Excerpt from The Slavs of the War Zone After their conquests the Poles reduced the original inhabitants to a condition of serfdom, and the landowners-the great lords (pans) and the gentry (szlachta) - were alone recognized as the Polish people. Added to this social and political gulf was a barrier of religious hatred. The Poles were Catholics while many of their subject peoples belonged to the Orthodox Eastern Church. These obstacles to a national unity were utilized by powerful and unscrupulous neighbours and Poland as an inde pendent Kingdom had ceased to exist before the Napoleonic Wars changed the face of Europe. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.