Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/20

x forms which are more primitive than those retained in Sanscrit, and with the single exception of the Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland it has preserved in actual use the most primitive forms of Aryan speech, though its grammatical methods are not so primitive as some used in the Gaelic.

The Prussians had a great love for their own primitive racial religion and for their independence; this religion and this independence they considered as inseparable. They inhabited a portion, or what was considered a portion, of the territory of Konrad, Prince of Mazovia, who tried to convert them; but instead of succeeding in his attempt he met with failure, and the Prussians took revenge by invading that part of his territory which was purely Polish and Christian, and which was known as Mazovia, immediately south of and bordering on Prussia, which, as stated already, touched on the Baltic and extended from the Vistula to the Niemen. The chief town of Mazovia was Warsaw, which became afterward the capital of Poland.

Among measures taken by Konrad to convert Prussia was the formation of a military order called the Brothers of Dobryn. These Brothers the Prussians defeated terribly in 1224.

In 1226 Konrad called in the Knights of the Cross to aid in converting the stubborn Prussians, and endowed them with land outside of Prussia, reserving sovereign rights to himself, at least implicitly. The Knights, however, intended from the very first to take the territory from Konrad and erect a great German State in the east of Europe on Slav and Lithuanian ruins. They had no intention of performing apostolic labor without enjoying the highest earthly reward for it, that is, sovereign authority. Before he had received the grant from Konrad, the Grand Master of the Order obtained a privilege from