an knights, their masters and oppressors; and the
Vendish population was by degrees reduced to the miserable condition
of serfs.

In the year 968, the first attempt was made to convert them to
Christianity, partly by the sword of the conqueror, partly by the
instruction of Christian missionaries. But more than one century
passed away, before the Christian religion was fully introduced among
them. Benno, bishop of Meissen, who died in A.D. 1106, at the age of
ninety-six, acquired by his activity in the work of converting the
Vendes, the name of the apostle of the Slavi. The obstinate resistance
with which the Christian religion had been rejected by them, can
easily be explained by the unjudicious, nay flagitious way, in which
it was presented to them by the Germans; who came among them, the
sword in one hand and the cross in the other; and exacted moreover
from them the sacrifice of their language, their customs, their whole
nationality in exchange. The naturally childlike and submissive
disposition of the Slavi rendered them in all other regions, as we
have seen, willing to receive the Christian doctrines, more especially
when their superiors themselves acted as their apostles, as was in
some measure the case with the Russian Vladimir, Jagello in Lithuania,
etc.[2] But the mode described above, which was adopted by the German
heroes, not only among the Vendes, but also some centuries later among
the old Borussians, could not but rouse all their feelings of pride
and nationality to a decided resistance. Even when the Germans
refrained from force, their means of conversion were equally opposed
to the spirit of Christianity. Bishop Otho of Bamberg, for instance,
was accustomed, when on his missionary travels, to have fifty or more
wagons in his train loaded with cloth, victuals, and other supplies,
in order to reward on the spot those who submitted to baptism.[3]

But the holy light of Christianity, even after the Vendish tribes had
embraced its doctrines, did not clear up the darkness of their fate.
The whole humiliating relation between masters and serfs in Germany,
which still degraded the last century, was unknown to the free ancient
Germans, among whom only the prisoner of war was a slave; and is
derived from the period of the submission of the Vendes. The Germans
indeed seem to have considered them as an inferior race, and treated
them accordingly. The contempt with which the old historians speak of
them, is revolt