In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Germans, under the Saxon emperors, carried on a war of conquest, almost of extermination, against the Slavi, from the Baltic along the Elbe to the Styrian and Carinthian Alps. The number of war-prisoners and peaceful settlers carried away and enslaved was immense. Many of them were sold in the Baltic ports, others in Venice, others again were distributed in the interior of Germany, and in such vast numbers that from them arose the general designation of "_slaves_" to all chattels of whatever race; and such was the origin of the word, which was afterward incorporated into all the languages of Europe.[20] Subsequently the harshest feudal tenures regulated the condition of the rural population of Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary, which did not terminate till the events of 1848-'49 put a final end to villeinage (_robot_) in all these countries. The Poles and Russians were unaffected by feudalism in any of its social or constructive developments. Up to the seventh and eighth centuries, the Poles continued to elect their chiefs from all classes of the people--merchants and workmen. The prince or chief Leschko was a merchant; while Piast was a wheelwright, and became the founder of a long line of kings. But wars created the men of the sword, or nobility; and then in Poland, as everywhere else, the nobles began to encroach upon the rights and property of the weak, and to oppress the agriculturists, the free yeomen (_kmets_, _kmetones_), and the husbandmen (_gospodarsch_); but neither of these were ever transformed into chattels. When the Poles became a distinct historical nation, chattelhood was disappearing from Europe. Their contests were principally with other Slavic nations and with the Germans; and no traces are to be found of the enslavement of prisoners of war. Their heathen neighbors were the Prussians, the Iadzwingi, and Lithuanians; and captives made among them were used either in public labors or strictly in domestic service, as were also prisoners of war in after-times made from the Tartars and Turks. When these prisoners became Christians, their chattelhood was at an end. The name for a war-prisoner is _niewolnik_, "one deprived of the exercise of his will." When the Polish agriculturists were subjugated by the nobles, and their condition became that of villeins, or _adscripti glebæ_, they began to be called _kholop_ (a name most likely borrowed from the Russian), also _poddany_, "subject;" and the rural relations had the general name of _poddanstwo_, "subjection."