Bohemian nobility

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The German princes now cast their looks about to find a man for an emperor, who should help them to humble the pride of the Bohemian: prince, and who, at the same time, should not stand in the way of their own aggrandizement. They found such a prince in Rudolph, the Count of Hapsburg, who, having some small possessions in Switzerland and Suabia, was too weak to assume any great authority over his constituents, and, moreover, agreed to wrest from the kingdom of Bohemia its recently acquired territories—Austria, Styria, and Carinthia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As this virtually removed the new churches from the authority of the old Consistory, the Diet was satisfied, and willing to acquiesce in the demands of their sovereign; and accordingly the desired subsidy was voted, and Rudolph was declared the rightful heir of the Bohemian crown.
During the brief reign of Maximilian, the Bohemians gained much religious liberty, and Protestantism greatly increased in strength and numbers. The more progressive people looked with great hopes to the future ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was further declared that no Bohemian, at the penalty of being deprived of honor, goods, and life, could separate his interests from those of his nation, but must retain his natural love for his country and help it in this hour of need. This proclamation was sent to all parts of the country, and proved so effective that one lord after another sent letters to the camp of Sigmund severing his allegiance from the crown. Indeed, the disaffection toward the emperor was so great that secret messengers were sent to the King of Poland offering him the crown of Bohemia. ”

“ The Bohemian lords did not object to this, since the chief of these was Peter, the Archbishop of Mayence, who had been greatly loved and honored by Václav II. Later, when the German lords began to grow too domineering, King John was held to the agreement, and ordered to dismiss them.
When the nobles had established King John and Queen Elizabeth upon the throne of Bohemia, they imagined that they had done their country a good service, and that his reign would be an era of peace and prosperity to all the people. ”

“ The harper, who had modestly stepped back among the youngest members, now quickly returned to his former place before the old man.
“You have accepted me as a Brother; oh, prove your brotherhood to me; patiently allow me to say a few words.”
“You are at liberty to speak,” the old man replied.
“I hear that you want to go to a king. How can it be that so many wise men forget that kings have always been the greatest enemies of the Bohemian people? Who of the long list of kings called to the Bohemian throne has been our father, our providence, as he should have been? ”

“ Soon will their wish be realized; only a little while longer, and if a miracle do not come from above, the hated Bohemian race, which they say for ages has been filled with heresy and revolt, will perish. ”

“ In spite of the dislike of the Turk, which was then common to all Christian nations, the Bohemians looked with alarm on any increase in those burdens of taxation which already weighed so heavily upon them; and, as already hinted, they dreaded the rule of a King, who might find it more convenient to reign at Presburg than at Prague. So strong was this feeling, that the [377] Bavarians, who had hoped to win the crown of Bohemia for their Duke, now believed that they could form a Bohemian party, which should commit itself openly to the side of Zapolya. ”

“ Yet any pride of succession which they may have had was legitimately theirs, for, if they were less materially and intellectually endowed, if the peculiarly happy circumstances of their civic foundation had passed to make their ultimate disruption certain under the changed conditions of all that is included in social development, they still preserved the Bohemian character, with its simplicity, gaiety, humour, and courage. To labour the point further is unnecessary, for if it is not already clear, the fault is too remote to be here corrected. ”

“ 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 period during which the new Luxemburg dynasty linked Bohemia to the Empire and the French West coincided with a Czech literary revival which repudiated the influx of unwonted luxury and refinement, and was brought home to the masses of the nation by able preachers. The University of Prague, founded by Charles IV. in 1349, became the centre of culture for Bohemia and her neighbours. John Hus and his noble friend, Jerome of Prague, became the great torchbearers of the Reformation. Their death inflamed the whole Bohemian nation against Rome and the treacherous Emperor Sigismund. ”

“ The estates of Bohemia, at a meeting that took place at Prague on the 16th of October 1720, sanctioned the female succession to the Bohemian throne and recognized the so-called Pragmatic Sanction which proclaimed the indivisibility of the Habsburg realm. The archduchess Maria Theresa, in whose favour these enactments were made, none the less met with great opposition on the death of her father the emperor Charles VI. Charles, elector of Bavaria, raised claims to the Bohemian throne and invaded the country with a large army of Bavarian, French and Saxon troops. ”

“ All our political aims likewise must be looked at from a standpoint equally elevated and freedom loving, combined with the old Bohemian honesty, unselfishness and devotion, with the ancient noble consideration for the honor of the Bohemian nation and for the verdict of the future. These great qualities the Bohemian nation manifested through the self-confident calm which it managed to preserve during the war in spite of all provocation, not needing instruction by its delegates or other political counsels. ”

“ Bohemia, in Roqueplan's words, must be continually renewed, for the old Bohemian is nothing but a legitimate object for ardent social reformers. So the Bohemians of 1830, some of whom made their names, while others remained obscure, were all youthful nobodies in the eyes of the world, perching in their attics like a colony of singing birds upon the topmost branches. ”

“ The fateful period for Bohemia comes in the sixteenth century. The people are weakened by wars, by internal religious strifes. A fearful new danger threatens central Europe—the Turks. In 1526 the Bohemian king, Ludvik, is killed in a battle with the Turks, assisting Hungary; and as there is no male descendant, the elective diet at Prague is influenced to offer the crown of Bohemia, under strict guarantees of all its rights, to the husband of Ludvik's daughter, Ferdinand of Habsburg, archduke of Austria. ”

“ The diet of the kingdom recommended, in 1790, that Bohemian should be introduced at least in certain secondary schools, preferably in Prague, but the Austrian world of officialdom was opposed even to this concession. “No one threatens the life of the Bohemian tongue,” protested these officials. “The government cannot antagonize the feeling of the most influential and wealthiest classes who use German, if not exclusively, at least overwhelmingly. Moreover, to encourage Bohemian would be to lose sight of the idea of the unification of the empire. ”

“ Descending the centuries to modern times, the Bohemian reckons his ancestors among the prominent figures of every great literary epoch. In the middle ages, the great family tradition is perpetuated among the minstrels and ballad-makers, the devotees of the gay science, the whole tribe of the melodious vagabonds of Touraine; while, as we pass from the days of chivalry to the dawn of the Renaissance, we find “Bohemia still strolling about all the highways of the kingdom, and already invading the streets of Paris itself.” ”

“ Not long before, a Bohemian nobleman had been openly murdered because he dared espouse the cause of the house of Austria, and now a deputation of Bohemian lords go to the German court to implore the emperor to let his fourteen-year-old boy rule over them. ”

“ Sobeslav, the next Duke of Bohemia, had just obtained the throne by the influence of his mother Svatava, who had persuaded the Bohemian nobles to ignore the claims of her eldest son, Otto. Otto at once appealed to Lothar, who asserted his right, as Emperor, to decide the succession to the Dukedom of Bohemia.
Such a claim would have been resented at any time; but Otto had specially offended Bohemian feeling, by consenting to hold the province of Moravia as a fief from the Emperor, instead of a dependency of the Duke of Bohemia. All the national feeling of independence at once burst into flame ”

“ Bohemia was glorious for a few years after 1830 as it has never been since because it proclaimed a creed, the creed of Romanticism. It was glorious then because, with Romanticism, Bohemia was a living force. Given this connexion, there was some point in the bravado, the extravagances and conceits of Bohemian life. They were an irregular army, those young men, and they rejoiced in their irregularity. Épater le bourgeois was a legitimate war-cry when the bourgeois stood for all that was reactionary in art. ”

“ I am a Bohemian of Slavic origin, and all I possess and command I place wholly and forever at the service of my own country. It is true that my nation is small, but from the very beginning it has possessed its own historical individuality. Its princes on occasions have acted in common with German princes, but the people have never regarded themselves as Germans, nor have others, during all these centuries, included them amongst them. ”

“ Fear of the Teutonic peril has always harried the soul of the nation. Every historian, every poet, every patriot has admonished the people to be on their guard. One of the oldest chorals extant contains the pathetic invocation to the patron saint of the country. “St. Václav, Duke of the Bohemian Land, do not let us perish nor our descendants.”
In course of time many Germans and denationalized Bohemians were Bohemianized, so that it is hazardous to guess whether in Bohemia and Moravia more Germans adopted the Bohemian language than Bohemians the German. ”

“ Intoxicated by their brilliant success, they determined to march home across Bohemia, without even asking permission of the ruler of that country. Very probably, they counted upon the favor of the fourteen lords who had been baptized in Ratisbon, for this was before the baptism of the Bohemian prince. The Bohemians, highly indignant that a hostile army dared cross their territory, hastily collected a large army, fell upon the Germans, and defeated them so that they fled, leaving rich spoils in the hands of the victors. ”

“ Numerous historical works were published, theology was cultivated with talent and zeal, the eloquence of the pulpit and the bar acquired a high degree of cultivation, and in religious hymns all sects were equally productive.
The triumph of the Catholic party, which followed the battle of the White Mountain, near Prague (1620) , gave a fatal blow to Bohemia. The leading men of the country were executed, exiled, or imprisoned; the Protestant religion was abolished, and the country was declared a hereditary Catholic monarchy. The Bohemian language ceased to be used in public transactions ”