68 PIAST
ruszenie, the levee-en-masse or feudal host, emerged in the form which was to
last for almost five hundred years. Regiments were organized on the basis of
'clan standards' for the members of leading families, and of 'district standards'
for the lesser knights, royal officers, and village mayors. Its strength in 1340 has
been estimated at n to 12,000 knights, not counting peasant and town infantry,
and was rising towards 20,000 by the end of the Piast period.
Conflict with the Empire began in the era when the Polish tribes formed part
of a vast swathe of pagan Slavonic settlement stretching from the Dnieper to the
Main and the Weser, and when the repulsion, subjugation, and conversion of
the heathen was regarded as the Christian duty of the neophyte Germans. In 754
when the Englishman St. Boniface, the 'Apostle of the Germans', was buried at
the Abbey of Fulda, the lands between the Elbe and the Odra had long been an
area where Germanic tribes intermingled with Slavs. In the tenth century, with
the consolidation of the marches under Otto the Great and the activities of
Wichman, Count of Saxony, and Hodo, Margrave of the Ostmark, the conflict
moved closer to the Polanian heartland. In the decade 963-73, Mieszko I paid
tribute to the Emperor, probably in recognition of Otto I's disclaimer of imper-
ial rights in Pomerania. In 972, at Cedynia (Zehde), he fought and defeated
Hodo, and six or seven years later, having suspended payment of tribute during
the disputed German succession, repulsed the Emperor's punitive expedition.
This was the era during which Mieszko undertook the conquest of Pomerania,
whilst Danish Vikings established themselves in their fortress of Jomsburg on
the island of Wolin. On the whole, the Piasts enjoyed a stable relationship with
the Ottomans, and shared in their hospitality towards the pagan slavs of the
Marches. Relations deteriorated after the premature death of Otto III in 1003,
and it seems possible that Boleslaw Chrobry, as a partner in the brief Roman
dream of Otto's 'Renovatio Imperii', may have enjoyed greater sympathy in
some parts of Germany than Otto's successor, Henry II. In 1002-3, 1007—13,
and 1015-18, Boleslaw Chrobry battled the Saxons for possession of Lusatia
and Milzi (Milsko). In these campaigns, he ravaged the marches as far as the
Saal; the Emperor laid siege to Niemcza (Nimtsch) south of Wroclaw. At the
Treaty of Budziszyn (Bautzen) in 1018, the disputed territories were granted to
Boleslaw in fief. They were soon lost after his death. Ninety years later, in 1109,
the Emperor Henry V again attempted to cross the Odra, but was thwarted by
the obstinate resistance of Glogow (Glogau). The royal fortress situated on an
island in the river, continued to resist, even, when Polish hostages were sus-
pended from the walls of the siege towers. In the ensuing period of fragmenta-
tion, the Emperors were free to intervene in Polish affairs with relative ease. In
1146, Conrad III led an expedition to endorse the claim of his brother-in-law,
Wladyslaw II Wygnaniec (Ladislaus the Exile, 1105-59), Prince of Silesia, to the
Piast principate. In 1157, Frederick Barbarossa repeated the exercise with simi-
lar lack of success. Thereafter, Silesia was regarded in Germany as an imperial
fief. Other Polish principalities were obliged to pay tribute. But the internal
weakness of the Empire increasingly left its eastern policy in the hands of its