in
Holstein, and the Polabae and Linones on the banks of the Elbe and
Leine; but were united under a common chief or king. They and their
eastern neighbours the Wiltzi, (Germ. _Wilzen_, Lat. _Veletabae_,) with
whom they lived in perpetual warfare, were the most warlike and
powerful among the Vendish tribes. The Wiltzi or Pomeranians lived
interspersed with the Kassubes, a Lekhish tribe, between the Oder and
the Vistula, and were subjugated by the Obotrites in A.D. 782. It was
however only by the utmost exertions, that these latter could maintain
their own independence against their western and southern neighbours,
the Germans. Conquered by Charlemagne, they regained their
independence under his successors, and centuries passed away in
constant and bloody conflicts and alternate fortunes. In the middle of
the twelfth century, however, they were completely subjugated by Henry
the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria. He laid waste their whole
country, destroyed most of the people, and compelled the few remaining
inhabitants and their prince, to accept Christianity from his bloody
hands. In A.D. 1167 he restored to this latter, whose name was
Pribislaus, a part of his kingdom, and gave his daughter Matilda in
marriage to the son of Pribislaus, who, a few years later, was made a
prince of the empire, and was thus gained over to the German cause.
His descendants are the present dukes of Mecklenburg; and it is a
memorable fact, that these princes are at the present day the only
sovereigns in Europe of the Slavic race. German priests and German
colonists introduced the German language; although we find that Bruno,
the chief missionary among the Obotrites, preached before them in
their own language. The Slavic dialect spoken by them expired
gradually; and probably without ever having been reduced to writing,
except for the sake of curiosity when very near its extinction. The
only documents of it, which have come down to us, are a few incomplete
vocabularies, compiled among the Polabae and Linones, i.e. the
inhabitants adjacent to the Elbe, in Slavic _Labe_, and to the Leine,
in Slavic _Linac_.

Long after the whole region was perfectly Germanized, a few towns in
the eastern corner of the present kingdom of Hanover, were still
almost exclusively inhabited by a people of Slavic race, who in the
seventeenth century, and even to the middle of the eighteenth, had
preserved in some measure their language and habits. But, since the
Germ