64 PIAST
who were able to accumulate land and revenues on a similarly extensive scale.
As from the early thirteenth century, the warrior caste was headed by the class
of miles (rycerz) or 'knight'. Possessed of sufficient land and manpower to keep
himself in horses, armour, and servants, he lived to fight, and to earn the grati-
tude of his prince. In Malopolska, there are traces of the semi-knightly class of
wlodyka or 'esquire', which was obliged to work its lands for its living and
could only take to the battlefield in the most pressing circumstances. The great
mass of heredes might only have provided one or two footsoldiers from several
families of landholders. All these people might consider themselves members of
the szlachta or 'fighting class'. But it was not till the very end of the Piast era that
they began to develop notions of an exclusive, autonomous estate.
At the bottom of the social scale were the slaves, organized in decades and
legions, and designated in the documents as decimi. Originating as prisoners of
war, they were settled on plots of their own and worked the larger estates. They
resembled the servi casati of the Frankish kingdoms of a century or two earlier,
and as such could be bought and sold. Some of the earliest surviving bills of
exchange dating from 1226 and 1246 mention transactions involving 'girls and
cattle'. Yet by then, slavery was already in retreat. The Church opposed the sale
of baptized slaves; and slaves were eager to be baptized. By this time, a numer-
ous sector of free or semi-free peasants had long since been in existence, and rep-
resented a growing proportion of the rural labour force. The towns, too, though
still small, attracted important concentrations of administrators, merchants,
and craftsmen.
In the thirteenth century, fundamental social changes occurred as the result
of colonization. The colonists were drawn partly from foreign immigrants, and
partly from locals who reorganized existing settlements along new lines. The
main stimulus to the movement came from particular areas of western and
northern Germany, which had long been able to supply settlers for the eastern
marches, and which were racked by the added threats of overpopulation and of
intensifying feudal services. Colonization took two different directions — the set-
tlement of rural villages and the establishment of incorporated towns. It was
helped by the initiative of Polish princes, whose lands were seriously under-
populated and not infrequently devastated by the ravages of war and of Mongol
raids. By offering conditions of tenure superior to those prevailing in Germany,
and by appointing a professional zasadzca (lokator) who could seek out, trans-
port, and organize the newcomers, an energetic prince could transform the
strength and economy of his inheritance in the space of a few years. In the case
of village settlement, the pace was set by Henryk the Bearded, Prince of Silesia,
who in 1205 launched a campaign to attract no less than ten thousand peasant
families into some four hundred new villages. Each family was to receive 1 lan
or 'manse' of arable land; pasture and forest were to be held in common. All ser-
vices and dues were to be waived during an agreed period of foundation. After
that they were to be limited to military service, to rents and tithes, paid partly in
cash and partly in kind, and to manorial service and fortress repair occupying 2