Kruszwica

History

This article incorporates text from "The Political History of Poland" (1917) by Edward Henry Lewinski-Corwin, a publication now in the public domain. Owing to the frequent raids of the Norsemen, the people of this region early organized an effective military force of defense. Under the protection of the military bands and their chiefs, the fields could safely be cultivated and the little, fortified towns (grody), which became places for the transaction of intertribal business and barter, for common worship, and for the storage of goods during a foreign invasion could be successfully defended and the wrongs of the people redressed. The military bands and their leaders soon became the unifying force, and the fortified towns, the centers of a larger political organization, with the freeman (Kmiec or Kmeton) as its base. The first historical town of this nature was that of Kruszwica, on the Lake of Gopło. Kruszwica formed part of Poland since its establishment in the 10th century. Some historical writers attribute the change in the political organization of the primitive Polanie tribe to the influence of foreign commerce, which for geographic reasons had early centered on the Gopło. At that period the lake was a very large body of water with a level at least ten feet higher than at present. The many small lakes now existing in the region were in all probability a part of Gopło, and the valleys of the vicinity constituted the bottom of the lake. There are many reasons to believe that such was the hydrography of the section in that remote age. In his description of Gopło, written five hundred years ago, Jan Długosz, a Polish historian, speaks of a vast body of water, leading us to believe that the lake then was much larger than it is at the present time. There is reason…