Bohemian Revolt

“ The signal for the latter was given by the Bohemian revolution in the spring of that year.
The Thirty Years' War, as it is termed, which was really a series of wars, naturally falls into five distinct periods, each representing in many respects a separate war in itself. The first two years of the war (1618-20) is occupied with the Bohemian revolt against the attempt of the Emperor to force Catholicism upon the Bohemian people and with its immediate consequences. It was accentuated by the attempt of the Emperor Matthias to compel them to accept the Archduke Ferdinand as King. ”

“ The peasants generally began the revolt and the townsmen followed; but this was not always the case. Sometimes the mob of the cities rose first and the peasants joined afterwards. In many cases, too, the poorer nobles were in secret or open sympathy with the insurrectionary movement. On more than one occasion they led the insurgents and fought at their head. The union of poor nobles and peasants had made the Bohemian revolt successful. ”

“ During the sixteenth century the struggle between the Bohemian nobles and the Crown became more acute. The new religious quarrels of the Catholic dynasty against the Protestant heresy curiously complicated the old strife for the independence of Bohemia and the privileges of the nobles. At the commencement of the seventeenth century an abyss already separated the Czechs from the Habsburgs in consequence of the religious intolerance of the dynasty, and a second revolt of the Czechs against the House of Austria was on the point of breaking out. ”

“ It is not thus that successful revolutions are made. The Bohemian nobles were but a faction, fighting for licence and for power under the sacred names of liberty, of patriotism, and of religion. They must have met the fitting reward of their selfishness and their arrogance at the hands of Bucquoi and his fourteen thousand half-starved and badly paid troops, had it not been for the timely interference of other powers. ”

“ The leading men were executed or exiled, the greater part of the soil was confiscated, and the nation that had taken such a noble part in the history of Europe was beggared and decimated until its name almost disappeared from the roll of living nations. The peace of a churchyard prevailed in the Bohemian lands deprived of its leaders, and lying helpless under the most oppressive and reactionary regime of a foreign dynasty. ”

“ The merciless ridicule of Paris would have killed them in a week, without support as they were. Defiance of the bourgeois, an absolute essential of the true Bohemian creed, was, therefore, not appropriate to the first cénacle, who lived openly the life of ordinary, decent citizens, while secretly preparing the proclamations, the standards, and the weapons by which the cataclysmic victory of 1830 was to be won. In such a tense moment Bohemia could not be born. Their outlook, in the second place, was too lofty to comprehend the lower planes in which Bohemia made itself conspicuous. ”

“ The only offense of the Bohemian king is that he is Slav, but that, with the jealousy of his power, the democratic institutions, and the wealth of his country, which contains the richest mines of silver in Europe, is sufficient. Great armies, German and Hungarian, are raised against him; finally he is treacherously slain in battle, his kingdom torn apart, and Bohemia is ravished and reduced almost to a "possession" or a fief of the Empire.
Yet the wound is not mortal, the nation is too strong ”

“ At the same time the peasant released from slavery to his feudal lord, breathed more ,freely after centuries of severe oppresion and became conscious that he was a man; the indifference and ignorance of serfdom gave place to a recognition of duties to the nation. All over the lands of the Bohemian crown, as persecution and oppresion were lifted, powers that had been lying dormant came to life and sap began after a long winter to circulate in the body of the nation. ”

“ It is not a new thing that this harassed people should stand in the way of German expansion to the east, as they are doing today. For more than a thousand years their lands have been a bone of contention between Slav and Teuton. Since early in the fifth century, when the Bohemian kingdom was most probably established, hardly a generation has passed but that their national existence has been endangered and their homes given over to fire and sword at the hands of the German invaders. ”

“ The flower of Bohemian manhood, hundreds of thousands of them, have been sacrificed to the insane pride and lust of conquest of the degenerate family of Hapsburgs, thousands of cripples, of men maimed and blind, walk the streets of Prague: children are dying of want, and the leaders of the nation are in jail or on the gallows. Every Bohemian, be he rich or poor, professor or peasant, is convinced that all these horrors were foolishly and recklessly caused by the alien emperor and the archdukes and courtiers that surround him. ”

“ Because the Bohemian nation was the first among the nations of Continental Europe that lifted up the torch of liberty, both of body and soul. Bohemians were the people that championed true democracy since the dawn of the fifteenth century. These ideals of freedom came into collision with the German government of the Hapsburgs, for this sinister dynasty has always been characterized by a blind hatred of every symptom of freedom and democracy. ”

“ Your punishment, O King, shall be that against your own will you shall arouse the Bohemian nation to new life. By your injustice you will awaken within the Bohemians their slumbering love for their country; with your dislike for their language you will arouse their old love for it. Being forced to give it up, they will love it the more. ”

“ Though the war, which first broke out in Bohemia, concerned only the house of Austria, yet by its originating in religious disputes, by its peculiar character as a religious war, and by the measures adopted both by the insurgents and the emperor, it acquired such an extent, that even the quelling of the insurrection was insufficient to put a stop to it. ... Though the Bohemian war was apparently terminated, yet the flame had communicated to Germany and Hungary, and new fuel was added by the act of proscription promulgated against the elector Frederic and his adherents. ”

“ The Bohemian people, vanquished by their enemy in a murderous struggle, were suddenly deprived of the strong hand which for twenty years had held the reins of the State. It was inevitable that the country should now become the scene of internal anarchy as well as the prey of aliens. ”

“ During the fifteenth century, the Czechs fought for the freedom of conscience against the whole of Europe. But following this glorious period came exhaustion, and after the battle of White Mountain in 1620 the Bohemians lost their independence. After this battle, twenty-seven leaders of the Bohemian Rebellion against Ferdinand the Second were executed; many of them tortured and thirty-six thousand families forced to leave their native land, and their property confiscated. Today Bohemians pay more than four hundred million crowns yearly by way of taxes to the Austrian government in Vienna ”

“ But if the charge of duplicity against Hus is founded mainly on ignorance of human nature, the accusation of violence which was brought against the Bohemian reformers may have been partially due to a confusion between two contests which were taking place at the same time, and in which the same parties were to some extent involved. ”

“ Kings and warriors, who had done much to extend the prestige and power of Bohemia, are remembered mainly for their cruelty and oppression; while saints, who may in some degree have weakened the sense of Bohemian independence, are not merely honoured, but are even put forward as the symbols of distinctive national life. ”

“ Conspiracy is rank around us; pestilence stalks abroad through the byways. I hear that Bohemia is already in revolt. No one knows what terrible disaster will come in the next news from the front.
“The aged Emperor can do nothing but sit there in the Hofburg, while his peers, fled here in terror from all other parts of the kingdom, spend their time in the gambling casinos, dance as if frenzied in the Zinspaeleste or, believing the end of the world at hand, are lost to religion, morality and the commonest decencies of mankind in debauching there in the Tabarin and vice-sinks like it. ”

“ But as every species of oppression carried to excess reacts upon itself, bringing its own punishment, so this cruel persecution of the Bohemian people proved the very means of rousing the national spirit, and awakening an interest in the cultivation of a language neglected for so many generations. ”

“ As to their history in the old world, the Bohemians have had such a stormy national struggle, and the bitterness of it has so entered into their lives, that it is impossible rightly to judge them apart from it. ”

“ The answers in defence are cautious and uncertain, as during the whole war the Catholic party were generally not a match for the Protestants in the serious warfare of the pen. But the speedy flight of the new King of Bohemia suddenly changed the physiognomy of the literary market. The secret writings obtained as booty from the Bohemian party were published by their opponents; and about these bulky quartos there raged for years a battle of petty flying-sheets. Revengeful, and joyfully triumphant, the Imperialists sounded their pæan. ”

“ When the new Diet met, Rudolph resorted to his old method of procrastination. Finally, when he could find no other pretext for refusing the demands of the Diet, he said he must refer the matter to the electors of the empire. As such a proceeding would have compromised the independence of the Bohemian kingdom, the States determined to resort to arms to defend both their religious and political liberties. A body of thirty directors were elected, who were to have the government in their hands and immediately raise an army for the common defense. ”

“ His personal share in the war was indeed cut short, partly by ill-health, partly by the necessity of returning to Bohemia, which was disturbed by the insurrection of a new pretender. But his son Frederick and his brother Theobald brought new reinforcements to the camp of Barbarossa; and a large part of all the glory that could be won in such a cause was due to the Bohemian soldiers. ”

“ No settlement of the struggle which leaves the heroic Bohemian people subject to the vengeance of the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns can be considered for a moment. It would be a betrayal, not only of the principles for which we are waging war, but of the liberties of the human race. ”

“ FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD OF BOHEMIAN HISTORY TO THE HUNGARIAN INVASION.
(-885.)
The history of a lost nationality is necessarily tragic and can rarely be commonplace. In the case of Bohemia the interest is increased by the variety of the parts which she was forced to play, each of which, while of great value to the world, assisted in some degree to hasten her ruin. Thus, for instance, the intense desire to maintain her own independent life brought her into collision with neighbouring States which were determined to crush or to absorb her ”

“ For the tragedy of Bohemia, which has given a minor strain to the song and the lay of its gifted children alike, has been the national tragedy laid bare in The Four Bare Walls,—the rebellion and hopeless struggle of a small Slavic nation, distinctly different in its sentiments, its language and national characteristics from the Austro-Germans who have governed and for three centuries oppressed it, fighting a fight unto death against the iron heel which has tried to denationalize a people through repeated attempts to wrest from them their native language. ”

“ The Bohemian people exhausted by the European arid Hapsburg counter-reformation were for a long time unable to withstand the oppression, until the great revival came at the end of the eighteenth century, culminating in the revolution of 1848. The revolution was suppressed, rights conceded to the people of Austria, and principally to the Bohemians, were taken back and absolutism reigned once more, until the disastrous war of 1859 compelled the granting of an imperfect constitutional regime. ”

“ When once a free Bohemian land emerges in the heart of Central Europe we shall know that the flood of German-Magyar aggression is receding, never to rise again. For the Powers which establish Bohemian independence will by that very act be united in the future against a possible recrudescence of German Imperialism. There is not a single State among the Allies whose interests clash with those of the Czech nation. To all of them the freedom of Bohemia will be a safeguard against a new German advance and a barometer of German pressure. ”

“ Strange as it sounds, in speaking of so turbulent a country, it is none the less true that, till this time, there had been no instance of a combined national resistance in Bohemia to a King who was the sole lawful claimant of the throne. There had been plenty of instances of setting up rival members of the royal family against each other; attempts by discontented nobles to call in a foreign King or Emperor to their help; and even something like a provincial insurrection of Moravia against Bohemia ”

“ They seem to have thought that they could break the resistance of the Bohemians by military force, and with the aid of the German minority of the population. A long struggle ensued. ... Bohemia is ... the 'cockpit' of Austrian political warfare, and almost every political crisis has been closely connected with events that occurred in Bohemia. The Bohemian representatives in 1867 refused to take part in the deliberations of the Vienna Parliament, the existence of which they considered contrary to the ancient constitution of their country. ”

“ Press laws were made doubly stringent, secret societies were prohibited, caricatures were exposed to a censorship, and the police was exceedingly vigilant. Above all, the bourgeoisie held firm. They were tasting prosperity and power, and had no desire to let political disturbance interfere with their enjoyment. Happy were those who could repent of youthful political excesses and return to comfortable homes and settled careers. Those who had no refuge but Bohemia came to know the chill of disappointment and repression. ”