Duchy of Silesia

The Duchy of Silesia was the Piast principality of the Oder valley, lasting in name from 1138 to 1742. Created, like Masovia, from Bolesław III's quartering of Poland, with its capital at Wrocław, it barely stayed whole: within a century it had split into Liegnitz, Glogau, Oppeln and a dozen quarrelling splinters, each with its own duke and its own German town law. The splinters drifted into Bohemia's orbit, and in 1327 most Silesian dukes did homage to the Bohemian crown, confirmed when Poland renounced Silesia in 1335. For four centuries Silesia was a Bohemian, then Habsburg, mosaic of duchies, rich in cloth, coal and kings' ransoms. Frederick the Great ended the mosaic in one war: in 1740 he invaded without declaring, and by 1742 most of Silesia was Prussian, the old Piast lines long extinct and the Bohemian connection cut. The name lived on as a Prussian province and a battlefield of three more wars.