronounced Ongoii, so that we ought to find Ungastisburg or some-
thing similar in Fredegar.
1 Mention of them does not occur again before 846: "In the land of the Slavs
who dwell between Main and Redanz [Slav. Radnica] called Moinwinidi and
Ratanzwinidi. "
## p. 453 (#485) ############################################
Influence of Avar Slavery 453
The Slav revolts here described were successful only as far as the
Erzgebirge (which divides Bohemia from the kingdom of Saxony), for
immediately north of this we find the Sorb clans on the Saale and Elbe
dominated even after this time by zupans. In Samo's time the Sorb
prince Dervan was subject to the Frankish king. By the successful
revolt of the Bohemians, and especially of the Lemusi, the hipans who
dominated the Sorb people were cut off" from the main horde of the
Kbagan in Hungary, so they voluntarily submitted to the Frankish
king in order to escape the fate of their clansmen in Bohemia and on
the Main-Regnitz. But when Dagobert was defeated by Samo, Dervan
fell away from the Franks to Samo, who was well satisfied not to have
as enemies the dreaded Sorbs, and let alone their two dominating
classes, the Avar hipans and the Viking vicazi. This explains how a
hipan prince could still remain prince under Samo, the deliverer of
the peasants. We now see that the whole of Slavdom, with perhaps
the sole exception of the North-Russian peoples, was swept along in the
Avar tornado. This expansion of the Avar power from the Peloponnesus
to the Baltic is not inconceivable, for there were Altaian empires greater
still, that of the descendants of Chinghiz-Khan and the kingdom of the
Huns, the predecessors of the Avars, which stretched from the Don to
the lower Rhine.
The view often put forward, that the Slavs themselves became effective
warriors in the cruel Avar school, runs counter to the facts. Neither
from the Germans nor from the Romans did they permanently wrest a
span of ground; in spite of their enormous expansion their part is purely
passive. The German migrations took place under the lead of remark-
able and heroic figures; at one time the Germans even gave the Roman
Empire its wisest statesmen and most powerful military commanders,
but among the millions of Slavs who flooded Germany and the East
Roman Empire we do not find the name of even one moderately
prominent warrior. Those mentioned by the Byzantine sources, like
Khilvud, Dabragezas, Mezamir, Ardagast, Piragast, Musok, cannot be
compared with the German army leaders, and also they were obviously
not real Slavs, but Slavic descendants of partly Germanic and partly
Altaian conquerors. The earliest prominent personality among the Slavs
is the Frankish Samo, and the most powerful Slav prince, the Russian
Svyatoslav (died 972), was in spite of his Slav name a pure-blooded
German, son of Ingvarr and Helga (Slav. Igor, Olga) and one of the
greatest German heroes in history.
"Mauritius11 and other writers describe the Slavs as they must
have been in their marshy cradle, without organisation, without
military discipline, and consequently quite unsuited for any serious
offensive movement. But on the defensive when well led they were
excellent in a style which was forced upon them by the continual man-
hunts of the pirates and the mounted nomads. Of a military schooling
## p. 454 (#486) ############################################
454 Elbe Slavs at war with the German Empire
from the Avars there is no trace except that they learned plundering
from their tormentors. On the offensive they could do nothing against
the Romans, though the Romans likewise could do nothing against the
defensive of the Slavs. For example, in 593-4, when the imperial army
advanced victoriously over the Danube, it was unwilling to winter in a land
where the cold was unbearable and the barbarians were invincible on
account of their great numbers. In the defensive power of the Slavs lay
also the strength of the Avar-Slav positions on the Baltic, Elbe, and
Saale against the Franks even after the fall of the Avar Empire. Only
after two and a half centuries of continual warfare did the Germans
remain victors.
Considerably more than thirty tiny Slav tribes in the former Old
Germania from the Danube to Mecklenburg are mentioned there in four
groups1. Not one of the groups forms a State, each is only seldom and
temporarily united when war threatens, otherwise it is divided into little
clans bitterly hostile to one another. Each little clan dwells huddled
close together in hamlets and little villages amidst marsh and a dense
forest zone through which go roads only passable for pack-horses in dry
seasons of the year, provided at the entrance to the forest zone with gates
and abattis'. And if the enemy forced his way in notwithstanding, the
people fled to their numerous earthworks, civitates. The Obodritzi in
Mecklenburg alone had 53 such civitates and the same number of duces,
and were actually regarded as invincible.
After the time of Charles the Great war with these Slavs was perma-
nent. Thanks to the protection of the mountain range and their peaceful
acceptance of Christianity, the Bohemian group maintained itself and
finally combined into a powerful Bohemian kingdom. On the other
hand the remaining three groups, really some dozen of Lilliputian clans,
succumbed to the Germans who always found allies among them, some-
times among the Obodritzi, sometimes among the Lyutitzi. Thus the
Elbe Slavs (save some small remnants) were exterminated or Germanised.
1 (1) The Bohemians: Doudlebi, Chekhove (Chekhs), Luchane, Lemusi, Pshovane,
Kharvati, Zlichane, etc. (2) The Sorbs east of the Saale and Elbe: Goleshintzi,
Nishane, "Selpoli," Lubushane, Lupoglavtzi, Zharovane, Trebovane, Milchane, Susli,
Glomachi, etc. (3) The Lyutitzi or Veletove, Wiltzi: Morichane, Sprevane, Brizhane,
Stoderane, or Havelane, Kyechane, Ukrane, "Redari," Dolenchane, "Kyzini,"
Chrezpyenyane, (Jznoim, Volini, Rani, etc. from the Sorbs to the Baltic. (4) The
Obodritzi: Reregi, Vagri, Polabi, Smolintzi, [GJinyane, Varnovi, Drevane, etc. in
Mecklenburg and its vicinity.
2 The Slav apostle, Otto of Bamberg, on his journey entered "a terrible
enormous forest which divides Pomerauia and Poland. . . . This wood had not been
traversed before by any mortal, except that the Duke [of Poland] in earlier years,
before he had conquered the whole of Pomerania,. . . had cut a way for himself and his
army by felling and marking the trees. Following this marking, with great difficulty
on account of the enormous snakes and wild beasts,. . . and on account of the marshes
that impeded the vehicles and heavy wagons, we traversed the forest in six days. "
Herbord, n. Chap. 10.
## p. 455 (#487) ############################################
Defensive Power of the Slavs 455
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 oppres-
sion of the German Government1. 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. 11 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. 11 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, n. 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, n. Chaps. 10, 25, 40.
## p. 456 (#488) ############################################
456 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 Riigen—and gave them the appearance of a pirate
people. Helmold reports that the men of Riigen 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 enter-
prises 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 spoil to measure themselves against them. " We
see here a remarkable fusion of the viking pirates, Altaian herdsmen and
Slav peasants on the Island of Riigen. 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 trans-
planted by the Avars, for here too we find a noble class of vitezi.
Giesebrecht excellently characterises the Baltic Slavs: "A mixed
## p. 457 (#489) ############################################
Political Impotence of the Slavs 457
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.
## p. 441 (#473) ############################################
The Roumanians living with the Slavs 441
winter wherever was convenient for them. We know most about the Old
Servian State, where the Vlakhs constituted an important element and
a rich source of income for the sovereign and the other landlords. By
them the larger mountain pastures were made the most of and indeed
devastated and disforested by the reckless grazing-off of the new growth,
by the searing of the grass to freshen the pasturage, and by the peeling
of young beech-trees as a substitute for honey to sweeten milk foods1.
They provided the State with excellent horses, of small stature but
hardy, and good cavalry for the army. They managed also the com-
merce, for it had to be a caravan trade with pack-horses, because most
of the mountain ranges run parallel with the sea and were then impassable
for wagons. The Vlakhs themselves traded in wool, skins and the famous
Vlakhish cheese which had to have a definite weight for Ragusa, and even
served as a substitute for money. In return they chiefly brought sea-
salt. By this trading the Vlakhs acquired knowledge of the world, and
became far superior in experience and shrewdness to the boorish Slav
peasant. They grazed the mountain pastures (planina) to the height of
3000 ft. , from the end of April to the middle of September, and then
slowly made their way, often taking two months, to winter on the coasts
on account of the mild snowless climate and the salt which splendidly
nourishes the sheep. They lived chiefly on milk and cheese. Their
chief enemy was the ice when it locked up the grass in early spring.
Thousands of sheep then starved and the richest man might become a
beggar in a few days. As they had no fixed settlements, they could not
easily be enslaved by the landlords, and after payment of the grazing-tax
they enjoyed freedom of movement without restraint. They themselves
were a heavy burden for the peasantry, especially through their destruc-
tion of the cornfields. Thus peasants and herdsmen were in opposition,
there was no intermarriage between them, and the State had to regulate
the wandering people and to protect the peasants with draconic laws.
The Emperor Dushan's law-book of 1349 states: "Where a Vlakh or an
Albanian camps in a village district, there another who comes after him
shall not camp; if he camps there by force, he shall pay the fighting-fine
(100 hyperpyres, that is fifty gold ducats) besides the value of what he
has grazed off". '" Even the Ragusans in Dalmatia, although they were
entirely dependent for their trade with the interior on the Vlakh caravans,
complained bitterly of the mischief they did when they wintered in
Ragusan territories, and finally forbade them to winter there.
All the more must the Avar nomads have oppressed the subjugated
Slav peasantry, for here the Avar was master, and the peasant was without
rights and protection. The Avar tribes as wandering herdsmen amongst
1 Roumanian herdsman life described by Ponqueville, Voyage, 11. pp. 208 ff. , 2nd
ed- pp. 382 ff. Jirecek, Das Furxtentum Bu/garien, pp. 181 ff. —The almost universal
bareness of the soil on the chalk mountains is much more due to the wandering
herdsmen than to the Venetian demand for timber for shipbuilding.
## p. 442 (#474) ############################################
442 Avars with the Slavs
the West Slavs could not graze their herds in connected winter-quarters
as in the steppes, because the snow lies deeper and longer in central
Europe. Neither had they there, as in Dalmatia, mild coasts rich in
salt and free from snow—the best imaginable winter-pasture—and so
they had to break up and live scattered in the Slav villages where the
peasantry had to store up grain and hay for them during the summer
and convert even the villages into suitable cattle-pens. This is pointed
to by the very small Slavonic round villages with one single exit, which
are common in Bohemia and as far as the Baltic, and which still preserve
the character of closable cattle-pens1.
Compared with the Slavs, the Avar oppressors were very few in
number, and could not therefore always master them. Now and then
these became restive, and refused obedience. The Khagan, occupied in
many distant places, did not always find leisure to chastise them, and
thus many Slav tribes gained their liberty.
There were, however, differences among the Avars themselves, who
were only held together by the iron hand of the Khagan. They were
but a mixed multitude. Where there was a prospect of rich booty they
followed him joyfully, but where no treasure allured them—e. g. in 602
against the poor but warlike Antae—they simply refused obedience and
deserted to the Romans. According to " Mauricius" such desertion was
a common event, and it helps to explain why the Khagan did not repeat
his victorious marches against the Frankish kingdom till the year 596a.
Avar hordes were indeed very loosely held together, and some fell
away and established small States on the old basis of Slav servitude.
The dissolution began as early as 608 in consequence of the successful
revolution of a part of the north-west Slavs and the formation of a Slav
union under Samo. By this the Avar hordes distributed among the
Elbe Slavs between Bohemia and the Baltic were permanently cut off
from the main horde in Hungary.
After the dissolution of the great Avar State the Avars and the
Bulgars themselves remained as a noble class, which finally became
Slavised and nationally absorbed in the subjected peasantry. In
Dalmatia as late as the tenth century the Avars were still sharply dis-
tinguished from the Croats. The mare-milking grand-prince north of
the Carpathians in the ninth century may indeed already have become
Slav, but by origin he must have been Avar. Strange was the fate of a
Bulgar horde which later than 641 fled to Dagobert. The Bavarians
1 Illustrated by Meitzen, Siedlung, i. p. 52, n. pp. 259, 362, 450-6, 485, Atlas 87
and explanatory map.
2 This irruption of the Avars into Thuringia in 596 was due to outside pressure, for
since 593 the Avar Slavs in what is now Roumania had been hard pressed by the
Romans, and even the Avars' own territory in the Hungarian steppe was threatened.
Something very pressing in the north-west of the Avar State must have therefore
occurred to compel the Khagan to abandon the south-east and to leave the Slavs
there to themselves.
>
## p. 443 (#475) ############################################
Dissolution of the Avar Empire. The Zupans 443
massacred them and only seven hundred escaped with their families
under Alciocus into the Marca Winidorum (Carantania), where they
lived many years with the Slav prince Walluc. This Alciocus must be
identical with the Alzeco who with his entire army—evidently stragglers
from Hungary—came peaceably to Italy and received from the Lombard
king Grimoald (662-672) extensive waste territory in the Abruzzi
mountains north-east of Naples. Although these Bulgars learnt vulgar
Latin, at the time of Paulus Diaconus they still retained their mother
tongue intact. This is natural, for only when they wintered in Apulia
did they find it necessary to use the vulgar Latin of the peasants, while
in the summer-pastures on the mountains they were by themselves. It
is therefore quite conceivable that their descendants did not forget their
original language till much later.
The organisation of the South and West Slavs in the centuries that
followed is also Avar and Bulgarian. A number of titles of rank of the
Altaians, Bulgars, Avars, Chazars and other West and East Turks (in
Chinese Turkestan), Utigurs and Mongols, have survived, and many of
these were borrowed early from Iranians and particularly Persians.
Many of these titles, some peculiar to the Altaians, some borrowed by
them from Iranians, are to be found among the Slavs. At the head of
an Altaian empire was the Khagan (East Turks, Avars, Chazars, etc. )
or Khan (Bulgars, Cumans, etc. ), and as successors of the Chazar Khagans
as conquerors of the Russian Slavs, the first princes of the Scandinavian
Varangians-Russ bore the title Kogan (in Arabian sources khaqan Ros).
The Turkish title boyla (Magnate) is found in Bulgar-Slavic and
Russian (bolyarin). The common Slav word for " Sir," gospodar, came
from Altaic, where it is a Persian loan-word—Middle Persian gospand-
dar, "owner of sheep"—the Altaian masters of the Slavs were indeed
shepherds; hence the change in the significance of the word. Of the
remaining titles which have come from Altaian into Slav the most
important are hipan (pronounced zhoopan) and pan (the latter coming
from gUpanU). Both are to be found in the forms tywirav and Koiravos
in inscriptions on monuments which the Bulgar khan Omurtag (814-831)
had erected to his deceased high officials who bore these titles. Both
are obviously Persian loan-words in Altaian, although the original
Persian words cannot be restored. The second (Jcopan) occurs among
the Patzinaks (xottov) also, but zupan was common to several Altaian
peoples in various pronunciations. An important historic criterion is
offered by the fact that certain titles of rank are pronounced yabgu,
yugur (Avar), yopan (Avar) in Eastern Turkish, but in western
dialects jabgu, %ovpyov (Bulg. ), frvrrdv (Bulg. ). Among the Slavs whom
the Avar khagan Baian had settled on the west front of his Empire, we
find on the Elbe and Saale, and then in the Alps and on the Adriatic,
zupans; but in the centre on the Danube in the district of Linz, a
iopan (pronounced yopan) Physso is mentioned in the year 777. This
## p. 444 (#476) ############################################
444 Zupans and Zupa
means that Baian placed the right wing of his west front against the
Saxons and Franks, and the left wing against the Lombards, under
Bulgarian zupans, but the centre against the Bavarians, under Avar
yopans. How important it was for Baian to settle his western front
against the Germans with warlike elements can be seen from the appear-
ance of a second warrior class, that of the Germanic vikings, among the
Sorbs on the Saale {vicazi), and among the Serbo-Croatians in Illyria
(vitezi). But it is also possible that before the invasion of the Avars
this Slav folk dominated by vikings had been subjected by a Bulgarian
horde, who set themselves over them as zupans, somewhere in their
home in Transcarpathia, and were then dismembered by Baian, and
transplanted together with his zupans and vikings to distant regions.
Before the time of Bulgars and Avars there were still no zupans
among the Slavs with whom the Byzantines came into contact, but
Germanic rlkses, and not till the year 952 is there a statement by Con-
stantine Porphyrogenitus, "These peoples, Croats, Serbs, have no princes
(op^oj/Ta? ) but zupans as a kind of elders (fovn-avot/? yipovra^) just as
the other Slav lands have. 11 In 965 Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub says exactly the
same of the "Awbaba11 [of Wollin] dwelling on the Baltic at the other
end of the Slav world, though he does not actually use the word hipan.
Among the Alpine Slavs (Slovenes) neighbouring on the Croats in
South Styria we also meet with a very numerous zupan class in
the fifteenth century under which the common peasantry were
placed. Among the Servians the "zoupanoi gerontes" mentioned by
Constantine were the princes of the individual clans, and one of them
made himself grand-zupan (archon, archezoupanos, megas zoupanos,
magnus comes) of the whole people. Similarly, the independent princes of
the Elbe Slavs (not yet subjugated by the Germans) were named by the
chroniclers duces, principes, sehiores, promiscuously; Ibrahim calls them
the elders. After the German subjugation the seniores = eldesten = supani
of the Elbe Slavs, namely the Sorbs in the modern kingdom of Saxony,
were still the highest class of the Slav population, having their posses-
sions in fief, being under feudal law, dispensing justice, and only pledged
to serve their lord in war on horseback; thus they came nearer to the
German nobility than to the other Slav peasantry. In Mecklenburg,
the land of the Obodritzi, the feudal village magistrates—the former
zupans—were expressly reckoned among the vassals of the country.
It cannot therefore be doubted that the zupans of the Elbe Slavs
also were principes, dornini, landlords before their subjugation.
With zupan is connected zupa (Slav, zupa, Lat. suppa), that is the
district under a zupan, which among the Serbs was a principality, but
among the Slovenes of Lower Styria at the time of the German dominion
zupa denoted only a village district. Here the zupans finally dwindled
to village-chiefs, and then the word signified their office, officium suppae
or the zupan estate. The great Servian tribal-ifwpa and the little
## p. 445 (#477) ############################################
The Zupa. The Alpine Slavs (Slovenes) 445
Slovenish xillage-zupa formed in a certain sense an economic whole, in that
all dwellers in the zupa-district possessed right of pasture; consequently
the zupa was here an undivided grazing-district throughout which
the agricultural rotation proceeded as long as there were no permanent
fields, and as long as the cornfields opened by clearing or the burning of
a piece of forest and again abandoned after their exhaustion became
derelict and once more forest-land. In consequence of this general right
of use by the inhabitants the word zupa in Servia became personified,
and signified also the whole of the inhabitants entitled to the right of
pasture—and formally of clearing too—the compastores, conterranei, so
to speak. So long as the Avars were lords in the land, and so long as
they remained wandering herdsmen, the requirements of their pasturing
and their tyranny were decisive; the enslaved Slav peasantry could place
their fields only where it suited their masters, and there could be no idea
of a peasant right of clearing. In the Balkan peninsula the nomad
shepherds wintered with their herds on sunny snowless sea shores, and
for this reason in Dalmatia the word zupa denotes a sunny land where
snow does not fall or where it melts rapidly. Some such districts—
standing winter-quarters of the nomads—finally retained the word as
their name. Among the Carinthian, Bohemian, and Polish Slavs we
find no such zupans and no such zupan, for here peasant dynasties
arose through peasant revolutions and the zupans had to give way.
But the name itself remained, or was borrowed anew from neighbouring
Slavs, and htpan in Bohemia signified a high state official, and zupa on
the one hand is beneficium, and on the other the office connected
with it. The members of the highest Bohemian and Polish nobility
had the title pan (originally gupari). This word has no connexion
with zupan, but arose from a title kopan attested by a Bulgarian
inscription as before mentioned.
The Avars and Bulgars naturally tolerated no other dominus among
the directly dominated Slavs, they were themselves the zupans, and as
zupans remained as domini after the break-up of the Avar Empire,
and indeed among the Sorbs and Alpine Slavs, and here and there
were very numerous, so that they are to be considered as the Avar and
Bulgar dominating class Slavised by the lapse of time, and no longer
nationally different from the subject people.
From the conglomeration of Slavs planted by the Avars in the
Eastern Alps was formed the people of the Slovenes (Carantani). They
extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Danube, and from East Tyrol
deep into Hungary. As they had the Avar main horde at hand on the
Danube and the Theiss, they were most deeply enslaved. Alter the/
destruction of the Avar kingdom by Charles the Great their social)
organisation appears greatly changed. In Lower Styria south of Cilli
as late as the fifteenth century they were under an uncommonly numerous
hereditary zupan class, and even in the smallest hamlet there were one,
## p. 446 (#478) ############################################
446 Social History of the Slovenes
two, three, or four zupans. On the other hand, south of this in some
districts of Carniola and north of the Drave in Lower Styria (in the
dominium of Arnfels) there was no such zupan class at all. There (in
Carniola) the village-presidents (also called zupans) were chosen, but
only village-magistrates—likewise called zupans—appointed for a fixed
period of time, by the village peasantry, here (in the Arnfels dominium)
they were nominated for a certain time by the landlord. In what is
now Eastern Carinthia too there was no zupan class; the land was
ruled by a peasant duke.
In the various doomsday books (Urbar) we find all the villages
belonging to the landlord concerned with a definite statement of
the number of the peasant estates, and the enrolled zupans with all
the dues and services. These villages originated at various times, some
before and some after the German occupation, and we can determine
many which were Old Slavic. Those which were first established by the
Germans, even when they were colonised with Slav peasants, are for the
most part large and often very regularly and artistically laid out in
German fashion, and their dues too are purely German. They cover most
of the broad valleys and river plains. The carefully planned villages of
the plains are therefore new. In another area of the large districts
their origin is uncertain; their nucleus may be old, but they were
remodelled, and enlarged by the attachment of new clearings. Yet
other districts are so markedly non-German that they must be pre-
German. These are not really villages, but tiny hamlets. Large
villages were unknown to the early Slavs, and the districts of the Elbe
Slavs are thickly set with little villages; the Serbs likewise, for the
most part, live in hamlets and isolated farms; the Bohemian and Polish
large villages are later foundations after the German fashion, and the large
Russian villages were only formed from small villages in modern times.
At the head of almost every village in Lower Styria and Carniola
whether large or small, old or new, there is a zupan, and even the mayor
of Laibach (Slav. Lyublyana), the capital of Carniola, bears this title.
Thus, since the German occupation, the expression zupan covers various
meanings among the Slovenes to which the magistrate's office is common,
but with different rights and duties. In a Slovene village first established
by the Germans—usually large—the zupan is nothing more than an
ordinary magistrate^W&r, magister villae, living in a farm exempt from
taxes, as a rule two hides (praedia, mansi, hubae). But in tiny little hamlets
of the TufFer domain, the zupan—who here too has everywhere two hides
(praedia)—cannot be a judex, magister villae, as he pays tribute, and in
certain hamlets he is the only inhabitant, and therefore has no one to
preside over. Indeed, in the neighbouring domain, Rann-Lichtenwald,
in 1309 there were also villages with two, and in 1448 with even three
and four zupans; two magistrates in a village belonging to one and the
same landlord would be absurd. Here the zupans considerably increased
## p. 447 (#479) ############################################
V
The Zupans in Lower Styria 447
during the 1S9 years, and, where there was formerly one, three or four
occupied the paternal inheritance either undivided or in divided estates.
As they all bore the title, but only one of them could be magistrate of
the village, zupan here signified the member of an hereditary class and
not the holder of an office. These zupans paid far more tribute than
the peasants on estates of equal size, the higher taxation consisting in
swine, subsidiarily swine-pence—this proves that they had greater rights
of pasture than the peasants.
The old Slovene zupan is a village-magistrate only where there (
are peasants under him. What was he originally? What he was
among the Elbe Slavs (senior) and the Serbs (princeps, dominus), viz.
landlord, as descendant of the Avaro-Bulgar herdsman class. Under the
German dominion he lost his former seigniorial character; the Germans
seized a considerable part of the territory, especially what was unculti-
vated, including the wasted plains and valleys, and left what remained
to those whom they found there—up to that time nomad zupans and
their Slav peasants—reckoning two hides (praedia) for a zupan and one
for a peasant. In consequence the zupans were so huddled together
that they were forced to give up the wandering herdsman life, and as
they could no longer keep large herds, they had to adapt themselves to
husbandry, contenting themselves with a smaller flock of sheep, and
finding compensation in swine-breeding. Their former monopoly in
cattle-breeding was also abolished, as under the Germans the peasants
also were allowed to engage in cattle-breeding though not to the same
extent as the zupans. This is shewn by the taxation. The peasants
still remained subordinated to the zupans, but they were newly dis-
tributed among them, with the land, so that a precisely defined number
of peasants was allotted to a definite group of zupans. Thereupon each
group of zupans shared the peasantry allotted to them according to a
definite principle—evidently hereditary. This follows from the fact that
the percentage of zupans and peasant hides is repeated in several districts
remote from one another, although the individual zupans appear so very
unequally provided with peasants, some indeed having none at all.
Thus we can see how the German domination forced the former
wandering herdsman to become a settled cattle-breeder and little by
little a grower of grain, and how the cattle-breeding of these zupans
was preponderant up to late times. Their social position was in earlier
times by no means slight: in a list of witnesses (1322) a zupan was not
cited among the peasant witnesses but mentioned before the burghers
of Laibach1—thus he was at least equal to them in rank. In the
thirteenth century in the manorial estates of Tuffer and Lichtenwald
one of the village zupans acted as Schepho—chief official of a larger
administrative district—and this also points to the higher position of
a zupan.
1 Levee, in. p. 73, or Peisker, Beziehungen, 159 [345].
## p. 448 (#480) ############################################
448 The Carinthian Peasant-State
As has been already mentioned, in many districts of Camiola and
Styria there was no zupan class at all and no permanent zupans, but one
of the peasants was made village-magistrate—equally called zupan—
from time to time and enjoyed in return a certain remission of dues1.
But this has nothing to do with the hereditary zupan of Tuffer and
Lichtenwald, where there were settled zupans paying large taxes, even
four in one and the same village belonging to one and the same landlord.
It will have been seen that a change took place in the signification
of the word zupan, and at the same time a change in the position of the
peasant population in general, a change different according to place and
time, and further developed and differentiated by the unequal pressure
of their lords, by continual colonisation under new conditions, and by
the decay and resettlement of entire villages. The unpretending peasant
who was entrusted for a time with the office of village-magistrate had
as little in common with the old Slovene zupan as the Frankish horse-
boy (marescallus) with a great French or German marshal.
While thus the former Avaro-Bulgar herdsman nobility,even if divested
of overlordship and turned into a peasantry, maintained itself under
the German domination in the sixteenth century in a position distinct
from the remaining peasantry and in certain districts of Lower Styria as
a numerous hereditary class, it disappeared in the neighbouring province
of Carinthia long before the German occupation through revolts of the
enslaved peasantry. As we have already seen, these latter had heavy
burdens to bear in providing their tormentors with supplies of food and
fodder, and giving themselves up to be massacred as befulci in countless
wars, while the Avar harnessed their wives and daughters like beasts to
his wagon, violated them systematically, destroying their family life and
indeed reducing their whole existence to the level of brutes. Thus,
destitute of all social ties the peasantry revolted; though many risings
were stifled in blood before one was successful. And now after ages of
servitude a part of the great Slav world was cheered by the sun of a
golden freedom, not this time to fade into anarchy. From the midst of
the victorious peasantry a prince was chosen to be a just judge and to
guarantee the husbandry of the people, and especially the cattle-breeding
till then forbidden to them. And that things should ever remain so, a
wonderfully ingenious ritual was devised for the installation of each new
prince—always a peasant. And as there was as yet no fixed hereditary
succession, and a certain time always elapsed before a new prince was
installed, the interregnum was provided for by recognition of the
eldest member of a certain peasant family as eo ipso vicegerent. So
tenaciously did the people cling to this ritual that even the splendid
German dukes of Carinthia had to humble themselves to assume the
1 Milkowicz, in MitteUungen, u. pp. 23 ff. ; Peisker, Die Mere Sozial- und
Wirtschaflsverfassung der Alpenslaven, iv. pp. 32 f.
## p. 449 (#481) ############################################
Installation of the Prince in Carinthia 449
ducal throne as peasants. In the year 1286 the ritual—markedly
modernised and relaxed—was of the following nature:
For the installation of the duke the oldest member of a certain
peasant family, the so-called duke-peasant, had to sit on the "prince's
stone" which lies in the Zollfeld near Klagenfurt. The new duke, in a
coarse peasant's dress with a staff in his hand and leading a bull and a
mare, is conducted by four nobles before the carelessly seated peasant,
who has to question those nobles in the Slovene tongue and to find out
who the man is, whether he is a just judge, mindful of the country's
well-being, of free standing and full of zeal for the Christian faith.
This they must swear to. Thereupon the peasant says: "By what
right shall he remove me from this my seat? " They answer: "With
60 pfennigs, these two brindled beasts, and the peasant dress which he
is wearing; he will also make thy house tax-free. " Thereupon the peasant
gives the duke a light cuff on the cheek, bids him be a good judge,
vacates the seat for him, and takes the beasts. The duke takes his seat
upon the stonfe and swings his drawn sword in all directions. He also
takes a drinjfc of fresh water.
successful revolt of these Slovenes from the Avars took place, as
we shallWee presently, about 608. The first prince of the Carinthians
whose nawie is known was Walluc (after 641), dux in Marca Vinedorum,
independent of the Avars as well as of the Bavarians and I,ombards.
About th«e year 745 the Avars attempted to subjugate the Carinthians
afresh, ar*ld their duke, Borut, sought help from the Bavarians. These
indeed djjjove off the Avars but made the Carinthians dependent on the
FrankisMf king, under native princes, of whom the last mentioned is
WoinimMir in 796; and Arnulf (emperor 896), if not the first, was one
of the JiOfirst German princes who as duke of Carinthia submitted (in
880) toM the peasant ceremony.
The** peasant revolt was not limited to Carinthia, rather it
eaibracJHed a great part of the Avar Slavdom from the Alps to the
Erzjw'flfcirge and the Vistula, for the Bohemian dynasty of the Premyslids
and *Jjthe Polish dynasty of the Piasts were of peasant origin. The
Pivn^iyslids were always conscious of this, and Lutold (died 1112),
vaW ll prince of Znaim (Slav. Znoyem), had the chapel which he built
decorated with frescoes which still remain, among them the
of the election of his ancestor with the hazel-stick, the bast-bag,
bast-shoes. Pulkava, court-chronicler to the Emperor Charles IV,
; of Bohemia (1346-1378), states that Pfemysl's bast-shoes and bast-
were " to this day" carefully preserved. "And on the day of the
coronation of the Bohemian king, the canons and prelates in procession
receive the king that is to be and shew him the bast-shoes and lay the
bast-bag on his shoulders so that he may be mindful that he sprang
from poverty and may not be presumptuous. " This is a poor survival of
a more ample ritual which, unlike the Carinthian, had lost all its original
<:. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XIV. 29
## p. 450 (#482) ############################################
450 Peasant-Princes in Bohemia and Poland
significance, for it did not originate in Prague but was transferred
there after the union of the State of the Lemusi with that of the
Chekhs of Central Bohemia. And it was disagreeable to the later
Pfemyslids.
King Wenzel I (1230-1253), who was German in feeling,
was ashamed of his origin, causing his peasant kinsmen to be driven
from Staditzi and giving the village to the Germans. But he does not
seem to have touched the bast relics; the kinsmen appear to have
recovered their heritage, for in the year 1359 the Emperor Charles IV,
as king of Bohemia, declared to the sons of Radosta, co-heirs of Staditzi,
that they and their forefathers had always been free heirs of their
tax-free estates; but as these had not long since been illegally given
away and burdened with taxation by his father, the blind King John
(who fell at Crecy, 1346), Charles IV now restores their rights, but
retains as crown-land the field which Pfemysl had once tilled single-
handed (it is to this day called the "king's field") and charges the
petitioners with the care of Premysl's hazel stock, all the nuts from
which they have to present yearly at the royal table as a n>emorial of an
event so remarkable. \
The peasant origin of the Pfemyslids and the Piasts cannot bean
invention of the chroniclers. No high-born dynasty would believe such
a story, rather it would make short work of such blasphemy aagainst its
kingly majesty. The chroniclers merely decked the fact outfwith the
fruits of their reading in ancient classics, and the Church interpreted it
in the sense of Christian humility. w
The peasant prince, Premysl, was not prince of the whole of Bohemia—
which even much later consisted of several little States—but tJf^riguially
only of the little people of the Lemusi round Bilin in Norf*th-West
Bohemia, in immediate proximity to the Sorb clan Glomachi (\ German
Daleminzen) in the modern kingdom of Saxony. These Glomjx^hi like
the Lower Styrians remained under zupans, but their social organisation
was more complicated. Under German domination they fell iff lto the
three classes: (1) Supani (Lat. seniores, German eldesten), (2) H^Biiluwii
(Slav, x'icazi) in equis servientes (servants on horseback, esquires).
(3) the Smurdi, correctly smrdi, that is the "stinkers,"" the coi
peasant-folk. In addition, there were corresponding to the Gei'
occupation members of German nationality: (4) the Censuales (Ge:
lazze), and (5) the Proprii (heyeri). The three Slav classes were
the special jurisdiction of zupans with Slavonic as official langu!
The Daleminzian zupans and smurdi corresponded to the two Lo
Styrian classes, the zupans as former domini (seniores) of AvarO'
origin; they were likewise very numerous but their percentage cannot
now be ascertained. On the other hand, the Withasii were of Germanic \j
Norse origin. The Vikings somewhere in Russia must have subjected
the forefathers of the Glomachi, and been transplanted with them by the
Avars after the year 563 to serve as a barrier against the Franks on
-
## p. 451 (#483) ############################################
The Sorbs. Peasant Revolution in North Bavaria 451
the Saale and the Elbe. Had they been later conquerors, they must
have stood above the zupans, but here the zupans (Avars and Bulgars) were
the foremost rank, and therefore the latest conquerors, and at the time
of the German domination the vicazi took rank next beneath them as
feudal peasants liable to cavalry service and standing with the zupans
under feudal law. In West and South Europe too the Vikings on
stolen horses were, as is well known, as terrible horsemen on the land
as they were pirates by sea.
Thus we find both among the Alp-Slavs and the Slavs on the Elbe
a. peasant State in immediate proximity to hipan States. Either then
the peasant revolution was only successful in places, or the Avars having
rallied and enslaved the peasantry of Styria afresh remained there as
zupans, and then together with the peasantry fell under German
dominion. "Fredegar11 says: "At this time Samo, a Frank, joined himself
with several merchants, went to these Slavs to trade, and accompanied
their army against the Avars. He shewed remarkable bravery, an
enormous number of Avars fell, he was chosen king, ruled successfully
thirty-five years, and beat the Avars in all following wars. '"
The "Fredegar " compilation incorrectly puts this event under the year
623, for the author of this chapter wrote in 642 or 643, and at that
time Samo must have been already dead1. If the length of his reign is
correctly given, the revolt must have taken place in 605 at the latest.
In the year 601 the Avars were depopulated by a disease just as the
Khagan had driven Constantinople to such straits that the citizens were
making ready to migrate to Chalcedon in Asia Minor. Soon after he
was almost destroyed in five defeats at the hands of the Romans in
Hungary itself, the heart of Avardom. These plunderers were already
face to face with extinction when the Emperor Maurice was dethroned
in 602, and were only saved from destruction by the incapacity of his
successor Phocas. But their supremacy was now at an end. Samo's
revolt thus falls between 602 and 605, most probably in the year 603.
Then followed the revolt of the Croats and the Serbs, and finally the
Bulgar khan Kubrat on the lower Danube made himself free between
635 and 641.
Of Samo's State only this is certain, that it bordered on Thuringia*,
1 Schniirer, in Collectanea Jriburgensia, fasc. ix. pp. 113, 233.
2 Fredegar, pp. 74 f. [631] "it was told to the Frankish king Dagobert that an
army of the Wends (Slavs) had hroken into Thuringia. . . . Then appeared envoys of the
[then still free] Saxons before Dagobert. . . . They promised to oppose the Wends and
to protect the Frankish territory on the Wend border. . . . [632] Then the Wends at the
command of Samo. . . harried Thuringia and other provinces. . . . " This proves that Samo's
kingdom bordered on the Thnringian province and did not lie in Bohemia, which
lies too far from the Thuringian Gau (jpagus) for attacks from that quarter (v. map).
Older historians placed Wogastisburg, one of Samo's strongholds, at Tans (at the
foot of the Bohmerwald)—called in older sources Tugast—the point at which invaders
often entered Bohemia from Bavaria. The Burberg near Kaaden in North-West
ch. xiv. 29—2
## p. 452 (#484) ############################################
452 The Slav Kingdom of Samo
and embraced the Main and Kedantz (Regnitz) Slavs'. Thus it lay in
what had been Frankish territory, for Samo himself acknowledged:
"The land we inhabit and we ourselves are Dagoberfs, yet only
in case he will maintain friendship with us. " Before the irruption
of the Avars into the Frankish kingdom in 562, it extended over
the Saale to the Elbe. The Sorbs on the Saale and the Elbe as well
as the Slavs on the Main and Regnitz were not transplanted (by the
Avars) into this previously Frankish district till later. Thus from this
time to the founding of Samo's State scarcely forty-four years elapsed,
so that he could not have ceased to be conscious of the fact that his
land was really Frankish property. Here, in the country of the Regnitz
Slavs, the traces of the wintering of the Avars are to this day inefface-
able. On the lower Aisch, which flows from the south-west into the
Regnitz between Erlangen and Bamberg, broad visages with protruding
cheek-bones, deep-set eyes, and black hair are still to be met with.
But the Slavs were originally blue-eyed and fair, and were only
black-haired and mongoloid where their women were systematically
violated by the Altaian conquerors, and this "Fredegar'" attests expressly
of Samo's Slavs. The Avars (or Bulgars) must therefore have wintered
here also. The same is the case with the Bohemian Slavs, whose black
hair struck the traveller Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in 965 as peculiar. Whether,
or how far, Samo's kingdom extended into Bohemia is not known; it is,
indeed, improbable that it did so, for even in historic times no State
has ever existed on both sides of the Fichtelgebirge and the Bohmerwald.
As late as the ninth century several independent Slav clans existed in
Bohemia, and they assuredly took part in the Slav revolt against the Avars,
for there is as little trace of a zupan class in Bohemia as in Carinthia.
It is therefore to be presumed that the Slav tribes did not proceed singly
but in combination against the Avars, and that an ephemeral federation
was formed, with Samo at its head. But we have no right to speak of
'Samo's Empire, and the assumption that his kingdom embraced Caran-
Ijania, the country of the Alpine Slavs, rests only upon the Arumymuxix
COnvermme Bagariorum et Carantanorum—a party production of the
Salzburg Church directed against the Slav apostle St Methodius, and
employing for its own purposes Fredegar's notice of Samo—for the
association of Samo with the Carinthian Slavs would prove the latter
to be members of the Frankish kingdom, and therefore of the Salzburg
diocese.
Bohemia, Chekh: Uhoit, is now proposed. The first suggestion is based on the con-
jecture Togastitburg and is therefore to be rejected, the second overlooks the fact that
tlhoii was then pronounced Ongoii, so that we ought to find Ungastisburg or some-
thing similar in Fredegar.
1 Mention of them does not occur again before 846: "In the land of the Slavs
who dwell between Main and Redanz [Slav. Radnica] called Moinwinidi and
Ratanzwinidi. "
## p. 453 (#485) ############################################
Influence of Avar Slavery 453
The Slav revolts here described were successful only as far as the
Erzgebirge (which divides Bohemia from the kingdom of Saxony), for
immediately north of this we find the Sorb clans on the Saale and Elbe
dominated even after this time by zupans. In Samo's time the Sorb
prince Dervan was subject to the Frankish king. By the successful
revolt of the Bohemians, and especially of the Lemusi, the hipans who
dominated the Sorb people were cut off" from the main horde of the
Kbagan in Hungary, so they voluntarily submitted to the Frankish
king in order to escape the fate of their clansmen in Bohemia and on
the Main-Regnitz. But when Dagobert was defeated by Samo, Dervan
fell away from the Franks to Samo, who was well satisfied not to have
as enemies the dreaded Sorbs, and let alone their two dominating
classes, the Avar hipans and the Viking vicazi. This explains how a
hipan prince could still remain prince under Samo, the deliverer of
the peasants. We now see that the whole of Slavdom, with perhaps
the sole exception of the North-Russian peoples, was swept along in the
Avar tornado. This expansion of the Avar power from the Peloponnesus
to the Baltic is not inconceivable, for there were Altaian empires greater
still, that of the descendants of Chinghiz-Khan and the kingdom of the
Huns, the predecessors of the Avars, which stretched from the Don to
the lower Rhine.
The view often put forward, that the Slavs themselves became effective
warriors in the cruel Avar school, runs counter to the facts. Neither
from the Germans nor from the Romans did they permanently wrest a
span of ground; in spite of their enormous expansion their part is purely
passive. The German migrations took place under the lead of remark-
able and heroic figures; at one time the Germans even gave the Roman
Empire its wisest statesmen and most powerful military commanders,
but among the millions of Slavs who flooded Germany and the East
Roman Empire we do not find the name of even one moderately
prominent warrior. Those mentioned by the Byzantine sources, like
Khilvud, Dabragezas, Mezamir, Ardagast, Piragast, Musok, cannot be
compared with the German army leaders, and also they were obviously
not real Slavs, but Slavic descendants of partly Germanic and partly
Altaian conquerors. The earliest prominent personality among the Slavs
is the Frankish Samo, and the most powerful Slav prince, the Russian
Svyatoslav (died 972), was in spite of his Slav name a pure-blooded
German, son of Ingvarr and Helga (Slav. Igor, Olga) and one of the
greatest German heroes in history.
"Mauritius11 and other writers describe the Slavs as they must
have been in their marshy cradle, without organisation, without
military discipline, and consequently quite unsuited for any serious
offensive movement. But on the defensive when well led they were
excellent in a style which was forced upon them by the continual man-
hunts of the pirates and the mounted nomads. Of a military schooling
## p. 454 (#486) ############################################
454 Elbe Slavs at war with the German Empire
from the Avars there is no trace except that they learned plundering
from their tormentors. On the offensive they could do nothing against
the Romans, though the Romans likewise could do nothing against the
defensive of the Slavs. For example, in 593-4, when the imperial army
advanced victoriously over the Danube, it was unwilling to winter in a land
where the cold was unbearable and the barbarians were invincible on
account of their great numbers. In the defensive power of the Slavs lay
also the strength of the Avar-Slav positions on the Baltic, Elbe, and
Saale against the Franks even after the fall of the Avar Empire. Only
after two and a half centuries of continual warfare did the Germans
remain victors.
Considerably more than thirty tiny Slav tribes in the former Old
Germania from the Danube to Mecklenburg are mentioned there in four
groups1. Not one of the groups forms a State, each is only seldom and
temporarily united when war threatens, otherwise it is divided into little
clans bitterly hostile to one another. Each little clan dwells huddled
close together in hamlets and little villages amidst marsh and a dense
forest zone through which go roads only passable for pack-horses in dry
seasons of the year, provided at the entrance to the forest zone with gates
and abattis'. And if the enemy forced his way in notwithstanding, the
people fled to their numerous earthworks, civitates. The Obodritzi in
Mecklenburg alone had 53 such civitates and the same number of duces,
and were actually regarded as invincible.
After the time of Charles the Great war with these Slavs was perma-
nent. Thanks to the protection of the mountain range and their peaceful
acceptance of Christianity, the Bohemian group maintained itself and
finally combined into a powerful Bohemian kingdom. On the other
hand the remaining three groups, really some dozen of Lilliputian clans,
succumbed to the Germans who always found allies among them, some-
times among the Obodritzi, sometimes among the Lyutitzi. Thus the
Elbe Slavs (save some small remnants) were exterminated or Germanised.
1 (1) The Bohemians: Doudlebi, Chekhove (Chekhs), Luchane, Lemusi, Pshovane,
Kharvati, Zlichane, etc. (2) The Sorbs east of the Saale and Elbe: Goleshintzi,
Nishane, "Selpoli," Lubushane, Lupoglavtzi, Zharovane, Trebovane, Milchane, Susli,
Glomachi, etc. (3) The Lyutitzi or Veletove, Wiltzi: Morichane, Sprevane, Brizhane,
Stoderane, or Havelane, Kyechane, Ukrane, "Redari," Dolenchane, "Kyzini,"
Chrezpyenyane, (Jznoim, Volini, Rani, etc. from the Sorbs to the Baltic. (4) The
Obodritzi: Reregi, Vagri, Polabi, Smolintzi, [GJinyane, Varnovi, Drevane, etc. in
Mecklenburg and its vicinity.
2 The Slav apostle, Otto of Bamberg, on his journey entered "a terrible
enormous forest which divides Pomerauia and Poland. . . . This wood had not been
traversed before by any mortal, except that the Duke [of Poland] in earlier years,
before he had conquered the whole of Pomerania,. . . had cut a way for himself and his
army by felling and marking the trees. Following this marking, with great difficulty
on account of the enormous snakes and wild beasts,. . . and on account of the marshes
that impeded the vehicles and heavy wagons, we traversed the forest in six days. "
Herbord, n. Chap. 10.
## p. 455 (#487) ############################################
Defensive Power of the Slavs 455
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 oppres-
sion of the German Government1. 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. 11 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. 11 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, n. 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, n. Chaps. 10, 25, 40.
## p. 456 (#488) ############################################
456 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 Riigen—and gave them the appearance of a pirate
people. Helmold reports that the men of Riigen 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 enter-
prises 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 spoil to measure themselves against them. " We
see here a remarkable fusion of the viking pirates, Altaian herdsmen and
Slav peasants on the Island of Riigen. 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 trans-
planted by the Avars, for here too we find a noble class of vitezi.
Giesebrecht excellently characterises the Baltic Slavs: "A mixed
## p. 457 (#489) ############################################
Political Impotence of the Slavs 457
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.
