ead. The German dances were in great request among the ladies of
the court.

In this way a numerous German nobility was established in the country,
for these courtiers or adventurers and their relations soon became
landed proprietors, and the Sclavonian institution of the Castellan was
replaced by the German feudal tenure. But an influx of priests and
monks tended still more to the promotion of German habits; a stream of
them poured incessantly from the west into the half-civilized country.
Monasteries, cloisters, and other pious establishments sprang up
rapidly, and became as it were the strongholds of German life; for the
brotherhoods of the west sent their best and most distinguished
members, and continued to furnish them with learning, books, and
spiritual energy. The princes, nobles, and clergy soon became aware of
the difference between German and Sclave labour; under the latter,
large tracts of country yielded little produce, except wood from the
forest and honey from the heath. The landed proprietors therefore, with
due regard to their own interests, introduced everywhere German labour.
Thus in Silesia the great truth first dawned upon men, on which rests
the whole system of modern life, that the labour of free men, can alone
give stability to a nation and make it powerful and prosperous. The
landed proprietors gave up the greater part of the claims which,
according to the Polish law, they had upon men who dwelt on their
property, and which were so exorbitant that they derived but little
benefit from them. The princes granted the inhabitants as a favour, the
right of founding cities and villages in accordance with German law,
that is to say, free communities, and this privilege was eagerly sought
after, especially by the ecclesiastical bodies, such as Cistertians,
Augustines, &c.

A regular method was pursued in founding these communities; but the
fate of the villages was very different from that of the cities in the
latter part of the middle ages. In the cities, as the body politic
continually gained fresh strength, their rights and independence
increased; the burgesses acquired by purchase the mayoralty, with its
rights and jurisdiction; whilst, on the other hand, the villages were
unable to protect themselves from the exactions of the landed
proprietors and the burdens laid upon them by their princes; they lost
much of their freedom, and many rights they had possessed at their
foundation in the thirteenth c