Polabian Slavs

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Polabian Slavs, also known as Elbe Slavs and more broadly as Wends, is a collective term applied to a number of Lechitic (West Slavic) tribes who lived along the Elbe river in what is today eastern Germany. The approximate territory stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north, the river Saale and the Limes Saxoniae in the west, the Ore Mountains and the Western Sudetes in the south, and medieval Poland in the east. The Polabian Slavic tribes were initially independent and had their own princes. Since the 7th century, some of them were forced to recognize the supreme royal authority of the neighboring Frankish rulers, but their relations with Merovingian and later Carolingian and Ottonian kings and emperors were marked by frequent frontier conflicts and uprisings. From the 9th century onwards, they were largely conquered by rulers of Eastern Francia and in time integrated into the Holy Roman Empire. In the following centuries, the tribes became gradually assimilated through Germanization...

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