Kingdom of Bohemia

The Kingdom of Bohemia (České království; Königreich Böhmen; Regnum Bohemiae) was a state located in the region of Bohemia in Central Europe, whose territory is currently located in the modern-day Czech Republic. The King was a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806, and many Kings of Bohemia were also Holy Roman Emperors. Its capital Prague was effectively the centre of the Holy Roman Empire in the late 14th century, and at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century. From 1526, the kingdom was continuously ruled by the House of Habsburg and its successor house Habsburg-Lorraine. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire it became part of the Habsburg's larger Austrian Empire, and subsequently the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1867. Bohemia nevertheless formally remained a separate kingdom, known as a crown land within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and its capital Prague was one of the empire's leading cities. In the last years of Austria-Hungary, Bohemia was the empire's most advanced and economically prosperous crown land. The Czech language (called the Bohemian language in English usage until the 19th century) was the main language of the diet and the nobility until 1627 (when German was formally made equal with Czech, and eventually prevailed as the language of the diet, until the Czech national revival in the 19th century), however, German was also widely used as the language of administration in many towns after German populated some areas of the country in the 13th century. The royal court used Czech, Latin and German language, depending on the ruler and period.

Following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, both Kingdom and Empire were dissolved and Bohemia became the core part of the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic.

History




13th century (growth)
Although some former rulers of Bohemia had enjoyed a non-hereditary royal title during the 11th and 12th century (Vratislaus II, Vladislaus II), the kingdom was formally established in 1198 by Ottokar I, who had his regality acknowledged by Philip of Swabia, elected King of the Romans, in turn for his support against the rival Emperor Otto IV. In 1204 Ottokar's royal dignity was accepted by Otto IV himself as well as by Pope Innocent III and afterwards definitely confirmed by the Golden Bull of Sicily issued by Emperor Frederick II in 1212, confirming the Duchy of Bohemia to the Kingdom status.

The Czech king should be exempt from all future obligations to the Holy Roman Empire except for participation in the imperial councils. Incorporated into the Habsburg Monarchy from 1526, it was dissolved in 1918 with the fall of Austria–Hungary, when the last Bohemian king, Charles I of Austria, was forced out of power without abdicating. The national assembly at Prague then deposed the Habsburg (Habsburg-Lorraine) dynasty and proclaimed the Czechoslovak Republic.

In 1212, Ottokar I (1192–93 and 1197–1230), bearing the title "king" since 1198, extracted the Golden Bull of Sicily (a formal edict) from the emperor confirming the royal title for Ottokar and his descendants and the Duchy was raised to a Kingdom. Czech king should 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 of Prague was revoked. The king's successor was Wenceslaus I, from his second marriage. To make it possible for this son rule the country, Ottokar established inheritance by male-preference primogeniture, before which the oldest child could rule the country, irrespective of gender.

His sister Agnes of Bohemia (Anežka), later canonized, was an extraordinarily courageous and energetic woman for her time; she refused to marry the Holy Roman Emperor and instead devoted her life to God. Corresponding with the Pope, she established the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star in 1233, the first order of knights in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Four other knight orders were present in Bohemia, Order of St. John of Jerusalem from cca.1160, Order of Saint Lazarus from late 12th century, Teutonic Knights in cca.1200–1421 and Templars in 1232–1312.

The 13th century was the most dynamic period of Přemyslid reign over Bohemia. German Emperor Frederick 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, the Mongol invasions (1220–42) absorbed the attention of the Bohemian Kingdom's eastern neighbors, the Hungarians and the Poles.

During the reign of the last Přemyslids and the succeeding House of Luxembourg the Bohemian kingdom was the most powerful state of the Holy Roman Empire. King Ottokar II of Bohemia ruled over an area from Austria to the Adriatic Sea. King Wenceslaus II was crowned King of Poland in 1300, his son Wenceslaus III King of Hungary one year later. From then the Kingdom of Bohemia stretched from Hungary to the Baltic sea.

Ottokar II (1253–78) married a German princess, Margaret of Babenberg, and became duke of Austria, thereby acquiring Upper and Lower Austria and part of Styria; he conquered the rest of Styria, most of Carinthia, and parts of Carniola. He was called "the king of iron and gold" — gold because of his wealth, iron because of fighting, he won against Hungary in Battle by Kressenbrunn, cs:Bitva u Kressenbrunnu where clashed more than 200 000 men, and he also fought and won against the Prussian pagans. In 1256, Ottokar II founded a city he named Královec in Czech, later known as Königsberg, now Kaliningrad. He ruled area through Austria to Adriatic Sea. From 1273, however, Habsburg emperor Rudolf began to reassert imperial authority. Combined with problems he had with rebellious nobility in Bohemia, all of Ottokar's German possessions were lost in 1276 and, in 1278, he was abandoned of part of nobility and died in the Battle on the Marchfeld against Rudolf.

The 13th century was also a period of large-scale German immigration, during the Ostsiedlung, often encouraged by Přemyslid kings hoping to weaken the influence of their own Czech nobility. 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-day Havlíčkův Brod) and Jihlava were important German settlements. The Germans brought their own code of law — the ius teutonicum — which formed the basis of the later commercial law of Bohemia and Moravia. Marriages between Germans and Czech nobles soon became commonplace.

King Wenceslaus II (1271-1305) managed to get the crown of Poland and for his son also the crown of Hungary. That time the Kingdom of Bohemia stretched from Hungary to the Baltic sea.

14th century ("Golden Age")
The 14th century — particularly the reign of Charles IV (1342–78) — 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 married Elisabeth, the daughter of Wenceslaus II. His son, Charles IV, the second king from the House of Luxembourg, was raised at the French court and was cosmopolitan in attitude.

He strengthened the power and prestige of the Bohemian kingdom. In 1344 Charles elevated the bishopric of Prague, making it an archbishopric and freeing it from the jurisdiction of Mainz and the Holy Roman Empire; the archbishop was given the right to crown Bohemian kings. Charles curbed the Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian nobility, rationalized the provincial administration of Bohemia and Moravia, and made Brandenburg (until 1415), Luxembourg (until 1437), Lusatia (until 1635), and Silesia (until 1742) into fiefs of the Bohemian crown. He created the Lands of the Bohemian Crown.

In 1355 Charles was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1356 he issued the Golden Bull of 1356, defining and systematizing the process of election to the Imperial throne, with the Bohemian king among the seven electors. The issue of the 1356 Golden Bull together with the following acquisition of the Brandenburg Electorate gave the Bohemian Kingdom two votes in the electoral college. Charles also made Prague 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 of Charles University in Prague in 1348. Charles's intention was 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, who had also been elected King of the Romans in the first election since his father's Golden Bull, but who was deposed from the Imperial throne before he could be crowned Emperor, with his brother Sigismund eventually succeeding to that position, being crowned in Rome in 1433.

15th century (Hussite Movement)
The Hussite movement (1402–85) was primarily a religious, as well as national, manifestation. As a religious reform movement, it represented a challenge to papal authority and an assertion of national autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs. The hussites defeated four crusades from Holy Roman Empire and the movement is also viewed by many Czechs as a part of the (worldwide) Protestant Reformation.Because many of warriors of crusades were Germans, it is presented as a Czech national movement and acquired anti-imperial and anti-German implications and thus can be considered a manifestation of a long-term Czech–German conflict.

Hussitism began during the long reign of Wenceslas IV (1378–1419), a period of papal schism and concomitant anarchy in the Holy Roman Empire, and was precipitated by a controversy at Charles University in Prague. In 1403 Jan Hus became rector of the university. A reformist preacher, Hus espoused the antipapal and antihierarchical teachings of John Wycliffe of England, often referred to as the "Morning Star of the Reformation". Hus's teaching was distinguished by its rejection of the wealth, corruption and hierarchical tendencies of the Roman Catholic Church. It advocated the Wycliffite doctrine of clerical purity and poverty and insisted on communion under both kinds, bread and wine, for the laity. (The Roman Catholic Church reserved the cup — wine — for the clergy.) The more moderate followers of Hus, the Utraquists, took their name from the Latin sub utraque specie, meaning "under each kind". A more radical sect soon formed — the Taborite sect — the Taborites, who took their name from the city of Tábor, their stronghold in southern Bohemia, rejected church doctrine and upheld the Bible as the sole authority in all matters of belief.

Soon after Hus assumed office, German professors of theology demanded the condemnation of Wycliffe's writings. Hus protested and received 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, 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 insistence at first on favoring Germans in appointments to councillor and other administrative positions had aroused the national sentiments of the Czech nobility and rallied them to Hus's defense. The German faculties had the support of Zbyněk Zajíc, Archbishop of Prague, and the German clergy. Wenceslas, for political reasons, switched his support from the Germans to Hus and allied with the reformers. On January 18, 1409, Wenceslas issued the Decree 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 the University of Leipzig.

Hus's victory was short lived, however. He preached against the sale of indulgences, which lost him the support of the king, who received a percentage of the sales. In 1412 Hus and his followers were suspended from the university and expelled from Prague. For two years the reformers served as itinerant preachers throughout Bohemia. In 1414 Hus was summoned to the Council of Constance to defend his views. Hus accepted this offer, but was imprisoned at his arrival and never given a chance to defend his ideas. The council condemned him as a heretic and burned him at the stake in 1415.

Hus's death sparked decades of religious warfare, the Hussite Wars. Sigismund, the pro-papal king of Hungary and successor to the Bohemian throne after the death of Wenceslas in 1419, failed repeatedly in attempts 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. Czech burghers and Roman Catholic Germans turned on each other; many were massacred, and most German survivors fled or were exiled to the Holy Roman Empire. The fighting changed the face of Bohemia to this day, for Bohemia would have a much larger German populace had they not been forced out due to the war. Sigismund led or instigated various crusades against Bohemia with the support of Bohemian Catholics. The Hussite Wars followed a pattern. When a crusade was launched at Bohemia, moderate and radical Hussites would unite and defeat it. Once the threat was over, the Hussite armies would focus on ridding the land of Catholic sympathizers. While many historians have painted the Hussites as religious fanatics, one must not forget that they fought to protect their land from a King and Pope who did not recognize the right of the Hussites to exist. Under Zizka's leadership, his armies stormed 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-day Slovakia 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 (today Zvolen) and Kassa (today Košice). 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 elected Albert of Austria as his successor. Albert died, however, and his son, Ladislaus the Posthumous — so called because he was born after his father's death — was acknowledged as king. During Ladislaus's 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 the Council of Basel in 1433 had negotiated a seeming reconciliation with the Catholic Church. The Council's Compact 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 Rokycan, 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. Ladislaus died of leukemia in 1457, and in 1458 the Bohemian estates elected George of Poděbrady as king. There were problems, however: though was George noble-born, he is not successor of royal dynasty, so his election to the monarchy would not be recognised, either by the Pope or by other European monarchs.

George sought to establish a "Charter of a Universal Peace Union", with the idea that all monarchs should tried to consolidate 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 together to fight the Turks. States would have one vote each, with a leading role for France. George did not see a specific role for Papal authority, however.

Czech Catholic nobles joined in the League of Zelena Hora in 1465, challenging the authority of George of Poděbrady; the next year, Pope Paul II excommunicated George. The Bohemian War (1468-1478) pitted Bohemia against Matthias Corvinus and Frederick III of Habsburg, and the Hungarian forces occupied most of Moravia. George of Poděbrady died in 1471.

Since 1471 (Jagiellonian and Habsburg rule)
Upon the death of the Hussite king, the Bohemian estates elected a Polish prince Ladislaus Jagiellon as king, who negotiated the Peace of Olomouc in 1479.

In 1490 Vladislav also became king of Hungary, and the Polish Jagellonian line ruled both Bohemia and Hungary. The Jagellonians governed Bohemia as absentee monarchs; their influence in the kingdom was minimal, and effective government fell to the regional nobility. Czech Catholics accepted the Compact of Basel in 1485 and were reconciled with the Utraquists. The Bohemian estrangement from the Empire continued after Vladislav had succeeded Matthias Corvinus of Hungary in 1490 and both the Bohemian and the Hungarian kingdom were held in personal union. Not considered an Imperial State, the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were not part of the Imperial Circles established by the 1500 Imperial Reform.

In 1526 Vladislav's son, King Louis, was decisively defeated by the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Mohács and subsequently died. As a result, the Turks conquered part of the Kingdom of Hungary; the rest (mainly nowadays Slovakia territory) came under Habsburg rule under the terms of King Louis's marriage contract. The Bohemian estates elected Archduke Ferdinand, younger brother of Emperor Charles V, to succeed Louis as king of Bohemia. Thus began almost four centuries of Habsburg rule for both Bohemia and Slovakia.

After the early death of King Louis II Jagiellon at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Bohemian kingdom was inherited by his brother-in-law, the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand I of Habsburg, younger brother of Emperor Charles V, whom he succeeded in 1558. The subsequent incorporation of Bohemia into the Habsburg Monarchy against the resistance of the local Protestant nobility sparked off the 1618 Defenestration of Prague and the Thirty Years' War. Their defeat at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 put an end to the Bohemian autonomy movement.

With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Bohemian kingdom was incorporated into the Austrian Empire and the royal title retained by the Emperor of Austria. In the course of the 1867 Austro-Hungarian Compromise the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia became k. k. crown lands of Cisleithania. The Bohemian Kingdom officially ceased to exist in 1918 by transformation into Czechoslovak Republic.

The current Czech Republic consisting of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia still uses most of the symbols of the Kingdom of Bohemia: a two-tailed lion in its coat-of-arms, red-white strips in the state flag and the royal castle as the president's office.

The Lands of the Bohemian Crown


Bohemia proper (Čechy) with the County of Kladsko (Hrabství kladské) was the main area of the Kingdom of Bohemia and from 1348 Charles IV created Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Země Koruny české), together with the incorporated provinces:

and, at times:
 * The March of Moravia (Markrabství moravské), acquired by Přemyslid and Slavník Bohemian rulers after the 955 Battle of Lechfeld, lost in 999 to Kingdom of Poland and reconquered by Duke Bretislaus I in 1019/1029 (uncertain dating);
 * Upper Lusatia (Horní Lužice), incorporated by King John of Bohemia in 1319 (Bautzen) and 1329 (Görlitz), and Lower Lusatia (Dolní Lužice), former Margraviate of Lusatia), acquired by John's son Charles IV from Otto V, Margrave of Brandenburg in 1367. Ferdinand II of Habsburg lost the Lusatias to the Electorate of Saxony with the 1635 Peace of Prague;
 * The Duchies of Silesia (Slezsko), acquired by the 1335 Treaty of Trentschin between Jan Lucemburský and King Casimir III of Poland. Queen Maria Theresa lost Silesia in 1742 to King Frederick II of Prussia by the Treaty of Breslau, with the exception of Austrian Silesia
 * The Duchy of Austria in 1251, the Duchy of Styria in 1261, the Egerland in 1266, the Duchy of Carinthia with the March of Carniola and the Windic March in 1269 and the March of Friuli in 1272, all acquired by King Ottokar II Přemyslid and lost to Rudolph I of Germany in the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld;
 * The Egerland (Chebsko) was again obtained by Wenceslaus II between 1291–1305; definitely given in pawn to Bohemia by Emperor (then King of the Romans) Louis IV in 1322 and subsequently joined in personal union with Bohemia proper;
 * The northern part of the Upper Palatinate ("Bohemian Palatinate") at Sulzbach, incorporated by Charles IV in 1355. Charles' son Wenceslaus lost the area in 1400 to the Electorate of the Palatinate under King Rupert of Germany;
 * The Brandenburg Electorate, acquired by Charles IV from Duke Otto V of Wittelsbach in 1373. Charles' son Sigismund lost Brandenburg in 1415 to Frederick I, Elector of Brandenburg.