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Monarchy in Central Europe (1198–1918), predecessor of modern Czechia
Shortly before the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the kingdom became part of the newly proclaimed HabsburgAustrian Empire, and subsequently theAustro-Hungarian Empire from 1867. Bohemia retained its name and formal status as a separate Kingdom of Bohemia until 1918, known as a crown land within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and its capital Prague was one of the empire's leading cities. The Czech language (called the Bohemian language in English usage until the 19th century)[10] was the main language of theDiet and the nobility until 1627 (after theBohemian Revolt was suppressed). German was then formally made equal with Czech and eventually prevailed as the language of the Diet until theCzech National Revival in the 19th century. German was also widely used as the language of administration in many towns after the Germansimmigrated and populatedsome areas of the country in the 13th century. The royal court used the Czech, Latin, and German languages, depending on the ruler and period.
Although some former rulers of Bohemia had enjoyed a non-hereditary royal title during the 11th and 12th centuries (Vratislaus II,Vladislaus II), the kingdom was formally established (by elevatingDuchy of Bohemia) in 1198 byPřemysl Ottokar I, who had his status acknowledged byPhilip of Swabia, electedKing of the Romans, in return for his support against the rival EmperorOtto IV. In 1204 Ottokar's royal status was accepted by Otto IV as well as byPope Innocent III. It was officially recognized in 1212 by theGolden Bull of Sicily issued by EmperorFrederick II, elevating theDuchy of Bohemia toKingdom status and proclaiming its independence which was also later bolstered by future king of Bohemia and emperor Charles IV, with his golden bull in 1356.
Under these terms, the Czech king was to be exempt from all future obligations to the Holy Roman Empire except for participation in the imperial councils. The imperial prerogative to ratify each Bohemian ruler and to appoint the bishop ofPrague was revoked. The king's successor was his sonWenceslaus I, from his second marriage.
Territories ruled byOttokar II of Bohemia in 1273The oldest depiction of coat of arms of Bohemia, castle Gozzoburg inKrems (13th century)
The 13th century was the most dynamic period of thePřemyslid reign overBohemia. German EmperorFrederick II's preoccupation with Mediterranean affairs and the dynastic struggles known as the Great Interregnum (1254–73) weakened imperial authority in Central Europe, thus providing opportunities for Přemyslid assertiveness. At the same time, theMongol invasions (1220–42) absorbed the attention of Bohemia's eastern neighbors,Hungary andPoland.
Přemysl Ottokar II (1253–78) married a German princess,Margaret of Babenberg, and became duke ofAustria. He thereby acquiredUpper Austria,Lower Austria, and part ofStyria. He conquered the rest of Styria, most ofCarinthia, and parts ofCarniola. He was called "the king of iron and gold" (iron because of his conquests, gold because of his wealth). He campaigned as far asPrussia, where he defeated the pagan natives and in 1256, founded a city he named Královec in Czech, which later becameKönigsberg (nowKaliningrad).
In 1260, Ottokar defeatedBéla IV, king of Hungary in theBattle of Kressenbrunn near theMorava river, where more than 200,000 men clashed. He ruled an area fromAustria to theAdriatic Sea. From 1273, however,Habsburg kingRudolf began to reassert imperial authority, checking Ottokar's power. He also had problems with rebellious nobility in Bohemia. All of Ottokar's German possessions were lost in 1276, and in 1278 he was abandoned by part of the Czech nobility and died in theBattle on the Marchfeld against Rudolf.
Ottokar was succeeded by his son KingWenceslaus II, who was crowned King ofPoland in 1300. Wenceslaus II's sonWenceslaus III was crowned King of Hungary a year later. At this time, the Kings of Bohemia ruled from Hungary to theBaltic Sea.
The 13th century was also a period of large-scale German immigration, during theOstsiedlung, often encouraged by the Přemyslid kings. The Germans populated towns and mining districts on the Bohemian periphery and in some cases formed German colonies in the interior of the Czech lands. Stříbro,Kutná Hora, Německý Brod (present-dayHavlíčkův Brod), andJihlava were important German settlements. The Germans brought their own code of law – theius teutonicum – which formed the basis of the later commercial law of Bohemia andMoravia. Marriages between Czech nobles and Germans soon became commonplace.
The 14th century – particularly the reign ofCharles IV (1342–1378) – is considered the Golden Age of Czech history. In 1306, the Přemyslid line died out and, after a series of dynastic wars,John, Count of Luxembourg, was elected Bohemian king. He marriedElisabeth, the daughter of Wenceslaus II. He was succeeded as king in 1346 by his son, Charles IV, the second king from theHouse of Luxembourg. Charles was raised at the French court and was cosmopolitan in attitude.
Charles IV strengthened the power and prestige of the Bohemian kingdom. In 1344 he elevated the bishopric ofPrague, making it an archbishopric and freeing it from the jurisdiction ofMainz, and the archbishop was given the right to crown Bohemian kings. Charles curbed the Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian nobility, and rationalized the provincial administration of Bohemia and Moravia. He created theCrown of Bohemia, incorporating Moravia,Silesia andLusatia.
Prague Castle, the ancient seat of Bohemian dukes and kings, Roman kings and emperors, and after 1918 the office of the Czechoslovak and Czech presidents
In 1355 Charles was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The next year he issued theGolden Bull of 1356, defining and codifying the process ofelection to the Imperial throne, with the Bohemian king among the seven electors. Issuance of the Golden Bull together with the ensuing acquisition of the Brandenburg Electorate gave the Luxemburgs two votes in theelectoral college. Charles also madePrague into an Imperial capital.
Extensive building projects undertaken by the king included the founding of the New Town southeast of the old city. The royal castle,Hradčany, was rebuilt. Of particular significance was the founding ofCharles University in Prague in 1348. Charles intended to make Prague into an international center of learning, and the university was divided into Czech, Polish, Saxon, and Bavarian "nations", each with one controlling vote. Charles University, however, would become the nucleus of intense Czech particularism.
Charles died in 1378, and the Bohemian crown went to his son,Wenceslas IV. He had also been electedKing of the Romans in 1376, in the first election since his father's Golden Bull. He was deposed from the Imperial throne in 1400, however, having never been crowned Emperor. His half-brother,Sigismund, was eventually crowned Emperor in Rome in 1433, ruling until 1437, and he was the last male member of the House of Luxemburg.
TheHussite movement (1402–1485) was primarily a religious, as well as national, manifestation. As a religious reform movement (the so-calledBohemian Reformation), it represented a challenge to papal authority and an assertion of national autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs. The Hussites defeated four crusades from the Holy Roman Empire, and the movement is viewed by many as a part of the (worldwide)Protestant Reformation. Because many of warriors of the crusades were Germans, although many were also Hungarians and Catholic Czechs, the Hussite movement is seen as a Czech national movement. In modern times it acquired anti-imperial and anti-German associations and has sometimes been identified as a manifestation of a long-term ethnic Czech–German conflict.
Hussitism began during the long reign ofWenceslaus IV (1378–1419), a period of papal schism and concomitant anarchy in the Holy Roman Empire. It was precipitated by a controversy atCharles University in Prague. In 1403Jan Hus became rector of the university. A reformist preacher, Hus espoused the anti-papal and anti-hierarchical teachings ofJohn Wycliffe of England, often referred to as the "Morning Star of the Reformation". Hus' teaching was distinguished by its rejection of what he saw as the wealth, corruption, and hierarchical tendencies of the Catholic Church. He advocated the Wycliffe doctrine of clerical purity and poverty, and insisted on the laity receivingcommunion under both kinds, bread and wine. (The Catholic Church in practice reserved the cup, or wine, for the clergy.) The more moderate followers of Hus, theUtraquists, took their name from the Latinsub utraque specie, meaning "under each kind". TheTaborites, a more radical sect, soon formed, taking their name from the town ofTábor, their stronghold in southern Bohemia. They rejected church doctrine and upheld the Bible as the sole authority in all matters of belief.
Kutná Hora, a medieval silver-mining centre, was once the second most important town of the kingdom.
Soon after Hus assumed office, German professors of theology demanded the condemnation of Wycliffe's writings. Hus protested, receiving the support of the Czech element at the university. Having only one vote in policy decisions against three for the Germans, the Czechs were outvoted,[citation needed] and the orthodox position was maintained. In subsequent years, the Czechs demanded a revision of the university charter, granting more adequate representation to the native Czech faculty. The university controversy was intensified by the vacillating position of the Bohemian king Wenceslas. His favoring of Germans in appointments to councillor and other administrative positions had aroused the nationalist sentiments of the Czech nobility and rallied them to Hus' defense. The German faculties had the support ofZbyněk Zajíc,Archbishop of Prague, and the German clergy. For political reasons, Wenceslas switched his support from the Germans to Hus and allied with the reformers. On 18 January 1409, Wenceslas issued theDecree of Kutná Hora: (as was the case at other major universities in Europe) the Czechs would have three votes; the others, a single vote. In consequence, German faculty and students left Charles University en masse in the thousands, and many ended up founding theUniversity of Leipzig.
Hus' victory was short-lived. He preached against the sale ofindulgences, which lost him the support of the king, who had received a percentage of such sales. In 1412 Hus and his followers were suspended from the university and expelled from Prague. For two years the reformers served asitinerant preachers throughout Bohemia. In 1414, Hus was summoned to theCouncil of Constance to defend his views. Imprisoned when he arrived, he was allowed no legal advocate for his defense; the council condemned him as a heretic and relinquished him to an imperial secular court, which decreed he beburned at the stake in 1415.[12]
Jan Žižka, the leader of the Hussites
Hus's death sparked theHussite Wars, decades of religious warfare.Sigismund, the pro-papal king ofHungary and successor to the Bohemian throne after the death of Wenceslas in 1419, failed repeatedly to gain control of the kingdom despite aid by Hungarian and German armies. Riots broke out in Prague. Led by a Czech yeoman,Jan Žižka, the Taborites streamed into the capital. Religious strife pervaded the entire kingdom and was particularly intense in the German-dominated towns. Hussite Czechs andCatholic Germans turned on each other; many were massacred, and many German survivors fled or were exiled to the rest of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Sigismund led or instigated various crusades against Bohemia with the support of Hungarians and Bohemian Catholics.
The Hussite Wars followed a pattern. When a crusade was launched against Bohemia, moderate and radical Hussites would unite and defeat it. Once the threat was over, the Hussite armies would focus on raiding the land of Catholic sympathizers. Many historians have painted the Hussites as religious fanatics; they fought in part for a nationalist purpose: to protect their land from a King and a Pope who did not recognize the right of the Hussites to exist. Žižka led armies to storm castles, monasteries, churches, and villages, expelling the Catholic clergy, expropriating ecclesiastical lands, or accepting conversions.
During the struggle against Sigismund, Taborite armies penetrated into areas of modern-daySlovakia as well. Czech refugees from the religious wars in Bohemia settled there, and from 1438 to 1453 a Czech noble,John Jiskra of Brandýs, controlled most of southern Slovakia from the centers of Zólyom (todayZvolen) and Kassa (todayKošice). Thus Hussite doctrines and the Czech Bible were disseminated among the Slovaks, providing the basis for a future link between the Czechs and their Slovak neighbors.
When Sigismund died in 1437, the Bohemian estates electedAlbert of Austria as his successor. Albert died and his son,Ladislaus the Posthumous – so called because he was born after his father's death – was acknowledged as king. During Ladislaus' minority, Bohemia was ruled by a regency composed of moderate reform nobles who were Utraquists. Internal dissension among the Czechs provided the primary challenge to the regency. A part of the Czech nobility remained Catholic and loyal to the pope. A Utraquist delegation to theCouncil of Basel in 1433 had negotiated a seeming reconciliation with the Catholic Church. TheCompacts of Basel accepted the basic tenets of Hussitism expressed in the Four Articles of Prague: communion under both kinds; free preaching of the Gospels; expropriation of church land; and exposure and punishment of public sinners. The pope, however, rejected the compact, thus preventing the reconciliation of Czech Catholics with the Utraquists.
George of Poděbrady, later to become the "national" king of Bohemia, emerged as leader of the Utraquist regency. George installed another Utraquist,John of Rokycany, as archbishop of Prague and succeeded in uniting the more radical Taborites with the Czech Reformed Church. The Catholic party was driven out of Prague. After Ladislaus died ofleukemia in 1457, the following year the Bohemian estates elected George of Poděbrady as king. Although George was noble-born, he was not a successor of royal dynasty; his election to the monarchy was not recognised by the Pope, or any other European monarchs.
George sought to establish a "Charter of a Universal Peace Union". He believed that all monarchs should work for a sustainable peace on the principle of national sovereignty of states, principles of non-interference, and solving problems and disputes before an International Tribunal. Also, Europe should unite to fight theTurks. States would have one vote each, with a leading role for France. George did not see a specific role for Papal authority.[citation needed]
Czech Catholic nobles joined in the League of Zelená Hora in 1465, challenging the authority of George of Poděbrady; the next year,Pope Paul II excommunicated George. TheBohemian War (1468–1478) pitted Bohemia againstMatthias Corvinus andFrederick III of Habsburg, and the Hungarian forces occupied most of Moravia. George of Poděbrady died in 1471.
The Jagiellonian dynasty governed Bohemia as absentee monarchs because the Hungarian nobility insisted on them putting their capital into Hungary; their influence in the kingdom was minimal, and effective government fell to the regional nobility. Czech Catholics accepted theCompacts of Basel in 1485 and were reconciled with theUtraquist Hussites. The Bohemian estrangement from the Empire continued; not considered anImperial State, the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were not part of theImperial Circles established by the 1500Imperial Reform.
In 1526, Vladislaus's son, KingLouis II of Hungary, was killed at theBattle of Mohács, fighting theOttoman Empire. Louis' death ended the Jagiellonian dynasty in Bohemia and Hungary; Louis' lands were partitioned between the Ottoman Empire, theHabsburg monarchy, and the newly formedEastern Hungarian Kingdom. The Bohemian Diet elected Louis' brother-in-law,ArchdukeFerdinand, as the new king of Bohemia, beginning almost four centuries of Habsburg rule for both Bohemia andHungary.
In 1740 thePrussian Army conquered BohemianSilesia in theSilesian Wars and forcedMaria Theresa in 1742 to cede the majority of Silesia, except the southernmost area with the duchies of Cieszyn, Krnov and Opava, toPrussia. In 1756 Prussian KingFrederick II faced an enemy coalition led by Austria, when Maria Theresa was preparing for war with Prussia to reclaim Silesia. The Prussian army conqueredSaxony and in 1757 invaded Bohemia. In theBattle of Prague (1757) they defeated the Habsburgs and subsequently occupied[citation needed] Prague. More than one quarter of Prague was destroyed and theSt. Vitus Cathedral suffered heavy damage. In theBattle of Kolín, however, Frederick lost and had to vacate Prague and retreat from Bohemia.
The current Czech Republic consisting of Bohemia, Moravia andCzech Silesia still uses most of the symbols of the Kingdom of Bohemia: a two-tailed lion in its coat-of-arms, red-white stripes in thestate flag and theroyal castle as thepresident's office.
Bohemia was among the first countries in Europe to become industrialized. Mining of tin and silver began inOre mountains in early 12th century. The Germanhospes had a major role in the industrial development of the Czech Kingdom. In the late 12th and in the 13th century the Přemyslid rulers promoted the colonisation of certain areas of their lands by German settlers from the adjacent lands of Bavaria, Franconia, Upper Saxony and Austria during theOstsiedlung migration. The new settlers not only brought their customs and language with them, but also new technical skills and equipment that were adapted within a few decades, especially in agriculture and crafts.In Silesia it had doubled (16% of the total area) by the beginning of the 11th century, 30% in the 16th century and the highest increase rates in the 14th century, the total area of arable land increased seven – to twentyfold in many Silesian regions during theOstsiedlung. They settled mostly the hills and mountains and started the mine works and high qualities industry such as metal works, weapon industry and beer making. Forest glass production was a common industry for German Bohemians.[15][16][17]
Bohemia proper (Čechy) with theCounty of Kladsko (Hrabství kladské) was the main area of the Kingdom of Bohemia. TheEgerland (Chebsko) was ultimately obtained by KingWenceslaus II between 1291 and 1305; given in pawn to Bohemia by KingLouis IV of Germany in 1322 and subsequently joined in personal union with Bohemia proper. In 1348Charles IV created theCrown of Bohemia (Koruna česká), together with the incorporated provinces:
In 1854 the political districts were abolished and the previous more centralised administrative structure largely restored. However, 13 newKraje/Kreise were established in place of the old ones. TheseKraje/Kreise were subdivided into between twelve and 20Bezirke (207 in total, plus the capital city of Prague); these acted merely as administrative units of theKraje/Kreise rather than taking on powers of their own. Prague remained a statutory city, as well acting as the administrative centre of thePrager Kreis/Pražský kraj. The city of Reichenberg was aStadtbezirk (city district) subordinate to theBunzlauer Kreis, as well as the seat ofLandbezirk Reichenberg; the two were counted together as a singleBezirk.[20]
11 of theKraje/Kreise had a single district court (Kreisgericht). These were located in the administrative centre of theKraj/Kreis, except for theČáslavský kraj/Časlauer Kreis, whose district court was located atKutná Hora/Kuttenberg. TheBunzlauer andLeitmeritzer Kreise (Boleslavský andLitoměřický kraje) each had two district courts: Jung-Bunzlau and Reichenberg for theBunzlauer Kreis; Leitmeritz and Böhmisch-Leipa for theLeitmeritzer Kreis.[20]
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In 1868 theKraj/Kreis system was abolished and the political districts re-established.[21] In 1868 Bohemia was divided into 89 political districts, each of which was constituted from between one and four of the 1854 administrative districts.[22] This would grow to 104 districts by 1913.[citation needed]
^From the Roll of Arms of Austria-Hungary inStröhl'sWappenrolle Österreich-Ungarns (1890),Tafel III. Ungarn, Böhmen, Dalmatien, Kroatien.Hugo Gerhard Ströhl:Wappenrolle Österreich-Ungarns. Erste Auflage, Wien 1890, S. VIII.
^Page from an armorial showing the arms of Emperor Frederick III,c. 1415–1493.
^Page from an armorial showing arms of Kaiser Maximilian Ic. 1508–1519
^Horák, Záboj (2017).Religion and Law in the Czech Republic. Kluwer Law International B.V. p. 277.ISBN978-9041187789.
^Brady, Thomas A.; Brady, Thomas A. Jr. (2009).German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650. Cambridge University Press. p. 74.ISBN978-0-521-88909-4.Archived from the original on 15 January 2023. Retrieved15 July 2021.The Luxemburg project halted under Charles IV's elder son, Wenceslas (r. 1363–1419 in Bohemia, 1376–1400 in Germany), who inherited a Bohemian kingdom endowed with a population of some two million
^Weinhold, Karl (1887). Die Verbreitung und die Herkunft der Deutschen in Schlesien. Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn
^Charles Higounet.(1986)Die deutsche Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter [Aus dem Französischen von Manfred Vasold]. Berlin : Siedler, 405 p. , cartes, plans, illustrations.
Bobková, Lenka (2006).7. 4. 1348 – Ustavení Koruny království českého: český stát Karla IV [Founding of the Crown of Bohemian Kingdom: Czech State of Charles IV] (in Czech). Praha: Havran.ISBN80-86515-61-3.
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