entury were only restored to them in the
beginning of this present one.

It was thus that after the beginning of the thirteenth century a new
German race sprang up with a surprising rapidity, bordering on the
Oder, between the Reisenberge and the plains of Poland. The emigration
continued for a considerable period, and the quiet struggle between the
German and Polish races lasted long after the former had gained the
predominance; indeed, in some districts it has not yet ceased. But for
the most part the pliant Sclave race of Silesia peaceably adopted the
new customs, as it was very advantageous to put themselves under German
law. And thus the new race showed in its dialect, manners, and
education a new phase of the German popular character which one may
perceive has arisen from the union of the German and Sclave races.

The people who thus sprang up were not destined to an easy life, and it
required all the excitability they derived from the Sclaves, together
with the higher capacity they inherited from the Germans, to preserve
them from annihilation. Driven in like a wedge between Bohemia and
Poland quite to the vicinity of Hungary, they contended with all these
nations, dispensing blows and receiving them from their stronger
neighbours. They were never able to attain to the independence of a
united people. However strong particular communities and confederations
became when it was a question of external enemies, the Silesians were
almost always divided.

In the fifteenth century the country was visited by that terrible
scourge the Hussite war. It is in that fearful time, when the fanatical
warriors of the chalice burnt the Silesian villages and cloisters, and
threw everything ecclesiastical into the flames, when the land was
devastated for nearly a century by the horrors of war, that the
peculiar Silesian character may be traced in contradistinction to that
of the races dwelling in the adjoining country.

Whilst in the regions adjoining the Oder, and still farther off by the
shores of the Baltic, the German race, proud of their recent conquest
over the Sclaves, desired to improve themselves by union with Germany,
a great Sclave population had arisen in the middle of the German
states, the toughest and most stable of all that family: it was firmly
incorporated in the Empire, and had long been under the influence of
German culture. Prague in the beginning of the fifteenth century might
have passed for a German city,