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Cornell University Library
DB 199.M75
3 1924 028 101 073
Worses of WILL S. MONROK
Turkey and the Turks - - - $3.00
In Viking Land: Norway, Its Peo- ples, Its Fjords, and Its Fjelds - 3.00
Sicily, the Garden of the Mediterra- nean -------- 3.00
Bohemia and the Cechs - - - - 3.00
L. C. PAGE ca. COMPANY
53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9240281 01 073
A PEASANT GIKL.
i
m
BOHEMIA AND THE CECHS
THE HISTORY, PEOPLE, INSTITUTIONS, AND THE
GEOGRAPHY OE THE KINGDOM, TOGETHER WITH
ACCOUNTS OF MORAVIA AND SILESIA
BY
WILL S. MONROE
AUTHOB OP "turkey AND THE TtFBKS," "iN VIKING LAND:
NOEWAY; its peoples, its fjords and its PJBLDS,"
"SICILY, THE GARDEN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
I
i
L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY BOSTON ^ ^ %J» MDCCCCX
\Aouroe^ \a1\1\ Sevjmour-^ \o^B
Copyright, X910, By L. C. Page & Company
(mCOBPOBATED)
Entered at Stationers'' Hall, London All rights reserved
First Impression, August, 1910
/
Slectrotyped and Printed by THE COLONIAL PSESS C. H. Simanda & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
"R.B.D.
DEDICATED TO
PROFESSOB FEANTISeK CXdA, Ph.D.,
OF THE UNIVERSITY OP PRAGUE, ONE OP THE AUTHOB'B OLDEST AND MOST ESTEEMED BOHEMIAN FBIENDS
FOREWORD
When one recalls the large number of popu- lar geographical works that have been pub- lished in recent times, it will surprise many readers to learn that this is the first general work of travel and description on Bohemia in English. It may not, therefore, be too much to hope that it will meet a real need; for clearly a country so old and so new as Bohe- mia has numerous claims on the travel lover.
The author's interest in Bohemia dates back nearly twenty years, when he began the trans- lation of one of the educational works of John Amos Komensky, one of the great spiritual leaders of the country. Subsequently at the request of Professor (now President) Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, he wrote a life of Komensky for the' Great Edu- cator Series.
These labours brought him in touch with the
vi Foreword
history and the literature of the country, es- tablished friendly relations with Bohemian scholars, and resulted in a number of visits to the ancient kifigdom, the most recent trip being an extended tour that included all the places of interest in the country.
As in his other travel-books in this series — Turkey, Norway, and Sicily — the author's aim has been, not merely to write a geographic treatise of Bohemia, but to give a general sur- vey of the developed and developing civiliza- tion of the kingdom- — the people and their ethnic characteristics, social and political in- stitutions, economic and industrial conditions, religion and education, literature, music, paint- ing, sculpture, architecture, etc.
While the human side of the subject has been most strongly emphasized, the geography and physical features of the country have not been neglected. The opening chapter gives a gen- eral survey of the topography of Bohemia, its mountains, plateaus, rivers, lakes, climate, flora, and fauna; three chapters are given to the city of Prague ; Carlsbad, Marienbad, and the other spa resorts have a chapter; the pro- vincial towns in the river basins and among the mountains, which form the natural boun-
Foreword vii
daries of the country, have a chapter, and the geography of Moravia and Silesia receives separate treatment.
The beginnings of the Bohemian nation, its relation to the other Slavic tribes and to the Keltic Boji and the Teutonic Marcomanni, its conflicts with avaricious Germans and barbaric Huns, and the transition from paganism to Christianity are briefly treated in the second chapter. The period of Charles IV, the Golden Age of Bohemian history, which witnessed the establishment of the Cech as a literary language, the foundation of the university of Prague, and the development of a national school of art, is the second historical chapter.
The great moral revolution, with Master John Hus, the patriot and martyr, as the lead- ing personality, and the terrible and desolating religious wars of the fifteenth century form the central themes of a third chapter. George of Podebrad, and the brilliant era which his reign inaugurated, the Thirty Years' War and the end of Bohemian independence, and the cen- turies of misfortune and oppression which followed this calamity complete the historical part of the book. On controverted matters, the author has followed Palacky, Tomek, Gindely,
viii Foreword
Helfert, Liitzow, and other recognized Bohe- mian historical authorities.
The seventh chapter of the book deals with the modern Bohemian renaissance and traces the buildiag of a new nation on the ruins of a glorious past. The removal, in the short space of fifty years, of two centuries of Ger- man alluvium, under which the Cechs were buried by the disastrous battle of the White Mountain, and the evolution of a virile and highly complex civilization, cannot fail to win the admiration of the modem world.
Two chapters are given to the people of the country — one to the Bohemians, their mental and physical characteristics, and one to the Germans and Jews. If the author has not painted the acclimated foreigners in glowing colours, it is because he has found the Bohe- mian specimens not very worthy representa- tives of their racial stocks. He passed two years as a university student in Germany, and has only the kindliest feelings for the Germans of the Fatherland; but he is forced to admit that the Germans in Bohemia constitute a not very likable species of the Teutonic genus.
Social institutions, including the Sokols, li- braries, and periodicals, are described in the
Foreword ix
tenth chapter ; religion, saints, and martyrs in the eleventh; schools, universities, and other educational institutions in the twelfth; lan- guage and literature in the thirteenth, and the fine arts — painting, sculpture, architecture, and music — in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters. Bohemia's contributions to the creative arts, as these chapters point out, give her an honourable place among the culture-nations of modern times.
Two chapters are given to the distinctly material side of Bohemian civilization — agri- culture, industry, and commerce; and the ap- pendixes at the end of the book provide definite information for the prospective traveller and point out some of the most important sources of information for readers who may wish to make further studies. For the use of the books listed in the bibliography the author is indebted to Mr. John Cotton Dana and his obliging colleagues in the Public Library at Newark, New Jersey.
Many Bohemian friends have aided in the collection and the verification of the informa- tion presented in the book, but the list is too long to print in this connection, and the obliga- tion must be discharged with a blanket-expres-
Foreword
sion of thanks. The two friends who so patiently read the proof of the book must, however, be named — Thomas Capek, Esq., a leading American Bohemian author, and Mrs. Clara Vostrovsky Winlow, the author's class- mate at Stanford University.
Although consistency has not always been possible, the author has for the most part employed Bohemian, rather than Grerman spelling of geographic names. This is con- trary to the practice of most American and English writers. There is however no good reason for the use of the German spellings. If places have not been anglicized, preference should be given to the geographic usages of the countries in which they are located. Amer- ican and English readers would clearly resent Venedig and Mailand for Venice and MUan in English books on Italy, and for precisely the same reason they should object to Kutten- berg and Wartenberg for Kutna Hora and Sedmihorky in books on Bohemia.
Will S. Moneoe.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
The Geography of Bohemia
Geographic individuality of Bohemia — Form of the coun- tnr — Mountain boundaries — The Ore mountains • — The Sudetic chain — Moravian mountains — The Bohe- mian Forest — The basin of the Elbe — Hills in the interior — The rivers of the country — Lakes and tarns — Climate — Rainfall — Forest area — Fruits — Minerals of the kingdom — Famous mineral springs — Fauna and flora — Population — Increase of the Bohemian element — Emigration to foreign countries — The principal cities — Prague and its suburbs — Small cities — Bohemians in the United States — Distribution of the Bohemians in America
CHAPTER II
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation
When the Bohemians occupied the country — Keltic Boj and Teutonic Marcomanni — Conflicts with the Avars — Social habits of the early Bohemian tribes — Chastity and faithfulness — Village organization — Local government — The legend of LibuSa — Pf emysl and the Bohemian dynasty — Attempts of Charlemagne to conquer Bohemia — Bofivoj I and the introduction of Christianity — The barbaric Huns — Invasion of Bohe- mia by the Germans — Reign of Boleslav the Cruel — Rise of Poland — Bfetislav I, the restorer of Bohemia —
xii Contents
First king of Bohemia — Skvonic liturgy replaced by the Latin — A meddlesome German emperor — Question of the celibacy of the Bohemian clergy — Internal dis- sensions — Frederick Barbarossa — The language ques- tion — Pfenaysl Otakar — German influence during the reign of Vdclav I — Ctonflicts with the Hapsburgs — German adventurers — Rudolph of Hapsburg — John of Luxemburg — Prince Charles 16
CHAPTER in
Pekiod of Chables rV
The golden age of Bohemian history — The qualities of Charles — His early training — National sympathies — Recognition of the Bohemian language — Foundation of the university of Prague — Artistic interests — Karlflv T^ — Prague enlarged — Beginnings of Carlsbad — The Golden Bull — The movement for church reform — Forerunners of Master John Hus — Conrad Waldhausen — Milifi of Kromffife — Matthew of Janov — -Thomas of Stitn^ — Commercial prosperity during the reign of Charles — Reforms inaugurated by the great emperor- king — Personal characteristics 37
CHAPTER IV
John Hits and the Moral Rbvgltjtion
Beginnings of the reign of Vdclav IV — Church scandals — Burden of taxation for churches — The schism in the Roman church and its effect on Bohemia — Rival pontiffs — Sale of indulgences — Opposition to indul- gences in Bohemia — Appearance of John Hus — His early life and training — The writings of Wycliffe — The Bethlehem chapel — Jerome of Prague — Reputed miracles — Chronic antagonism between Germans and Bohemians — The university as a factor in the contest — Decree of Kutnd. Hora and departin-e of German mas- ters and students — Conflicts with the Roman pontiffs —
Contents xiii
Rival popes — Venders of indulgences — Hus excom- municated and Prague laid imder interdict — Hus in exile — Sigismimd and the council of Constance — Hus promised a safe-conduct — The trial and martyrdom of Hus — Jerome of Prague also burned as a heretic — Effect of the news on Bohemia — Beginnings of the Hussite wars — The question of communion in both kinds — Death of Vdclav and political parties — Utra- quists and Taborites — The caUxtines — Nicholas of 5usinec — The crusade against Bohemia and John Ziika — Qualities of the great Bohemian leader — In- vading armies repulsed by Zi2ka — The Articles of Prague — Council of Basel grants religious autonomy to the Bohemians — Momentary peace — The guardian- ship of Ladislav SO
CHAPTER V
GeOBGE of PoDBBBaU) THE PkOTBSTANT KiNG
One of the most interesting epochs in Bohemian history — Struggle for supremacy during the minority of Ladis- lav — George of Pod&rad becomes regent — Disinte- gration of the Taborites — Question of religious rights again revived — John of Rokycan — An unconfiraied archbishop — Struggles with Rome — Brief reign of Ladislav — George of PodSbrad becomes king of Bohe- mia — Period of reUgious tranquillity — Renewed con- flicts and attempts to abrogate the Articles of Prague — Conflict with the papal legate — German party takes sides with Rome — George exconmiimicatea — Alliance with Poland — Death of King George — His qualities as a statesman — Confirmation of the Polish prince — Invasion of Bohemia by Matthew of Hungary — Vlad- islav and the papal party — Moral delinquency of the priests — Reign of King Louis — The reformation of Martin Luther — Ferdinand and the religious quarrels in Germany — Efforts to prevent the spread of Prot- estantism in Bohemia — Growth of the Bohemian Brethren — The wavering policy of Maximilian — Fer- dinand and the counter reformation — The Letter of Majesty 81
xiv Contents
CHAPTER VI End op Bohemian Independence
Rudolph deposed — Growth of Protestantism in -Bohemia
— Interpretations of the Letter of Majesty — Ferdi- nand and religious intolerance — Destruction of Prot- estant chxirches — Conflicts at Prague _ — Provisional government established — Jesuits banished by the Protestants — Maximilian of Bavaria comes to file aid of Ferdinand — Defeat of the Bohemians in the battle of White Mountain — Return of the Jesuits — Execution and exile of the Bohemian nobles — Property confis- cated — The Protestant religion suppressed in the king- dom of Bohemia — Destruction of the national literature by the Jesuits — Extension of the central authority — Ferdinand forced to recognize the historic rights of the Bohemians — Albert of Waldstein — His role in the Thirty Years' War — Invasion of Bohemia by the Swedes — The peace of Westphalia — The country ruined by the war — Maria Theresa — Enlightened despotism — Conquest of Silesia by the Prussians — Second expulsion of the Jesuits — Joseph II — Decree of religious toleration — System of serfdom modified — Leopold II and Francis — Napoleon and the Bohemians
— Metternich and the half century of reaction — Francis Joseph 107
CHAPTER Vn
Modern Bohemian Renaissance
Effect of the edict of religious toleration — The nobility and the modern movement — Foundation of the Bohe- mian National Museum — Literary activities — Jung- mann and Palack^ — Historic rights of the people emphasized — Tragic career of Karel Havlifiek — The refusal to form part of the German confederacy — The pan-Slav congress at Prague — Revolution of 1848 and its consequences — The concordat of 1855 — Aus- trian defeats — Proposed national parliament — An Austrian bureaucrat — Constitution of 1861 — The Aus- gleich of 1867 — Cisleithanian parliament — Declaration of the historic rights of the Bohemians — The rump
Contents xv
parliament and its collapse — Efforts to conciliate the Bohemians — Efforts to suppress the Slavs — More con- cessions — Bohemian faculties in the university of Prague — Extension of the use of the Bohemian lan- guage — The noisy pan-Germans — Count Aehrenthal and the outlook 133
CHAPTER VIII
The Bohemian People
Earliest traces of Slavic peoples in Europe — Divisions of the Slavic families — Bohemians first in point of culture
— Ethnic characteristics — Prominent physical features
— National costumes — Han^ks and Hordks — Not a religious people — Relation of church and state — Pun- ishment for sacrilege in Bohemia — Love for music — Marriage and Divorce — Industry and intelligence — Reading habits of the people — Civic and philan- thropic institutions — Government — Parliament of the kingdom — Inequalities in the electorate — Numerous political parties — Favours shown the Germans — Jews and business — Administration of justice — Austrian of&cials — Compulsory miUtary service — Taxation and the imperial budget — The monetary unit — Material progress of the Bohemians 156
CHAPTER IX
Germans and Jews in Bohemia
Foreign elements in the population of Bohemia — Effect of the destruction of the national language and literature
— Decrease in the proportion of Germans — Failure of the Germans to get a permanent foothold in the country
— Where they are found — Mixture of Germans and Jews — Common bond of union the dislike of the Bohe- mians — Antiquity of the Hebrew colony in Prague — Josephtown and its historic monuments — The Jewish quarter of Prague in the sixteenth century — Naming of the Jews by Maria Theresa — ■ Special privileges enjoyed by the children of Israel — Why the Jews of Bohemia are Germans rather than Bohemians . . 177
xvi Contents
PA6B
CHAPTER X
Social iNSHTtrTioNs: The Sokols
Beginniligs of the Sokols — Early leaders in the move- ment — The first unions — Organizations in the provin- cial towns — Opposition of the imperial government — Part played by gynmastics in the association — Relar tion of the Sokols to the national movement — District organization and supervision — The jubilee — Intellec- tual and moral influence of the Sokols — Historic pilgrimages — International meets • — The tournament of 1907 — Strength of the Sokols — Library move- ment in Bohemia — PubUc libraries at Prague — The Bohemian Industrial Museum — Vojta NAprstek and his labours — What he did for libraries — The peri- odical literature of Bohemia and its influence ^ The daily journals of Prague — Weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies 189
CHAPTER XI
Religion, Saints, and Mabtybs
Nature of the paganism of the earliest inhabitants of Bohemia — Gods and goddesses — Ethics of the early religion — Introduction of Christianity by Greek mission- aries from Constantinople — Its adoption in Moravia — Earliest Christian churches — Conflicts with the Chris- tians in Germany — The use of the Slavonic liturgy and its approval by the early popes — Efforts of Pope Gregory VII to secure the adoption of the Latin liturgy — Spread of Christianity by Bof ivoj I and Ludmila — Canonization of Ludmila — Saint Vdclav — John of Nepomuk — His legend as related by the Jesuits — Not an historic character the verdict of modern historians — The martyrdom of Master John Hus — His zeal for church reform — • His service to the national language and literature — Jerome of Prague and his martyrdom — The Roman Catholic church in Bohemia — Relation of the church to the state — Ecclesiastical divisions of the kingdom — Protestants and Hebrews . . . 210
Contents xvii
CHAPTER XII
Education in Bohemia
Education in relation to the national movement — Komensk^ the great Bohemian educator — The " dark ages " following the end of Bohemian independence — Nature of the present elementary school system — Character of school buildings — Teachers and their training — The secondary school system — Gymnasia and real-schools — Weakness in the system of the education of girls — Technical and industrial education
— The university of Prague — Its influence during the mediaeval period — In the hands of Jesuits and Germans
— Revival of the Bohemian faculties — Influence on
the national life and development 233
CHAPTER XIII
Bohemian Language and Literature
Origin of the Bohemian language — The original Cyrillic alphabet — Adoption of tne Latin characters — Func- tion of the consonants — Two branches of the Bohe- mian language — Early historic development of a prose literature — Its destruction by the Jesuits after the Thirty Years' War — Question of the manu- scripts — Early Bohemian hymns — Kxistian and Cos- mos of Prague — Literary renaissance during the Hussite moral revolution — John Zi2ka — John Amos Ko- menskj- — Two centuries of intellectual barrenness — Dobrovsk^ and the commencement ^f the modern renaissance — Jungmann, KolMr, and SafaHk — Fran- tiSek Palack^ and the history of Bohemia — Ecclesi- astical censorship and its influence on literature — Hanka and Tyl — Dramatic literature — Modem Bohe- mian poets — Zeyer — SKdek — Cech — Vrchlick^ — Machar and Svoboda — Bohemian novelists — Critical and historical works — V16ek — BartoS — Masaryk — Scientific literature — Geography, travel, and descrip- tion— Recent historical writers — Count Liltzow . 249
xviii Contents
CHAPTER XIV
Painters and Paintings
Bohemia an art centre during the reign of Charles IV — The Prague school of painting — Fourteenth century artists — Theodore of Prague — The paintings in the Karliiv T^n castle — Destruction of Bohemian art by Joseph II — Revival of art traditions at the close of the eighteenth century — The academy at Prague and its first directors — Effect of the romantic movement on Bohemian artists — Differentiation of Cech and German art — The Manfes family—; New Bo- hemian society of fine arts — Hellich and Cermdk — Svoboda and Maixner — Josef Manfes and his followers — ZeniSek and AleS — Influence of France on the painters of Bohemia — Jaroslav Cermdk, Pinkas, and Bro^ik — The allegorical painters — Genre painters — Landscape painting and the young artists of to-day . 284
CHAPTER XV
SCUI/PTURE AND ABCmTBCTDRE
Few remnants of Gothic sculpture — Absence of monu- ments to great spiritual heroes in Bohemia — - Inartistic religious effigies — Statue of Charles IV — Modern Bohemian sculptors — VdclaV Lev^ — Josef Myslbek — Ludivik Simek — Seidan, Seeling, Popp, Kafka, and Mauder — Stanislas Sucharda and the Palack^ mon- ument — L. Saloun and the monument of John Hus — Minor sculptors — Bohemian mediaeval architecture — Architectural view from the Belvedere — St. Vitus cathedral — The abbey of St. George — The Charles bridge — The old Town Hall — The TSm church — Palaces at Prague*— Architectural interests at Kutnd, Hora — • Other Bohemian towns — Beginning of the modern architectural movement — Some of the modern architects — Hdvka, Zitek, Schultz, and Mocker . . 307
Contents xix
CHAPTER XVI
Bohemian Music and Composers
Music the best-known of the fine arts in foreign coun- tries — Its development during the mediseval period — Contributions of John Hus and the reUgious reformers — Bohemian hymnology — Effect of congregational singing in the vernacular — Sacred music of the Bohe- mian Brethren — Bfld Hora and the decUne of interest in church music — Folk-songs and foU:-dances — Chorals — Interest of the nobiUty in music — .Italian opera at Prague — First opera sung in the Cech — Beginnings of the modem school of national music — Smetana and his labours — ■ The contemporaries of Smetana — Antonfn Dvof dk — His early training and struggles — Tardy recognition of his work — Nature of his compositions — His fund of melody — Fibich and the lyric drama — His notable works — Kova- fovic and Foerster — Novdk and Josef Suk — Nedbal and the other younger composers — Writers on the philosophy, history, and aesthetics of music — Otakar Hostinsk^ — Music schools in Bohemia — Singing societies 322
CHAPTER XVII
Agbicttlttjke in Bohemia
Bohemia a rich agricultural country — Large amount of the land in the hands of the nobility — Big estates not intensively cultivated — Abolition of serfdom and its influence on agriculture — Sub-division of the farms — Size of the holdings — Scarcity of farm-labourers — Wages — How the small farmers supplement their earn- ings — Peasant industries — Home-made fabrics and peasant costumes — Influence of home-industries upon farm-labour — The Jew money-lender a menace to agriculture — Lingering effects of serfdom — Nature of the agricultural products — Advances made in horti- culture — Cattle-rearing — What education is doing for the farmer 346
XX Contents
CHAPTER XVIII
Inrustrt and Commekce
Bohemia one of the leading commercial countries in Europe ' — Plzen and the manufacture of beer — The liquor industry — Construction of locomotives and railway carriages at Prague — The textile industries — Paper — Bohemian glass ^ Chinaware and porcelain — Mineral products in Bohemia — The' coal fields — Iron — Diversified home-industries — ■ Lace — Prague the centre of the industrial life of the kingdom — Other industrial towns — The commerce of Bohemia — Exports and imports — Commercial relations with the United States — Means of transportation — Waterways, rail- ways, and highways 361
CHAPTER XIX
The Old Town op Pkagtje
Divisions of the city of Prague — The Old Town — Earliest bridges spanning the Vltava — The Charles bridge — Its towers and monuments — The old Town Hall — Chapel and council chamber — The T^n church -Alterations by the Jesuits — The Powder gate — Josephtown, the ancient ghetto — Old synagogue and hall — The oldest Hebrew burying-ground in Europe — Some noted tombs — The VySehrad, the acropolis of Prague — The basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul — Its legends — The church cemetery — An old Slavic monastery 376
CHAPTER XX
Hradcant: The Kremlin of Prague
The_ huge pile of buildings known as Hrad6any — For eight centuries the residence of the Bohemian kings — Erection of a royal palace here by Charles IV — Addi- tions by Vladislav II, Ferdinand I, and Rudolph — The noble Gothic hall of King Vladislav — The round
Contents xxi
towers and council chamber — The Cathedral of St. Vitus — Its Gothic choir — Tombs of the Bohemian kings — The chapel of St. Vdclav — Interior decorations — The church of St. George — Tomb of St. Ludmila — The Belvedere — Capuchin monastery and the church of Loretto — The abbey of Strahov — Palaces of the Bohemian nobility — The Waldstein palace — Its gar- den-refectory — Bohemian Ethnographic Museum — The Petf in — Picturesque houses — The gaudy Jesuit church of St. Nicholas 390
CHAPTER XXI
Modern Prague
Prague an interesting modem city — How it has been modified by the recent national movement — The Bohemian National Museum — Its numerous collections — Valuable books and ancient manuscripts — The gradual of Prague — ■ The Bohemian National Theatre — Destruction by fire of the first building — The present home of drama and the opera — The Rudolphinum — Picture gallerjr — Museum of industrial art — Gallery of modern paintings — Public parks and gardens — , Monuments to national heroes — Educational institu- tions — Banks — Municipal street railway — Other municipal institutions — Prague admir^ibly admin- istered — H6tels — Railway connections — American and English tourists 405
CHAPTER XXII
Carlsbad and Mahienbad
Spa resorts in western Bohemia — Geological structure of the Ore mountains — Deposits of glacial ages — Nature of the thermal springs — The sprudel waters of Carlsbad — Some of the famous springs — Founda- tion of the town by Charles IV — Inundations of the Tepl valley — Diseases treated at Carlsbad — Municipal control of the springs — Bathing estabhshments — Attractions of the town — Ethnic types represented
xxii Contents
PAQB
among the summer guests — A favourite resort of royalty — Shipment of the waters — Carlsbad also an industrial centre — " Beware of shop-keepers " — Marienbad — Springs and bath-houses — The abbey of Tepl — Kranzen^ad — Nature of the waters — The moor-Daths — Teplitz 418
CHAPTER XXIII Other Bohemian Towns
Provincial towns of historic interest — Tdbor and the Taborites — Budfijovice — Hlubokd castle — Knunlov and the Bohemian Forest — Towns on the upper Vltava — Pffbram, — Husineo — SpI6dk — Eisenstein
— Doma^lice and the Chods — Towns east of R-ague
— Kutnd, Hora — The Sedlec monastery — Cdslav and John Ziika — Pardubice — Podfibrady the birth- place of Bohemia's only Protestant king — Krdlov6 Hradec — JiJln and its numerous interests — The rocks of Prachov — Sedmihorky — Turnov — Itoudnice
— Litom^fice 434
CHAPTER XXIV
Moravia and Silesia
Topography of Moravia — Mountains surrounding the country — Morava river basin — Climate and rainfall — Mineral products — Agricultural lands — Racial stocks in Moravia — Early introduction of Christianity — National costumes — The Hor^ks — The Handks — The Vlachs — The Slovaks — Government of Moravia
— Brno — Olomouc — Social institutions — Schools — How the Germans and Jews are favoured — Causes of racial strife — The Moravian Brethren — Origin of the sect — Labours in behalf of education — The duchy of Silesia — Geographic features — Chief characteristics "
— The capital 449
Appendixes . . 465
Index 475
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A Peasant Girl Frontispiece
Map of Bohemia xiv
Snow Dome in the Giant Mountains 3
.J
Edmundsklamm Rock Sculptures 7
Village in the Bohemian Forest . . . . . . 13
Stare Mgsto (Old Town) 31
Carlsbad: Founded by Charles IV 41
T^n Church 43
The Cathedral, KutnSl Hora 60
Remnant of ZiJka's Fortifications at Tdbor ... 72
City of the Taborites 82
Kutnd Hora . . . ^ 96
Bodenbach (Podmokly) 121
Krdlov^ Hradec 125
Bohemian National Museum 134
Eger (Cheb) 154
Bohemian Peasants at Doma^lice 158
German Theatre at Prague 181
Old Jewish Cemetery at Prague 183
Dr. Karel GroS 199
Vojta Ndprstek 201
HavlI6ek Monument at JiiSfn 206
Cathedral at Olomouo 213
Peasant Couple 229
An Elementary School 234
A Secondary School at T&bor 238
xxiii
xxiv List of Illustrations
PAGB
Interior of a Peasant Farm House 251
Svatopluk Cech 272
Jaroslav Vrohlick^ 274
Alois Jirdsek 276
Vdclav Vladijov Tomek 282
Viclav Brollk 299
Rudolphinum; Art Gallery 306
Stanislav Sucharda . 313
Old Town Tower of Charles Bridge 317
J. Hldvka 320
Bedfich Smetana ■ 330
Antonln DvoMk . 332
Zdengk Fibich 338
Bohemian String Quartet 344
Citizens' Breweries at Plzeii 362
Old Town 376
Old Town Hall 379
Powder Gate 381
Hradfiany: the Kremlin of Prague 390
Sohwarzenberg Palace 399
Maid, Strana (Small Town) 403
Modern Prague ■ . . 405
Street in Modern Prague 416
The Sprudel at Carlsbad 420
Marienbad 428
Hlubokd Castle 436
A Chod at Domallice 440
Zi2ka. Square at Ji6in 445
A Hand,k 45^
Slovaks 454
Olomouc: the Ancient Capital of Moravia . . . 456
BOHEMIA AND THE CECHS'
CHAPTEE I
THE GEOGRAPHY OF BOHEMIA
Geographic individuality of Bohemia — Form of the countiy — Mountain boundaries — The Ore mountains — The Sudetic chain — • Moravian mountains — The Bohemian Forest — The basin of the Elbe — Hills in the interior — The rivers of the country — Lakes and tarns — Climate — Kainfall — Forest area — Fruits — Minerals of the kingdom — Famous mineral springs — Faima and flora — Population — In- crease of the Bohemian element — Emigration to foreign countries — The principal cities — Pra^e and its suburbs — Small cities — Bohemians in the Umted States -;- Distri- bution of the Bohemians in America.
The geographic individuality of Bohemia is more marked than that of any other country in Europe. As Cosmos, one of the early chron- iclers, remarks, " there is no stream in Bohe- mia that does not rise within its borders." Switzerland and Transylvania each have clear
' The words Bohemian and Cech (pronounced check) are used synonymously throughout this work. When other races residing in the country are referred to, they are specifically mentioned, as Germans, Jews, etc.
1
Bohemia and the Cechs
and well-centred individualities, but Bohemia " instead of letting its rivers run away, emits the abundant waters that come down from its wide framework of mountains through one sin- gle opening. This fact, and the radial con- vergence of the water courses toward the mid- dle of the country, tend to give it unusual inner solidarity and unity, preventing a divergence of economic interests." Geographically the country has that physical autarchy — the ca- pacity to provide for itself — which Aristotle postulated as a necessary condition for polit- ical independence.
Bohemia is diamond-shaped, the four points of the diamond taking the directions of the points of the compass. Its area is a little more than twenty thousand square miles, or about that of the states of New Hampshire and Ver- mont combined. The four sides of the quad- rangle are surrounded by mountains and the interior of the country is a bowl-like basin, suggesting that the land was once an inland sea about the size of Lake Michigan. It was even- tually drained by a channel worn by the Elbe through the sandstone mountains on the Saxon frontier in the northwest. The depression is a plateau of primitive and Paleozoic rocks, with
The Geography of Bohemia 3
basaltic cones of considerable height rising out of the basin. Some of these peaks, like the Sip Mountain in the centre of the basin with an altitude of 1,325 feet, belong to the later earth movements of Europe.
The boundaries of the country are clearly marked by mountain ranges. In the northwest are the Ore mountains (Erzgebirge) which rise like a wall above the valley of the Eger (Ohfe) but slope gently to the Saxon side. The range is relatively uniform iu height — the average altitude being a little more than twenty-five hundred feet — and the summits are generally rounded. The highest peak in the range is the Keilberg (4,182 feet). Numerous roads cross the Ore mountains in all directions, and on one of these is Gottesgab, the most elevated town in Bohemia (3,373 feet) and once a busy mining place.
In the northwest is the Sudetic chain, a laby- rinth of mountains which, in contour, recalls the Alps. Here among the Giant mountains we find some of the highest peaks of Bohemia, such as the Snow Dome (5,186 feet) and the Old Father (4,890 feet). The peaks of the Giant mountains rise abruptly from the chain and their lower slopes have luxuriant forests.
Bohemia and the 6echs
In the southeast is the height of land com- monly spoken of as the Moravian mountains, but there are no well defmed ranges or peaks, a fact wMch explains the ethnic unity of Bo- hemia and Moravia.
The Bohemian Forest is in the southwest. Here we find a cluster of piled-up mountains of gneiss and schist. These mountains form an excellent strategical frontier for the country, the interior slopes being gentle and the outer slopes abrupt and difficult of access. Only two passes give easy entrance into Bohemia from Germany. The pass at Domazlice (Taus), which is 1,473 feet above sea-level, leads across the centre of the range, and the Golden Path (2,664 feet) a little farther to the south.
The elevated portions of the Bohemian For- est contain numerous picturesque lakelets near the summits of the highest peaks. They oc- cupy crater-like depressions under the moun- tain tops, which gives them a sombre, solitary, and wild appearance. At one end of the lake or tarn a wall of granite rises abruptly to the summit, forming a segment of the circle, the rest of the lake being enclosed by the pine- clad arms of the mountain. Several of
The Geography of Bohemia 5
these lakelets — like tlie Black sea, Arber sea, and the Devil's lake — are of very great depth.
The forest region has an average elevation of about two thousand and four hundred feet. Several of the peaks like the Vel Javor (Arber- berg), the Koklah (Kachelberg), and the Bou- bin attain altitudes of four thousand five hun- dred feet. These peaks are all densely covered with silver fir, which, with the numerous brook- lets and mountain tarns, add to the sombre and picturesque effect. The forests are under government supervision, and the trees may not be cut down until they have attained a cer- tain maturity — usually after thirty years of growth. The silver fir trees in the Bohemian Forest frequently reach heights of one hundred feet.
The interior depression of Bohemia is drained by the Elbe (Labe) and its tributaries — the Vltava (Moldau), the Loucna (Adler), the Jizera (Iser), and the Ohfe (Eger) being the principal branches of the main drainage system. The basin is bordered by a series of minor ranges of hUls, of red grits and sand- stone formation, and by a succession of ter- races formed of sedimentary rocks successively
Bohemia and the Cechs
deposited upon the slopes of the mountains of primitive formation.
In the centre of the basin are the Hfebeny and th# Brdy hills, of Silurian formation, which abound in mineral treasures, and farther north are the basaltic cones already referred to. Piled up masses of scoriae may be found on both sides of the Elbe, some having elevations of more than two thousand feet, and upon these the castles, chapels, convents, and monasteries of mediaeval Christianity were erected. The de- composed lava at the base of the hills gives great fertility to the soil of the country.
Three of the great rivers of Germany — the Elbe, the Vistula, and the Oder — take their rise within the limits of the kingdom of Bo- hemia. The Vistula escapes through Galicia and Poland, while the Oder flows through Ger- man Silesia. The Elbe alone, which takes its rise in a boggy swamp in the Giant mountains, crosses Bohemia in its course to the German ocean.
The greatest tributary of the Elbe is the Vltava (Moldau) which forms the median axis to which the rivers of the kingdom approach from both sides. It is the longest of the Bohe- mian rivers and has been made navigable by
EDMUNDSKLAMM BOCK SCULPTURES.
The Geography of Bohemia 7
a system of canalization inaugurated 1896. Be- tween Prague and the junction of the Vltava with the Elbe a minimum depth of seven feet is maintained, which floats barges of nine hun- dred tons.
The Vltava joins the Elbe near Schrecken- stein (Stfekov), which is the Bohemian Lurlei. A bold rock nearly three hundred feet in height rises from the banks of the stream, and on its summit is the ruin of an ancient castle, be- longing to the Lobkovic family, which was des- troyed in the eighteenth century.
From Schreckenstein to Pirna in Saxony the Elbe and its small tributaries from Saxon Switzerland present some of the most pictur- esque features to be found in central Europe. The deep gorges, which have been worn in the sandstone by the action of the streams, are rich in curious rock sculptures. The Edmunds- klamm at Herrnskretschen, near the Saxon frontier, is perhaps the most interesting.
The single important Bohemian exception to the Elbe system is the Morava (March) river. It takes its rise in the Bohemian-Moravian highland and finds its way to the Black sea through the Danube. There are many rapid rivers of commercial consequence that flow
8 Bohemia and the Cechs
from the Sudetic mountains in tlie north and furnish the water-power for the numerous tex- tile factories in the neighbourhood of Keichen- berg (LibSrec).
The few lakes of the country are small and are found almost entirely in the Bohemian For- est. There are numerous thermal springs in the northwest portion of the kingdom which are connected with the former volcanic activity of the slopes of the Ore mountains.
Bohemia shares with central Europe a rela- tively mild climate. The winters are colder in the southern than in the northern portions of the country, but nowhere severe. The rainfall is moderate. At the gate of the Elbe it is twenty-four inches and at its source forty-one inches. Prague has an annual rainfall of about sixteen inches and Budejovice (Budweis), on the upper Vltava, twenty-five inches. Snow in the Bohemian Forest often reaches a depth of twelve feet.
None of the surface of Bohemia is beyond the limit of forest growth and most of the coun- try is highly productive. The productive for- est area is large — about two-fifths of the coun- try— and the other three-fifths of the area includes the rich agricultural lands. Accord-
The Geography of Bohemia 9
ing to Julius Caesar, two thousand years ago Bohemia was one vast forest filled with wild animals. While the lowlands have been brought under cultivation, there are stUl beautiful for- ests of birch, fir, beech, and pine.
Fruits are abundant in Bohemia, chiefly ap- ples, pears, plums and other stone fruits. In the region of Litomefice there is an area of more than two thousand acres devoted to the cultivation of the vine. Half the area of the kingdom is devoted to agriculture, the chief products being wheat, rye, barley, oats, pota- toes, flax, and hops.
The kingdom is rich in minerals such as iron, silver, tin, lead, copper, antimony, sulphur, alum, coal, porcelain earths, and precious and ornamental stones. In fact salt is about the only important mineral commodity that is not found in the country. Small quantities of gold are taken from the sands of some of the river beds, but the yield is not large. Bohemia has the most famous mineral springs of Europe, including the warm alkaline aperient springs at Carlsbad and Teplice; the bitter cathartic springs at Sedlee, Bylany, and Zajecice; the sulphurous springs at Teplice, and the saline chalybeate springs at Marienbad and Franz-
10 Bohemia and the Cechs
ensbad. In fact there are thirty-three mineral- spring health resorts in Bohemia which are visited annually by several hundred thousand patients?
In the days of the Romans, when Bohemia was known as Sylva Gabreta, wild animals were numerous — wild boar, reindeer, lynx, elk, aurochs, and roebuck; but these have largely disappeared. The lynx has almost entirely died out; the wild boar is becoming scarce; deer and roebuck are no longer plentiful, al- though polecats, martins, hares, and foxes are still abundant- Five hundred different species of birds are found in the coimtry, including the golden oriole, blue-jay, woodpecker, and most of the other feathered varieties found in central Europe. Numerous crows, magpies, hawks, and falcons inhabit the country; and the wild game-birds that are most abundant are ducks, pheasants, partridges, and blackcock. The country has numerous insects, including more than three thousand varieties of beetles.
Cattle rearing is a leading industry, includ- ing milk-cows, oxen, cattle for slaughter, swine, and sheep for wool. Poultry also has a large place for the flesh, the eggs, and the feathers. The goose is held in the same esteem in Bohe-
The Geography of Bohemia ii
mia as is the turkey in the United States ; and, in the south-central parts of the country, there are scores of farms devoted to the rearing of geese. I photographed one goose-field at Jano- vice that contained nine hundred fowls. Bee- culture also occupies a prominent place.
The population of the entire kingdom — Bo- hemia, Moravia, and Silesia — was nine and a half million people in 1900, the census of the present year not being available for this work. Of this number Bohemia alone had a popula- tion of six and a third million, Moravia a trifle under two and a half million, and Silesia nearly seven hundred thousand. About seventy-two per cent, of the inhabitants are Bohemians, twenty-three per cent. Germans, and five per cent. Hebrews. The increase of the Bohemian population has been very great during the past twenty-five years, while there has been a de- crease in the relative number of German inhab- itants, and the Jews have scarcely more than held their own. This increase has been made in the face of a large emigration. In the dec- ade 1890 to 1900, one hundred and thirty-two thousand Bohemians, or one and a fourth per cent, of the population of 1890, sought homes in foreign countries. Most of these came to
12 Bohemia and the Cechs
the United States, but not all. Vienna to-day- has a Cech population of two hundred thou- sand, and one finds an increasing number of Bohemians in the great industrial centres of Saxony and Prussia.
The population of Bohemia is relatively dense — three hundred and fifteen to the square mile — although, to except Prague, the kingdom has no large cities. IWith its immedi- ate suburbs, Prague has about half a million people. The city proper is divided into seven districts. On the right bank of the Vltava are the Old Town (Stare Mesto), Josefov (the former ghetto). New Town (Nove Mesto), and Vysherad (the new quarter). On the right bank of the river the Small Town (Mala Strana), Hradcany (the kremlin of Prague) and Holesovice-Bubny, the industrial part of the city. The immediate suburbs, which are separate municipalities, are Karlin, Smichov, 2izkov, and Vinohrady. All but Snnchov are on the right bank of the Vltava.
Plzen, the second largest city in the kingdom, has only sixty-eight thousand inhabitants; Budejovice (Budweis), the third, forty thou- sand; Aussig (tTsti), the fourth, thirty-seven thousand, and Eeichenberg (Liberec), the fifth.
The Geography of Bohemia 13
thirty-five thousand. Most of the cities of Bo- hemia have less than twenty thousand inhab- itants. This means that, with a population so dense, and with more than half the country devoted to agriculture, it has many small cities, which are the centres of diversified industries. Turnov, for example, with only thirteen thou- sand inhabitants, is the centre of an important linen industry; Litomefioe (Leitmeritz), with the same number, has important beer indus- tries; 2atec (Saatz), with sixteen thousand in- habitants, is the centre of the Bohemian hop industry, and has machine shops and a variety of manufactures; and Pardubice, with seven- teen thousand people, has extensive breweries and sugar refineries. Certain industries are concentrated in small towns in particular local- ities, but the towns of the country are pretty well distributed over the country, the least pop- ulated part being the Bohemian Forest in the south.
The general movement of population is toward the cities, although the foreign emigra- tion is still large. The United States receives the largest number of Bohemians who seek homes in foreign lands. From twelve to four- teen thousand come to our country every year,
14 Bohemia and the Cechs
only two per cent, of whom are illiterate, which is lower than that of Germany; and almost none of the Bohemians are unskilled labourer*. They locate for the most part in the middle west. Of the two hundred and twenty odd thousand naturalized Bohemians in the United States and three hundred and ten thousand American born, one hundred and fif- teen thousand live in the state of Illinois; sixty thousand in Nebraska; forty-five thou- sand in New York; forty-three thousand each in Wisconsin and Maryland; forty thousand in Texas; thirty-six thousand in Minnesota, and thirty-five thousand in Iowa. Chicago is the largest Bohemian city in America (the sec- ond Bohemian city in the world), with one hun- dred thousand inhabitants; there are forty thousand Bohemians in both New York City and Cleveland; Onjaha and St. Louis each have eight thousand ; St. Paul has six thousand, and Milwaukee five thousand five hundred. Bohemians came to America with the first set- tlers. They had been exiled from their country after the battle of White Mountain. Concern- ing two of these Protestant exiles we have records. Augustyn Herman, such an exile, made the first map of Maryland, copies of
The Geography of Bohemia 15
which, are preserved in the archives at Eich- mond and in the British Museum. Another Bohemian exUe, Frederick Filip, took a prom- inent part in the affairs of New Amsterdam and is buried in the cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, near Tarrytown, New York. And there may' have been others. Hundreds came after the political disturbances of 1848, and many more after the war with Prussia in 1866, since which time the stream has been rather steady. The Bohemians in America make excellent citizens, and, as later pointed out, they readily adjust themselves to our civilization and institutions.^
' For an account of the Bohemians in the United Statgs see: Pamatky 6esk^ch emigrantfl v Americe. ■ By Thomas Capek. Omaha, 1907.
CHAPTER n
BEGINliriNGS OF THE BOHEMIAN NATION
When the Bohemians occupied the country — Keltic Boji and Teutonic Marcomanni — Conflicts with the Avars — Social habits of the early Bohemian tribes — Chastity and faithfulness — Village organization — Local government — The legend of LibuSa — Premysl and the Bohemian dynasty
— Attempts of Charlemagne to conquer Bohemia — Bo- fivoj I and the introduction of Christianity — The barbaric Huns — Invasion of Bohemia by the Germans — Reign of Boleslav the Cruel — Rise of Poland — Bfetislav I, the restorer of Bohemia — First king of Bohemia — Slavonic liturgy replaced by the Latin — A meddlesome German emperor — Question of the celibacy of the Bohemian clergy
— Internal dissensions — Frederick Barbarossa — The lan- guage question — Pfemysl Otakar — German influence during the reign of Vdclav I — Conflicts with the Haps- burgs — German adventurers — Rudolph of Hapsburg — John of Luxemburg — Prince Charles.
How long Bohemia has been inhabited by people of the Slavonic race cannot be stated with any degree of certainty. Palacky and the older histoi'ians fixed the date as approxi- mately the year 451 a. d. But more recent an- thropological and historical studies suggest that the kingdom had an autochthonous Slavic population before the Christian era; and that Slavonic races, the progenitors of the Bohe-
16
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 17
mians of to-day, were the contemporaries of the Keltic Boji and the Teutonic Marcomanni.
It was formerly supposed, however, that the Boji, the most eastern branch of the Keltic race, to whom the country owes its name, were the earliest inhabitants. They are mentioned by Livy, Julius Csesar, and other Latin writers, and the country is sometimes referred to as the Bojian desert.
The Boji, however, were greatly weakened by conflicts, at first with the Romans and Da- cians and later with the Marcomanni, who were supposed to be the dominant people in the country up to the middle of the fifth century of the Christian era. At this time the present occupants became the masters of Bohemia; and although they were for several centuries in almost constant conflict with the Avars from the east and the Germans from the west, they seem to have been sufficiently advanced in the arts of defence to hold their own against these warlike invaders.
At this period, as Palacky has pointed out, the Bohemians cultivated the arts of peace; and when they resorted to arms at all, it was in self-defence. They cultivated the soil, reared cattle, and engaged in commerce with
18 Bohemia and the Cechs
neighbouring peoples. Their patient industry became proverbial. " Social in their habits, they pressed hospitality to unlawful extremes, not hesitating to rob their neighbours in order to entertain their guests. Music and dancing constituted their pastimes. Family ties were held sacred. The shades which darkened their character were their frivolity, their quarrel- some disposition, and their vindictiveness."
Palacky^ calls attention to the astonishment of the Greek writers at the extraordinary chas- tity and faithfulness of the Bohemian women. It struck them as something superhuman, ha- bituated as they were to lax sexual standards. "V^Hiile monogamy was reasonably general from the earliest historic period, polygamy existed and continued to be practised long after the introduction of Christianity.
The elders of the different villages seem to have been the earliest rulers of the people, and the political institutions were of the most prim- itive character. . Ultimately groups of villages confederated, and the choice of the chief be- came restricted to the members of certain pow- erful families ; and eventually it was narrowed
' DSjiny ndrodu (SesWho v Cechdch a v Morav6. By FrantiSek Palacky. Prague, 1836-1876.
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 19
to the first-born of one particular family, and the ruler was known as the knez or prince.
The early princes, who held court at the Vysehrad, were assisted in the government by twelve advisers, who formed a rude senate; and, when great issues were to be decided, the owners of large estates and the heads of clans were called together in a national parliament. Before the ninth century serfdom as an insti- tution did not exist in Bohemia.
The first prince whose name legendary his- tory has preserved to us is that of Krok, who, having died without male issue, bequeathed his possessions to his daughter Libusa, concern- ing whom the chroniclers wrote : ' ' She was a wonderful woman among women; chaste in body, righteous in her morals, second to none as judge over the people, affable to all and even amiable, the pride and glory of the female sex, doing wise and manly deeds." She is said to have founded the city of Prague and to have foretold its future greatness.
Libusa ruled wisely and well for some years. On one occasion, however, in rendering a deci- sion in a litigation between two noblemen, the defeated party is reputed to have remarked in her hearing that " Bohemia was the only coun-
20 Bohemia and the Cechs
try that endured the shame of being ruled over by a woman." On the following day she called the representatives of the people together and asked them to select a man to rule over them. They insisted, however, that she select a hus- band whom they would be glad to recognize as their prince.
Pointiug to the distant hills she is reported to have said: " Beyond those hills is a small river called the Belina and on its banks a vil- lage called Stadic. Near-by. is a farm, and in one of the fields of that farm is your future ruler plowing with a yoke of spotted oxen. His name is Premysl. My horse will lead you to the spot. Follow him." They followed the guidance of the horse to the field where a peasant, plowing with two oxen marked with spots, responded to the name of Premysl. He was saluted as their future sovereign, con- ducted to the Vysehrad, where he married Li- busa, and became the progenitor of a long line of Bohemian princes and kings.
For a period of more than two hundred years we have little more than legends and the names of ruling princes as historic sources. The in- troduction of Christianity into Bohemia by niissionaries from the Greek empire in the east
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 21
and conflicts with Charlemagne and the rulers of the Eoman empire from the west in the ninth century give us our earliest reliable historic accounts.
Charlemagne had visions of world power; and after subduing the Saxons, he directed his attention to Bohemia and Moravia. But his efforts were not attended with a very large measure of success in Bohemia. During the reign of his son Louis the Pious (814-840) the Bohemians may have entered into a sort of dependent relationship with the Carlo vingian dynasty, as German historians assert, to bring peace to their country.
After several unsuccessful attempts on the part of the Eoman authorities to introduce Christianity into Bohemia by the way of Ger- many, it finally found a foothold in the country from Constantinople by the way of Moravia. The latter country, inhabited by people of the same race as the Bohemians, had attained na- tional unity earlier than the Cechs.
Under the rule of Svatopluk, Moravia became a country of marked political consequence. Bofivoj I, the reigning prince of Bohemia, formed an alliance with Svatopluk and maj- have become subject to him. While on visits
22 Bohemia and the Cechs
to the Moravian court, both Bofivoj and his wife Ludmila were received into the Christian church and they introduced the new religion into Bohemia. They built many churches, one of which, that at Levy Hradec, near Prague, is still in existence.
The story of the introduction of Christianity will be related in more detail in a subsequent chapter on religion; but it may be noted in this connection that its rapid spread in both Moravia and Bohemia was probably due to the fact that the Slavonic rather than the Latin was the accepted language for church service. Cyril and Methodus, who had been sent by the Greek emperor Michael of Constantinople as missionaries to Moravia, had already laboured among Slavonic peoples in Macedonia; and they brought with them a Slavonic translation of the Bible which became the literary stand- ard of the people.
The great scourges of Europe at this time were the barbaric Huns. Arnulph, an illegiti- mate son of Carloman, jealous of the growing power of Moravia, encouraged the barbarians to invade that country; and while Svatopluk resisted such invasions during his lifetime, the feuds between his sons after his death
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 23
enabled the Magyars to get a foothold in Hun- gary.
When Svatopluk died in the year 894 the Moravian kingdom included, besides that mar- gravite, Hungary, Poland, Silesia, northern Bohemia, and a large part of northern Ger- many. All the minor Slav states acknowledged his supremacy. But the fierce barbarians " ravaged Germany and the surrounding Sla- vonic lands with impunity." They conquered most of Moravia and held it for more than half a century.
Concerning this event Palacky says: " The invasion of the Magyars and their establish- ment in Hungary is one of the most important events in the history of Europe ; it is the great- est misfortune that has befallen the Slavonic world during thousands of years. The Slav- onic races in the ninth century extended from the frontiers of Holstein to the coast of the Peloponnesus, much divided and disconnected, varying in habits and circumstances, but every- where able, diligent, and capable of instruction. In the middle of this extended line a centre had been formed by Eostislav and Svatopluk, round which, both by inner impulse and through the force of external circumstances, the other
24 Bohemia and the Cechs
Slavonic tribes would have grouped them- selves."
The Bohemians by some stroke of good for- tune were able to resist the invading bar- barians. Count Liltzow^ remarks in this con- nection : " In the complete absence of contem- porary records it is impossible to ascertain how Bohemia escaped the fate that befell Mo- ravia. The ability of the princes of the house of Pfemysl, who then ruled over Bohemia, may have largely contributed to preserve the coun- try from the Magyar invaders. Old legends tell us that Vratislav, who was about this time succeeded by his brother Spytihnev, was a glo- rious prince, so that we may infer that he was successful in defending the country against its numerous enemies."
Henry the Fowler, who had subdued the Sla- vonic tribes of the upper Elbe, invaded Bohe- mia during the reign of Vaclav I (928-936). He advanced upon Prague and Vaclav was forced to pay an annual tribute of six hundred marks of silver and one hundred and twenty head of cattle. Vaclav acquired a reputation for great piety during his lifetime ; and after
' Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count Lutzow. London, 1910.
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 25
his murder, by his brother Boleslav, the church of Eome canonized him as a saint.
Boleslav I (936-967), surnamed the Cruel, is characterized by Palacky as " one of the most powerful monarchs that ever occupied the Bo- hemian throne." He freed Moravia from the oppressive rule of the barbaric Huns and re- conquered a large part of what is now the king- dom of Bohemia. The consolidation of the Cech possessions was continued by Boleslav II (967-999). Prague became a bishopric, but the price which the Bohemians had to pay for this ecclesiastic advantage was the surrender of the Slavonic liturgy and the adoption of the Latin, which did not cease to be a bone of contention for centuries.
The rise of Poland involved Boleslav III (999-1002) and his successors in wars with the sister state. Temporarily a Polish prince oc- cupied the throne of Bohemia as Vladivoj (1002-1003), but with the aid of the Germans the Poles were driven from Bohemia; and Jaromir (1003-1012), a brother of Boleslav III, became the ruler of the country. Family feuds continued; and with the aid of Henry II his brother Ulrich (1012-1037) secured the crown.
Bfetislav I (1037-1055), whom Palacky calls
26 Bohemia and the Cechs
the restorer of Bohemia, is described as a prince possessed of splendid presence and great qualities — fierce and formidable as a warrior, but eminently judicious and temperate in civil administration. He united Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Poland under one ruler; and, as Count Liitzow remarks, " the idea of a West-Slav empire seemed on the point of being realized; but at this time also Germany- stepped in to prevent the formation of a power- ful Slav state on her borders. ' ' Henry III sent two armies into Bohemia; and although both were defeated, the Germans were finally vic- torious, and Bfetislav was forced to surrender all his possessions in Poland and pay Germany a war indemnity. During his reign a regular order of succession to the throne was estab- lished, in the hope that future family quarrels might be averted. It was provided that the oldest son of the house of Pfemysl should in- herit the Bohemian crown and the second son become prince of Moravia.
His son Spytihnev (1055-1061) ruled only six years and he was succeeded by Vratislav II (1061-1092), who had held the title of duke of Olomouc. He divided Moravia between his brothers Otho and Conrad and gave Jaromir,
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 27
the youngest, the see of Prague. But the latter soon tired of cassock and breviary; and, with a few congenial young knights, he sought em- ployment in the army of the king of Poland.
In the struggle between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, emperor of Germany, Vratislav rendered material assistance to the emperor, and his forces were the first to scale the leonine city. Gregory was subdued and Eome was de- livered to the emperor. In reward for his services Henry permitted him to be crowned king of Bohemia, with the reservation that the honour should be borne only by him and that his successors should resume the title of princes. He was a great king, and during his reign ' ' the arts and sciences were cultivated up to the full measure of the progress of the age. ' '
The reign of Bfetislav II (1092-1110) was characterized by a vigorous effort to spread Christianity; for paganism stiU existed in the remote parts of the kingdom. Slavonic monks were likewise driven from their convents and replaced by Latin monks. After a prolonged period of civil strife — a commonplace matter in Bohemian history at this period — Borivoj II (1110-1120) assumed the reins of government. After another civil war and the intervention of
28 Bohemia and the Cechs
Germany Vladislav I (1120-1125) held uncer- tain sway for five years.
Sobeslav I (1125-1140) brought the meddle- some GeKman emperor to terms. Emperor Lothair maintained that no Bohemian prince could ascend to the throne of his country be- fore having received it as a fief from the em- peror of Germany; and as Sobeslav refused to recognize any such claims, the Germans in- vaded Bohemia and met a decisive defeat soon after they had crossed the Giant mountains. Bohemia, in addition, forced Lothair to recog- nize her right to participate in the election of subsequent emperors. Thus, remarks Tomek,' " Bohemia, which hitherto had only had cer- tain obligations toward its powerful neighbour the German empire, henceforth also enjoyed certain rights with regard to Germany."
During the reign of Vladislav II (1140-1173) a vigorous effort was made to compel the Bo- hemian clergy to conform to the regulation of the Roman church in the matter of celibacy; for, as Count Liitzow has pointed out, the Bo- hemian clergy, even of the highest rank — such as Jurata the provost of Prague, Peter the
' DSjepis M&ta Prahy. By Vdclav Vladivoi Tomek. Prague, 1891-1901. 12 vols.
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 29
dean of the cathedral, Hugo the provost of Vysehrad, and Thomas the dean of the cathe- dral at Olomouc — were married ecclesiastics. Vladislav participated in the second crusade and accompanied the Bohemian contingent of the army as far as Constantinople.
Uninterrupted struggles between the conten- tious members of the Premysl dynasty throned and dethroned Sobeslav II (1173-1189), Con- rad Otho (1189-1191), Vaclav II (1191-1192), and Premysl Otakar (1192-1230) during the half century that followed, not to mention a half dozen sovereigns who ruled less than twelve months. Frederick Barbarossa was emperor of Germany; and, by means fair and other- wise, he placed Bohemia in a more or less de- pendent relation with his dominions.
" While Bohemia thus became more depend- ent on Germany," remarks Count Liitzow, " the German element also acquired greater importance in the country itself. As early as the end of the eleventh century a small German settlement existed at Prague, which received certain privileges from Sobeslav II ; the clergy was largely of German nationality, and per- haps from dislike to the custom of holding the religious services in the language of the coun-
30 Bohemia and the dechs
try — a custom that for a long time continued in Bohemia — favoured the German element in every way. Another cause of the spread of the German language and nationality at this period was the circumstance that all the wives of the Bohemian princes, with the exception of the peasant-princess Bozena, were of foreign, frequently of German, nationality. These prin- cesses often brought German chaplains and other dependents in their suite, and the Bohe- mian nobles also acquired the German lan- guage, which became to a certain extent the language of the court; the German princesses naturally taught their children their own lan- guage from earliest youth."
The reign of Pfemysl Otakar also marks the beginning of the struggle with the Eoman pon- tiffs which was continued through centuries. Andrew, the bishop of Prague, " claimed abso- lute immunity from the temporal law-courts, not only for all ecclesiastics, but also for all their servants and dependents; and, while de- manding perfect freedom from taxation for all church property, he attempted to enforce on the whole country the payment of church-tithes, to which only certain estates had hitherto been liable. He further denied to laymen all right
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 31
of conferring ecclesiastical offices, though he himself appears to have accepted investiture from King Otakar." The king and people naturally refused to recognize the claims of Andrew and he was forced to leave the city.
Grerman influence continued in Bohemia during the reign of Vaclav I (1230-1253). A German colony was brought to the Old Town (Stare Mesto) of Prague and given a larger measure of autonomy than was enjoyed by the Bohemians. The Germans were made inde- pendent of the Bohemian law courts and they were permitted to enclose their settlement with fortifications. Similar settlements of Germans were established at Brno (Briinn) and Jihlava (Iglau) in Moravia. It was during the reign of Vaclav that a horde of Tatar barbarians invaded the country, but they did not get be- yond Moravia. They sustained a crushing de- feat at the hands of the Bohemians at Olomouc, which, as Palacky remarks, decided the fate of Moravia and Bohemia, and perhaps of Europe.
Pfemysl Otakar II (1253-1278) continued the policy of German colonization. He also organized a crusade against the heathen Prus- sians, defeated them in several great battles, and forced them to accept Christianity. In a
32 Bohemia and the dechs
war with Hungary he won both territory and • renown; but having contested the election of Rudolph of Hapsburg, allied German and Hun- garian armies invaded his possessions, and an insurrection having broken out among the Bo- hemian nobility, he did not risk a battle but sued for peace. He was forced to renoimce his claims to Styria, Austria, Carinthia, Oarniola, and Istria, as well as certain territories in western Bohemia, and he was permitted to re- tain Bohemia and Moravia merely as fiefs of the German empire. The subsequent interfer- ence of Rudolph with the affairs of Bohemia induced him to strike a blow for freedom, but the result was disastrous. His forces were defeated and he died " fighting desperately." Concerning the disastrous ending of one of Bohemia's greatest kings. Count Liitzow writes : " The fact that Otakar had, by the priv- ileges he granted the towns, alienated many of the powerful Bohemian nobles, who there- fore deserted him in the hour of peril, was un- doubtedly one of the principal causes of his downfall. Another still more potent consid- eration was the question of nationality. Ota- kar was, justly or unjustly, accused of favour- ing the Germans to the disadvantage of his own
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 33
countrymen, and he had thus become unpopu- lar with the Bohemians. The stimulus of na- tional pride, which has sometimes animated the Bohemians to most heroic deeds, did not there- fore incite them to rally round their king, whom many of them considered nearly as much a Ger- man, as his opponent."
During the minority of Vaclav II (1278- 1305), the five-year old son of Otakar, Otho of Brandenburg acted as guardian and nominal ruler of the country ; but he misused his power shamefully and flooded the country with Ger- man adventurers. The nobility finally turned against him and forced him to promise to with- draw his foreign mercenaries from the country within three days. But the state of anarchy which his guardianship introduced caused the peasants to neglect their farms and flee to the mountains for protection; and the winter of 1281-82, being one of great severity, half a mil- lion people are said to have perished from famine.
The reign of Vaclav III (1305-1306), the last of the Pfemysls, was cut short by an assas- sin. As he died without issue the Bohemians were disposed to select his brother-in-law, Henry, duke of Carinthia, as his successor ; but
34 Bohemia and the Cechs
the German emperor declared that, as Bohemia was a feudal dependency of his empire, the selection of a ruler, in the absence of a lawful heir, rested with him ; and he gave the kingdom to his son Rudolph of Hapsburg (1306-1307). To enforce his claim he sent a large army to Bohemia; and, to legalize it, he married Ru- dolph to Elizabeth, the widow of Vaclav II. The new king surrounded himself with German favourites, and he would have faced deposition at the' hands of the discontented Bohemians but for his timely death.
The choice of a successor fell to Henry of Carinthia (1307-1310), not without a contest with the emperor of Germany; but Henry proved an altogether incompetent ruler, and John of Luxemburg (1310-1346), the only son of Henry, emperor of Germany, was selected by the Bohemians as their ruler. He married Elizabeth, the second daughter of Vaclav II, and in 1311 they were crowned at Prague as king and queen of Bohemia.
John, however, proved something of a knight- errant and adventurer, and he gave more of his time to the feuds and political broils in the other countries of Europe than to those of his own kingdom. His continued absence from Bo-
Beginnings of the Bohemian Nation 35
hernia and Ms constant demands for money and soldiers to carry on his foreign exploits, to- gether with the civil wars instigated by the Bohemian nobles, brought the country to the verge of ruin. A local historian remarks : " In the absence of some strong hand to govern, the strong oppressed the weak. The land was in- fested with robbers, who plundered the inhab- itants without let or hindrance. Sometimes whole villages were destroyed, the inhabitants scattered in all directions, many of whom per- ished in the woods from starvation. And King John himself became a public robber. His own sources of income having been drained to the last farthing, he robbed the churches of their ornaments; and, stealing the crown and the crown jewels from the palace, he sold them, using the money for his own private expenses. ' ' During the last years of his reign John en- trusted the government of the country to his son Charles, who, although young in years, dis- played extraordinary talent for executive du- ties and Bohemia made marked progress under his regency. John spent his closing years in Luxemburg and was killed in the great conflict between the English and French at the battle of Crecy, while fighting on the side of the
36 Bohemia and the Cechs
French king. Wlien the English king heard of his death he is said to have exclaimed, " The crown of chivalry has fallen to-day ; never was any one eqftal to this king of Bohemia." But the people of his kingdom could not have re- gretted his death, for it ridded them of an in- competent and extravagant ruler and brought to the throne one of the ablest sovereigns that had inherited the dynasty of Pf emysl. The next chapter will tell the story of this remarkable man, known in history as Charles I as king of Bohemia, and Charles IV as emperor of Ger- many, in which twofold capacity he ruled.
CHAPTER III
PEKIOD OF CHABLES IV
The golden age of Bohemian history — The quahties of Charles — His early training — National sympathies — Recognition of the Bohemian language — Foundation of the university of Prague — Artistic interests — Karluv T;^ — Prague en- larged — Beginnings of Carlsbad — The Golden Bull — The movement for church reform — Forerunners of Master John Hus — Conrad Waldhausen — Milifi of Krom6fi2e — ■ Matthew of Janov — Thomas of Stitn;^' — ; Commercial pros- perity during the reign of Charles — Reforms inaugurated by \he great emperor-king — Personal characteristics.
The reign of King Charles I (1346-1378), who as emperor of Germany was known as Charles IV, was in most respects the golden age of Bohemian history. He enlarged the boundaries of the kingdom ; established higher courts of law and reorganized the administra- tion of justice; founded the university of Prague; enlarged Prague by the addition of Nove Mesto; founded the city of Carlsbad; built the castle of Karluv Tyn as a depository for the crown jewels and treasures of the king- dom ; surrounded himself with artists who de- veloped the Prague school of painting, and gave a powerful impetus to the Cech language
37
38 Bohemia and the Cechs
which had fallen into disuse since the days of Pf emysl Otakar I.
Palacky * says of him: " Charles was unlike his father in many respects; he inherited neither his qualities nor his faults. John, chiv- alrously brave and somewhat vain, was mostly guided by his temperament, which, though viva- cious and inconstant, was generally intent on noble purposes. He loved warfare above all things, both in good earnest and in sport; he sought out wars and tournaments ; cared more for glory than for gain ; succeeded in conquer- ing more than he was able to retain. He at- tempted great deeds, but his want of thrift often drove him to petty acts. His learned and serious son, on the other hand, showed everjrwhere the most entire self-possession, and in all matters of business acted according to a fixed plan and with calculation; he also fought bravely, but he preferred to obtain his purpose by peaceful negotiation. Orderly in financial matters, he showed exceptional talent in the art of government, though his military capacities were not great ; he obtained far more by the arts of diplomacy than he ever could
' DSjiny ndrodu iSesk^ho v Cech&h a na MoravS. By Fran- ti§ek Palack^. Prague, 1836-1876.
Period of Charles IV 39
have done by the force of arms. John hardly disguised the fact that he had little sympathy for the land and people of Bohemia; love for them seems, on the other hand, to have been the one passion of Charles. ' '
Charles had been educated in France, and he spoke the French, German, and Bohemian lan- guages with equal facility. His predilection, however, was for the Bohemian ; and, while he permitted the use of either the German or the Bohemian in the town assemblies, he refused official appointments to Germans who could not speak the national language, and he required his German subjects to have their children in- structed in the Bohemian. He also secured from the pope permission to use the national language in all ecclesiastical services in certain monasteries; and in a dozen other ways he gave an impetus to the development of the Bo- hemian language and literature which bore precious fruits during the period of John Hus and the great moral revolution.
Early in his reign (1348) he founded the uni- versity of Prague which antedated the organi- zation of the German universities by more than half a century, and was the first higher insti- tution of learning in that part of Europe.
40 Bohemia and the Cechs
Charles may himself have been a student at the university of Paris during his residence in France, as some of his biographers assert, and he certainly was familiar with the character of the university of Bologna. The archbishop of Prague was selected as the chancellor of the new institution, and learned men from France and Italy, in addition to Bohemian and German scholars who had studied in these countries, were offered posts in the university. It grew rapidly in popularity, and at the time of the death of Charles it enrolled more than seven thousand students. A fuller account of this higher institution of learning will be found in a subsequent chapter on education in Bohemia. Another monument which bears testimony to the artistic interests of the emperor-king is the noble castle of Karluv Tyn on the banks of the Mze river, twenty miles south of Prague. It is located on an isolated rock of jasper, a thou- sand feet above the river, and was built for the better protection of the crown jewels and the charters of Bohemia. It was sumptuously dec- orated with precious stones and mural paint- ings, and combined, as Mr. Maurice ^ has re-
* The story of Bohemia. By C. Edward Maurice. New York, 1896.
Period of Charles IV 41
marked, " the memories of Charles' work as king, as moral reformer, and as patron of art. ' ' The paintings in the castle, in the emperor's apartments, and in the chapel of St. Catherine, as well as the other tasteful artistic and archi- tectural embellishments, recall the encourage- ment which Charles gave to the fine arts of his time.
Prague was raised into imperial importance by the founding of a new suburb (Nove Mesto) to meet the growing needs of the capital and accommodate the large number of students at- tracted to the city by the fame of the univer- sity. He also founded Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary), the celebrated watering place in west- ern Bohemia. Tradition has it that, while on a hunting expedition, the emperor-king discov- ered the hot mineral springs, caused the waters to be examined by the professors in the medical faculty of the university of Prague, and built for himself a castle on the spot that he might enjoy their salutary effects.
In 1356 Charles published his famous Golden Bull, by the terms of which he attempted to settle the relations between the emperor and the electors. He recognized that the ills of the preceding century were largely due to the im-
42 Bohemia and the Cechs
certainty of the electorate and the doubtful claims of rival aspirants. He accordingly fixed the electorate on a clear 'basis, defined the lands which gawe the privilege of voting, and as- serted the right of the electors to choose the emperor without waiting for the confirmation of their choice by the pope. He also secured for the king of Bohemia a more favourable position among the electors of the empire and asserted the right of the Bohemians to choose their own king.
But the Grolden Bull met with keen displeas- ure from the pope and it chilled for a period the cordial relations that had hitherto existed between the Roman see and Prague. German historians have unduly magnified the subser- viency of Charles to Rome. Count Liitzow^ discounts this judgment by the firmness which Charles displayed at this time, as well as his opposition to the demands of the papal dele- gate for the collection of tithes for the benefit of the papal court. He adds: " Charles called on the bishops to pay greater attention to the morals and conduct of their clergy, and even threatened to seize the ecclesiastical revenues
* Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count Lutzow. New York and London, 1910.
Period of Charles IV 43
should they not be more worthily employed. Though the momentary estrangement between pope and emperor may have been one of the motives of the energetic language which Charles used, there is no doubt that the em- peror, a man of earnest and unaffected piety, seriously desired to reform the habits and morals of the clergy. ' '
It was during the reign of Charles that the movement for church reform gathered force; and his encouragement to the teaching and the preaching of reformers like Conrad Wald- hausen, Milic of Kromefize, Matthew of Janov, and Thomas of Stitny — " the truest and most obedient sons of the church, ' ' as Baron Helf ert characterizes them — that the ground was pre- pared for John Hus and the great moral revo- lution of the next generation.
Conrad was an Augustinian monk of German parentage whose first pastorate was at Lito- mefice. He became pastor of the Tyn church in Prague in 1364 and held this post up to the time of his death five years later. In his ser- mons he denounced the extravagances of the citizens and the corruption of the clergy, and exhorted the return to the simple and pious life of the early Christians. He attacked with
44 Bohemia and the Cechs
great severity Augustinian and Dominican monks^ as well as the immorality of the laymen ; but Chai^Jes approved of his preaching and gave him protection. A contemporary, Benes of Veitmil, says of him : " A German by birth, a man of great learning and greater eloquence, he saw when he came to Bohemia all men given up to luxury. He preached dauntlessly against usurers and other unjust possessors of prop- erty, and especially against religious persons of both sexes who had been received into their orders through simonical practices. As, in consequence thereof, many such persons, con- science stricken by his pious sermons, obtained dispensation from the holy apostolic curia, and others refused to give up their children to the orders with the stipulated sums of money, all the brethren of the begging orders rose up against him, and loaded him with manifold abuse. But he, a man of perfect love, endured it all with equanimity for God's sake."
Milic of Kromerize, who succeeded Conrad as preacher at the Tyn church, was a Moravian by birth who had been educated in Italy. He held in turn the post of secretary to Margrave John of Moravia and Emperor Charles, and later became canon of the church of St. Vitus,
Period of Charles IV 45
the present cathedral of Prague. But in 1363 ' ' he resigned all valuable preferments in order to follow the Lord Christ in poverty and hu- mility." He seems to have provoked even greater enmity on the part of the monks than Conrad had done ; and, in the hope of silencing him, errors of dogma were charged against him. He journeyed to Rome to defend himself against the charges of his enemies, and the pontiff " evidently recognizing the purity of his intentions " dismissed the charges. He became so popular as a preacher and such great crowds flocked to the Tyn church to hear his denunciations of * * the pride and avarice of the clergy," that he was forced to repeat his ser- mons from four to five times each day.
A second charge of heresy was brought against him by the begging friars, and while waiting for the final decision of the pope he died in 1374. Palacky says of him : " In Milic that religious thought and feeling, which have always distinguished the Bohemians, found its embodiment. He stirred the spirit of the peo- ple to its depths, and first caused it to rise in those waves which, at a later time and with the cooperation of new elements, grew to be the billows of a great storm. ' '
46 Bohemia and the Cechs
Matthew of Janov was the son of a Bohe- mian nobleman who had studied at the univer- sities of Prague and Paris and he seems to have taken his master's degree at the latter institution. In 1381 he became a canon of the cathedral of Prague ; and through his writings — and notably his essay on the Abomination in the holy place — he exercised wide influence. He bewailed the worldliness of the clergy and the neglect of the Bible; he rebuked the mon- astic orders ; he protested against the worship of pictures, the invocation of the saints, and the importance attached to relics ; and he urged that the gospel should more generally be preached in the vernacular. Some of his views he was forced to recant at a diocesan synod held in 1389, and he was suspended for six months from ministerial functions.
Thomas of Stitny, who is sometimes men- tioned as the father of Bohemian literature, was a philosopher and man of letters as well as a religious reformer. He was educated at the university of Prague and was deeply in- fluenced by the writings and preaching of Milic. His purpose, he declared, was to bring the truth so vividly before the minds of his hearers that they might learn to shun evil and
Period of Charles IV 47
be inspired to follow the good. The national language was his medium both in writing and preaching, for he argued that it was unwise to attempt to fence up Christian teaching with a Latin wall. When his enemies attacked him for his use of the Bohemian language for re- ligious purposes, he replied, " St. Paul wrote his epistles to the Jews in Hebrew; to the Greeks in Greek; why, then, should I, being a Bohemian, hesitate to write to my countrymen in Bohemian? I will write in Bohemian, for God loves a Bohemian as well as he does a Latinist." The works of Thomas of Stitny consist of twenty-five pamphlets on religious and ethical subjects. They were widely read during the golden age of Bohemian history and exerted a powerful influence upon the develop- ment of Bohemian literature in that day and on the tendencies of religious reforms in the next generation.
In addition to these and other reforms., Charles also gave considerable attention to the commercial prosperity of his possessions. Bo- hemia had been for a long while infested by robbers who rendered commerce unprofitable and the highways unsafe. He policed the coun- try and attacked the strongholds of the robber-
48 Bohemia and the 6echs
knights and executed some of the most notori- ous leaders. The story is told that one of these robber-ki^ights was John of Smoyno, who oc- cupied a castle at Zampach. He had formerly served in the royal army and Charles had given him a golden chain for his bravery. After Zampach had been stormed, Charles is said to have thrown the rope around John's neck at the time of his execution, remarking that "it was not only golden chains that he had to give to his friends."
Charles died in 1378, and his death marks the end of the golden age of Bohemian history. He may have made a better Bohemian king than German emperor; but his contributions to the refinements of life and his amelioration of the social conditions of his people entitle him to high rank as a benefactor of mankind. He was buried in the cathedral at Hradcany in Prague, which he had rebuilt and enlarged. Concerning the personal characteristics of the great emperor-king a Bohemian historian writes: " Charles was rather small and thick- set; he was somewhat round-shouldered, his head and neck thrust forward; his face was broad, his features coarse, his eyes large. He dressed in plain black broadcloth, without any
' Period of Charles IV 49
ornamentation whatever, his coat being but- toned up to his chin. His favourite pastime was whittling. He whittled on all occasions, even when sitting as judge and listening to the most serious cases. At times it seemed that he was paying more attention to his knife than to the pleadings of the counsel; but the deci- sions that he gave proved that he had not lost a word. In the management of his domestic affairs, Charles was economical to stinginess; but in great undertakings he showed a gen- erosity truly princely. In affairs of state he listened patiently to his counsellors, but he generally acted according to his own mind, and a decision once reached was held as final. Al- though five centuries have passed since the father of Bohemia lived — and since that time fearful storms and changes have come over the country — yet, at the present time, no one can travel over the land without meeting on every side works that perpetuate the name of Charles IV, rendering it dear to every Bohe- mian heart." ^
' The story of Bohemia. By Frances Gregor. Cincinnati and New York, 1895.
CHAPTEE IV
JOHN HITS AND THE MORAL EEVOLUTION
Beginnings of the reign of V^lav IV — Church scandals — Burden of taxation for churches — The schism in the Roman church and its effect on Bohemia — Rival pontiffs — Sale of indulgences — Opposition to indulgences in Bohemia — Appearance of John Hus — His early life and training — The writings of Wycliffe — The Bethlehem chapel — Jerome of Prague — Reputed miracles — Chronic antagonism be- tween Germans and Bohemians — The university as a factor in the contest — Decree of Kutnd Hora and departure of German masters and students — Conflicts with the Roman pontiffs — Rival popes — Venders of indulgences — Hus ex- oommunicated and Prague laid under interdict — Hus in exUe — Sigismund and the council of Constance — Hus promised a safe-conduct — The trial and martyrdom of Hus — Jerome of Prague also burned as a heretic — Effect of the news on Bohemia — Beginnings of the Hussite wars — The question of communion in both kinds — Death of Vd.- clav and political parties — TJtraquists and Taborites — The calixtines — Nigholas of Husinec — The crusade against Bohemia and John ZiJka — Qualities pf the great Bohemian leader — Invading armies repulsed by ZiXka — The Articles of Prague — Council of Basel grants religious autonomy to the Bohemians — Momentary peace — The guardianship of Ladislav.
Vaclav IV (1378-1419) inherited both the kingdom of Bohemia and the empire of Ger- many, as well as the wise counsellors of his father; but he failed signally to rise to the re- sponsibilities which the troubled conditions of the times forced him to face. His ability was so
so
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 51
distinctly iaferior to that of Ms illustrious father that among the nobility, at least, he soon lost esteem and confidence. " A great name," as Mr. Maurice ^ has remarked, " is a very dan- gerous inheritance; and when that inherit- ance implies an obligation on the heir to carry out a great work begun by his predecessor, the tradition generally involves failure and disgrace. In Vaclav, as in so many sons of great rulers, some of the qualities which had secured his father's success were conspicu- ously wanting. Charles had known when to insist, and when to abstain from insisting, on the reforms which he had most at heart. He had known how f a!r to go in the punishment, of offences, and when to pardon graciously ; above all, he had known how to respect, and even to utUize, the abilities of his opponents. None of these lessons of statesmanship could Vaclav ever learn; he was absolutely without self- restraint or sense of proportion; and, conse- quently, though his aims were generally those of a wise and patriotic ruler, he frequently used the methods of a cruel tyrant."
The scandals and discords occasioned by the
* The Btoiy of Bohemia. By C. Edmund Maurice. New York and London, 1896.
52 Bohemia and the Cechs
residence of the Eoman pontiffs at Avignon and the lowered moral tone of the clergy, which ultimately developed into the Hussite wars, had cause(f Charles no little anxiety during the last years of his reign and he had repeatedly called the attention of the ecclesiastics to the need of moral reform within the church. That this need was augmented by the schism which began almost simultaneously with the accession of Vaclav there can be no reasonable ques- tion of doubt. Count Liitzow,^ a Bohemian his- torian, says : "At no time, indeed, was such a reformation more necessary. Warfare, tour- naments, hunting, and gambling were widely spread among the clergy, and immorality was almost universal, the law of celibacy having fallen into complete neglect."
Baron Helfert,^ who writes from a strongly Eoman Catholic point of view, says that " the immorality of the clergy was so great that in some parishes it was considered desirable that the priests should live in concubinage." Dur- ing the seventy years that the popes lived at Avignon they intrigued constantly in the inter-
* Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count Ltitzow. London and New York, 1910.
2 Hus und BBeronymus. By Josef Alexander Helfert. Prague, 1853.
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 53
ests of France, the Avignon court at one time having loaned the king of France three and a half million guldens. After the schism tremen- dous monetary demands were made on the lands which remained obedient to the respective pon- tiffs, and this money was spent ia the main for ■ secular and political purposes.
The burden of taxation in Bohemia and else- where became intolerable, and " no church of- fice or church benefice, no exemption or dis- pensation, no hope of future preferment, no, not even forgiveness of sins, could be gained without cash payment."^ -^neas Sylvius,^ who later became Pope Pius II, it will be re- called, declared at the council of Constance, " Nothing does the court of Eome give with- out payment, inasmuch as the very laying on of hands, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, are for sale."
The schism, it will be recalled, had occurred shortly before the death of Charles. He had induced the German princes to recognize Ur- ban VI as the legitimate pope and to renounce all connection with Clement VII and the car-
^ A short history of Germany. By Ernest F. Henderson. New York, 1908.
^ MneiB Sylvii De Bohemorum, et ex his Imperatorum aliquot Origine ac Gestis. Basel, 1575.
54 Bohemia and the Cechs
dinals who supported him. Vaclav adhered to the policy of his father and tried to induce the king of France to join with him in a move- ment looking to the deposition of both claim- ants and the election of a new pontiff. Boni- face IX had succeeded Urban as pope at Eome in 1389 and Benedict XIII had become the suc- cessor of Clement as the pope at Avignon in 1394. Boniface died in 1406 and was succeeded first by Innocent VII and then by Gregory XII. Since neither the pope at Eome nor the pope at Avignon would yield, and the schism was giving Hus and the Bohemian reformers an excellent opportunity to set forth doctrines at variance with those of the Eoman church, the idea of an international ecclesiastical council was suggested. In the early days of the Chris- tian church, it was urged, councils were the highest authorities in all matters concerning religion, but that gradually the authority of the councils had been usurped by the popes. After some hesitation the cardinals called a councU to meet at Pisa in 1409. The council deposed both Gregory and Benedict and elected Alexander V, who died soon afterwards and was succeeded by John XXIII, ' ' a man whose past had been open to the gravest reproach."
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 55
As both Gregory and Benedict refused to ab- dicate, the church now had three popes and the problem was enormously complicated, since each claimed to be the true vicegerent of God and the legitimate successor of St. Peter, and each hurled terrible maledictions against his rivals. John XXIII characterized Gregory XII as " a heretic, a demon, and the antichrist ' ' ; Gregory obligingly bore similar testimony re- specting John, and both united in pronouncing Benedict " an impostor and a schismatic." Europe became the theatre of war and rapine ; for the rival popes sought to crush one another, not merely by the use of spiritual bulls, but by the force of temporal arms. The sale of indulgences to provide the sinews for the spiri- tual warfare of the rival pontiffs served even more to alienate the Bohemians, who had been greatly disappointed because the council of Pisa had been prorogued without attempting to regulate the papal finances and reform the abuses of the clergy.
It was at this time that John Hus ^ appeared
' The literature of Hus is very large. In English, see Count Liitzow's Life and times of Master John Hus (London and New York, 1909), the most comprehensive and recent work, and Albert Henry Wratislaw's John Hus: the commencement of resistance to the papal authority on the part of the inferior clergy (London, 1882). In German, see Baron Helfert's Hus und Heronymus
56 Bohemia and the Cechs
on the stage of Bohemian history as the leader, of the movement for moral reform. Hus was born in the market-town of Husinec in south- ern Bohemia in 1373 of poor but honest and ambitious parents. His father died when he was young. After completing his elementary and secondary studies in the provincial schools, he repaired to Prague, where he took his mas- ter's degree in the university in 1396. Upon the completion of his university studies he en- tered the service of the church and soon attained distinction. His fame attracted the attention of the king and he was selected as the confessor of Queen Sophia. In spite of the fact that he had studied with some care the writings of Wycliffe, the English reformer, he was unstinted in his devotion to the church of Eome. In 1393, at the time of the jubilee at Prague, he took part in the procession in order to share in the absolution, and gave the last four grosohen that he possessed to a confessor. The antagonistic attitude of Hus to the church of Rome dates from the year 1402, when, as preacher of the Bethlehem chapel, he began
(Prague, 1853); Wilhelm Berger's Johannis Hus und Konig Sigmund (Augsburg, 1871); J. Friedrich's Die Lehre von Hus (Ilegensburg, 1862). In French, Ernst Denis' Hus et la guerre dea Hussites.
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 57
to attack the morals of the clergy. The Beth- lehem chapel, which played such an important role in the moral reformation movement, had been founded and endowed ten years before by a Bohemian patriot who stipulated that its use should be confined to the preaching of the word of God in the mother-tongue. As already noted, the moral condition of Prague at this time could not well have been worse. The king, the nobles, the prelates, the clergy, and the citizens, we are told, ' ' wallowed in the most abominable vices " and " indulged without restraint in avarice, pride, drunkenness, lewdness, and every profligacy." Against these vices the preaching of Hus came as a strong reaction, " like an incarnate conscience."
The appearance at Prague two years later (1402) of two English theologians, James and Conrad of Canterbury, who were graduates of Oxford and disciples of Wycliffe, had a pro- found influence on the subsequent career of Hus. He had already learned considerable about the teachings of the English reformer through Anna, the sister of King Vaclav who had married King Richard of England, and Jerome of Prague, who had spent some time in England, where he had studied the doc-
58 Bohemia and the Cechs
trines of "VVycliffe at first hand. From this time the preaching of Hus partakes more of the authority of the Bible and less of the Eo- man hierarchy.
Another event shortly happened which made a keen impression on the mind of the Bohemian reformer. Miracles, it was alleged, were being performed in a village church on the lower Elbe, where a drop of Christ's blood was cur- ing all sorts of ills, and the church was visited by thousands of pilgrims. Doubt having been cast on its efficacy, the archbishop of Prague appointed a committee of three — one of whom was Hus — to visit the village and ascertain the truthfulness of the reputed miracles. The report was unfavourable, and the archbishop issued a mandate requiring all priests to pub- lish to their congregations the episcopal pro- hibition of pilgrimages to the village under pain of excommunication. But the incident weakened unmistakably the Bohemian reform- er's faith in pilgrimages and other practices of the Roman church.
The chronic antagonism between the Bohe- mians and the Germans, after all the chief fac- tor in the moral revolution and the Hussite wars, at this time became acute. Hus had been
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 59
made dean of the philosophical faculty of the university of Prague in 1401 and the next year he was made rector of the university. The administration of the university was entrusted to officials selected by representatives of the four nations into which students and teachers were organized. These nations were (1) the Bohemian nation, which included students and masters from Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and the other Slavic lands; (2) the Bavarian nation, which included those from Bavaria, Aus- tria, Swabia, Franconia, and the Ehinelands; (3) the Polish nation, including those from Poland, Silesia, Eussia, and Lithuania, and (4) the Saxon nation, including those from Saxony, Thuringia, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Each nation had one vote in the administration of the institution, which made it easy for the foreigners to combine and defeat the wishes of the Bohemians.
Such a circumstance was a contributing fac- tor to the long chain of incidents that led up to the Hussite wars. At the conclusion of the rectorship of Hus, Walter Harasser, a German, was selected to direct the destinies of the ship of learning. He at once called an academical meeting and presented for its examination
60 Bohemia and the Cechs
forty-five articles extracted from the writings of Wycliffe. A stormy debate followed, in wMcli Hus and the Bohemians defended the articles ; but they were condemned by the com- bined votes of the foreigners, and the members of the university were forbidden to teach them. The condemnation, however, remained prac- tically a dead letter ; for in his university lec- tures and in his sermons at the Bethlehem chapel Hus continued to present his views of the essential doctrines of the Christian relig- ion much as he had done before. But the con- denmation led to the organization of two well- defined parties within academic circles — the one headed by Hus and demanding church re- form and the other led by the Germans and justifying the alleged abuses of the Eoman church.
As early as 1385 the Bohemians had attacked the policy of appointing foreigners to the chief offices in the university ; but the crisis came in 1409, when King Vaclav, yielding to the na- tional party, by the decree of Kutna Hora changed the system of voting so that hence- forth the Bohemians were given three votes and the combined foreign nations only one. Thereupon five thousand German students and
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 61
professors, with, a sprinkling of sympathizers among the other foreign nations, left Prague in a body and went to Saxony, where they founded the German university at Leipzig.
The reform party in Bohemia was strength- ened by the exodus. Hus was again chosen rec- tor of the university, which gave him great influence and a large field in which to promul- gate his doctrines. But his teachings were by no means pleasing to Alexander V, whom the council of Pisa had that year elected as Roman pontiff. The . pope authorized the archbishop of Prague to prevent preaching in private chapels and to proceed against those who " read the writings or taught the opinions of "Wycliffe." Two hundred volumes pertaining to the doctrines of the Oxford reformer were burned and the archbishop soon afterwards excommunicated Hus for continuing to preach. But the king and the queen were indignant be- cause of the acts of the archbishop, and he was ordered to indemnify the owners of the des- troyed books. Meanwhile the king seized some of the ecclesiastical revenues, and wrote a men- acing letter to the Roman cardinals in which he stated that if the Holy College did not find some prompt means of settling the religious
62 Bohemia and the Cechs
quarrels in Bohemia that he and the lords of his kingdom would find a way of termina- ting the ijiatter in accordance with their own views.
Matters in Italy at this time led Hus to take the step which ultimately brought him to the stake at Constance. John XXIII had been driven from Rome by King Ladislav of Naples, who was one of the adherents of Gregory, one of the rival popes. John placed Ladislav under the ban; pronounced him " a perjurer, a schismatic, a reviler, a heretic, a traitor, and a conspirator," and proclaimed a crusade against him. But as funds were required for the holy war, he sent out venders of indul- gences to provide the means for subduing Lad- islav. Their arrival in Bohemia at once pro- voked an outburst of denunciation.
Count Liitzow says of this episode: " Pre- ceded by drummers they entered the city, and established themselves in the market-place. They called on all passers-by to contribute money or goods in exchange for indulgences. The sale of indulgences had been one of the abuses which the Bohemian church reformers had from the first most strenuously opposed. Hus, in his Bethlehem chapel, spoke strongly
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 63
against the granting of these indulgences, which, he said, were given to aid in the slaugh- ter of the soldiers of Ladislav, who could but obey their king. At the same time he dis- claimed all intention of taking sides in the quarrel between the two popes. ' '
The matter of the sale of indulgences was brought before the university by Hus and Je- rome of Prague, and after a stormy debate the practice was declared to be unchristian. The pope renewed his decree of excommunication against Hus and " all true Christians were for- bidden to have any intercourse with him ; food and drink were to be supplied to him only under paiu of excommunication ; all religious serv- ices were to be suspended in every town which he entered ; Christian burial was to be refused him, and the Bethlehem chapel was to be des- troyed. ' '
The city of Prague having been laid under interdict and the churches closed, King Va- clav asked Hus to retire for a period in the hope that an end might be brought to the con- flict. Hus left Prague and went to his native town for a period, not, as he asserts, " to deny the truth, for which I am willing to die, but because impious priests forbid the preaching
64 Bohemia and the Cechs
of it. ' ' The Eoman church, he maintained, was still to him the spouse of Christ and the pope the repre^ntative and vicar of God. What he opposed was the abuse of authority and not the principle.
Hus spent nearly twenty months in volun- tary exile, during which time he occupied him- self in preaching in villages, fields, and forests, and in literary occupations. He wrote fifteen works in the Bohemian language and several in Latin, among which were his treatise on simony and the famous postil. His contributions to the development of Bohemian literature during his exile were significant. He purified the na- tional language, gave it fixed etymological rules, and invented a new system of orthogra- phy. He also revised the Bohemian transla- tion of the Bible that had been made during the preceding century, and composed many hymns. Count Liitzow calls attention to the fact that from this period, more strongly than before, Hus " affirmed that the Bible was the only true source of Christian belief. This position neces- sarily incensed the adherents of the papal au- thority more than almost any other could have done."
Meanwhile Sigismund, who had originally
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 65
inherited Brandenburg and superseded Va- clav as emperor of Germany, had induced the church authorities to call a council at Constance to settle the question of the rival pontiffs. And to this council Hus was summoned to refute the charges of heresy. " From the point of view of the church," notes an English historian, " there is no doubt that he was a dangerous man — a violent political agitator, a heroic re- former. He preached doctrines which had been formally condemned and he preached them with a flaming eloquence that carried all before it."
Sigismund promised Hus a safe-conduct, a fair hearing, and a free return to Bohemia, even in the event of his not submitting to the decisions of the council. He was brought before the council several times and required to make a general recantation of all heretical doctrines that he had taught. The charges brought against him were (1) teaching that laymen as well as priests should be granted the cup of the eucharist; (2) attacking transubstantia- tion; (3) insisting that the moral character of the priest affected the validity of the sacra- ment, and (4) criticizing the discipline and or- ganization of the church. He asked to be heard
66 Bohemia and the Cechs
in defence of the doctrines that he had taught the Bohemians, but this was denied him; and he was assured that recantation alone would spare his life. But he assured the churchmen that he would prefer to die rather than recant with his lips opinions that he held in his heart. He was declared a heretic and turned over to the civil authorities to be burned.^
With all the cruel symbolic acts that an out- raged orthodoxy could invent, John Hus was burned at the stake at Constance the 6th of July, 1415. He had been degraded from the office of priesthood and expelled from the church before he was handed over to the sec- ular arm ; and, as he was led to his cruel fate, he was required to wear a paper cap upon which fiends and devils were painted, and bear- ing the unchristian legend, " We commit your soul to the devil." Hus sang the liturgy as the fire was kindled about him and he was only silenced by the flames that finally choked him. His ashes were thrown into the Ehine that they might not be taken back to Bohemia and ven- erated. A generation later Erasmus, the great Dutch scholar, forcibly remarked : * * John Hus
* For a full account of the trial and last days of Hus, see the recent admirable book by Count Ltltzow: The life and times of Master John Hus (New York and London, 1909).
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 67
was murdered, not convicted." And that ver- dict is shared by most impartial historians.
The burning of Hus was the beginning and not the end of the religious discord in Bohemia. His funeral pyre was the signal for a fierce struggle that lasted for more than fifty years and left behind those ineffaceable memories of suffering and ruin which followed in the train of the terrible and desolating Hussite wars. The treachery of Sigismund, in abandoning Hus, has left a stain on the name of that sov- ereign which the intervening centuries have not blotted out. That he should have broken his word with Hus because of his devotion to the Eoman church might be excused; but to have subsequently written the Bohemian nobles as- suring them of his profound regret that Hus had been burned and declaring that he did everything in his power to prevent it, and then to ha,ve urged a crusade against the Bohemians because they resented the murder of their great reformer, — surely, as Mr. Maurice points out, no ruler ever took so much pains to write him- self down a liar as did Sigismund.
Shortly after the burning of Hus, his col- league, Jerome of Prague, met the same fate at the hands of the council of Constance. Je-
68 Bohemia and the Oechs
rome was a great scholar and a great traveller ; but his part in the moral revolution of Bohemia was relatively insignificant. Worn and starved by long imprisonment, Jerome finally yielded to his persecutors 4nd recanted. This satisfied the Italian members of the council and they desired to set him free ; but the Germans, with centuries of bitter hatred toward the Bohemi- ans, insisted that his recantation could not be trusted and insisted upon further examination. He was agaia called before the council, when he took occasion to express keen regret that phys- ical weakness had led him to recant, for he declared that he still believed in the teachings of Hus and Wycliffe. He was promptly led to the stake and burned.
When the news of the burning of Hus reached Bohemia it produced indescribable ex- citement and indignation. A stirring protest was sent to Constance against " the eternal, shameful wrong ' ' ; the Roman Catholic priests were promptly expelled from their parishes; the houses of the clergy were plundered ; siege was laid to the palace of the archbishop of Prague and he was forced to flee in dismay; the town-hall at the capital was seized and the councillors, who continued faithful to the Ro-
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 69
man party, were dragged to the windows and hurled to the angry crowd in the square below, who, " with the fury of wild beasts, tore them limb from limb. ' ' The university declared Hus a holy martyr for the faith of Christ, and or- dered that the day of his martyrdom (the 6th of July) should thereafter be observed as a national holiday ; and the Bohemians — nobles and common people — swore that, to their last breath, they would uphold religious freedom.
When the news of these and other acts of violence reached Vaclav, he was thrown into such a paroxysm of rage that he died from a stroke of apoplexy. As he died without heirs, the question of a successor greatly complicated the disturbed conditions in Bohemia. His brother Sigismund was the logical heir, but he had alienated the national party by his treachery with Hus, and they declared that noth- ing could induce them " to recognize as king the man who had put to death their saint and hero. ' ' In spite of his machinations — and they were worthy of an American political machine boss — it required some years, and then by the aid of arms, for Sigismund finally to possess the crown of Bohemia.
The question of the cup — or communion in
70 Bohemia and the Cechs
both kinds, as it was more commonly called — was the theological rock that divided Bohemia into two hostile political parties. In the prim- itive Christian church, as historical students have asserted, the communion was administered after the repast and in two kinds — bread and wine. The Greek Orthodox church, from which Bohemia had received Christianity, preserved the ancient practice ; but in the Roman church, the priest alone took the communion with the two kinds, administering the sacrament to the laity under the form of bread alone.
Bohemia, however, clung with great tenacity to the habit of administering the communion in the two kinds ; and it was not until the time of Gregory VIII that the practice was formally forbidden. It continued in use among the com- mon people, and became a distinctive feature of the Hussite movement. In 1417 the univer- sity of Prague declared that communion in both kinds was necessary to the salvation of the soul, although the Eoman church had forbidden the cup to the laity.
Before the death of Vaclav there had been but two political parties in Bohemia — the na- tional party, which demanded church reform and a larger measure of religious freedom, and
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 71
the Eoman party, composed almost entirely of Germans, who resented the criticisms that had been made against the clergy. But in the tur- moil that followed the news of the burning of Hus and the attempts of Sigismund to get pos- session of Bohemia, three well-defined parties emerged, and these at a later date were again subdivided by factional differences. The Eo- man Catholic party favoured submission to Sigismund and the decrees of the mother church. Its support came almost entirely from the German settlements in Bohemia and Mo- ravia. The utraquist party, composed largely of the Bohemian nobility and the more con- servative nationalists, showed its willingness to accept Sigismund if he would pledge himself to the question of church reform and a larger measure of religious liberty. The third party, sometimes called the extreme reform party, thoroughly distrusted Sigismund and desired to break with the authority of the papal see and organize a national church. It " rejected the mass and all the sacraments, except baptism and communion, the doctrine of the existence of purgatory, and many of the rules and reg- ulations of the church. Its adherents main- tained that the Holy Bible was the sole author-
72 Bohemia and the Cechs
ity in all matters of religious belief." This party subsequently became known as the Ta- borites, from the fortified town of Tabor which they made their stronghold during the Hussite wars. The utraquist party later became known as the calixtines, because of the chalice which became the symbol of granting the cup to the laity. It was represented by the university which from the first opposed the extreme re- form party, and declared that Christian doc- trine was found not only in the Bible, but also in the traditions of the church, so long as those traditions were not in contradiction to scrip- ture. The calixtines, as Palacky has remarked, ultimately became the aristocratic party, and represented the university and the city of Prague ; while the Taborites became the demo- cratic party and represented the common peo- ple who lived in the small villages and towns. Under the leadership of Nicholas of Husi- nec, the royal burgrave of the castle of Hus and a member of the court of King Vaclav, the extreme reform party gathered in a field near Austi for worship and deliberation; and on a near-by hill they subsequently established the fortified stronghold of Tabor which played an important role in the wars of the following
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 73
years. Originally these gatherings near Austi were in the nature of primitive camp-meetings on a grand scale, as many as forty thousand people sometimes assembling. They came from all. parts of Bohemia and Moravia in solemn processions, carrying banners bearing the em- blems of the sacraments. They divided into numerous congregations, each sex by itself, with priests in charge of each. Some preached, others heard confession, and still others admin- istered the communion in both kinds.
When, however, Pope Martin V proclaimed a crusade against Bohemia and called the en- tire Christian world to arms against them, John 2izka, who had distinguished himself as a military leader during the reign of Vaclav, turned these religious gatherings into a per- manent camp. A bold eminence was fortified and Tabor became the stronghold of the re- forming party and the centre of all those who opposed King Sigismund and his allies. It has well been said that when a nation is passing through a crisis, it always finds a leader for the crisis. John 2izka of Trocnov was the leader that Bohemia produced at this critical moment. He and John Hus, as some biogra- phers assert, may have been school-fellows.
74 Bohemia and the Cechs
Attaining manhood he became a knight-errant, serving first under the king of Poland and af- terwards under King Vaclav, with whom he stood in high favour. He was unquestionably the greatest military genius of his age, and by some historians he is regarded as the inventor of modern tactics. He never lost a battle ; and by his indomitable energy and invincible lead- ership, armies of peasants and mechanics were organized which beat down, with iron flails and wooden clubs, the mail-clad knights of Europe. His barricades of wagons were notable in- stances of his military genius, and the ardour with which his soldiers sang the battle hymn, " Ye who the Lord God's warriors are," which 2izka himself probably composed, indicates the religious source of his irresistible courage. ' ' Intolerant, fanatical, and cruel, he was never- theless a true patriot, disinterested and humble, striving to lead a godly and righteous life. Deeming himself an avenger of the divine law, he mercilessly destroyed all whom he believed to be its foes, and in the spirit of Israel's stern leader, ' hewed in pieces before the Lord. ' " ^ Crusaders to the number of a hundred thou-
* The best life of ^i^ka is by Tomek, in the Bohemian. (Prague, 1885.) See also George Sand's Jean Zyska and Lenau's Bilder aus dem Hussitenkriege.
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 75
sand responded to the proclamation of Pope Martin V to assist Sigismund in ridding Bo- hemia of heresy, ^neas Sylvius says that the horsemen alone numbered seventy thousand, and Lawrence of Brezova, a contemporary chronicler, says that the crusading army in- cluded Germans, Hungarians, Croatians, Dal- matians, Bulgarians, Wallachians, Sicilians, Ruthenians, Bavarians, Saxons, Austrians, Sua- bians. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Poles, and Eng- lishmen. The crusaders were led by the Elec- tor Palatine, the archbishops of Maintz, Treves, and Cologne, Frederick of HohenzoUern, Duke Albert of Austria, and other German princes. The Bohemian forces were led by 2izka. Prague was the objective point. 2izka occu- pied an elevated point of land east of the city known as Vitkov, but now called 2izka's Hill. The allied forces were directed by Sigismund. The contest was brief but decisive. The cru- sading army was totally defeated, Sigismund fled in dismay from Bohemia, and the arch- bishop of Prague went over to the Hussites. Those of the utraquist nobles who had sided with Sigismund against their coxmtrymen were highly incensed at the barbaric conduct of the retreating Germans who " scoured the neigh-
76 Bohemia and the Cechs
bouring country, burning as heretics all Bo^ hemians, without distinction, whom they could seize."
The Bohemians — those who had fought with and against 2izka — now got together and drew up prelinunary peace measures known as the Articles of Prague. The articles declared (1) The word of God is to be preached by Christian priests in Bohemia without let or hindrance; (2) the sacrament of the eucharist is to be administered, under each kind, of bread and wine to all believers not disqualified to receive it by reason of mortal sin; (3) the secular dominion exercised by the clergy over worldly goods and possessions, to the prejudice of their spiritual office and the damage of civil author- ity, is to be taken away from them, and the clergy are to be brought back to the evangelical rule and the apostolic practice of Christ, and (4) all mortal sins, especially such as are pub- lic, as also all other irregularities contrary to the divine law, in whatever estate they may appear, are to be punished by those by whom it pertains. The articles were drawn up in Latin, Bohemian, and German and sent to all the courts of Europe. The Bohemian diet adopted them ; allegiance to Sigismund was re-
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 77
nounced, and twenty regents were appointed to administer the affairs of the kingdom.
The Articles of Prague, as Count Liitzow has pointed out, " were undeniably in accord with the wants of the age and formed the basis of a possible agreement. The utraquist nobles who, though they were on the king's side, yet warmly approved of the four articles, unsuc- cessfully attempted to obtain their acceptance by the papal legate."
The next fourteen years (1420-1434) wit- nessed the extraordinary military success of 2izka and his small but well-disciplined army. The war was not confined to Bohemia. The Hussites made repeated inroads into Saxony and other parts of the German empire. They invaded Franconia, penetrated as far as Meis- sen, and threatened to besiege Nuremberg. 2izka died of the plague in 1424, and his place was taken by Prokop, sumamed the Great, a married Taborite priest. In the five crusades that had been sent against the Bohemians, the allied forces of Sigismund and the foreigners had suffered ignoble defeat in each; and in the great battle of Domazliee (Taus), fought in 1431, " the stateliest army that Sigismund had yet been able to raise went down, almost with-
78 Bohemia and the Cechs
out a struggle, before the grim, determined Bohemians."
Sigismun^ now recognized how utterly hope- less it was to try to coerce the Bohemians, and he again begged Pope Martin V to assemble a general council of the church to settle the religious differences. The unwilling pontiff finally called the council of Basel and invited the Bohemians to send deputies. Upon the fol- lowing conditions they agreed to send repre- sentatives to Basel: (1) Full guarantee of the personal safety of the envoys; (2) the right to express their opinions freely; (3) the right to censure the abuses of the church, and (4) the right to defend the Articles of Prague. The Eoman pontiff assented to these conditions and further stipulated that church services in the towns through which the envoys passed need not be suspended, which the rules of the church would have required, since Bohemia was under interdict.
Fifteen Bohemian delegates — including Pro- kop the Great, the leader of the Taborite mili- tary forces, John of Rokycan, who subsequently became the utraquist archbishop of Prague, and Peter Payne, an English disciple of Wyc- liffe who had taken refuge in Bohemia — were
John Hus and the Moral Revolution 79
selected; and they were accompanied by an escort of three hundred horsemen. After end- less discussions, a compromise was finally agreed upon: the Bohemians were allowed communion with the cup, they were permitted the free preaching and reading of the gospel, and the right to draw the clergy before the secular tribunals. But the question of the moral reform of the clergy — of such keen in- terest to the Bohemians — was not taken up by the council of Basel, although it was in ses- sion for eighteen years.
Peace at last restored, Sigismund (1436- 1437) was finally permitted to take possession of the kingdom for which he had struggled for seventeen years ; but he lived only a few months to enjoy his possession. Before his death he had provided for the succession of his son- in-law, Albert of Hapsburg (1437-1439). The unpopularity of Albert, occasioned by his at- tempts to Germanize certain cities in Bohemia and Moravia, caused his downfall; and the Bohemians proceeded to elect Casimir, the younger brother of the king of Poland. The death of Albert and the subsequent birth of a son to his queen (Elizabeth), the granddaugh- ter of Charles IV, brought the strife to an end ;
80 Bohemia and the Cechs
and Ladislav Posthumus (1439-1457) was de- clared the rightful occupant of the Pfemysl throne.
The question of the guardianship of young Ladislav during his minority caused no little disturbance. Frederick III, the newly elected German emperor, claimed the protection of his nephew. The struggles of the two dominant parties in Bohemia, the absence of any duly appointed regent, and the consequent turmoil and confusion led to the selection of George of Podebrad, " the first and only Protestant king of Bohemia." The next chapter will deal briefly with the events which followed the death of Albert.
CHAPTER V
GEOEGE OF PODIiBEAD, THE PEOTESTANT KING
)
One of the most interesting epochs in Bohemian history — Struggle for supremacy during the minority of Ladislav — George of Podebrad becomes regent — Disintegration of the Taborites — Question of rehgious rights again revived — John of Rokycan — An unconfirmed archbishop — Struggles with Rome — Brief reign of Ladislav — George of Podebrad becomes king of Bohemia — Period of rehgious tranquiUity — Renewed conflicts and attempts to abrogate the Articles of Prague — Conflict with the papal legate — German party takes sides with Rome — George excommunicated — AUi' ance with Poland — Death of King George — His qualities as a statesman — • Conflrmation of the Pohsh prince — Invasion of Bohemia by Matthew of Hungary — Vladislav and the papal party — Moral dehnquency of the priests — Reign of King Louis — The reformation of Martin Luther — Fer- dinand and the rehgious quarrels in Germany — Efforts to prevent the spread of Protestantism in Bohemia — Growth of the Bohemian Brethren — The wavering policy of Maxi- milian — Ferdinand and the counter reformation — The Letter of Majesty
The reign of George of Podebrad (1458- 1471), the so-called Protestant king of Bohe- mia, is, after that of Charles IV, one of the most interesting in the history of the kingdom. As pointed out in the last chapter, Albert, duke of Austria, succeeded Sigismund ; but his reign was short, and, leaving no male heir, the Bohe- mians proceeded to elect Casimir, brother of
81
82 Bohemia and the Cechs
King Vladislav III of Poland. But as Albert's widow gave birth to a son a few weeks later, the election of Casimir was annulled.
It wag widely recognized, however, that the country needed a strong and wise ruler during the minority of Ladislav Posthumus (1439- 1457) ; and this was ultimately settled by the supremacy of one of several contending polit- ical parties. There were four important par- ties in Bohemia at this time — the German party, which represented the interests of the Eoman Catholic church, of which Ulrich of Eosenberg was the leader; the conservative utraquist party headed by Menhard of Jind- fichuv Hradec; the national (calixtine) party led by Ptacek of Pirkstein, and the Taborites, or ultra-reform party, directed by Bishop Nich- olas and a popular Taborite pastor named Ko- randa.
Menhard went over to the German party; the Taborites were disintegrated by the com- bined opposition of the other parties ; and, at the death of Ptacek, George of Podebrad be- came the leader of the national or moderate reform party. Although a young man less than twenty-four years of age, he displayed the sa- gacity of an experienced statesman and the
The Protestant King 83
virtues of a patriot; and within a few months he made himself regent of Bohemia.
His great force of character and extraordi- nary administrative ability were recognized by all parties, ^neas Sylvius,^ who later occupied the papal chair, says of George : ' ' He was a man of great and many sided gifts, of exhaust- less energy and enterprise, of keen intuition, so that he seldom made a mistake when com- pelled to decide a question upon the spur of the moment; he was a man of agreeable man- ners, just and upright in his dealings, but some- what contaminated by heresy. ' '
The events that led up to the ultimate tri- umph of George of Podebrad were both nu- merous and complicated. Frederick III, of Hapsburg, and the uncle of Ladislav, took charge of the young prince and refused to allow him to be taken to Bohemia. He claimed the right of guardianship and the education of the lad in accordance with the doctrines of the Eoman Catholic church. A council of repre- sentatives from Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia — the component parts of the kingdom — met in a diet to establish a regency during
1 Mnese Sylvii De Bohemorum, et ex his Imperatonim aliquo Origine ac Gestis. Basel, 1575.
84 Bohemia and the Cechs
the absence of the infant king. The discordant parties could not come to terms, and the diet was dissolved.
The question of the religious rights of the Bohemians was again revived. These rights were embodied in the Articles of Prague which had been sanctioned by Pope Martin V and the council of Basel ; but Martin had died in 1431 and was succeeded by Eugene IV, who dissolved the council the year following. The ecclesias- tics, however, continued in session in spite of him, and an open rupture took place which was ultimately healed. Again in 1437 Eugene dis- solved the council and called another at Fer- rara. Those of the cardinals who refused to ac- company him remained in session at Basel and elected Felix V in his place. Thus the church again had two popes and two councils. Eugene died in 1447 and was succeeded by Nicholas V in whose favour Felix abdicated. The articles, he maiatained, had been adopted by a schis- matic council, and he refused to recognize them.
The delay in the papal confirmation of John of Eokycan as archbishop of Prague had also irritated the Bohemians. John had been se- lected during the reign of Sigismund. This wily ruler had consented to the selection of
The Protestant King 85
John and liad assured the Bohemians that the pope would confirm the appointment. He showed them a letter which he had written to the Holy Father urging the confirmation of John as archbishop of Prague. But at the same time he sent a secret messenger to Rome requesting the pope to delay the matter " in the hope that the Bohemians might solve the difficulty by murdering Eokycan."
The fortunes of the unconfirmed archbishop were intimately identified with those of George of Podebrad. John was born near Plzen and educated at the university of Prague, where he became a follower of the teachings of Master John Hus. In 1425 he was appointed to the Tyn church, where his eloquence won him im- mediate fame. He was one of the delegates to the council of Basel and delivered a stirring address in defence of the religious practices of the Bohemians, after which he was the recog- nized spiritual leader of the national reform party. In 1435 he was selected archbishop of Prague; and although his appointment was never officially approved by the Roman pontiffs, he held the office for thirty-six years.
A Bohemian historian says of him: " Eoky- can was a man of much wisdom and modera-
86 Bohemia and the Cechs
tion, great depth and earnestness of character, of fervent patriotism, and unswerving devotion to the caupe of truth. It was for these qualities that the Bohemians loved him, and endured all manner of persecution from the pope rather than give up their chosen archbishop."
The arrival in Prague at this time of Car- dinal Carvajal on a mission from the pope brought matters to a crisis. He made it clear that the Roman see would probably never con- firm the selection of John of Eokycan as arch- bishop, and he confessed entire ignorance of the Articles of Prague and the religious priv- ileges which they were supposed to grant. " George of Podebrad, who had in his custody the original of this precious document, there- fore forwarded it to him. When, upon the fail- ure of his mission, the cardinal left Prague shortly afterwards, his departure caused a great outcry among the townspeople. They accused him of having carried away the orig- inals of the famous compacts and they threat- ened him with the fate of Hus. ' ' ^ Horsemen were sent to overtake the cardinal and the pre- cious document was recovered. But the epi-
1 Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count Llitzov, Ne^ir Vork and London^ 1910.
The Protestant King 87
sode caused no little agitation, and the national party called a convention to meet at Kutna Hora. It was decided to organize an army, capture Prague from the German party, and establish some form of settled government in Bohemia.
A small but well disciplined army under the leadership of George of Podebrad marched against the capital in September, 1448. He obtained possession of the city almost without resistance ; and although some of the noblemen joined the German party and formed a league against him, which occasioned more or less civil war, the kingdom was soon in his hands. He aimed to bring peace to the country, and to this end he appointed representatives of both the great political parties to office. He conciliated the Roman Catholics, overcame the opposition of most of the nobles, and at a general diet held at Prague in 1452 he was duly elected governor of Bohemia.
The next year Frederick was induced to sur- render Ladislav. The young prince was brought to Prague and declared king of Bohemia. The governorship of George was extended six years and he was made regent of the kingdom. As it had become evident that the Roman see would
88 Bohemia and the Cechs
not confirm the appointment of John as arch- bishop, the ecclesiastical representatives of the national party projected a scheme for an alli- ance with the Greek Orthodox church. Nego- tiations were opened with Constantinople ; but the capture of the capital of the Greek empire by the Turks brought the project to an abrupt close.
Bohemia enjoyed a large measure of pros- perity under the regency of George. His wise administration of public affairs and the con- ciliatory policy which he adopted towards the Eoman Catholics and the leaders of the op- posing parties gave him recognized standing for statesmanship of a high order.
The death of Ladislav in 1457 extinguished the last claim to direct line with the Pfemysls. According to an arrangement made by Sigis- mund the Bohemian crown should now revert to the Hapsburgs, but Frederick III had his hands more than full, and he made no effort to secure the prize. This left the Bohemians free to select their own ruler. There were many candidates for the post, but the Bohemian diet, by a unanimous vote, elected George of Pode- brad king of Bohemia. The news of the choice caused joyful tidings throughout the kingdom.
The Protestant King 89
" Thus," remarks Mr. Maurice,^ " the election of George of Podebrad marks the accession of the first heretic king in the history of Europe. ' ' During the pontificate of Calixtus III Bohe- mia enjoyed comparative tranquillity, so far, at least, as interference from Rome was con- cerned ; and to preserve friendly relations with the Roman see, King George suppressed all re- ligious sects in his kingdom that went beyond the demarcations of the Articles of Prague. He required the separatists from the utraquist body to leave the country ; he forced the Tabor- ites to surrender and disperse; the Bohemian Brethren, a new Protestant sect that had orig- inated under the leadership of Peter Celcicky and Brother Gregory, were severely perse- cuted, and the Waldensian exiles from Italy and France were no longer welcomed. " The successful policy of Podebrad, ' ' remarks Count Liitzow,^ " had secured Bohemia against all foreign enemies, and peace and order were also maintained. The prosperity of the country had greatly increased in consequence, and the peo- ple began to hope that the happy times of King
' The story of Bohemia. By C. Edmund Maurice. New York and London, 1896.
2 Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count Lutzow. London and New York, 1910.
90 Bohemia and the Cechs
Charles IV were returning. The university of Prague, which had suffered greatly during the troublous times, now again entered into fuU activity."
When, however, Pius II ascended the papal throne the struggle was renewed. As Cardinal Piccolomini, Pius had passed a number of years in Bohemia on various religious mis- sions ; he had written a history of the country under the pen-name of ^neas Sylvius,^ and it was generally supposed that he would continue the conciliatory policy of his predecessor. But he soon disillusioned the Bohemians. He de- manded their immediate return to the ritual of the Eoman church, and he sent a legate to Prague to make known his intentions.
The compact known as the Articles of Prague was declared null and void, and the Bohemians were advised that if they did not submit peace- ably to the decision of the pope that the church would be obliged to resort to force. It was furthermore asserted that King George had not kept the oath that he had made at the time of his coronation.
The news of the revocation of the articles
1 ^neae Sylvii De Bphemorvun, et ex his Imperatorum aliquot Origins ac Gestis. Basel, 1575
The Protestant King 91
granting religious tolerance caused consterna- tion in Bohemia. The king called a meeting of the diet, at which he said, " We are greatly surprised at the doings of the pope ; for it seems to us that it is his intention again to bring war into this kingdom, that was brought into unity and peace by means of the compact. How can he destroy and take away from us what was granted us by the holy council of Basel, which was greater than any pope; yea, and confirmed by his predecessor, Eugene IV? Should each pope thus attempt to bring to naught what was done by others, what security would there be for any law? He complains that we have not kept the oath taken before our coronation. We will read that oath to you." After the reading of the oath, the king con- tinued: " You have heard that we swore to destroy all errors, sects, and heresy in our kingdom. You know with certainty that we do not love heretics, nor do we wish to defend them ; but we never supposed that our compact, and taking the cup in communion, was heresy, since they are based upon the gospel and the practice of the primitive church. We were born to the calixtine faith, and never deviated from the teaching of our parents; we con-
92 Bohemia and the Cechs
formed to this faith whUe a noble ; then, again, as governor of the country; and in the same faith we ascended the royal throne. How then could we declare this faith heresy, and by try- ing to exterminate it make war upon ourselves ? It is a great mistake, for which we are not responsible, that any one should think that, for the sake of the royal throne, we would do vio- lence to our own conscience, deny our faith, and contend against Grod. Therefore, know ye all, that, as we ourselves, so our wife by our side, and our dear children, will remain true to the calixtine doctrine according to the compact^ and for this faith we are ready to lay down our crown and our very lives. ' '
The pope's legate then delared that the com- pact was revoked, and that communion in both kinds was prohibited. He added, " I declare to you the will of the most holy father, which is, that you. King George, your queen, and your children must not take communion except at the church on the Hradcany ; that you shall clear your court of all unworthy chaplains, the sowers of errors leading to damnation, and de- liver them up to the chapter of Prague for pun- ishment; forbid all heretics to administer the sacraments, which, in their hands are not sacra-
The Protestant King 93
ments, but blasphemies; and if you refuse to do this, you wUl stand before man and Grod guilty of perjury." King George protested that he had not violated his oath, to which the legate replied, " It is not for you to interpret your oath, but for him who administered it." The king answered, " I acknowledge no judge but my own conscience." The legate then ex- claimed : ' ' Do you dare to withstand the apos- tolic commands? Eemember what you do; it is rebellion, not obedience, and the pope will not leave it unpunished. His power reaches far; look to your eroAvn. What is the source of all earthly honours? Where do kings get their crowns, prelates their authority and hon- ours, and institutions of learning their privi- leges? And he who can grant them, can also take them away."
The prelate proceeded to rouse the German party against the king. The malcontent nobles met at Zelena Hora in November, 1465, and accused King George of having violated the laws of the country in the matter of taxation and declared themselves no longer bound by their oaths of allegiance. They secured the co- operation of the emperor of Germany and the king of Hungary. The latter had organized an
94 Bohemia and the Cechs
army to attack the invading Turks; but he declared that a campaign against the heretical Bohemians was as meritorious as warfare against the Moslems. Palacky remarks in this connection that if King Matthew had, at this moment, directed all his energies agaiast the Turks, instead of attempting to extirpate religious liberty in Bohemia, he might have crushed the Ottoman power, and thus spared Hungary two centuries of Turkish servi- tude.i
In December, 1466, Pope Pius issued a bull of excommunication against King George. He was deposed of his rank as king ; faithful Cath- olics were forbidden to obey him, and the pro- visional government of the kingdom was given to the leaders of the league of Zelena Hora. King Matthew of Hungary issued a proclama- tion in which he declared his intention of de- fending the Eoman Catholic faith against the heretical Bohemians, and he proceeded to in- vade Moravia. Brno was captured, and Mat- thew subsequently had himself declared king of Bohemia. He attempted to invade Bohemia, but was repulsed; and in 1469 his army was
1 Geachichte von Bohmen. By FrantiSek PalackJ^. Fragile, 1844-1867.
The Protestant King 95
shut up at Vilem and he was forced to sue for peace.
But King G6orge was not ignorant of the alliances which the Holy Father was making, and he was confident that the struggle would be renewed. He therefore sought an ally in the king of Poland. The latter consented to cooperate with the Bohemian king provided, at his death, the crown might pass to the Polish prince Vladislav. It was a cherished plan of King George to transmit his possessions to his son ; but he sacrificed his ambition in order to bring peace to his country.
The decision was ratified by the Bohemian diet, and Prince Vladislav, the son of Casimir, was recognized as the heir of the Pfemysl throne. The nobles of the league of Zelena Hora were pacified; the pope's allies were driven from the country, and tranquillity was once more restored. But at this moment (the 22nd of March, 1471) King George died of dropsy, the death of his able and faithful co- worker, John of Eokycan, the archbishop of Prague, having taken place just a month before.
George of Podebrad was unquestionably one of the most democratic and ablest occupants of the Bohemian throne. He was the choice of
96 Bohemia and the Cechs
the people; and although the Germans, and some of the nobles who adhered to the Eoman party, were never reconciled to his selection, he enjoyed a large measure of affection from his subjects. Count Liitzow^ says of him: " King George has always remained, next to Charles IV, the sovereign whose memory the Bohemians treasure most. Even the misfor- tunes of the last years of his reign, and the failure of his principal plans — supremacy in Germany and the foundation of a national dy- nasty^— do not diminish this feeling. It is indeed possible that, had he succeeded in ob- taining the prominent position in the empire which his ambition marked out for him, the affection of the Bohemians would have been alienated; for it was the knowledge that they were governed by a man of their own race that mainly induced the Bohemians to love Pode- brad and to retain their affection for him even when his fortunes were at the lowest."
At a diet held at Kutna Hora in May, 1471, the selection of the Polish prince was confirmed, although the crown was also sought by King Matthew of Hungary, Duke Albert of Saxony,
* Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Covint Lutzow. London and New York, 1910.
The Protestant King 97
and the Dukes of Miinsterberg, the latter being sons of the late King George of Podebrad. He was crowned as King Vladislav II (1471-1516) at Prague in August of that year, when he took the oath of allegiance to the Articles of Prague, and " the university presented him with a neatly printed and bound copy of the Bible, so that he might read it and direct himself and his subjects according to the will of God. ' '
Failing in the election at Kutna Hora, King Matthew of Hungary invaded Moravia, but a treaty of peace was shortly concluded at Olo- mouc, by the terms of which the Hungarian king renounced his claims to Bohemia, but was permitted to retain possession of Moravia, Si- lesia, and Lusatia, on condition that these prov- inces revert to Bohemia at his death.
Vladislav had been educated in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church and his govern- ment was soon in the hands of the papal party. But efforts to curtail the religious liberties of the Bohemians caused so much disorder that the reactionary party progressed slowly. Un- der the papacy of Alexander VI the authorities at Eome renewed their efforts to bring about the abrogation of the Articles of Prague. But without results. The Bohemians then, as so
98 Bohemia and the Cechs
many times since, stood by their historic rights.
Upon the death of Matthew (1490), Vladis- lav also inherited Hungary and transferred his residence to that country. He was at best a weak ruler; and prolonged residence abroad permitted the nobles to usurp the royal powers and the rights of the common people. It was during these years that a reaction set in against the democracy of George of Podebrad. Feu- dalism was introduced from Germany, and the peasants were reduced to a state of bondage.
Peter Chelcicky, a contemporary writer, says: " The priests and prelates do not hold it up as a sin for princes, nobles, and the rich t& live a life of luxury, greed, pride, and be guilty of all manner of wickedness, because they themselves are guilty of the same sins. The people have endured great evils on account of the religious wars ; many of the peasants have been obliged to forsake their homes on account of hunger; they are obliged to pay threefold and fourfold taxes, and what is left them is taken away by the soldiers. The fortresses and cities are filled with thieves, who rob, beat, and imprison the peasants. There can be no for- giveness for these cruel rulers who oppress
The Protestant King 99
their peasants, calling them knaves and dogs, and all that they may satisfy their own insati- able appetites. It is not right for a noble or wealthy man to be idle all day long, to play chess and cards, to sleep long, to commit adul- tery like a brute, to stuff himself constantly, and pour wine or beer into his throat as into a cask. It is not right for them thus to oppress the poor, do them wrong by compelling them to do service, and to impose upon them many other burdens. ' '
King Vladislav died in 1516 and was suc- ceeded by his son Louis (1516-1526), a lad of ten years. The emperor of Germany and the king of Poland were recognized as the guardi- ans of the young king, and Bohemia continued to be governed by the nobles, the chief burgrave being Zdenek Lev of Rozmital. Louis was also king of Hungary and spent most of his time in that country after attaining manhood, as his father before him had done.
The Lutheran reformation that had broken out in Germany revived the religious dissen- sions in Bohemia. The Germans, it will be recalled, had been the foremost opponents of Master John Hus and the moral revolution; they had invariably cast their strength with
100 Bohemia and the Cechs
the papal party; we can therefore understand that " the Bohemians were surprised to see the Germans now themselves receive the com- munion in the two kinds, and renounce the au- thority of the Eoman church. ' '
Hungary at this time was on the eve of a crushing humiliation. The great Ottoman ruler, Suleiman I, invaded the country with a well- organized army of three hundred thousand. Louis could muster a force of only twenty-five thousand ; and at the battle of Mohac (the 29th of August, 1526), the Hungarian-Bohemian forces were totally defeated, and the greater part of the Hungarian kingdom passed into the hands of the Turks and was held by them for nearly two hundred years.^ King Louis was drowned while crossing a stream in the retreat from the battle-field of Mohac. It has been well remarked that everything in the life of King Louis came before its time. His birth was pre- mature ; he became king of Bohemia and Hun- gary at the age of ten ; he married at sixteen, and his death came at twenty.
By an agreement between the king of Poland
* See the Author's Turkey and the Turks: an account of the lands, the peoples, and the institutions of the Ottoman Empire. Boston, L. C. Page & Company; London, George Bell & Sons. Second edition, revised and enlarged, 1909.
The Protestant King lOl
and the emperor of Grermany, it had been ar- ranged that the latter 's grandson Ferdinand should succeed Louis to the Bohemian throne. This claim was based on the fact that Ferdi- nand's wife was the only legitimate heir of the house of Pfemysl. There were many candi- dates— Dukes Louis and William of Bavaria, Elector John of Saxony, King Sigismund of Poland, and three or four Bohemian nobles. The Bohemian diet finally came to a unanimous vote in the selection of Ferdinand I (1526- 1564). The Bohemian crown was thus for the third time awarded to a member of the house of Hapsburg, where it has ever since remained. Ferdinand also became king of Hungary, thus ruling the three important states which consti- tute the present empire of the Hapsburgs.
The reign of Ferdinand was disturbed by the religious quarrels then agitating Germany. There were at this time four religious parties in Bohemia — the utraquist, the Bohemian Brethren, the Lutheran, and the Roman Cath- olic, the latter having the fewest adherents. Grindelyi estimates that a third of the Bohe- mians and Moravians may have been Eoman
1 Gesehichte der Ertheilung des Bohmischen Majestatsbriefe von 1609. By Anton Gindely. Prague, 1868.
102 Bohemia and the Cechs
Catholics; although at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War he states that not a tenth of the no^emen were Roman Catholics, and a still smaller proportion among the other classes of the population. Most Bohemian historians think that his figures for the sixteenth century are much too high.
' ' Although he was unsuccessful in his efforts to prevent the spread of Protestantism," notes Count Liitzow, " Ferdinand succeeded in con- solidating his dynasty, and in strengthening the royal authority in Bohemia. He was able to obtain from the Estates the recognition of his hereditary right to the throne. At the moment of his accession he had been obliged to recog- nize the elective character of the Bohemian crown. When a great fire at Prague (1541) destroyed all the state documents, Ferdinand obtained the consent of the Estates to the sub- stitution of a charter formulating the theory that he had, in consequence of the hereditary rights of his wife. Queen Anna, been accepted as a king in the place of the former charter, which had declared that he had become king by election. This innovation, however, caused great dissatisfaction in Bohemia."
To settle the ever recurring religious con-
The Protestant King 103
troversies, Ferdinand called a council of the representatives of the parties " who either professed the Catholic faith or recognized the Articles of Pragnie." This excluded the Bo- hemian Brethren and the Lutherans. Nothing came of the council because the Eoman party disapproved of all measures that put the utra- quists on an equality with them. The growth of the Brethren caused him no little concern. In the drift from democracy and the tendency toward imperialism which had characterized the government of Bohemia since the death of George of Podebrad, the Bohemian Brethren had taught and practised the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. In consequence, the sect had been enormously augmented by the humble people from all parts of the kingdom. Ferdi- nand's imprisonment and torture of their lead- ers, confiscation of their property, and prohi- bition of their meetings in no sense retarded their growth.
Six years before his death Ferdinand had succeeded Charles V as emperor of Germany; and these two offices he bequeathed to his son Maximilian (1564-1576). Gindely^ says of
» Rudolf II und seine Zeit: 1600-1612. By Anton Gindelv. Prague, 1868
104 Bohemia and the Cechs
him: " Maximilian differed from most of Ms contemporaries, who were generally either fiery adherents or bitter enemies of Catholi- cism. Durmg the whole of his life he was un- able to make up his mind definitely for or against the Catholic cause. He played the part of a discontented son as long as his father lived, opposed him, and surrounded himself with en- emies of the Catholic church; he avoided the religious functions of that church, and the Prot- estants founded great hopes on his accession to the throne ; but as soon as he succeeded his father he abandoned his former attitude, began to favour the Catholics, and publicly conformed to their creed."
If the reign of Maximilian had disappointed the hopes of the Protestants, that of Eudolph II (1576-1612) was certainly equally disappoint- ing to the Roman Catholics. Educated under the most intolerant conditions in Spain, he was regarded by all parties in Bohemia as the most likely agent for the revival of the reactionary policy of Ferdinand. He had inherited from his father the kingdom of Hungary, the duke- dom of Upper and Lower Austria, and the Ger- man empire. But his chief interests were in literature, science, and art. Tycho Brahe, the
The Protestant King 105
Danish astronomer, and Johannes Kepler, the Prussian astronomer, found refuge at his court and opportunities for the pursuit of their scien- tific studies. He made Prague his capital, and the centre of artistic, scientific, and literary, as well as imperial power. He was an ardent col- lector of antiquities, and filled his palace at the Hradcany in Prague with works of art. But he was suspicious, reticent, and vacillating. After negotiating for twenty years for the hand of Isabella, the daughter of King Philip of Spain, the latter despaired of a termination of the negotiations, and gave her to the archduke of Austria; and failing himself to attend the meetings of the German diet, he never gave his representatives advance instructions, and re- quired them to carry on an interminable corre- spondence.
He was, however, in 1609, forced to call a diet at Prague to reach some conclusion on the question of the rights of his Protestant sub- jects. In his " Letter of Majesty," dated the 9th of July that year, he granted the free exer- cise of religious worship to all his subjects; Protestants were permitted to have their own governing body and could call together general assemblies from all parts of the kingdom; on
106 Bohemia and the Cechs
the royal domains they might erect such churches as they needed, but on the lands of the nobles no church could be erected without their permission. The letter met with a storm of opposition from the Roman Catholic party, and particularly from 2denek of Lobkovic, Adam of Sternberg, and Duke Ferdinand of Styria. The opposition of the latter was significant, as will be shown in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VI
END OF BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE
Rudolph deposed — Growth of Protestantism in Bohemia — Interpretations of the Letter of Majesty — Ferdinand and religious intolerance — Destruction of Protestant churches — ConBicts at Prague — Provisional government established
— Jesuits banished by the Protestants — MaximiUan of Bavaria comes to the aid of Ferdinand — Defeat of the Bo- hemians in the battle of White Mountain — Retiun of the Jesuits — Execution and exile of the Bohemian nobles — Property confiscated — The Protestant reUgion suppressed in the kingdom of Bohemia — Destruction of the national Uterature by the Jesuits — Extension of the central authority
— Ferdinand forced to recognize the historic rights of the Bo- hemians — Albert of Waldstein — His role in the Thirty Years' War — Invasion of Bohemia by the Swedes — The peace of WestphaUa — The country ruined by the war — ■ Ma,ria Theresa — Enlightened despotism — Conquest of Si- lesia by the Prussians — Second expulsion of the Jesuits — Joseph II — Decree of religious toleration — System of serfdom modified — Leopold II and Francis — Napoleon and the Bohemians — Metternich and the half century of re- action — Francis Joseph.
The deposition of Rudolph, because lie had not been able to prevent the spread of the Prot- estant movement in Bohemia, and the accession to the throne of his brother Matthew (1612- 1619), mark the beginning of the end of Bo- hemian independence. But as Matthew was already an old man, and as both his brothers,
107
108 Bohemia and the Cechs
like himself, were childless, it was apparent that the crown must soon pass to other hands.
With th# rapid growth of Protestantism, re- ligious differences multiplied. Not only Ger- many and Bohemia, but also Austria, Bavaria, and Styria had become greatly iafiltrated with the heretical " poison " of the Lutherans and Calvinists. In the latter country Duke Ferdi- nand had inaugurated a Catholic reformation; and, by the aid of military barbarism, he was able not only to stem the advance of the move- ment but to drive from the country all persons, whom he did not put to the sword, who looked with disfavour upon the religion of the Roman Catholic church.
Conflict over the interpretation of the " Let- ter of Majesty,"' referred to in the previous chapter, was the immediate cause of the Thirty Years' War. After the council of Trent the Jesuits had entered the Hapsburg dominions and boldly undertaken the reconquest of the same to the church of Eome. The concessions which the Catholics accused Rudolph of having made to the Protestants, in permitting them to build churches on the royal domain, met with a storm of opposition from the Jesuits; but this opposition did not assume serious proper-
End of Bohemian Independence 109
tions during the early years of the reign of Matthew.
With the transmission of the Bohemian crown to Ferdinand II (1619-1637) war was imminent. The Protestant party had refused to recognize the bequest of Matthew and had chosen Frederick, the count palatine of the Rhine, as king of Bohemia. With the aid of the Catholic league, with Maximilian of Ba- varia at its head, Frederick was no match for the combined forces which united to suppress heresy in Bohemia; and the party which had struggled so many centuries for religious lib- erty suffered an ignominious defeat at the bat- tle of White Mountain.
Ferdinand had been educated by the Jesuits and " never had they a more devoted pupil or a more pliant tool." He had extirpated Prot- estantism in Styria and he soon made it clear that he proposed to do likewise in Bohemia. " His Jesuit advisers," notes Count Liitzow,^ ' ' openly declared that the present moment was a ' golden opportunity for extirpating here- tics.' " Pescheck^ states that Ferdinand had
1 Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count Lutzow. New York and London, 1910.
2 Geschichte der Gegenreformation in Bohmen. By Christian Adolph Pescheok. Leipzig, 1850.
110 Bohemia and the Cechs
asserted, ' ' Bather would he take a staff in his hand, gather his family around him and beg his bread from door to door, than tolerate a heretic in his dominions." And he kept his vow. Not a vestige of the Protestant religion was left in Bohemia at the close of a brief reign of eighteen years, although the Protestants had constituted more than nine-tenths of the pop- ulation when he became king of Bohemia in 1619.1
The "Letter of Majesty" had permitted the Protestants to buUd churches on the royal domains; but a bitter dispute arose as to the nature of the royal domains. Estates which were administered by the crown, but of which the clergy had the usufruct, became the bone of contention that precipitated the outbreak of the war. The Protestant citizens of the town of Hroby erected a church on such a domain against the protests of the local Roman Cath- olic clergy, and the building was destroyed by orders from the archbishop of Prague. An ap- peal was made to the king, but he declined to afford any redress.
1 Dr. Anton Gindely, who writes from a distinctly Roman _ jtholic point of view, states that at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War " certainly not a tenth of the nobility of Bohemia,
Catholic point of view, states that at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War " certainly not a tenth of the nobiUty of ~ ' and a still smaller proportion of the other classes, were Cj See Gindely's Rudolf II und seine Zeit. Prague, 1868.
End of Bohemian Independence ill
There was a strong feeling in Prague that the resident advisers of the king — Jaroslav of Martiaic and William of Slavata — ^had influ- enced the king unfavourably against the Prot- estants, for both were staunch adherents of the Roman Catholic church; and when it became noised abroad that the Protestant churches of the capital were to be destroyed and religious liberty abolished, the Praguers marched to the royal palace and threw both advisers from the windows of the Hradcany. The intended vic- tims escaped without serious injury, but the event — Imown as the Defenestration of Prague — marks the beginning of the terrible and des- olating Thirty Years' War.
A provisional government was established, an army quickly organized, and the Jesuits ban- ished from the country. The edict of banish- ment of the zealous followers of Loyola bears striking resemblance to .that issued by the Hapsburgs against the order one and a half centuries later. The Bohemian decree of 1618 accuses the Jesuits of " desiring to subdue all kingdoms and lands in the world to their yoke and power."
Maximilian of Bavaria, who came to the as- sistance of Ferdinand, had been educated under
112 Bohemia and the Cechs
the same Jesuit influence. He was a capable military leader and " always glad to do some- thing for the Catholic cause." The united forces of Ferdinand, Maximilian, and the Cath- olic league attacked the Bohemians at White Mountain, just butside of Prague, on the 8th of November, 1620, and within the space of lit- tle more than an hour the fate of Bohemia was decided. The defeated Bohemian Protestants were scattered to the four winds; Frederick was driven into exile, and Ferdinand and his Jesuit co-workers took charge of Bohemia and forced the people to return to the Roman Cath- olic church or leave the country.
' ' The land which was practically Protestant before any other European country," notes a French historian, " was the land in which the reactionary victory of Catholicism was most complete — complete alike over peasant, towns- man, and noble ; and whatever may happen to be our own intellectual standpoint — whether we sympathize with Rome or those who rebelled against her — we shall in either case be equally moved, as spectators of human events, by the solemn and fateful irony of this singular and dramatic climax." For nearly two hundred years Bohemia was removed from the list of
End of Bohemian Independence 113
independent European nations, and was forced to submit to what Denis ^ not inappropriately characterizes as "a politico-clerical despot- ism. ' '
Twenty-seven of the leading Bohemian no- bles, who had not fled from the country after the battle of White Mountain, were executed in the market-place of Prague. Gindely,^ a Eo- man Catholic historian, says of this event: ' ' These melancholy executions mark the end of the old and independent development of Bohe- mia. Members of the most prominent families of the Bohemian nobility, eminent citizens and learned men, in fact all the representatives of the culture of the land, ended here and with them their cause. The destiny of the country was henceforth in the hands of foreigners, who had neither comprehension nor sympathy with its former institutions."
In point of culture Bohemia at this moment was one of the most advanced countries in Eu- rope. But all this was wiped out by the reac- tionary policy of Ferdinand and his Jesuit ad- visers. The country had a population of more
1 La Bohgme depuis la Montagne Blanc. By Emst Denis. Paris, 1908.
2 History of the Thirty Years' War. By Anton Gindely. Translated from the German by Andrew Ten Brook. New York
1884.
114 Bohemia and the Cechs
than four million inhabitants, bnt it was speed- ily reduced to less than eight hundred thousand. Some were executed; many were thrown into prison for life or a long term of years, and, according to Slavata, thirty thousand families wandered into exile. " Starvation and torture were regular means of coercion, and in many districts there were quartered, on the refrac- tory, bands of dragoons who in bitter mockery went by the name of angel makers! " The lands of the executed and exiled Protestants were confiscated and given to foreigners — Germans, Italians, and Spaniards. The Bohe- mian schools were closed, the national language was suppressed, and the once-famous univer- sity degenerated into a Jesuit college. Unre- mittingly and relentlessly the bigoted Ferdi- nand and his equally bigoted advisers instituted courts which proceeded against all Bohemians, suspected of rebellion or heresy, with new and unheard-of forms of procedure, evidence of evil intent being taken as a proof of the most seri- ous charge.
To the calamities already enumerated — the execution of her great spiritual leaders, the reduction of her population to a bare remnant, the downfall of industrial prosperity — a still
End of Bohemian Independence 115
greater calamity awaited Bohemia in the de- struction of her rich and abundant national lit- erature. " Almost all literature in Bohemia subsequent to Hus," remarks Count Liitzow, * ' had been imbued with the spirit of the great reformer and patriot. All this literature was therefore doomed to destruction, and the Jesu- its certainly were to a great extent successful. If we except the classical literature, there is none to whom belong so many books the exist- ence of which can be proved with certainty, yet of which all trace is lost, as to the older litera- ture of Bohemia. Jesuits accompanied by sol- diers — to prevent the possibility of resistance — were empowered to search for heretical books in all Bohemian dwellings from the noble- man's castle to the peasant's hut. The Jesuit Andrew Konias is particularly mentioned as rivalling the fame of Omar or Archbishop The- ophilus. He is perhaps the greatest book des- troyer known to history, and boasted of having himself burnt sixty thousand Bohemian vol- umes."
Ferdinand proceeded to alter the Bohemian constitution so that it might coincide with his own intolerant and autocratic religious and political notions. The Bohemian crown was
116 Bohemia and the Cechs
declared no longer elective but hereditary in the house of Hapsburg. The civil and political institutions of the kingdom were remodelled. To the three estates already existing in Bohe- mia — the nobles, the knights, and the citizens — he added a fourth — the clergy. He further provided that all privileges and rights hitherto granted to Protestants were revoked, and no non-Catholics^ — Jews excepted — were hence- forth allowed to reside in Bohemia. Many of the aristocratic privileges of the Bohemian diet and the feudal nobility were withdrawn, and the judicial, administrative, and financial pow- ers of the kingdom were greatly curtailed.
There was a progressive extension of central authority in the privy council, the aulic cham- ber, and the war department domiciled at Vi- enna. The professional bureaucratic spirit which he introduced resulted in the transfer of Bohemian autonomy to the imperial govern- ment. Denis ^ thinks that the most important factor in the suppression of the Bohemian na- tionality and culture was ' ' the subtly tenacious tactics and the opportunist policy which char- acterized the propagandist methods of the So-
1 La Boh^me depuis la Montagne Blanc. By Ernst Denis. Paris, 1903.
End of Bohemian Independence 117
ciety of Jesus; for it was to the Jesuits that the task of recovering Bohemia for the Eomau faith was entrusted, owing to the secular clergy being disorganized and under the suspicion of national bias. The uniformity of education, of which they obtained the monopoly, had an im- portant influence on the progress of centraliza- tion, inasmuch as its prominent feature was the employment of the German language and the practically entire exclusion of the Bohemian from the schools and university. ' '
In the revision of the Bohemian constitution, however, Ferdinand was forced to recognize certain historic rights and autonomous privi- leges which dated back to the time of St. Vaclav. He issued a decree which stated that he allowed " the Bohemians to preserve their ancient privileges as far as they had not been suppressed by the new constitutional enact- ments." The revival of their historic rights and ancient privileges, as will be pointed out in the next chapter, has been the watchword of the modern Bohemian renaissance.
After Ferdinand, the most commanding fig- ure of his reign was Albert of Waldstein, who belonged to one of the oldest families of the Bohemian nobility. His parents were Protes-
118 Bohemia and the Cechs
tants, but after their death his uncle sent him to a Jesuit school at Olomouc, where he re- nounced his early faith and adopted the creed of the Eoman Catholic church. But as he changed his creed so often in adult life it is more than likely, as one of his biographers re- marks, that ' ' none of these changes of religion appear to have been to the slightest extent founded on conviction."
Matters were not so easily adjusted in other parts of the empire as in Bohemia. In many of the German provinces the Protestants of- fered the most stubborn resistance. It was apparent to Ferdinand that the splendidly equipped army of Gustavus Adolphus, at the moment engaged in a struggle with the Poles, would eventually come to the aid of the German Protestants, and this might jeopardize the counter-reformation which he had so brilliantly inaugurated in Bohemia. The situation de- manded a military genius of the first order, and the choice fell to Albert of Waldstein, who was destined to play a great role in the Thirty Years' War. A German historian remarks in this connection: " In spite of errors of judg- ment and of sins of omission on the part of his opponents, the Emperor Ferdinand was at
End of Bohemian Independence lid
this moment in an extremely difficult and dan- gerous position. The sums extorted from the Bohemians had been squandered on churches and on Jesuits; the treasury was empty; to oppose the various forces that were springing up in all directions there was only the army of Tilly. Spain was occupied elsewhere for the moment, while Bethlen Gabor was making ready to help the Protestants. It was natural that in such an emergency Ferdinand should seek for assistance wherever it was most easy to obtain. Then it was that the man came to the fore who was to occupy the thoughts of his fellow-men, and to dominate his age to a rare degree — a mysterious, elusive genius, not thor- oughly good but certainly not thoroughly bad. The character of Wallenstein is the most diffi- cult to judge because of his own inveterate cau- tion and reticence; it was his rule never to commit to paper anything that might compro- mise himself. Everything that we know about his motives is at second-hand, and verdicts vary according to the standpoint."
Waldstein had profited enormously by the confiscation of the property of the executed, imprisoned, and exiled Bohemian Protestants. Ferdinand had made him duke of Friedland,
120 Bohemia and the Cechs
which gave him dominion over vast tracts in northeastern Bohemia with the town of Jicm as the centre. He was reputed immensely rich, and one may jndge of the extent of his wealth by the fact that the beer brewed in his domin- ions in a single year brought him a revenue of sixteen thousand guldens. In his hour of need Ferdinand turned to Waldstein. He was to raise an army of twenty-one thousand men at his own expense. The army was to live by a system of forced contributions. In addition to a big salary which Ferdinand promised to pay him, "Waldstein was to have as perquisite the ransom of all ordinary prisoners, a share of the booty, and certain political rights. He was also given the right to make treaties with the terri- torial lords with whom he came in conflict, and if need be, to grant concessions in the matter of religion.
His success was extraordinary, but he in- curred the hatred of the Jesuits and the sus- picion of Ferdinand, and at the diet of Regens- burg in 1630 he was dismissed. He retired to Bohemia and lived in his magnificent palace at Prague and on his estates. But matters went so badly for Ferdinand that he was forced to recall him and give him absolute command of
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the Roman Catholic forces. He again fell under suspicion of treachery, and was murdered in 1634 in his palace at Prague by a band of conspirators.
Ferdinand died in 1637 and was succeeded by his son, who had previously been crowned king of Bohemia as Ferdinand III (1637-1657). Bohemia was invaded by the Swedes that year. Many Bohemian exiles returned with the Swe- dish army, and General Baner declared that he came to Bohemia as a protector of the freedom of the Protestants, and he was, accordingly, welcomed with great enthusiasm by the peas- ants. Podmokly (Bodenbach), tJsti (Aussig), and Litomefice (Leitmeritz) were captured and the invading army advanced on Prague. Baner encamped twice before the city, but he did not attack it, he was ultimately driven from the country, and the Catholic reformation was re- newed with great vigour.
The peace of Westphalia which terminated the Thirty Years' War settled the fate of the Protestant movement in Bohemia. The Prus- sians and Swedes tried to secure such conces- sions from Ferdinand III as would permit the Bohemian exiles to return to their fatherland and cling to their faith. Sweden, indeed, had
122 Bohemia and the Oechs
assured the Bohemian refugees who had en- listed in her armies that she would require this concession as a condition of peace. But Ferdi- nand declared that he would continue the war rather than allow the presence of a single Prot- estant in Bohemia or Moravia. But Protes- tants and Catholics were both tired of the struggle, and Sweden was forced to consent to the exclusion of the former from Bohemia. It is estimated that one-third of the population in the districts affected by the war perished. En- tire provinces became deserts and heroic meas- ures were adopted to repeople the uninhabited districts. A local diet in Franconia, for exam- ple, forbade any one under sixty to become a monk and gave permission for every man to have two wives.
Count Liitzow asserts that Bohemia suffered more during the Thirty Years' War than dur- ing the Hussite campaigns. " The towns," he says, ' ' lost the larger part of their population. Among the exiled Protestants had been almost all the prominent merchants and tradesmen, who now sought refuge in distant countries. As of France after the edict of Nantes, it can be said of Bohemia after the Thirty Years' War, that it suffered by the loss of its best
End of Bohemian Independence 123
citizens, in such a manner that it can even now be said to have hardly recovered. Prague, re- cently the capital of a vast empire, . after the treaty of Westphalia acquired the aspect of a provincial town, and this continued throughout the eighteenth century."
Two inconsequential reigns followed that of Ferdinand III — Leopold I (1657-1705) and Joseph I (1705-1711) — during which periods the kingdom was Germanized and the move- ment for the complete repression of Bohemian nationality continued. Charles VI (1711-1740), who as king of Bohemia was known as Charles II, was crowned with great splendour at Prague, but he was occupied with the adminis- tration of other parts of his empire and gave little attention to the internal affairs of Bo- hemia. Having no male heir, his chief concern was to transmit his possessions to his daughter, and he devoted all his energy during the closing years of his reign to this end.
The accession to the Bohemian throne of Maria Theresa (1740-1780) marks an augmen- tation of the centralizing tendencies which had been in force since the peace of Westphalia. There was, however, this difference: the en- lightened despotism of a lay government super-
124 Bohemia and the Cechs
seded the traditional Eoman Catholic absolut- ism which had prevailed since the disastrous battle of the White Mountain. Her reign wit- nessed the legislative beginnings of that polit- ical and economic dualism which resulted in the suppression of the separate chancellaries of Austria and Bohemia, and the substitution of a high court of justice, which destroyed the historic federation of the states and produced a union that rested solely on the sovereign's hereditary personality.
The greater portion of the duchy of Silesia, an integral part of the kingdom of Bohemia, was one of the losses which the country was required to meet during the reign of Maria Theresa. At the treaty of Westphalia, the Prussians had permitted the suppression of Protestantism in Bohemia and Moravia, but had stipulated that the religion was to be recog- nized in the duchy of Silesia, and allowed cer- tain privileges. It was alleged, however, that such liberties were constantly curtailed by the Jesuits, and the Silesian Protestants found no redress at the hands of the Hapsburg rulers. Frederick II, who had become king of Prussia shortly before the death of Charles VI, made the maltreatment of the Silesian Protestants
End of Bohemian Independence 125
the pretext for invading that province before Maria Theresa was well seated on the unsteady throne which her father had bequeathed to her. There were many Bohemian exiles in Prussia who kept Frederick in touch with the condition of their co-religionists in Bohemia. Indeed, the Prussian king himself wrote that in the district of Kralove Hradec (Koniggratz) " there are a few Hussites who are not utterly indisposed to do a little spying for us. ' ' Frederick met prac- tically no resistance m Silesia, although suffer- ing a decisive defeat at Kolm in Bohemia ; and at the close of the Seven Years' War the em- press-queen was forced to cede to him the county of Glatz and all of the duchy of Silesia excepting the provinces of Teschen, Jagern- dorf, and Troppau. Thus a third of the lands of the Bohemian crown passed to the Hohen- zoUerns.
Another important event during the reign of Maria Theresa was the second expulsion of the Jesuits from Bohemia (1773). It will be recalled that they had been expelled from the kingdom one and a half centuries before by the Protestants, but this time it was a Roman Cath- olic sovereign that issued the decree of banish- ment. It was charged that " the Jesuits insti-
126 Bohemia and the Cechs
gated the authorities against the subjects and the subjects against the authorities; that they had empowered parricides to murder kings and- the anoinfed of the Lord who refused to act contrary to their God and in accordance with their (the Jesuits') counsels; that they had promised these criminals eternal salvation and freedom from the pains of purgatory; that they had by means of confessions obtained knowledge of many family secrets. ' ' ^ The strange part about the decree is that the charges of 1773 are strikingly similar to those made by the Protestants in 1618.
Maria Theresa was succeeded by her son Joseph II (1780-1790), whom fifteen years before her death she had made co-regent. Joseph had been greatly influenced by the French encyclopaedists. He was, as Denis has remarked, " a philosophical monarch and the disciple of Aufhldrung " and " he reduced the clergy to the state of functionaries, secretly pro- tected Freemasons, and flattered himself that he had convinced his subjects that to be good Catholics they had no need to be Romans ; yet he circuitouslv reinstated the old demands of
* Quoted by Count Liitzow from a MS. copy preserved in the state archives at Venice.
End of Bohemian Independence 127
Eome, the blind submission of the subject, with the remarkable difference, that the creed was changed, and the discipline hence- forth guided not by the commands of the church, but by the catechism of the encyclo- paedists. ' '
One of the first acts of the sovereign after the death of his mother was to issue a decree of toleration, which granted religious freedom to the Calvinists and the Lutherans, but re- fused to recognize the Bohemian Brethren. Since the battle of the White Mountain (1620) only Roman Catholics and Jews were allowed to reside in the country. The fact that seventy thousand persons in the kingdom declared themselves Protestants, the moment they were free to do so, indicates that the spirit of John Hus and the men of his time had not entirely disappeared from Bohemia. Joseph also sup- pressed seven hundred monasteries and re- duced the number of monks from sixty-three thousand to twenty-seven thousand.
He abolished the harder features of serfdom ; took the inquisitorial power from the criminal courts; dropped such crimes as magic, apos- tasy, and marriage with infidels from the code, and attempted to introduce a compulsory sys-
128 Bohemia and the Cechs
tern of education. The latter provision, how- ever, inflicted lasting injury on the Bohemians. It was decreed that all teaching should be in the Germ^ language and that the German should be the exclusive language of the courts. The people in the country districts had never given up their mother-tongue, and many of the peasants were unfamiliar with the German. As a result of the decree many Bohemians were subjected to all sorts of vexations and frauds. This aspect of the enlightened despotism of Joseph was due to his determination " to con- solidate the wide and variegated lands over which he ruled into one vast monarchy, whose only language was to be the German." How signally this ambition failed the next chapter will point out.
Joseph was succeeded by his brother Leopold II (1790-1792). During his brief reign he re- stored some of the local privileges that had been taken from the Bohemians by his mother. He called together the Bohemian states, which for some years had not been permitted to meet, and he endeavoured to conciliate the various nationalities whom his mother and brother had offended. But he reestablished servitude and compelled the unfortunate peasants to resume
End of Bohemian Independence 129
cruel tasks from which they had been liberated by Joseph.
Francis (1792-1835), of whom it has been said that he was so far behind his time that he ought to have died when his grandmother (Maria Theresa) was born, was a reactionary of the type of Ferdinand II. He was admirably aided in his policy of political repression by Metternich, the most sinister politician of mod- ern times. This was the period when Napoleon momentarily changed the map of Europe, and he humbled Austria quite as much as Prussia.
His efforts, however, to secure the coopera- tion of the Bohemians in his ambitious schemes failed signally. " Your union with Austria," he wrote them in 1809, " has been your mis- fortune. Your blood has been shed for her in distant lands, and your dearest interests have been sacrificed continually to those of the he- reditary provinces. You form the finest portion of her empire, and you are treated as a mere province to be used as an instrument of pas- sions to which you are strangers. You have national customs and a national language. You pride yourselves on your ancient and illustrious origin. Assume once more your position as a nation. Choose a king for yourselves, who
130 Bohemia and the Cechs
shall reign for you alone, who shall dwell in your midst, and be surrounded by your citizens and your soldiers." The stirring appeal, how- ever, did nof arouse the nation to revolt against the house of Hapsburg, although it called the attention of the people to their splendid past, and certainly had some effect on the writers who prepared the way for the modem Bohe- mian renaissance.
Although Bohemia had remained neutral, or rather had supported Austria, during the Na- poleonic wars, her institutions suffered greatly during the generation that Metternich stood over the Hapsburgs' possessions and forced them into the narrow path of his own reaction- ary and conservative policy. Count Liitzow remarks concerning this period : ' ' The admin- istration of the Hapsburg dominions — with the exception of Hungary — was founded on a system of severest absolutism during the years that followed the general pacification of 1815. The liberty of the subject became entirely de- pendent on the arbitrariness of an omnipotent police. Countless government spies watched over even the most insignificant acts of the citi- zens. A double system of ' censure ' — one political and the other ecclesiastical — ren-
End of Bohemian Independence 131
dered it impossible to express in print any opinions that were not in strict accordance with the views of the government at Vienna. While the despotism of Vienna pressed heavily on all parts of the empire, its oppression was felt more heavUy in Bohemia than elsewhere; for not only were individuals deprived of all lib- erty, but the national language — so sacred to all Bohemians — was excluded from every school, law-court, or government in the coun- try."!
Francis was succeeded by Ferdinand IV (1835-1848), who, like his predecessor, left the administration of the government to Metter- nich, the apostle of repression. So far as pos- sible the premier kept from the ears of his sovereign the growing discontent of all classes of society; but with the breakdown of the Or- leanist monarchy in France in 1848, and the constitutional movement which it inaugurated in Europe, revolutions broke out among the Magyars in Hungary, the Grermans in Austria, the Cechs in Bohemia, and the Italians in Ven- ice and Milan. Ferdinand attempted to save his crown by the dismissal of Metternich, the
1 Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count Lutzow. New York and London, 1910.
132 Bohemia and the Cechs
abolition of press censorship, and the rehabil- itation of the Bohemian constitution and na- tional parliament — an empty promise based on mental reservation — but it was too late. ' ' Your Highness, we have nothing against your person, but everything against your system," said one of the civic deputies in Vienna, " and we must repeat, your abdication alone can save the throne and the monarchy." The feeble and yielding Ferdinand was forced to resign, and the crown passed to Francis Joseph, the pres- ent venerable and esteemed incumbent, who has been king of Bohemia and emperor of Austria since 1848. The heir-presumptive to the throne is Archduke Frantisek Ferdinand, son of the late Archduke Charles Louis and the Princess Annunciata. He married in 1900 the Countess Sophia Chotek (now princess of Hohenberg).
CHAPTER Vn
MODEBN BOHEMIAN BENAISSAKOB
Effect of the edict of religious toleration — The nobiUty and the modern movement — Foundation of the Bohemian Na- tional Museum — Literary activities — Jungmann and Pa- lack^ — Historic rights of the people emphasized — Tragic career of Karel HavhcSek — The refusal to form part of the German confederacy — The pan-Slav congress at Prague — Revolution of 1848 and its consequences — The concordat of 1855 — Austrian defeats — Proposed national parUament — An Austrian bureaucrat — Constitution of 1861 — The Aus- gleich of 1867 — Cisleithanian parliament — Declaration of the historic rights of the Bohemians — The rump parUament and its collapse — Efforts to conciliate the Bohemians — Efforts to suppress the Slavs — More concessions — Bohemian faculties in the university of Prague — Extension of the use of the Bohemian language — The noisy pan-Germans — Count Aehrenthal and the outlook.
The beginning of the modern Bohemian re- naissance dates back to the time of Joseph II, when the edict of religious toleration abolished ecclesiastical despotism. Men once more began . to think and to write in Bohemia ; and ' ' all the rigours of the censorship of Metternich," re- marks Denis, " failed to stop the first flowers of Bohemian literature from blossoming. ' ' An account of Bohemian literature will be given in a later chapter ; but it may be remarked in this connection that the devotion of a handful
133
134 Bohemia and the Cechs
of literary men — Jungmann, KoUar, Saf af ik, and Palacky — revived the faith of the enlight- ened members of the Bohemian nobility in their fatherland; and the noblemen protected the young patriots, who otherwise would have been exiled from the country or thrown into prison through the despotism of Metternich and the tools he employed to maintain government by repression.
Concerning the role played by the Bohemian nobility in the early stages of the modem re- naissance, Count Liitzow ^ says : " As the Aus- trian police had at that time the power of ex- pelling from any town those who were not either residents there or able to prove that they had suflScient means of livelihood, the patriots, who were very poor, and some of them had come to Prague from other parts of the empire, were exposed to constant persecution on the part of the police. Several patriotic noblemen assured the safety of the young enthusiasts by conferring on them appointments as librarians or tutors in their families. ' '
The foundation of the Society of the Bohe- mian National Museum in 1818 marks the be-
' Bohemia: an historical sketch. By Count LQtzow. London and New York, 1910.
Modern Bohemian Renaissance 135
ginning of an organized movement for the revi- val of the suppressed national institutions. But the movement continued distinctly literary for many years, since that was the only direc- tion it could safely take under a government of the absolutist nature of that of Austria. The proceedings of the museum were originally pub- lished in both German and Bohemian, but the German edition was soon discontinued. The early activities of the museum were directed to editing ancient Bohemian works which had been made rare by the counter-reformation and the wholesale destruction of books in the national language by the Jesuits during the two cen- turies that they were spiritual masters of the kingdom. .
Manuscripts were collected; many ancient songs were recovered ; an interest was aroused in the study of the recovered fragments of lit- erature which dated back to a comparatively early period, and, more important than all, an acquaintance was made with the splendid past history of their country, which contributed in such a large measure to revive the patriotism of the people. These and like movements aroused that passionate desire for liberty which had always characterized the Bohemian people
136 Bohemia and the Cechs
before the disastrous -battle of the White Moun- tain. The leaders of the new movement were at first philologists and poets ; but by the mid- dle of the century they gave way to historians and jurists, and in our own day these in turn have been superseded by constructive states- men and captains of industry.
The literary movement gathered strength slowly during the opening years of the nine- teenth century. Jungmann is said to have re- marked to a couple of fellow patriots who were paying him a call, ' ' It would only require that the ceiling of this house should fall in and there would be an end of Bohemian literature. ' ' Not only had the national literature been superseded by the German, but the national tongue had likewise been displaced by the German, which was the required language of the schools. The Bohemian continued to be spoken by the peas- ants and the occupants of the small villages, but in the cities and towns the German had acquired complete supremacy. An anecdote is related of the early days of the renaissance, when a friend of Jungmann rushed to his room to tell him that two well-dressed men had been heard speaking the Bohemian on the streets of Prague.
Modern Bohemian Renaissance 137
By the early forties of the last century, how- ever, historic traditions were once more re- established and the literary movement had attained such strength that the Bohemian pa- triots began to agitate for the restoration of their political rights, which had been largely suppressed during the decades that followed the battle of the White Iklountain. Their in- spiration came at first from Herder and the French rationalists; and their early political programme, which expressed the yearnings of the nation for emancipation, developed into a pan- Slav cult which aroused the suspicions and enmity of the German minority in the country. ' ' The Germans hastened to discover high trea- son in this Platonic association with the other Slavs," remarks a Bohemian historian, " and seized on the spectre of Russia as a political weapon in their campaign for supremacy. ' '
Paldcky was the first of the patriots to " re- linquish the delusive vision of the pan-Slav myth. ' ' He made the historic rights of the Bo- hemian people and a return to the constitution of 1627 the chief planks in his political pro- gramme ; and there rallied to his support a na- tional party composed in the main of ' ' peasants and artisans who were discontented with the
138 Bohemia and the Cechs
selfishness of their middle-class employers, most of whom had German predilections and were. on many points Jews or Judaisers." The nobles were essentially German and Austrian in spirit ; and while they furthered the national movement so long as it was distinctly literary, they were not willing to go very far in the as- sertion of Bohemian historic rights. As pointed out in previous chapters, the native Bohemian nobility had been largely exterminated, during the period of reaction that followed the close of the Thirty Years' War, and they never shared the aspirations of the Bohemian patri- ots for the recovery of complete independence.
One of many tragic episodes in the unequal struggle which Bohemia was waging at this time is the career of Karel Havlicek (1821- 1856), the patriot and statesman, who fell a martyr to the cause of journalistic freedom. The Bohemian national party was without a journal to represent its cause; and Havlicek founded for this purpose the Prague News (Prazske Noviny). But as the Austrian cen- sor prohibited all allusions to the internal af- fairs of Bohemia, Havlicek resorted to strata- gem and device, and published accounts of conditions in Ireland, and the pressing need
Modern Bohemian Renaissance 139
there of such reforms as the equality of the nationalities represented in the population, uni- fication of the kingdom, equality of all before the law, trial by the jury system, a responsible ministry, a national assembly, and reform in education. He later founded at Kutna Hora the Slovan, but here as ia Prague he was sub- jected to endless annoyances by the Austrian censors. He was arrested on some trumped-up charge, but acquitted; however the imperial government evidently did not propose to tol- erate the exposure of Bohemian wrongs under the guise of Irish news, and Havlicek was taken to the Tyrol, where he was imprisoned in a for- tress until, broken in health, he was released and died shortly afterwards.
At the meeting of the Germanic confederacy called at Frankfurt in 1848, the Hapsburg dy- nasty was invited to send six representatives, and the Bohemian historian and statesman, Frantisek Palacky, was invited to act as one of the delegates. In his letter of declination he said, " I am not a German but a Bohemian, belonging to the Slav race. Whatever talent I may possess is in the service of my own coun- try. My nation is certainly a small one, but it has always maintained its historical individ-
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uality. The rulers of Bohemia have often been on terms of intimacy with the German princes, hut the Bohemian people have never considered themselves as Germans." Palacky very prop- erly refused to commit the Bohemians to the pan-German movement which the Frankfurt meeting was called to inaugurate.
Slavic politicians, as an off-set, called a con- gress of representatives of the different Slavic races to meet in Prague. But the Hungarian government protested against the meeting of a congress at which the Slavs of Hungary should be represented. The call of the congress admitted as delegates Slavs who were under the rule of the house of Hapsburg; and, as guests, representatives from other Slavic coun- tries. By an accident the gathering degener- ated into a riot which had " a large and dis- astrous influence on the future of Bohemia." Prince Windischgratz, the military commander of Prague, looked with disfavour on the con- gress, and it was well-known that he favoured the forcible re-establishment of absolutism in Bohemia. At the conclusion of a religious service in one of the churches, attended by the members of the congress, some Austrian sol- diers on duty — who were entirely ignorant of
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the Bohemian language — claimed that some of the delegates had uttered insults against their commander, and they forthwith began to fire on the passers-by. A panic followed, there was considerable rioting, and the houses of several of the Bohemian patriots were plundered. [Windischgratz, whom an English historian has not inappropriately characterized as " the butcher," withdrew his forces from the city and concentrated them on a surrounding hill. Under the pretext that shots had been fired at his outposts he began a general bombard- ment of the city, and the kingdom was again placed under absolutist rule.
When Vienna rose in rebellion during the revolutionary period of 1848, the Bohemian deputies returned to Prague; but the coup d'etat of 1849, which was the result of the co- operation of the clerical and military forces in the empire, brought the sovereign back, and the powers of parliament were greatly cur- tailed. An imperial police was organized for the entire empire to up-root discontent. The fiscal system was changed and the powers of the diets much limited. German was made the exclusive language. The concordat of 1855 pro- claimed the doctrine of a Christian state for
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the Hapsburg dominions. " The episcopate and the clergy," remarks a Bohemian historian, ' ' formed a privileged class, and public instruc- tion, whicii was open to them, was the principal factor in their political ascendency. If they sometimes abused their power, it cannot be denied that they did what they could for pan- Austrian unity. Evidently discontent was great in the country of Hus, where radicalism gained ground every day. Indignation grew before the tyrannical orders issued by Bach from 1851 to 1856, rendering the German language obliga- tory in Bohemia and Hungary as the medium of public instruction. The courage of the rebel had been lost, though no assistance was ren- dered to the hated government which was in the throes of a financial crisis. The want of spirit displayed by the army in the unfortunate campaign in Italy against a foe who, after all, was the true, if unwise, champion of the na- tional formula showed how things were going. Defeat was, from one point of view, a blessing." The concordat of 1855 gave the Roman Cath- olic church unlimited control over all ecclesias- tical and educational affairs, and absolutism reigned in church and state. The Germaniza- tion of Bohemia and Hungary was carried on
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by a ruthless bureaucracy ; the Austrian police interfered with courts of law; trial by jury and the right of public trial were suppressed; the liberty of the press was still more curtailed; German was the only language in which the newspapers of the empire could be printed; municipal elections were suspended; the con- dition of the imperial finances became chaotic, and the deficit of the empire in 1859 was nearly three hundred million florins.
The defeat that was a blessing to the Bohe- mians, referred to in a preceding paragraph, came from an imexpected source. The drastic treatment of the Italians brought matters to a crisis. Although Pope Pius IX had taken the side of the Bohemians against the house of Hapsburg in the struggle for constitutional lib- erty in 1848, his own subjects made larger de- mands for self-government than he was willing to grant, and he was forced to fly to Naples in the disguise of a footman, where he remained until a French army restored Rome to him. A French garrison remained in his capital to pro- tect him against the attacks of the Italians. War broke out in northern Italy in 1859; the Austrian forces were defeated at Solferino and Magenta, and expelled from Lombardy; the
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pope lost all his territories beyond the Appe- niiies; Sicily rebelled and drove the Bourbon king from the country; Naples revolted, and Victor Bimmanuel acquired the papal and Hapsburg possessions and annexed them to his dominions, taking the title of king of Italy.i
The loss of the Italian provinces was a crush- ing blow to absolutism; and, to avert further disasters, the government at Vienna decided upon the establishment of representative insti- tutions of some sort. Bach, the apostle of abso- lutism, was dismissed, and Count Goluchowski attempted to organize the variegated empire along more liberal lines. A new constitutional scheme was promulgated in 1860 which pro- vided for an imperial assembly composed of delegates from all the states of the dynasty, to which extensive powers were granted. The members of the assembly were to be selected by the national diets of the different states, each state sending the number that corre- sponded to its numerical strength in the empire — Hungary, eighty-five; Bohemia (and Mo- ravia), seventy-six; Galicia, thirty-eight ; Aus-
1 See the Author's Sicily, the Garden of the