John of Bohemia

“ Restless, adventurous and warlike, John had soon tired of governing his kingdom, and even discussed exchanging it with the emperor Louis for the Palatinate; and while Bohemia was again relapsing into a state of anarchy, her king was winning fame as a warrior in almost every part of Europe. He fought against the citizens of Metz and against his kinsman, John III., duke of Brabant; he led the knights of the Teutonic Order against the heathen in Lithuania and Pomerania and promised Pope John XXII. to head a crusade ”

“ As the rival of the hated House of Hapsburg, and the deliverer from the incapable Henry of Carinthia, the new king was specially acceptable; while his marriage with the daughter of Wenceslaus might have almost cheated the enthusiastic Bohemians into the belief that they were once more to be governed by a national sovereign. John, too, seemed willing enough to meet these aspirations more than half way. He not only recognised that claim, which had been formerly asserted against Vladislav, that Bohemians [120] should not be called to fight outside their kingdom ”

“ King John fell from his horse mortally wounded, and fifty of the chief nobles soon lay dead round their king. Hardly any of the Bohemians survived, and the flower of the Bohemian nobility perished on the battle-field of Crécy.
The charge of the blind King of Bohemia, useless and even faulty, from a military point of view, as the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, is equally immortal: even after more than five hundred years a Bohemian cannot write of this "gallant deed of arms" without feeling his blood stirred. ”

“ There is much in Bohemian history that will appeal to the English reader. What Englishman could fail to find interest in the history of that nation which was once ruled over by the "Goode King Wenceslaus" of the old English carol and by the blind King John, the news of whose valiant death brought tears to the eyes of Edward III; of that nation which gave England one of her most popular queens—Queen Anne, wife of Richard II and daughter of the greatest of our Czech kings?
Bohemia, though one of the lesser nations, gave more than one man to the world," revered in all hearts that love light." ”

“ After the departure of King Henry from Prague, a Diet was immediately called, in which the lords took the oath of allegiance to their new king; and John, as a ruler of a new dynasty, gave a written agreement promising to preserve the liberties of the country. As this was the first document of the kind ever given by a King of Bohemia, some of the provisions deserve special notice: The king promised to call no foreigners into the land to be his officers and counselors; he was forbidden either to give away or sell any of the crown estates to foreigners ”

“ Then followed many years of oppression and disorder, during which John only appeared in Bohemia when he wished to demand money from the citizens, [126] which he then hastened to spend at Paris or on the Rhine, either in the provision of splendid tournaments, or on some of the many wars which the princes of the Empire were waging against each other or against the Imperial towns. John’s special attraction was to Paris, where the court of King Charles was becoming a centre of pleasure and excitement. ”

“ When it was told to King John that the French were flying, and he was entreated himself also to seek in flight the safety of his life and that of his men, he said: “God forbid that a King of Bohemia should fly; rather lead me there where the battle is raging most fiercely. The Lord be with us; we fear nothing, but watch carefully over my son.” When he had been led to the battlefield King John, struck by many arrows, was killed, and many Bohemian nobles who were with him on August 26. ”

“ The acquisition of the territories, and especially of Tirol, had provided Louis with many enemies, prominent among whom were John of Bohemia and his family, that of Luxemburg. John, therefore, entered into an alliance with Pope Clement VI. The course of the war which ensued in Germany was such as to compel the emperor to submit to humiliating terms, though he stopped short of accepting the election of Charles, margrave of Moravia (afterwards the emperor Charles IV.) as German king in July 1346. ”

“ The German king considered that King John had encroached on the rights of the Empire by these conquests; John's old enemy King Casimir of Poland, the dukes of Austria, Charles Robert, King of Hungary, and his uncle Robert, King of Naples, all joined him in opposing the ambitious King of Bohemia. King John succeeded in pacifying the King of Germany by the promise that all lands conquered by him in Italy should become the joint property of the two sovereigns. ”

“ I am thankful that Bohemia has under the power of Jesus Christ received so much good from the blessed land of England through your labours; and I do not wonder that while to some it is a savour unto death, yet to others it is a savour unto joy, because for many it is a savour unto life eternal. [4] For the enemy of man had sown tares [5] so widely in our kingdom that scarcely a grain or two of wheat appeared. The whole of man’s field had been so filled with nettles that the way of salvation could with difficulty be found. ”

“ By means of this custom the wealth of the nobility kept constantly increasing, while that of the peasants decreased in like proportion; for the noble could sell or lease the land to another peasant under more and more limitations, and the peasants thus were reduced to slavery.
This custom had no authority in the law of the land, and at length there arose a man who had the moral courage to raise his voice against it. This was John of Jenstein, the Archbishop of Prague during, the reign of King Václav. The archbishop declared that he found the custom in vogue upon the episcopal estates ”

“ The king seems himself to have felt the impossibility of governing alone a country from which, in consequence of his adventurous life, he was almost always absent. Shortly after leaving Italy King John proceeded to Luxemburg, where he had become involved in a feud with John, Duke of Brabant; but he left his son Charles at Prague, with full power to govern Bohemia and Moravia. Always jealous of his son, John had formally stipulated that Charles should only bear the title of Margrave of Moravia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Losing ground in France, fluctuating in England, Protestantism was apparently more triumphant in vast territories where the ancient Church was one day to recover its mastery. Of the population of Bohemia, there were perhaps ten Protestants to one Papist, while in the United Netherlands at least one-third of the people were still attached to the Catholic faith.
The great religious struggle in Bohemia and other dominions of the Habsburg family was fast leading to a war of which no man could even imagine the horrors or foresee the vast extent. ”

“ The chronicle of Dalimil ends with the coronation of King John in 1310, and it is therefore appropriate now to mention the writings of a chronicler who deals principally with the reign of King John—the Don Quixote of Bohemia, as he has been aptly called. I allude to the Latin chronicle of Beneš of Weitmil, a canon of St. Vitus’s cathedral at Prague. The chronicle is divided into four books, the first three of which contain the history of Bohemia from 1283 to 1345. ”

“ They saw none such in Italy; Germany unexpectedly offered one. John, king of Bohemia, the son of Henry VII, arrived at Trent towards the end of the year 1330. The memory of his father was rendered dearer to the Italians by the comparison of his conduct with that of his successor; and John was calculated to heighten this predilection. He could not submit to [157] the barbarism of Bohemia, and inhabited, in preference, the county of Luxemburg, or Paris ”

“ But now the present King of Bohemia has got the sway of Trieste, and is Lord High Admiral and Chief of the Marine Department. He has been much in Spain, also in South America; I have read some travels, "Reise Skizzen," of his—printed, not published. They are not without talent, and he ever and anon relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He adores bull-fights, and rather regrets the Inquisition, and considers the Duke of Alva everything noble and chivalrous, and the most abused of men. ”

“ Wherefore, most reverend fathers! you shall understand that the king of Bohemia did never favour with his heart these men, whose unshamefastness is such, that they feared not even of late to treat me evil, being so much in the king's favour and credit." After him stepped forth Paletz, saying, Paletz speaketh against John Huss."Verily most reverend fathers, not only the learned men of other nations, but also of Bohemia itself, are, through the counsel of John Huss and his adherents, banished out of Bohemia, of which number some remain yet in exile in Moravia." ”

“ And although the lords of Bohemia here present are greatly slandered, because they, seeing the said Master John Huss so to be tormented and troubled, contrary to the king's safe-conduct, have not by their letters put the king in mind of his said safe-conduct, that the said lord and king should not any more suffer any such matters, forasmuch as they tend to the contempt and disregard of the kingdom of Bohemia, which from the first original and beginning, since it received the catholic faith, never departed or went away from the obedience of the holy church of Rome ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ But this I did say, that there were in Bohemia a great number of gentlemen and noblemen, who did favour and love me, who also might easily have kept me in some sure and secret place, that I should not have been constrained to come unto this town of Constance, neither at the will of the emperor, neither of the king of Bohemia." The cardinal of Cambray.With that the cardinal of Cambray, even for very anger began to change his colour, and despitefully said: Do you not see the unshamefastness of the man here? ”

“ Prudent answer to cardinal Julian.Hereunto the Bohemian ambassadors answered in few words, that they came only to propound those four articles, not in their own name, but in the name of the whole kingdom of Bohemia;—and spake no more. Whereupon William, the noble protector of the council, calling unto him four men on either part, treated touching the pacifying the matter; by whose advice the council decreed to send a famous embassage with the Bohemian ambassadors, unto Prague, where the people should assemble upon Sunday. ”

“ But the reserved power in Spain, Italy, and Southern Germany was sure enough to make itself felt sooner or later on the Catholic side.
Meantime the Estates of Bohemia knew well enough that the Imperial house was bent on destroying the elective principle of the Empire, and on keeping the crown of Bohemia in perpetuity. They had also discovered that Bishop-Archduke Leopold had been selected by Rudolph as chief of the reactionary movement against Protestantism. ”

“ A subsidy gathered by the pope to fight against the faithful of Bohemia.⁠But, for the better explaining of the matter, first here is to be noted, that during the time of this convocation provincial, pope Martin had sent down to the clergy of England for a subsidy to be gathered of the church, to maintain the pope's war against the Lollards (so the papists did term them) of Bohemia. Also another subsidy was demanded to persecute one Peter Clerk, master of arts of Oxford, who, flying out of England, was at the council of Basil, disputing on the Bohemians' side. ”

“ When the news of the barbarous cruelty exercised at Constance against John Huss and Jerome of Prague, was noised in Bohemia, the nobles and gentlemen of Moravia and Bohemia, such as favoured the cause of John Huss, gathering themselves together in the zeal of Christ, first sent their letter unto the council; expostulating with them for the injury done to those godly men, as is before expressed ”

“ Which things being taken by the way and finished, we will (Christ willing) afterwards return to the tractation hereof, to prosecute the troubles and conflicts of the Bohemians, with other things beside, pertaining to the latter end of the council of Constance, and to the choosing of Pope Martin, as the order of years and time shall require.
*But first [1] I will declare a certain vision, which the said John Huss had in his country of Bohemia, before his martyrdom. ”

“ When a friend in need is a friend in want;
Where the only aim is to keep afloat.
And a brother may drown with a cry in his throat.
Oh, I long for the glow of a kindly heart and the grasp of a friendly hand.
And I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land. ”