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At the entrance to these rivers, however, and along the borders of the Baltic were the great maritime communities, the chief members of the Hanseatic League, including the before-mentioned Wendish group and the cities of Bremen and Hamburg. Yet not these alone, although they were in some respects the most important.

The inhabitants of Prussia were originally not Germanic, but rather Slavish in type; and, indeed, to-day in the forest of the River Spree, on which Berlin is situated, and only about fifty miles from that city, there still dwell descendants of the original Wendish inhabitants of the country who speak the Wendish language.

In the pursuit his archers "pinned the hands of the rowers to the oars with their arrows" and crippled them, so skilful had much practice made them. Turn the leaf of Saxo's chronicle, and we find him under Rügen with his fleet, protecting the now peaceful Wendish fishermen in their autumn herring-catch, on which their livelihood depended. Of such stuff was made the bishop who

The Wends, in presence of such things, could not but consent more and more to efface themselves, either to become German, and grow milk and cheese in the Dutch manner, or to disappear from the world. The Wendish Princes had a taste for German wives; in which just taste the Albert genealogy was extremely willing to indulge them.

In that case by many bargains, some with bloody crowns, it had been settled, If the Wendish Dukes died out, the country was to fall to Brandenburg; and here they were dead.

This enterprising people ventured, without a compass, to steer under the North Pole round to the most northerly point of Russia. From the Wendish towns the Netherlands received a share in the Levant trade, which, at that time, still passed from the Black Sea through the Russian territories to the Baltic.

So the Teutonic chief, with his gesitha, comites, or select band of knights, who had received from him, as Tacitus has it, the war-horse and the lance, established himself as the natural ruler and oppressor of the non-riding populations; first over the aborigines of Germany proper, tribes who seem to have been enslaved, and their names lost, before the time of Tacitus; and then over the non-riding Romans and Gauls to the South and West, and the Wendish and Sclavonic tribes to the East.

Margaret's, Wendish Street; now happily recovered, thanks to the skill of Dr. Saxham, from an illness, held at no recent date to be incurable. Mr. Fraithorn has undertaken the onerous duties of Chaplain to the Hospitals in charge of the Military Staff. It was gratifying to observe," she continues, "that the Colonel commanding graced the occasion by his martial presence.

Meanwhile among the Wends Gottschalk's son revived his father's authority and contact with German civilisation; but after 1131 the Wendish kingdom fell to pieces, and from that moment we can mark the steady advance of German power to the Oder.

The captains wail over the trap and abuse him for getting them into it. Absalon, disdaining to answer them, leads his ships in single file straight for the gap where the Wendish fleet lies waiting, and gets the King to attack with his horsemen on shore. Between them the enemy is routed, and the cowards are shamed.