History of Bohemia & the Czech Republic
Bohemia derives its name from a Celtic tribe, the Boii, who inhabit the region during the last few centuries BC. But Slav tribes arrive in the area from the east during the early centuries AD. The most powerful of these tribes are the Cechove, or Czechs. By the 9th century Bohemia is loosely connected to the great kingdom of Moravia, lying to the east.
From Moravia comes the influence of Christianity, energetically spread in Bohemia in the 10th century by Vaclav, a prince known in the west as Wenceslas. Murdered on his way into church in 929, Wenceslas is later venerated as Bohemia's patron saint. By the 13th century the Premyslid family, of which Wenceslas is a member, rules far beyond Bohemia. Its territories are at their greatest extent under Ottakar II. The Bohemian prince Ottakar is elected duke of Austria in 1251, inherits the throne of Bohemia in 1253, wins further border territories by a victory over the Hungarians at Kressenbrunn in 1260, and subsequently extends his domain southwards as far as the Adriatic coast.
For several generations Bohemia has had close links with the German empire, and when the electors meet in 1273 to choose a new German king the most powerful candidate is undoubtedly Ottakar. But the electors reject Ottakar, perhaps because his dynasty is Slav rather than German. They choose instead his neighbour in nearby Switzerland - the Habsburg count Rudolf.
Rudolf enters Austria with an imperial army in 1276, defeats Ottakar, and forces upon him the treaty of Vienna. By its terms Ottakar renounces his claim to Austria. As a vassal of Rudolf he is allowed to keep the ancestral lands of his dynasty, Bohemia and Moravia (the western part of Great Moravia, linked to Bohemia since 1029), but he is stripped of his other dignities.
Crowned King of Poland
Two years later, in 1278, Ottakar marches west to recover Austria. His army meets Rudolf's at Dürnkrut, northeast of Vienna. Ottakar is defeated, and is killed in flight from the battle.
Ottakar's son Wenceslas is only seven at the time of the disaster at Dürnkrut, yet Bohemia is stable enough for him to succeed his father on the throne without disturbance. The kingdom derives great wealth from its silver mines, and Wenceslas uses these resources for a prolonged and successful adventure in Poland. By 1300 Wenceslas has gathered sufficient support to be crowned king of Poland at Gniezno. But his reign over the two kingdoms of Bohemia and Poland is interrupted by his early death in 1305.
He is succeeded by a 17-year-old son, also Wenceslas. The young king travels to Poland in 1306 to claim his second crown. During the journey he is murdered in his bed. His successor on the Bohemian throne, John of Luxembourg, revives the claim to Poland. But this time the Polish nobles finally elect their own prince, Wladyslaw.
The Luxembourg dynasty rules in Prague for more than a century. Under Charles IV, the son of John and Elizabeth, both city and kingdom enjoy a period of unprecedented splendour - even though the early years of his reign coincide with the horrors of the Black Death.
Prague - Imperial City
Charles is elected German king in 1346, succeeds his father as king of Bohemia later in the same year, and is crowned emperor in Rome in 1355. So the alliance with the Luxembourg dynasty brings imperial power to Bohemia. Even better, Charles makes Prague his imperial city. Already a prosperous centre, at the intersection of important trade routes, it benefits immensely from the emperor's patronage.
Charles founds Eastern Europe's first university at Prague in 1348 and builds its Central Hall (the Carolinum, named after himself). He commissions the famous Charles Bridge, joining the Old Town to the Little Quarter on the other side of the Vltava. And he adds an entirely new quarter to the city, the Nove Mesto or New Town.
The authority which Charles establishes as Holy Roman emperor (it is he who brings order to the empire's proceedings with his Golden Bull of 1356) is sufficient for his son, Wenceslas IV, to succeed him unopposed as German king - a rare event in the recent centuries of German elections.
Two Decades of Violence
The death of Wenceslas in 1419 is followed by almost two decades of extreme violence in the Hussite wars - resulting from the reforming ideas of John Huss and from the outrage provoked by his death. John Huss, a teacher of philosophy in Prague University, is appointed in 1402 to a controversial position. He is put in charge of the Bethlehem chapel in Prague. The chapel, founded about ten years previously, is associated with a radical approach to Christianity. The preachers argue for a simple Christianity, a religion of poverty and humility, very different from the worldly grandeur of the papacy.
For several heady years the reformers preach and agitate in Prague. The papacy is an easy target. Since 1378 there have been two rival popes. From 1409 there are three. One of them even has the effrontery to sell indulgences in Prague to finance his campaign against his opponents. Eventually a council is called at Constance, in 1414 and Huss is invited to put his case. Within weeks of his arrival he is arrested, with the emperor's tacit approval. When news reaches Prague of Huss's death, burnt at the stake in Constance, the movement for reform is greatly strengthened.
In 1420 the Hussites build a fortified town at Tabor, on a bluff above a river about 50 miles south of Prague. From here their leader, Jan Zizka, conducts a series of brilliant campaigns against the armies of Sigismund and the new pope, Martin V.
Marching under their symbolic banner (which displays a communion chalice), the Hussites defeat half a dozen papal and imperial armies sent against them between 1420 and 1431. They fight with the zeal of nationalism and piety. They benefit too from a military tactic pioneered by Zizka - his so called 'war wagon fortress', using farm wagons as mobile barricades behind which an attacking force can shelter (an idea more familiar, subsequently, in the Wild West, but also used by Babur in India in 1526).
These victories eventually wring from the papacy some notable concessions to Bohemia, in terms agreed in 1433. By the Compacts of Prague, agreed in 1433 and confirmed at a peace treaty in 1436, the Hussites are granted papal permission to give the sacrament in both kinds; their seizure of church lands in their territories is authorized; and Bohemia is granted an independent church under an elected arcbhishop.
These major concessions do not end the argument. The religious split remains the chief issue throughout the 15th century - which even sees the election of a Hussite king, George of Podebrady, to the Bohemian throne in 1458.
Battle of Mohacs, 1526
The weakness of Hungary and Bohemia, under the rule of the 15-year-old Louis II, attracts the interest of an aggressive young sultan of Turkey, newly on the throne as Suleiman I. In 1521 he sends a demand for tribute. When it is rejected he marches west and captures Belgrade.
In 1526 Suleiman pushes further up the Danube. Forced now into action to defend Budapest, Louis II brings an army south to meet him. Devoted until now to a life of pleasure the young king approaches his enemy with reckless courage but little wisdom. At the centre of 20,000 hastily gathered troops, he rides against some 100,000 Turkish janissaries, well trained and hardened in warfare.
The clash occurs at Mohacs. The Hungarians are annihilated and the king killed, probably by drowning when in flight. Suleiman briefly advances as far as Budapest and then withdraws, taking with him 100,000 Hungarians.
Province of Austria
Bohemia, after Mohacs, enters nearly four centuries as little more than a province of the Austrian empire. The Habsburg rulers, fervently Roman Catholic, find it hard at first to resist demands for religious liberty from a predominantly Protestant population. This is, after all, the land in which the battle for freedom of conscience was first won, by the followers of John Huss. In the turbulent 16th century, Bohemia has its share of unrest.
But in the long run religious dissent proves Bohemia's undoing. Action by the Protestant assembly in Prague in 1618 lights the spark of the Thirty Years' War. The dramatic event which in 1618 provokes a crisis throughout Europe is known to historians as the Defenestration (out-windowing) of Prague. The windows in question are those of the seat of government, the Hradcany fortified palace. Those forcibly thrown out are two of the regents appointed by the Habsburgs. At its end, the peace of 1648 enables the Habsburgs to impose a strict uniformity of doctrine which stifles Bohemia's vitality.
Prague features as dramatically at the very end of the Thirty Years' War as at the start. In July 1648, just three months before the signing of the peace of Westphalia, Swedish armies occupy part of the city. Like the rest of central Europe, Bohemia has suffered three decades of conflict and deprivation. But the after-effects of the crisis are probably greater here than anywhere else. The terms of the treaty of 1648 specifically allow the Habsburgs to enforce Roman Catholicism in their territories. In Bohemia this is a licence to continue the policy already put into practice in 1621 by Ferdinand II. In 1781 Joseph passes an Edict of Toleration in Habsburg territories. For the first time since the Thirty Years' War Protestants are allowed to worship in Bohemia. Measures to help the peasants include abolishing the corvée and, in 1789, a maximum tax level of 30% of produce.
The French revolution and Napoleon's reforms inspire suppressed minorities throughout Europe with the dream of self-determination. In Bohemia, as in Hungary, nationalism expresses itself through the language and history of the ethnic group. A Bohemian museum is founded in Prague in 1818. A history of Bohemia and Moravia, written by Frantisek Palacky and appearing from 1836, offends the Habsburg censors by identifying the Hussite period as the defining moment of Czech identity.
Meanwhile the Slavs see their chance. In June, 1848, a pan-Slav congress assembles in Prague with Palacky, the Czech nationalist historian, as president. The excitement of the occasion is expressed in a demonstration by radical Czech students. The Austrian commander of Prague takes the opportunity to impose martial rule. It is the first of several occasions over the next twelve months in which imperial troops are able to restore order, often because groups with different revolutionary aims fail to assist each other - and even, on occasion, lend their support to the imperial power.
In 1861, the a new elected Bohemian Diet was established. The renewal of the old Bohemian Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia, and Duchy of Silesia) became the official political program of both Czech liberal politicians and the majority of Bohemian aristocracy ("state rights program"), while parties representing the German minority and small part of the aristocracy proclaimed their loyalty to the centralistic Constitution. After the defeat of Austria in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Hungarian politicians achieved the Ausgleich (compromise) which created Austria-Hungary in 1867, ostensibly creating equality between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the empire. An attempt of the Czechs to create a tripartite monarchy (Austria-Hungary-Bohemia) failed in 1871. However, the "state rights program" remained the official platform of all Czech political parties (except for social democrats) until 1918.
Turbulent Times
After World War I, Bohemia became the core of the newly-formed country of Czechoslovakia, which combined Bohemia, Moravia, Austrian Silesia, and the Slovak lands of Hungary into one state. Under its first president, Tomáš Masaryk, Czechoslovakia became a rich and liberal democratic republic.
Following the Munich Agreement in 1938, the border regions of Bohemia inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans (the Sudetenland) were annexed to Nazi Germany; this was the single time in Bohemian history that its territory was divided. The remnants of Bohemia and Moravia were then annexed by Germany in 1939, while the Slovak lands became Slovakia. From 1939–1945 Bohemia (without the Sudetenland) formed with Moravia the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren). After World War II ended in 1945, the vast majority of remaining Germans were expelled through the Beneš decrees.
Beginning in 1949, Bohemia ceased to be an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia, as the country was divided into kraje. In 1989 Agnes of Bohemia became the first saint from a Central European country to be canonized by Pope John Paul II before the "Velvet Revolution" later that year. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 (the "Velvet Divorce"), the territory of Bohemia became part of the new Czech Republic.
The Czech constitution from 1992 refers to the "citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia" and proclaims continuity with the statehood of the Bohemian Crown. Bohemia is not currently an administrative unit of the Czech Republic. Instead, it is divided into the Prague, Central Bohemian, Plzeň, Karlovy Vary, Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, and Hradec Králové Regions, as well as parts of the Pardubice, Vysočina, South Bohemian and South Moravian Regions.
