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The world looked at her deeds and remembered that this child of the Andegavian house and Polish Piasts , this daughter of the powerful Louis, a pupil of the most fastidious of courts, and also one of the most beautiful women on earth, renounced happiness, renounced her first love and being a queen married a "wild" prince of Lithuania, in order to bring to the cross, by his help, the last pagan nation in Europe.
Under that of her early monarchs, the Piasts and their senate, she sat beneath an almost patriarchal sceptre, they being native and truly parental princes. John Sobieski was one of this description by descent and just rule.
He was a descendant of the Piasts of Szlonsk and the son of Bolko, Prince of Opole. Zbyszko had heard of him at the court of Witold; and now while standing behind the princess and Danusia, he recognized the archbishop by his abundant hair which being curled, made his head look like a kropidlo.
Soon the prince appeared and mounted his horse; behind him was an attendant with a crossbow and a spear so long and heavy, that very few could handle it; but the prince used it very easily, because like the other Mazovian Piasts, he was very strong. There were even women in that family so strong that they could roll iron axes, between their fingers.
In old Fenian times, namely, the days of Finn and his companion knights, the Piasts, however, roamed the country, devouring men and women and cattle in large numbers, and some of the early heroes are recorded to have been swallowed alive by them and then to have hewed their way out of their entrails.
Christianity was introduced by the fourth of the Piasts, A. D. 964, and it was a sovereign of the same House, Boleslas I., the Brave, who gave a solid foundation to the Polish State. He conquered Dantzig and Pomerania, Silesia, Moravia, and White Russia, as far as the Dnieper.
But, in sad process of time, "strangers of Rome, of Gaul, and of other nations," in whose veins not a drop of Sclavonian blood flowed, found means to successively seat themselves on the throne of the Piasts, the Jagellons, and the Sobieskis, of ancient Sarmatia; and the revered fabric fell, as by an earthquake, to be registered no more amongst the kingdoms of the world.
The Dukes of Liegnitz were Sovereign-Princes, come of the old Piasts of Poland; and had perfect right to enter into this transaction of an ERBVERBRUDERUNG with whom they liked. So that the matter seemed now complete: secure on all points, and a matter of quiet satisfaction to both the Houses and to their friends.
DEMETRIUS. I tender fifty, who will give their oaths, All Piasts to a man, and free-born Poles Of spotless reputation, each of whom Is ready to enforce what I have urged. There sits the noble Prince of Sendomir, And at his side the Castellan of Lublin; Let them declare if I have spoke the truth. ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN. How seem these things to the august Estates?
But the undisputed truth is, Duke Friedrich II., come of the Sovereign Piasts, made that ERBVERBRUDERUNG, and his Grandson's Grandson died childless: so the heirship fell to us, as the biggest wig in the most benighted Chancery would have to grant; only the Kaiser will not, never would; the Kaiser plants his armed self on Schlesien, and will hear no pleading.
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