II.
The Early History of Czechoslovakia
Celtic tribes were the earliest known inhabitants of Bohemia, Moravia,
and Slovakia. As early as 500 B.C.,
the Boii settled in Bohemia and the Cotini, a related tribe, settled farther
east, in Moravia and parts of Slovakia. Semi-nomadic
Germanic tribes, the Marcomans in Bohemia and the Quadi in Cotini territory,
eventually displaced the Celts. Invasions and mass population shifts drove the Germans
westward; from the fourth century A.D., the area's population became
increasingly Slavic.
The
fifth century provides the earliest records of Czech tribes.
They developed an economy based on agriculture and resided in
characteristically circular Slavic villages, called okronlice,
on the most favorable land in the Elbe (Labe)
river valley. In the sixth century,
the Avars, a pastoral people speaking a Ural-Altaic language, moved into the
Middle Danube (Dunaj) and the
surrounding lands. They did not
penetrate into the Elbe basin, but enslaved the weaker Slav tribes of the
Carpathian mountains for about 100 years.
Their enslavement ended when Samo, thought to be a Frankish merchant,
united the Slavic tribes and led them against the Avars.
In 625, the Empire of Samo, the earliest known Czech political unit, was
established near Prague. Samo died
in 658. His empire did not survive
him.
Moravia
was the center of the second Czech polity.
Mojmir, chief of the most powerful tribe in the region, the Holasovici,
annexed western Slovakia. Mojmir
built up the Moravian Empire in the center of the Moravian basin in the early
ninth century. The neighboring
Franks made repeated attempts to diminish the power and influence of the
Moravian Empire, and throughout the ninth century they mounted raids into Czech
territory. German missionaries
arrived in Moravia to spread the Roman form of Christianity among the Slavs.
At Regensburg, Germany, Mojmir and his fellow chiefs were baptized.
Rostislav, who led from 850 to 870, succeeded Mojmir.
Rostislav felt the Germanic influence threatened his rule and turned to
Byzantium. Cyril and Methodius,
monks sent by Emperor Michael at the request of Rostislav, introduced Eastern
rites and liturgy in the Slavic language in the Moravian Empire.
The Cyrillic alphabet was developed.
The Pope invested Methodius as Archbishop of Moravia.
However, Rostislav's successor, Svatopluk, who led from 871 to 894,
chose alliance with the German king. When
Methodius died in 885, the Moravian Empire came under the sphere of influence of
the Roman Catholic Church.
The
Magyar Invasion and the Bohemian Kingdom
The Magyar invasion of the Danube basin followed Svatopluk's death.
The Magyars entered the region as semi-nomadic pastoralists, but then
settled
into agricultural communities and held the territory until the sixteenth
century and the Ottoman conquest. The
Moravian Empire collapsed with the arrival of the Magyars.
The chiefs of the Czech tribes in Bohemia broke from the Holasovici,
swearing allegiance instead to the Frankish Emperor Arnulf.
Bohemia became the political hub for the Czechs, and the Bohemian
Kingdom began to develop.
The Bohemian Kingdom, appeared under the rule of the Premyslid Dynasty.
The Premyslid chiefs were members of the Čechové, a tribe holding
lands near the junction of the Vltava and the Elbe rivers.
The Premyslid chiefs unified neighboring tribes in the tenth century
and established a form of centralized rule.
The first recorded Premyslid prince, Borivoj, was succeeded by his
sons, Spitihnev, and then Vratislav I, who ruled from 916 to 920.
Vratislav I was succeeded in turn by his son, Wenceslas, who ruled from
920 to 929 and became the national saint and hero.
Wenceslas III, the last Premyslid ruler, died in 1306.
The Bohemian Kingdom was cut off from Byzantium by the Magyar presence
and existed in the shadow of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 950, the powerful Emperor Otto I, a Saxon, led an expedition to
Bohemia demanding tribute. In this
manner, the Bohemian Kingdom became a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and its
king one of the seven secular electors of the emperor.
The German emperors continued to use Roman Catholic clergy to extend
German influence. German priests
and monks continued their missions into Czech territory.
The bishopric of Prague was founded in 973 during the reign of Boleslav
II, who ruled from 967 to 999. Significantly,
the bishopric was subordinate to the German arch-bishopric of Mainz.
While struggling to retain autonomy in relation to the empire, Premysl
rulers used the German alliance to strengthen their rule against a perpetually
rebellious regional nobility.
The most dynamic period of Premysl reign came in the thirteenth century.
Emperor Frederick II was preoccupied with Mediterranean affairs and the
dynastic struggles known as the Great Interregnum, from 1254 to 1273, weakened
imperial authority in Central Europe. This
provided the opportunity for Premyslid assertiveness, while the Magyars and
Poles contended with the Mongol invasion of 1220 to 1242.
Premysl King Otakar I ruled from 1198 to 1230.
He extracted a Golden Bull, a formal edict, from the emperor in 1212,
which confirmed the royal title to Otakar and his descendants.
It revoked the imperial prerogative to ratify each Bohemian king and to
appoint the Bishop of Prague. The
Bohemian king's authority over Moravia was ensured in the form of a permanent
union.
Otakar II, who ruled from
1253 to 1278, married Margaret of Babenberg, a German princess, and by so
doing became Duke of Austria. By
this means he acquired upper and lower Austria and part of Styria.
Otakar and Bela IV of Hungary had a long history of rivalry, which came
to a head at Kressenbrunn in 1260. Despite
a shattering defeat at the hands of the Mongols at Mohacs in 1241, Bela had
worked valiantly to rebuild Hungary. Unfortunately
for the Hungarians, Otakar's kingdom was reaching the height of its power.
Bela marched up to the east bank of the March river (Morava in Czech) in
Moravia, just as Otakar reached the west bank.
Neither army was capable of forcing a crossing in the face of a hostile
enemy. Otakar courteously allowed
Bela to cross unhindered. In the
attack that followed, Otakar virtually annihilated the Hungarian army.
Bela was forced to surrender Styria.
Otakar also conquered most of Carinthia and parts of Carniola.
Otakar strongly opposed the rule of Rudolf I, the first Habsburg ruler of
Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. Otakar,
who also claimed the duchy of Austria, refused to recognize Rudolf.
Beginning in 1273, however, Habsburg Rudolf fought to restore imperial
authority. Otakar lost all of his
German possessions in 1276.
On 26 August 1278, the armies of the two rulers met in battle at
Marchfeld. In an intense battle of
knights, the Bohemians were defeated and Otakar was slain.
His son, Wenceslas II, succeeded to the Bohemian throne under German
regency.
Large-scale German immigration had taken place through the thirteenth
century, often at the encouragement of the Premysl kings, who hoped to lessen
the influence of the Czech nobility. The
Germans settled in towns and mining districts on the Bohemian frontiers, in some
cases establishing German colonies in the Czech interior. Important German settlements included Stribro, Kutna Hora (Kuttenberg
in German), Nemecky Brod (Deutsch Brod), and Jihlava.
The German code of law, the jus
teutonicum, was introduced and would later form the basis of commercial
law in Bohemia and Moravia. The
intermarriage of German and Czech nobles soon became commonplace.
During the reign of Wenceslas II, from 1278 to 1305, the Polish
territories of Tesin and Krakow were acquired, in 1290 and 1291 respectively. In 1300, Wenceslas II became King of Poland.
His son, Wenceslas III, was elected King of Hungary in 1301, thus uniting
the Bohemian, Polish, and Hungarian crowns.
This union was to be short-lived, however.
Wenceslas II died in 1305 and Wenceslas III was murdered in Olomouc in
1306. Premysl rule ended.
Luxemburg
Rule
Confusion and civil war followed the death of Wenceslas III. John of Luxemburg, son of Emperor Heinrich, married the
Premyslid Princess Elizabeth in 1310. He
led his army to Bohemia and claimed the throne, ruling from 1310 to 1342.
His reign was weak and characterized by regionalism and conflict among
the native nobility. The nobles won a charter of privilege, the Domazlice
Agreement, in 1318, which assured that all advisers and officials in the
kingdom would be Czech nobles. John
directed most of his attention to foreign military adventures, and his main
contribution to Bohemia consisted of certain territorial acquisitions.
The reign of the second Luxemburg king, Charles IV, from 1342 to 1378,
was a golden age in Czech history. Charles,
who was German, was raised at the French court and spent much of his life
abroad. As a result, his attitude
was cosmopolitan, and he supported the Czech element.
The bishopric of Prague became an arch-bishopric in 1344, freeing it
from the jurisdiction of Mainz and the empire, and the archbishop gained the
right to crown Bohemian kings. A
judicial separation of the kingdom and the empire resulted from the
establishment of a supreme court in Prague.
Charles brought the Czech nobility under control, rationalized Bohemia
and Moravia's provincial administrations, and made Brandenburg, Lusatia, and
Silesia fiefs of the Czech crown. Charles
was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1347. He
issued a Golden Bull in 1356, specifying the process of election to the
imperial throne and making the Czech king foremost among the seven lay electors.
The Bohemian Kingdom was no longer
a fief of the emperor.
Charles made Prague an imperial city.
He undertook extensive building projects, including founding the New Town
(Nove Mesto) south of the old city.
Hradčany, the royal castle and long-time seat of Czechoslovak government,
was rebuilt. The Charles Bridge (Karlův
Most) was built over the Vltava. He
founded the University of Prague (Charles University - Univerzita Karlova), the
first such institution in the empire, in 1348.
The university, divided into Czech, Polish, Saxon, and Bavarian
faculties, each with one controlling vote, would become an international center
of higher education. However, it
also would become the center of intense political nationalism.
With Charles' death in 1378, his three sons divided his kingdom.
Wenceslas IV inherited Bohemia, Silesia, and part of Lusatia.
The
Hussite Movement
The
Hussite reform movement was both national and religious in nature.
From the aspect of religious reform it challenged papal authority and
asserted national autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs.
As a Czech national movement it took on anti-imperial and anti-German
implications. Hussitism began
during the reign of Wenceslas IV, from 1378 to 1419.
At this time, many religious leaders were demanding church reforms.
Split by the Great Schism of the West, the church had two rival popes,
and would later have three.
Jan Hus (John Huss) graduated from Charles University and in 1398 began
to lecture there. He became an
ordained preacher in 1410. He
served as rector of the university twice, from 1402 to 1403, and from 1409 to
1410. A religious reformer, Hus
adopted the anti-papal and anti-hierarchical teachings of John Wycliffe of
England, introduced into Czechoslovakia by Jerome of Prague. Wycliffe is often called the "Morning Star of the
Reformation." He denounced the
morals of the clergy, opposed the sale of indulgences, rejected many church
beliefs and practices, and advocated the Bible, not the Church, as the source of
final authority in ecclesiastical matters.
He also became a leader of the Bohemian nationalist movement.
Hussitism was distinguished by its rejection of the Roman Catholic
Church. It advocated Wycliffe's
doctrine of clerical purity and poverty. Hussites
also insisted on communion under both kinds, bread and wine, for the laity,
while the Roman Catholic Church reserved wine for the clergy.
The Utraquists, more moderate followers of Hus, took their name from the
Latin sub utraque specie, meaning
"under each kind." The
Taborite sect, which took its name from the biblical Tabor, was more radical.
The Taborites rejected Church doctrine, upholding the Bible as sole
authority in all matters of belief. The
town of Usti, south of Prague, was a Taborite stronghold, renamed Tabor in
1420.
Shortly after Hus took office as rector, German theology professors
demanded the condemnation of Wycliffe's writings.
Hus protested, and received support from the Czech element at the
university. Since the Germans had
two votes in policy decisions, the Saxon and the Bavarian, they defeated Hus and
his supporters, and the orthodox position was maintained.
Later, the Czechs demanded a revision of the university's charter, so
that the native Czech faculty would receive adequate representation.
The controversy at the university came to the attention of the Bohemian
king. The nationalist sentiments of
the Czech nobility, aroused by Wenceslas' insistence to favor Germans in
appointments to councilor and administrative positions, caused them to rally to
the defense of Hus. The German
faculties, however, were supported by Archbishop Zbynek of Prague and the German
clergy. The supporters of Pope
Gregory XII, including Zbynek, challenged the imperial title of Wenceslas, and
allied themselves with the reformers. Wenceslas
issued the Kutna Hora Decree on 18 January 1409, giving the Czechs three votes,
and the foreigners only one. The Germans, expelled from administrative positions at the
university and replaced by Czechs, left the university en masse.
Hus' victory was only temporary. The
Council of Pisa met in 1409 to settle the papal controversy; they also confirmed
Wenceslas as Holy Roman Emperor. The
anti-Pope, Alexander V, condemned Wycliffe's ideas and ordered Hus to stop
preaching in 1410. Hus refused to
obey. In 1411, Pope John Paul XXIII,
of the Avignon line and later regarded as an anti-Pope, excommunicated Hus.
The next year, Pope John Paul imposed the great excommunication,
forbidding anyone to give him shelter or aid.
Hus and his followers were suspended from the university and expelled
from Prague. For the next two years
the reformers served as itinerant preachers throughout Bohemia.
In 1414, the Council of Constance, which met to end the Great Schism,
summoned Hus to defend his views. Holy
Roman Emperor Sigismund granted Hus safe conduct and promised him protection. The Council of Pisa, however, condemned him as a heretic,
imprisoned him, and ordered him to recant his views and make an unqualified
submission. Sigismund did nothing
to honor his promise. On 6 July
1415, Hus was burned at the stake.
Jan
Žižka
While the anti-Catholic revolt was named after Hus, it was Jan Žižka of
Trocnov who brought the movement its most notable victories, and whose military
genius influenced the history of Europe from 1420 until his death in 1424.
Though eventually blind, Žižka led the Hussites brilliantly into
battle. After Hus' death, religious
warfare raged for decades. Sigismund, the pro-papal King of Hungary, gained the Bohemian
throne after the death of Wenceslas in 1419.
He tried repeatedly to gain control over the kingdom with the aid of
Hungarian and German armies, but failed.
Trocnov was a small holding under the dominion of the Prince of
Schwarzenberg. Žižka, hopelessly
in debt after cosigning a pledge to cover the debts of a friend, Jaroslav of
Mysletin, chose to turn over his property.
He then left for Prague, seeking employment as a soldier under Wenceslas
IV. By 1329, Žižka earned himself a position as Royal Hunter in
the forest of Zahorany, near Prague. In
1395, Bohemia suffered civil strife when Henry of Rosenberg, who opposed the
centralization of power under Wenceslas, imprisoned the king in his castle for
several months. While the king was
later released, the people split into factions between the king and Rosenberg.
The rebellious nobles were encouraged by Sigismund, but Žižka's
loyalty was with Wenceslas.
For 10 years, bands of burglar-mercenaries called Lapkas plundered
Bohemia. These mercenaries derived
their pay as much from looting as from their salary.
Some Lapkas were dispossessed farmers, whose property had been
confiscated by the church or by feudal lords.
They took up arms against their oppressors, secreting themselves and
their caches in the forests of Bohemia.
They found a natural forum for the expression of their discontent in Hus.
He spoke out against the greed and corruption of the Church.
Instead of reserving hymns for processions or for after sermons, Hus
advocated the singing of hymns throughout his services, and in Czech. This small deviation from the norm became a rallying point
for growing Czech nationalism and anti-German sentiment. While preaching a return to a moral base dependent solely
on the bible, he also espoused the defense of the interests of God by means of
arms.
Even while the mercenaries fought for the nobles, the dispossessed Lapkas
attacked and robbed them and the clergy. Both
sides pillaged the countryside, whether from a sense of moral obligation,
revenge, or simple greed. The
knights and churchmen who captured Lapkas executed them, but their numbers
continued to grow.
Žižka was in charge of a band of Lapkas loyal to the king. After Žižka raided Budejovice in 1409, the king himself
pardoned Žižka for his "excesses."
This shows that the king was well aware of the acts committed by his
nobility and their mercenaries, and that they were not completely under his
control. Žižka, however, did not
lack control over his troops and began to introduce innovations.
By 1410, holding the title of Royal Gatekeeper, Žižka had probably
encouraged his peasant auxiliaries to modify their flails and scythes to serve
as weapons.
Since 1405, hostilities between Wenceslas and his nobles were reduced.
The battle against the roving Lapka took on more intensity.
When war broke out between the Teutonic Knights and the union of Poland
and Lithuania, it provided a convenient solution.
Wenceslas and his military chief, Jan Sokol of Lamberg, committed
themselves to a foreign war. West
European nobles joined the chivalrous Teutonic "crusade," while Sokol
urged Czech warriors to assist the Poles and Lithuanians, as a war of Slavic
survival against the hated Germans. Žižka
and his band joined the 3,000 Bohemians who marched under Sokol's Fourth Polish
Standard against the Teutonic Knights.
Žižka took part in the important victory at Grunwald on 15 July 1410.
Afterward, King Jagiello of Poland pursued the remnants of the enemy to
Marienburg Castle, which was the Teutonic stronghold from 1309 to 1457.
Being unable to storm Marienburg, Jagiello continued to Rogozna Castle.
The assault on Rogozna was commanded by Captain Hancik, a Czech.
Next to fall was Radzyn Castle, on 23 August, and Žižka was among those
left to hold it. He is recognized
in historical accounts for his part in defending it against a Teutonic attempt
to regain it.
Žižka went back to Bohemia with a wealth of experience. Though Žižka himself remained a horseman, he brought back
the innovative use of cannon on the battlefield and the use of war wagons to
form mobile field fortifications.1
This very successful Hussite battle formation brought new prominence to
handgunners, halberdiers, and war wagons, but also continued the role of the
armored knight as part of a force of combined arms. It gave the infantry more mobility, as the wagons rolled into
battle with masses of infantry wielding crude, but inexpensive and effective,
polearms, as they enjoyed the support of handguns and small field pieces.
Žižka returned with much improved finances, as well, and in 1410 bought
a house on Na Prikope in Prague's Nove Mesto, not far from the Royal Palace.
He became an officer in the palace guard and was regarded as an
"artful and clever warrior."2
During this time, Hus was continuing his preaching in Bohemia and
spreading his popularity among the lesser nobility and lower classes.
When the Council of Constance condemned Hus as a heretic, leading to his
execution, 452 outraged knights and nobles signed a protest against the
council's decision. An independent
Church of Bohemia began to take shape.
Žižka was not among the signatories of the protest.
He was out of Bohemia at the time, fighting for Henry V of England at the
Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415, where the English, outnumbered more than
3 to 1, won one of the great victories of military history.
By 1419, Žižka had returned to Prague.
He rejoined the Hussite cause, and discovered that a new, more radical,
Taborite movement had formed in Bohemia's rural areas, advocating strict
adherence to the Bible alone and doing away with religious ritual.
At this time, Wenceslas suffered a stroke, leaving the throne of Bohemia
to his brother Sigismund, the last of the Luxemburg dynasty. Sigismund, however, was the last man many Czechs wanted to
rule the country.
Sigismund obtained a Papal Bull declaring a crusade against the Hussite
"heretics" on 1 March 1420, and began to gather German and Western
knights for his campaign. Phillipo
Scolari, better known as Pippo Spano, became one of Sigismund's most capable and
notorious commanders. He had
acquired a veteran's hardened brutality and martial skills in frontier fighting
against the Turks.
Pro-Hussite noblemen turned to Žižka for leadership.
He, in turn, went to Tabor, to adapt their religious zeal to the military
discipline and training necessary to defeat the Hungarians.
Raids on Catholic castles gave his men experience and captured weapons,
but Žižka made his most ingenious innovations within Tabor, where he converted
peasant scythes and flails to weapons by reinforcing them with iron bands,
nails, and studs. He also continued to develop the war wagon - it now carried
six crossbowmen, four halberdiers, two handgunners, two flailists, two
shield-carriers, and two drivers, as well as two each of axes, pickaxes, spades,
hoes, and shovels for digging entrenchments.
Žižka commanded a Taborite force in the winter of 1419-1420 which
occupied Plzen. In March 1420, he
was elected overall commander of the Taborite forces.
Sigismund had entered Moravia, where he linked up with pro-Catholic
forces at Kutna Hora, and from there marched to Prague.
Sigismund and Pippo Spano also relieved the besieged garrison of Hradcany
before turning toward Prague on 14 July 1420.
Žižka and his Taborites closed the city gates and faced Sigismund
outside the city walls. From entrenched positions on Vitkov Hill, Žižka's 9,000
men faced Sigismund's army of 80,000.
The attack began with an assault up Vitkov by a few thousand Hungarian
and German cavalrymen, and it succeeded in capturing the watchtower.
It was held off at the new Hussite barracks by a garrison of only
twenty-six men and three women. Žižka and his bodyguard rushed to their aid from the
southern slope, striking the flank of the imperial horsemen and scattering them
down the steep north slope. Though
Sigismund lost only a few hundred men, he refrained from further assaults, and
left the hill to the Hussites. Vitkov
Hill was renamed in honor of Žižka.
Sigismund abandoned the idea of an all-out assault on Prague, He had himself crowned King of Bohemia at Hradcany, looted
its treasury, and left for home.
Fighting continued, both between Catholic and Hussite, and among moderate
and radical Hussite factions. Through
it all, Žižka led his troops to repeated victories.
He left Prague in August 1420 to conduct a guerrilla campaign against
Ulrich of Rosenberg. Žižka forced
Ulrich to sign a truce, and turned anew to the Plzen region early in 1421.
Shortly thereafter, Žižka controlled western and northwest Bohemia.
Eastern Bohemia followed. Even
Sigismund's Catholic stronghold, Kutna Hora, capitulated to Žižka, followed
closely by Hradcany. During the
siege of Bor Castle in 1421, Žižka was struck under the right eye by an arrow.
The resulting infection left him sightless.
In September 1421, the Bohemian crown was offered to Grand Duke Vytautus
of Lithuania by a Hussite council of regency at Kutna Hora.
Emperor Sigismund, enraged at these new negotiations, marshaled a new
army, giving command to Pippo Spano. Pippo
entered Moravia in October, joined by the forces of Silesia, Lusatia, the
Archbishop of Olomouc, Duke Albert of Austria, Ulrich of Rosenberg, and several
other Czech lords. By December,
Sigismund's force was 30,000 strong, and marched on Kutna Hora.
The two opposing forces met on 6 January 1422.
Žižka's army of 10,000 Taborites moved to set up a wagon lager in its
path.
Several cavalry assaults struck the right flank of the Taborites, but
were beaten back with heavy losses. Pippo
next slipped more horsemen past the lager in darkness into the city itself.
German citizens let them in and then assisted in the slaughter of the
Taborites within the city.
Žižka, blind, isolated in his camp, and without provisions, continued
to instill confidence in his men as he rode among them.
In answer to Pippo's raid on the city, he took the offensive.
He moved his war wagons against the Hungarians, halted to fire, and then
exploited the breach they created. The
war wagons halted a mile further and formed a square, but Sigismund declined to
pursue Žižka. Instead, he moved
his forces into Kutna Hora for the winter.
Ignoring winter, Žižka gathered reinforcements and assaulted the nearby
town of Nebovidy. Defeating the
Hungarian army there, he turned on Kutna Hora.
Pippo Spano advised Sigismund to evacuate and the King ordered his men to
set fire to the city. Žižka's
advance cavalry, however, arrived on the heels of the retreating army and put
out the fires.
Sigismund withdrew 15 miles, pursued by Žižka.
On 10 January, after two days of retreat, Sigismund stood to face Žižka
at Nemecky Brod (Habry) - against Pippo's advice.
Sigismund's troops formed their battle lines, but Žižka took the
offensive with cavalry, mobile artillery, and war wagons, and routed the
demoralized Hungarians. Many of the
retreating soldiers died as the ice on the rivers cracked under their weight.
Sigismund, disheartened by his defeat and leaving over 50 percent of his
men dead on the field, fled Bohemia, narrowly escaping capture himself.
Žižka, a blind warrior and religious zealot with forces numbering only
half the 23,000 Sigismund put into battle, had forced one of the most powerful
armies of Central Europe to withdraw from the battlefield.
The
radical Taborites and moderate Hussites split again in the spring of 1423.
Žižka, having grown intolerant of the Taborites, formed a "small
Tabor" that rallied townsmen and noblemen of the "Oreb Union,"
named after a hill near Orebovice. The
Orebites followed a code of near-military discipline composed by Žižka.
It required that they remain in their assigned battle groups, guard
their van, flanks, and rear whenever on the march, never light fires without
permission, and to kneel in prayer before battle.
The Orebites considered all, noble or peasant, equal before God and
therefore subject to identical punishment for crimes or breaches of discipline.
Harsh penalties enforced equal division of booty; hoarders were to be
executed.
Division between Taborite sects brought Žižka and the Prague nobles
into conflict. Prague's citizens
attempted to name a governor of their own in Hradec Kralove, Žižka's political
center, but he expelled him.
Prague's citizens then allied themselves with Catholic noblemen and
marched against Žižka's encampment. They
outnumbered and cornered Žižka's forces, who escaped across the river on boats
and rafts. Žižka led his men to
Malesov, near Kutna Hora, and there made a stand on familiar high ground. Žižka's men released wagons filled with rocks on their
attackers as they moved up the hill, breaking up the enemy formations.
Žižka followed with a devastating artillery barrage.
Orebite cavalrymen then charged down the hill, routing the enemy and
killing 14,000 men. Žižka
regained control of Eastern Bohemia.
Žižka advanced on Prague in September, and its citizens negotiated an
armistice and a new allegiance. Having
reunited the Taborites, he turned to Moravia, which was still outside the
Hussite sphere of influence. During
the siege of a Catholic lord's castle en route, Žižka fell ill, possibly with
plague. On 11 October 1424, he
died. Among his last words to his
lieutenants were instructions to "continue fighting for the love of God and
steadfastly and faithfully defend the truth of God for eternal reward."3
Leadership of the Taborites fell to priest Andrew Prokop.
His men, grief stricken, took the name "orphans" and painted Žižka
on a white horse on their banners, holding his distinctive fist-shaped mace.
Žižka's influence was felt for more than ten years after his death, but
the Hussites finally met defeat at the Battle of Lipany in 1435.
Žižka was interred at the Church of the Kindred Spirit in Hradec
Kralove. Various legends told of
the disappearance of his tomb and his wish that his skin be removed after his
death to make a drum to lead his men. His
body did not vanish, however, and was moved to the Church of Peter and Paul in
Caslav prior to the demolition of the old church approximately thirty to fifty
years after his death. There, it
was rediscovered on 21 November 1910, among those of another man and a woman,
during repairs to the church. The
mix-up of bones caused confusion during a reexamination of the remains in 1974,
but in 1981 they were examined in Budapest by Dr. Imre Legyela, who was able to
positively identify the skull of Žižka.
Prokop
led the Taborites in a continued fight against Sigismund.
Despite urging from the Pope and from Sigismund, the terrified German
soldiers refused to resume conflict against the fierce Hussites.
Finally, in 1426, 50,000 Germans made a stand at Usti nad Labem (Aussig
on the Labe in German). Not
surprisingly, Sigismund's forces again lost disastrously, suffering losses of
more than a third.
The Hussites then took the offensive. They
penetrated into Hungary, Austria, Germany.
No army could halt them. Their
defeat came only when another civil war broke out among themselves.
After terrorizing Eastern Europe for 14 years, the Taborite-Utraquist
struggle began anew. At Cesky Brod
on 30 May 1434, Prokop led the Taborites against an army backed by nobles and
conservatives. The battle left
18,000 dead - including Prokop. The
Hussites themselves accomplished what no foreign army had been able to do.
The
Hussites penetrated into Slovakia, as well.
Refugees from the fighting in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia settled
there. Jiska of Brandys, a Czech
noble, controlled most of southern Slovakia between 1438 and 1453 from Zvolen
and Kosice. With the refugees came
the doctrines of Hus and the Czech bible, which spread among the Slovaks.
This formed the basis for cultural links between the Czechs and Slovaks.
Ladislas, the young posthumous son of Albert of Austria, was elected by
the Czech Diet to succeed Sigismund after his death in 1437.
Due to his youth, Bohemia was ruled by a regency composed of moderate
Czech nobles, who were Utraquists, while some Czech nobles remained loyal to the
pope. The main challenge to the
regency was internal dissension among the Czechs. The Utraquists sent a delegation to the Council of Basle in
1433, who had seemingly achieved a reconciliation with the Catholic Church.
The resulting Compact of Basle accepted the basic tenets of Hus.
These were expressed in the Four Articles of Prague:
communion under both kinds; free preaching of the Gospels; expropriation
of Church land; and punishment of ecclesiastical scandals by lay tribunals.
The Compact of Basle was rejected by the pope, however, preventing a
reconciliation between the Czech Catholics and the Utraquists.
George of Podebrad, who became the leader of the Utraquist regency and
would later reign as the "national" king of Bohemia, achieved this
reconciliation. By installing
John of Rokycan, an Utraquist, as the Archbishop of Prague, he united the Czech
Church and the more radical Taborites. The
Catholics party was driven out of Prague. In
1457, Ladislas succumbed to the plague, and the next year George of Podebrad was
elected King of Bohemia by the Czech Diet.
His election, however, was not recognized by the pope, and Czech Catholic
nobles joined in the League of Zelena Hora, challenging the authority of the
king until his death in 1471.
The Polish Jagellon kings ruled Bohemia from 1471 to 1526, governing as
absentee monarchs. They had minimal
influence in the kingdom, and the role of government was assumed by regional
nobility. The Compact of Basle was
accepted by the Czech Catholics, effecting reconciliation between them and the
Utraquists. In 1526, the Habsburgs
reestablished centralized authority. After
the devastation of the religious wars, the Bohemian Kingdom found shelter under
the Holy Roman Emperor with the arrival of the Ottomans.
The
Battle of Mohacs
The fall of Belgrade to Suleiman I, the Magnificent, in 1521 opened
Hungary, Austria, and Germany to the Ottoman Turks.
Suleiman led an army of almost 100,000; he was met at Mohacs on the
Danube by Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia with a hastily assembled force of
20,000. Some help came from
Sigismund I of Poland.
When the Turks arrived on 29 August, Louis led a rash headlong assault on
the Turks. Suleiman's well-trained
troops, with an advantage in artillery, cut Louis' poorly-disciplined forces
to pieces. The next day, a Turkish
counter-assault left 10,000 dead, including Louis, seven bishops, and several
hundred nobles.
The defeat broke Hungary's hold on Europe and reduced the territory of
the Old Kingdom of Hungary to an area roughly corresponding to Slovakia.
The influx of Magyar aristocrats seeking refuge from the Ottomans greatly
increased Slovakia's Magyar population. The
influence and autonomy of the Germans, therefore, declined.
Habsburg
Rule
The remainder of the Kingdom of Hungary, including Slovaks, came under
Habsburg rule after the defeat at Mohacs. Habsburg
territory now surrounded the Czechs on the south and east.
Archduke Ferdinand, the younger brother of Charles V, the Habsburg
Emperor, was elected by the Czech Diet to succeed Louis.
In this manner, the crowns of Saint Wenceslas and Saint Stephen came
under the Habsburgs in 1526. While
Hungary remained, for the most part, autonomous, Bohemia, due to its location,
natural resources, and population, became the most important territory of the
Habsburg Empire.
King Ferdinand, ruling from 1526 to 1564, undertook a policy of centralization
in Bohemia. He sought to
concentrate authority in the king and his German councilors and to establish
hereditary succession for the Habsburgs. He
tried to eliminate the influence of the Czech Estates (nobles, clergy, and
burghers), but met stubborn resistance. The
conflict was delineated by religious lines.
The Reformed Church opposed the Catholic Habsburgs, but the Habsburgs
were supported by the Czech and German Catholic minority.
The religious struggle broadened. With
the Lutheran Reformation of 1517, much of Bohemia's German burgher population
adopted the Reformed Creed, both Lutheran and Calvinist.
The Hussites split, with one faction allying itself with the German
Protestants. Ferdinand made a brief
conciliation in 1537 by conceding to the Czechs, recognizing the Compact of
Basle, and accepting moderate Utraquism.
In 1546, German Protestants, united in the Schmalkaldic League, warred
against Charles V. Ferdinand wanted
to go to the aid of his brother, but the Czech nobility, who were Hussite and
pro-Protestant, sympathized with the German Protestant princes.
This rift led to armed conflict between Ferdinand and the Czech Estates
in 1547. The Czechs, however, did
not unite against Ferdinand, and were defeated.
Reprisals were carried out against the rebellious Czech nobles.
Their property was confiscated and their privileges repealed.
In the square before the royal palace, two lesser nobles and two burghers
were executed. A Hussite sect, the
Unity of the Brethren, which had figured prominently in the rebellion, was
bitterly persecuted. Bishop John
Augusta, their leader, was imprisoned for 16 years.
In 1556, Ferdinand became Holy Roman Emperor, and founded the Jesuit
Academy in Prague. He attempted to
use Jesuit missionaries to extend Catholic influence in Bohemia. Throughout the reigns of the Habsburg successors, Maximilian
II from 1564 to 1576 and Rudolf II from 1576 to 1612, conflict between Habsburgs
and Czechs and between Catholics and followers of the Reformed Creeds continued.
Eventually, both gave concessions to the Czechs.
Rudolf II, in a Letter of Majesty in 1609, promised toleration of the
Bohemian Confession and gave control of the University of Prague to the Czech
Estates.
The
Battle of the White Mountain
Ferdinand of Styria, then regarded as the likely successor as Emperor to
Matthias, who reigned from 1612 to 1617, attained the Bohemian throne in 1617.
Ferdinand rigidly advocated Catholicism, and his opposition to
Protestantism brought Czech-Habsburg tensions back to the surface.
Two imperial lieutenants, both Catholic Czechs, were thrown from the
windows of the royal palace on 28 May 1618.
The Czech nobility rebelled, electing a Calvinist, Frederick V, leader of
the Protestant German Palatinate, to the Bohemian throne.
Ferdinand II became Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Austria in 1619.
He quickly moved to suppress the Czech rebellion.
Ferdinand was aided by the Catholic League, a union of several Catholic
states within the empire, and by Philip III of Habsburg Spain.
Henry Matthias of Thurn led the Czech troops, aided by the armies of
Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, against the imperial forces.
Count Johann Tserklaes von Tilly, also known as Comte de Tilly, a Flemish
general who served as a hired military commander for Maximilian I of Bavaria,
became chief general of the armies of the Catholic League in 1620. He led 25,000 men into Bohemia, forcing a 15,000-strong force
of Bohemians under Christian of Anhalt to fall back toward Prague.
Christian entrenched his men on a chalk rise known as the White Mountain,
just west of Prague. Hungary's
Bethlen Gabor led a force of Hungarians in support.
On 8 November 1620, Count von Tilly surprised the defenders in the early
morning mist. He sent his troops up
the slope under cover of artillery fire. Christian's
troops took heavy casualties, then broke and fled.
Some 5,000 of the defenders became casualties or prisoners.
After his decisive victory at the Battle of the White Mountain, Tilly
entered Prague unopposed and sacked it. Frederick
fled Bohemia with his wife, thus earning the title "Winter King" due
to his short reign. Czech
Protestants, who had embarrassed successive Holy Roman Emperors since Hus was
burned at the stake, were at the mercy of imperial anger.
The emissaries of the emperor took control, securing Habsburg authority
and reestablishing Catholic dominance. They
suppressed the rebellion and abolished Protestant religious liberties.
Many Czech nobles were executed, and most others went into exile, and
their properties were confiscated. Ferdinand
also took Frederick's own inheritance, the Rhenish Palatinate, by force of arms,
giving it to Maximilian I, leading ruler of the Catholic League.
Counter-Reformation
After the defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain, large numbers of
Czech and German Protestant burghers emigrated.
The University of Prague and the Jesuit Academy were merged in 1622; the
Bohemian Kingdom's entire educational system came under Jesuit control.
A royal decree in 1624 expelled all non-Catholic priests.
A legal basis for Habsburg absolutism was established by the revised
Ordinance of the Land in 1627, declaring Czech lands the hereditary property
of the Habsburgs. The diets of
Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia lost their powers - legislation would be by royal
decree, approved formally by the diets. The
kingdom's officials were chosen from among the local nobility, and were
strictly subordinate to the king.
Catholic Germans from the southern German territories immigrated on a
large scale, further securing Habsburg rule.
They received most of the confiscated Czech land, took over commerce and
industry, and formed the new Bohemian nobility.
The Czech Catholic nobility that remained in the kingdom gradually lost
their national patriotism, becoming loyal servants of the Habsburg Empire.
Czech peasants became serfs in the new order.
The Jesuit conversion of the Czechs was successful in appearance only.
Though "converted" to Catholicism, the Czechs, after losing
their native church, tended to become irreligious.
The defeat of the Czech Protestants did not end the wars that were
ravaging Europe. While the Thirty
Years' War, from 1618 to 1648, had its origin in religious issues, it eventually
became a struggle for national dominance. The
conflict between the German Protestant princes and the Holy Roman Emperor
involved foreign powers and extended beyond German territory, involving Austria
and Spain on one side and France on the other.
Czechs fought on all sides. The
rebellious Czech generals fought on the side of the Protestant armies.
Others defected to the imperial forces; the most prominent was Albrecht
of Wallenstein. Battles raged
across Bohemia throughout the war, first by German Protestant armies, and later
by the Danish and Swiss. Slovakia and Moravia were ravaged by battles between the
imperial armies and Prince Bethlen Gabor's Hungarians, reinforced by Turkish
mercenaries. Cities, villages, and
fortresses were destroyed.
During Ferdinand III's reign from 1637 to 1656, the Thirty Years' War
ended. In 1648, the Treaty of
Westphalia incorporated the Bohemian Kingdom into the Habsburg imperial system,
which established its seat in Vienna. When
Leopold I, who reigned from 1656 to 1705, defeated the Turks, he made it
possible for the empire to return to the
original dimensions of the Old Kingdom of Hungary.
Joseph I reigned briefly from 1705 to 1711, followed by Charles VI from
1711 to 1740. Through a series of
treaties concluded by Charles between 1720 and 1725, the various Estates of the
Habsburg lands were forced to recognize the unity of the territory under
Habsburg rule and accept hereditary Habsburg succession, including the female
line.
Enlightenment
Enlightened rule came under the reigns of Maria-Theresa, from 1740 to
1780, and her son Joseph II, from 1780 to 1790.
Maria-Theresa and Joseph were influenced by the ideas of the French
philosophes, a group of radical thinkers and writers in France, including
Voltaire and Rousseau, who stressed the use of human reason and were critical of
the religious and political practices in France.
Maria-Theresa and Joseph sought rational and efficient administration of
the Bohemian Kingdom. Reforms were
implemented eliminating the repression of the Counter-Reformation and
permitting secular social progress.
The territorial ambitions of the increasingly powerful Hohenzollern
dynasty challenged Maria-Theresa's accession to the Habsburg lands.
Bohemia was again invaded in 1741 by the Prussian king, Frederick II,
and the dukes of Bavaria and Saxony. Charles
Albert, the Duke of Bavaria, was proclaimed king by the Czech nobility.
Maria-Theresa regained Bohemia and was crowned queen in Prague in 1743,
but the highly industrialized territory of Silesia, excluding Tesin, Opava,
and Krnov, was ceded to Prussia.
Maria-Theresa instituted a policy of centralization and bureaucratization
to guarantee the security of the Austrian territories and to ensure the steady
flow of taxes and soldiers. The
separate chancelleries of Austria and Bohemia were replaced by a joint
Austro-Bohemian chancellery, firmly uniting them.
German became the official language.
The Czech diets lost the last of their political power, and imperial
servants appointed by the queen took over their functions.
As a small concession, governorship of Bohemia was reserved for a Czech
noble. Czech and Austrian provinces
were divided into administrative districts.
Toward the end of the century Joseph II extended centralization to
include Hungary.
Maria-Theresa and Joseph II initiated further reforms, reflecting
Enlightenment principles such as the abrogation of feudal social structures and
the power of the Catholic Church. Maria-Theresa
eliminated the Jesuit control of the education imposed by the
Counter-Reformation, nationalized and Germanized the educational system, and
shifted educational emphasis from theology to the sciences.
She modified serfdom, reducing robota (forced labor on the lord’s land)
and freeing serfs to leave the land. Joseph
II later abolished serfdom entirely. Joseph's
1781 Edict of Toleration granted Lutherans and Calvinists freedom of worship.
This period of enlightened rule provided an opportunity for economic
progress and social mobility of great consequence for Bohemia. Under the encouragement of the Czech governor, the Czech
nobility turned to industrial enterprise.
Many nobles sublet their lands, investing their profits in the
development of textile, coal, and glass manufacture.
Czech peasants, no longer bound to the land, relocated from the rural
areas to the cities and manufacturing centers.
The urban areas of Bohemia, previously populated by Germans, took on
an increasingly Czech character. The
sons of Czech peasants were sent to school, and some went on to attend the
university, creating a new Czech intelligentsia. The population of Bohemia nearly quadrupled, with a similar
increase in Moravia.
However, Joseph's successor, Leopold II, who reigned from 1790 to 1792,
repealed many of Joseph's edicts in response to pressures from the nobility.
Leopold restored certain feudal obligations, and serfdom would not be
completely abolished again until 1848. Under
the rule of Francis II from 1792 to 1835 the aristocratic and clerical reaction
grew stronger. The reactionary
movement was temporarily interrupted by the war against revolutionary France
and the Napoleonic wars.
Francis II had committed Austria to several unsuccessful coalitions
against France. In 1804, in
preparation for the inevitable, he named himself Francis I, first Emperor of
Austria. After the battle of Austerlitz
in 1805, Napoleon reorganized Germany and Francis abdicated as Holy Roman
Emperor, causing the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1810 Francis had his daughter married to Napoleon.
Later, he played a part in Napoleon's downfall, and regained much
territory.
The Austrian Empire would play a leading role in the newly established
German Confederation. After
Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the reactionary policies of Austria's Prince Clemens
von Metternich dominated European affairs.
Through his leadership at the Congress of Vienna and elsewhere,
Metternich restored order in Europe, but to the advantage of European kings and
princes and at the expense of democratic movements.
National
Revival
Central Europe experienced a period of national awakening in the first
half of the nineteenth century. The
subject Slavic peoples were inspired toward national revival by Napoleonic
expansionism and German nationalism, which was ignited by confrontations with
the armies of the French revolutionaries.
The intellectual revival resulting from a concept of the
"nation" as a people united by language and culture became the
foundation of a struggle for autonomy.
The new intelligentsia formed when Czech peasants moved into the cities
and manufacturing centers and sent their sons to become the leaders of the Czech
national revival. Only a small part
of the predominantly German nobility lent it support. The first phase of the national movement was philological.
The Czech language existed mainly as a provincial dialect used by
peasants. The massive task of
transforming the language into a literary medium and establishing formal study
of Czech began at the University of Prague in 1791.
The key figures in the revival of the Czech language were Frantisek
Martin Pelcl, the first professor of Czech at the University of Prague, Jozef
Dobrovsky, often called the "Father of the Czech National Revival,"4
who wrote the first Czech grammar - in German, and Jozef Jungmann, a
grammarian and translator who developed Dobrovsky's work and authored the
first Czech-language dictionary. As
a result of their efforts, Czech literature flourished and the Czech reading
public grew. The prominent
authors from this period were: author Pavel Josef Safarik; poets Jan Kollar, F.L.
Celakovsky, Karel Jaromir Erben, and Karel Hynek Macha; dramatists V.K.
Klicpera and Josef Kajetan Tyl; historian Frantisek Palacky; and journalists
Frantisek Brauner and Karel Havlicek Borovsky.
In 1818, the new Museum of the Bohemian Kingdom provided an institutional
foundation for the Czech revival. The
museum was an important resource for Czech scholars, and in 1827 began to
publish a journal that became the first permanent voice of Czech nationalism.
Continuing in its literary efforts, in 1830 the museum absorbed the
Matice Ceska, a Czech intellectual society devoted to the publication of
scholarly and popular books. The
patriotic scholars and nobles who composed the museum's membership contacted
the other Slavic peoples, in an attempt to turn Prague into the intellectual
center of the western Slavs.
Frantisek Palacky, a Czech Protestant from Moravia who studied in
Bratislava and did not settle in Prague until 1823, became a major figure of the
Czech revival. A romanticist
inspired by the nationalist spirit of the Hussite tradition, Palacky sought to
enhance Czech political consciousness. His
work stressed the Czech nation's struggle for political freedom and
self-determination, and became a cornerstone of contemporary Czech thought and
culture. His writings and methods,
however, remained scholarly. He
became the great historian of the Czech people; his exhaustive five-volume work,
"The History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia, helped Czechs
rediscover their national identity. Paradoxically,
the first volume of 1836 was published in German.
The first Czech volume did not appear until March 1848.
The
Slovaks also underwent a similar national revival. The Kingdom of Hungary, restored to its original dimensions,
was ruled by a Magyar aristocracy that was also swept by a national awakening.
Magyar replaced Latin as the official language in 1792.
Unlike the Czech nation, both Catholicism and Protestantism retained a
solid hold among the subject peoples of Hungary.
Slovak revival took place under the leadership of the Slovak clergy, the
intellectual elite in this peasant region.
Anton Bernolak, a Jesuit priest, made the first attempt to develop a
Slovak literary language, the Bernolactina, based primarily on Western dialects.
The Catholic clergy adopted it, and disseminated it in religious
literature. This movement, however,
remained philological, and never developed nationalist political implications.
Bernolak and his followers remained loyal to the Hungarian kingdom.
The Slovak Protestant revival was more limited in scope, for the most
part confined to the Slovak minority settled in urban centers. Slovak Protestantism was distinguished by a predilection for
Czech culture. Since the sixteenth
century Biblictina, the artificial and archaic language of the Czech Bible, had
served as the literary language of the Protestant clergy.
In the early nineteenth century, Jan Kollar and Pavel Safarik,
German-educated Protestant theologians, tried to form a more suitable Slovak
literary language by combining Czech grammar with elements of the central Slovak
dialect. In 1825 they published a
reader, Citanka, and by the 1830s had a wide following among the younger
students at Protestant lycees. Kollar
and Safarik viewed Czechs and Slovaks as one nation, but the students broke with
the Czechs and proclaimed the separate identity of the Slovak nation.
Ludovit Stur, a leading Slovak poet, writer, organizer, and politician,
was a student at the Bratislava lycee. He
refined the work of Kollar and Safarik and developed the Sturovcina, which he
proposed in 1843 be accepted as the Slovak literary language. In 1844, a society known as the Tatrin, based on the Matice
Ceska, was established, and the Sturovcina spread rapidly in the Protestant
community.
The
Revolutions of 1848
Palacky, who fancied himself the heir and successor to the Hussite leader
Jan Amos Komensky, became the leader of the conservative wing of the Czech
nationalist movement. Like his
Hussite predecessor, Palacky developed a political platform based on
cultural renaissance. Among his
supporters were Karel Havlicek Borovsky, an important journalist and political
publicist, Ladislav Rieger, Palacky's son-in-law, and Frantisek Brauner.
In 1848, the Czech youth formed a more radical wing of Czech politics led
by Josef Vaclav Fric and Vaclav Sabina.
The
Paris revolution of February 1848 spawned similar action against autocratic
governments across Europe, including the territories of the Habsburg Empire.
In Prague, the expression of nationalist and socialist movements had been
prevented by Prince Metternich and his police minister Sedlnicky.
Emperor Ferdinand I, who reigned from 1835 to 1848, ceded to pressure
against the Metternich regime, and moved
to establish a new government.
Metternich resigned in March, and Ferdinand promised to reorganize the
empire on a constitutional, parliamentary basis.
He promised the Czechs a separate Constitutional Assembly, a widening of
the electorate, the reconstitution of the supreme offices of the Bohemian
Kingdom in Prague, and the recognition of Czech as an official language of equal
standing with German. However, when
Ferdinand appointed Prince Windischgraetz as commander of the Prague Garrison,
it was perceived as a threat to the revolutionary movement.
Incidents began to occur between students and workers and the reinforced
garrison. In May, Windischgraetz
deployed his troops to the factories on Prague's outskirts.
The resulting tension would affect the course of the Pan-Slav Congress,
which was to convene in Prague on 2 June to discuss the possibility of
political consolidation of Austrian Slavs, Poles, Ruthenians, Ukrainians,
Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs.
In the Bohemian Kingdom, a national committee had been formed, which
included Germans and Czechs. Bohemian
Germans, however, supported the Grossdeutsch position, which favored including
Austria and Bohemia in a united, federated Germany, organized on a
liberal-democratic basis. In a
continuation of the Czech-German conflict that would plague Czechoslovak
history,
they withdrew from the committee. Palacky's
conservatives proposed Austro-Slavism as the creed of the Czech national
movement, and continued loyalty to Habsburg rule as protection from German and
Russian expansionism, together with the federalization of the empire on an
ethnographic basis, uniting Bohemian Germany with Austria in one province and
Czechs and Slovaks in another. Palacky
also proposed that the Slavic peoples of the empire, who formed the majority,
unite politically to protect their own interests.
Palacky's conservatives failed to achieve their goals.
The excitement created by conflicts between the military and
demonstrators allowed the radical wing to prevail. The congress adopted a Manifesto to All European Nations,
which protested the oppression of the Slavic nations and demanded freedom for
all nations.
The congress was interrupted by the bloody suppression of a demonstration
on present-day Wenceslas Square, where students and factory workers were
attacked by the army. The radicals,
to include German revolutionaries, barricaded the streets. Windischgraetz, whose wife was killed by a stray bullet in
their home, ordered his troops to withdraw from Prague. He then subjected Prague to an artillery siege, and six days
later the uprising was broken.
Stur had also attended the Pan-Slav Conference, and organized political
resistance to the Hungarian kingdom, leading a Slovak National Council in
drafting the "Demands of the Slovak Nation." Their demands included
establishing separate national legislative assemblies and granting each national
group the right to use its native language in the Hungarian Diet, in
administration, and in the educational system.
Following rejection of the demands by the Hungarian Diet in May 1848,
Stur organized armed resistance. Dissatisfied
with the Hungarian response, Slovak patriots requested the imperial government
recognize Slovakia as an independent crown land within the empire.
The Sturites, a relatively weak group, sought rapprochement with the
Czechs during 1848, but continued to reject Czech proposals for a Czecho-Slovak
political union.
In March 1849, imperial armies, with Russian help, crushed the revolutionary
movement, halting all negotiations for liberal, constitutional reform.
Under the new Habsburg emperor, Franz Joseph I, who reigned from 1848 to
1916, absolutism was restored. In
1851 he revoked the constitution of March 1849.
Prime Minister Alexander Bach, who became known for censorship and
police rule, concluded a concordat with the Pope, which returned many privileges
the Catholic Church had lost under Joseph II.
While the Viennese court prevented change in the political or ideological
sphere, they encouraged economic growth.
The process of reform begun by Maria-Theresa and Joseph II, which was
halted by Metternich, gained impetus from the events of 1848. The emancipation of serfs was completed, and
industrialization of Bohemia and Moravia began.
Agriculture, the food industry, and mining for iron ore and coal rapidly
expanded. The Trade Act of 1859
terminated the privileges for the guilds and established free enterprise.
Tariffs between the Hungarian and Austro-Czech regions were abolished, a
significant benefit to Czech industry.
Many of the great Czech industrial enterprises were established during
this period. In the 1860s,
ownership of the engineering works in Plzen, established by Count Wallenstein,
passed to Emil Skoda, and would become the principal heavy engineering and
armament supplier to the Habsburg monarchy.
The Ringhoffer and Danek works, which formed the core of the present-day
CKD electrical engineering group, were also established in the 1850s and 1860s.
Dual
Monarchy
The Habsburg armies were defeated in 1866 by Prussia, and subsequently
Austria was expelled from the German Confederation.
To strengthen his empire, Franz Joseph made a compromise with the Magyar
liberal gentry. Austria-Hungary
became a dual monarchy joined under the Habsburg crown, with an autonomic
Hungarian kingdom and constitutional, parliamentary government in both Austria
and Hungary
Political power in the Austrian parliament was held by German liberals
from 1867 to 1879. The Czech
National Party, dominated by the Old Czechs, advocated alliance with the
conservative nobility and Bohemian autonomy similar to that granted the Magyars.
In concession to Czech nationalist demands, in 1871 the Hohenwart
ministry granted the Fundamental Articles.
The articles recognized the historic rights of the Bohemian Kingdom, but
resulted in violent protests from German and Magyar liberals, and were
rescinded.
After the German liberals lost power in 1879, Count Eduard Taafe,
supported by the Old Czechs, formed his conservative "Iron Ring"
cabinet, which governed until 1897. In
Bohemia, as Czechs gained numerical and political superiority, the conflict
between Czechs and Germans intensified, except in the border districts where
Germans continued to dominate. As
the developing Czech commercial and industrial bourgeoisie increased its influence,
they sought to obtain equal status for the Czech language in administration
and education, and Czech nationalists continued to press for Bohemian
autonomy. The Germans opposed these
efforts, and German liberals advocated the administrative separation of German
and Czech districts. Georg von
Schonerer's nationalist Pan-German Party, based in the Bohemian Egerland, called
for Austrian and Bohemian unification with Germany. Taafe's government failed to resolve the Bohemian conflict,
giving the radical Young Czech Party a decisive electoral victory in 1891.
Parliamentary politics were rendered ineffective by the obstructionist
tactics of both Czechs and Germans. During
the last years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, governments rose and fell with
great frequency. The Young Czech
Party splintered, and Czech politics changed orientation.
A radical nationalist faction seceded in 1897 and formed the Radical
Progressive Party. In 1899,
another splinter group formed the Radical Constitution Party, returning to the
revivalist program in which the Old Czechs had failed.
Other small parties drew away the political base of the Young Czechs.
The Popular Progressive Party formed under the leadership of Adolf
Stransky. The Czech Popular Party,
also known as the "Realistic Party," formed around Tomas G. Masaryk in
1905. The Young Czechs were
reorganized in 1906 by Karel Kramar, who struggled for economic and cultural
equality, and after 1918 continued as the National Democratic Party.
In Hungary, Slovaks faced increasing Magyar nationalism as a result of
the Dual Compromise of 1867 and the Nationalities Act of 1868, which established
Magyar as the official language. Slovak
political participation was reduced by their limited electoral base; only 6.1
percent of the total population was Slovak.
The conservative and Pan-Slav Slovak National Party, which had the
support of both Catholics and Protestants, looked to autocratic Russia for
national liberation. The party
attempted to further Slovak culture and improve the material welfare of the
Slovak nation, but its efforts were thwarted by the Hungarians. In 1875, the Slovak Matica, a cultural center, was closed,
and in 1883 all educational institutions above the elementary level were
Magyarized. Many Slovaks emigrated,
but most remained peasants or industrial laborers.
Cooperation between Czechs and Slovaks did not reappear until the
twentieth century, with the development of the Hlasist movement, named after the
review Hlas.
Masaryk encouraged the movement, which was led by young Czech-oriented
Slovak intellectuals and soon attracted all Slovak patriots.
World
War I
Conditions in Europe in 1914 made war inevitable.
Intense nationalism, the division of Europe into two armed camps,
economic rivalry, and territorial ambitions created a situation in which the
slightest provocation would start a war involving the major European powers.
The provocation was provided in June 1914, when 19-year old student
Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the
throne of Austria-Hungary, in Sarajevo. Princip,
a Serb living in Bosnia, was a member of a revolutionary society seeking to
overthrow Austrian rule in Bosnia.
Austria feared that Serbian nationalism would disrupt its empire.
They held Serbia responsible for the assassination, but made no move for
twenty-five days. Finally, on 23 July, they sent an ultimatum to Serbia,
demanding a response in twenty-four hours.
Serbia conceded to eight of ten demands and proposed that the remaining
two be put before the Hague Tribunal. Austria
refused, and after a week of feverish negotiations, declared war on Serbia on
July 28, 1914.
When Austria went to war on the side of the Central Powers, the Czech
national movement mounted an effort to create an independent Czechoslovak state.
Large numbers of Czechs deserted the empire, and many Czech soldiers
fought with the Russians. The Slovaks formed centers of resistance in Vienna, Prague,
Budapest, and Bratislava. Slovak
political leader Anton Stefanik joined Masaryk and other political leaders in
Paris, where they formed the Czech National Council. Masaryk negotiated with the Allies, both Russia and the West,
to gain a commitment for the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia.
Emperor Charles I, who ruled from 1916 to 1918, tried to preserve the
integrity of the empire through secret negotiations toward a separate peace.
His efforts failed in the spring of 1918, and the Allies gave their
support to national revolt. In the
fall they granted formal recognition to the Czech National Council.
On 29 September 1918, General Ludendorff, who directed Germany's military
and political policy in the closing years of the war, urged the chancellor to
negotiate an armistice. In early
October, Germany and Austria proposed peace negotiations.
Masaryk issued a declaration of Czechoslovak independence on October
18. The new Czechoslovak state
needed to regain the easily defensible borders of the historic Bohemian Kingdom,
as well as its economic assets, but this was threatened by German and Austrian
deputies. On October 21 deputies
from the German-dominated Sudetenland joined other German and Austrian deputies
in declaring an independent German-Austrian state.
After Emperor Charles I abdicated on November 11, Czech troops occupied
the Sudetenland.
Hungary had withdrawn from the Habsburg Empire on 1 November. Its new liberal-democratic government, under Count Mihaly
Karolyi, sent troops into Slovakia. The
Czechs and the Allies agreed on the Danube (Dunaj)
and Ipel rivers as the Slovak-Hungarian border. A large number of Hungarians occupied the fertile plain of
the Danube, and thus became part of the new state.
The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919. Premier Karel Kramar and Foreign Minister Eduard Benes of
the new provisional government led the Czech delegation. The conference approved the formation of a Czechoslovak
Republic, encompassing Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia - the lands of the historic
Bohemian Kingdom - together with Slovakia and Ruthenia. The Czechs requested Ruthenia to provide a common frontier
with Romania, which with Yugoslavia formed the basis of the future Little
Entente. Tesin, predominantly
Polish, was divided between Czechoslovakia and Poland.
The Czech claim to Lusatia, which was part of the Bohemian Kingdom until
the Thirty Years War, was rejected. On
10 September 1919, Czechoslovakia signed a "minorities" treaty,
which extended the protection of the League of Nations to its ethnic minorities.
Ruthenia
The Ruthenians, whose name derives from the Ukrainian "Russin,"
or Russian, were pastoral nomads from Galicia who settled the deep, narrow
valleys of the Ukraine during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and
integrated with the Hungarian political system. The Ruthenians were poor peasants, grazers, and lumbermen -
vassals and serfs of the Hungarian magnates dominating the plains of the Tisza
River. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, Ruthenia was part of the Ottoman Empire. In the mid-seventeenth century most Ruthenians converted from
the Greek Orthodox to the Uniate Catholic (Greek Catholic) Church.
The Uniate Church combined spiritual allegiance to Rome with Orthodox
rites, and allowed the Hungarian clergy to gain the loyalty of their
Eastern-oriented subjects.
The Ruthenians remained poor, agrarian, and politically apathetic.
Ruthenian delegates did, however, attend the Slavic Congress in 1848
and later appealed to Vienna for autonomy and the right of cultural development.
But, as in Slovakia, the Dual Compromise all but eliminated the chance of
educational progress, with Magyarization of all secondary and most elementary
schools in Ruthenia. Over 50,000
Ruthenians emigrated prior to World War I.
Beginning in the latter nineteenth century, Russian Pan-Slav propaganda
gained influence, and many Ruthenians converted to the Greek Orthodox Church.
Most, though, remained local in orientation, and fought with the
Hungarian armies during World War I.
Political activity on behalf of Ruthenia during World War I was conducted
by Ruthenian emigrants in the United States.
Groups formed with various political objectives.
These included total independence, semi-autonomy within Hungary,
federation with Galicia and Bukovina, inclusion in a Soviet federation, or union
with the Czechs. Largely through
the influence of Masaryk and Benes, who negotiated with the American Ruthenian
leader, G. Zatkovic, Ruthenia became part of the Czechoslovak Republic.
The
Czech Legion
The Czech Legion, which would eventually form the nucleus for the
Czechoslovak Army, was created in World War I with the primary goal of
eventually winning Czechoslovak independence.
Thousands of Czechoslovaks were conscripted by the hated
Austro-Hungarian Empire and sent off to serve on the Russian and Italian fronts. Many took the opportunity to desert and offer their services
to the Allies against their rulers.
The basis of the Czech Legion was a brigade of Czechs and Slovaks who had
fled Austro-Hungarian rule to Russia before the war. They were highly-trained and performed well alongside the
Russian Army, maintaining their discipline when the army began to collapse.
In December 1914, the Tsar's Imperial government offered the 50,000 to
60,000 Czech and Slovak prisoners of war a chance to fight against the Germans
and Hungarians. Many declined out
of concern that, if recaptured, the Central Powers would consider them traitors
and execute them. By 1916, though,
there were enough volunteers for two regiments. They fought alongside Russian soldiers, who - armed and
financed heavily by Britain and France - kept eighty or more German divisions
tied to the Eastern Front.
Masaryk, heading the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris, decided to
use both prisoners of war and civilians living in Russia to form a national army
to fight on the Western Front. However,
his negotiations with the Imperial government for evacuation of the
Czechoslovaks to France were unsuccessful.
He resubmitted his request to the Provisional government, which granted
it. Czechoslovak military units
were formed, and by the spring of 1917, 24,000 Czechs and Slovaks served in a
corps on the Eastern Front. This
Czechoslovak corps fought with distinction in the June 1917 offensive, winning a
brilliant victory at Zborov in Galicia in July.
These troops and the remaining Czechoslovak prisoners of war were to be
transferred to the Western Front, but the Bolshevik coup and chaos prevailing
throughout the country intervened.
The Bolsheviks sympathized with the Czech Legion's aim to fight Germany
and the Habsburg Empire to free their lands.
The Allies, of course, did not care who controlled Russia or what forces
occupied it, as long as they opposed the Germans. However, the presence of the well-armed force, loyal to
neither the country nor to Bolshevism, was a less than desirable situation for
the Soviet leadership, as it must also have been for the Czech Legion.
In December 1917, the Allies recognized the Czech Legion in Russia as a
separate army under the Supreme Allied Council.
In January 1918, Masaryk returned to Russia to negotiate again, now with
the Bolsheviks, for their evacuation to France. This had become a pressing matter, because a pending treaty
between the Central Powers and the Ukraine, where most of the Czechoslovak
prisoners of war were held, made it likely that the Germans would soon occupy
that region. The Bolsheviks delayed
their decision until after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded in March.
Finally, they gave their consent.
The
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk greatly complicated life for the Allies.
General Ludendorff was able to withdraw German divisions from Russia and
launch a massive new offensive on the Western Front.
The Ukraine's oil fields and wheat could soon be in German hands.
The Allies could wait no longer. They
desperately needed to keep open the Trans-Siberian Railway and reopen an Eastern
Front.
Masaryk and the Allied command had hoped to move the legion to Archangel
and Murmansk, vital ports by which the Allies had supplied the Russians against
Germany. On 16 June 1918, a
military mission of 570 officers and noncommissioned officers set out from
Newcastle to Murmansk with the forces of Major General Sir Charles Maynard. Their job would have been to train the Czech Legion when it
arrived. They would then assist
Major General Maynard's Royal Marines, Royal Engineers, Serbs, and French
artillery to defend the port.
Finnish partisans threatened the railroad lines to Murmansk and Archangel
and German submarines patrolled the sea lanes around them. The German Army could have easily seized the ports had the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk not been concluded and Germany had reopened attacks
against the Red Army. The presence
of the legion in Murmansk would have helped defend the port until their
evacuation. Instead, the Czech
Legion was to leave the Russian Republic, move completely across the Soviet
Union through Siberia to Vladivostok, and then on to the United States and,
eventually, to Western Europe to fight alongside the French.
Masaryk ordered the Czech Legion commanders to adopt a policy of
"armed neutrality." They
were not to interfere in Russian internal affairs.
They were to remain armed, however, since the area they would travel
through was dangerously out of control.
The Czechoslovaks were ready to leave.
Accompanied by Ukrainian Bolsheviks, they fought their way through
advancing German forces toward Penza and the Trans-Siberian.
Some were captured and hanged as traitors by the Austrians.
The Legion moved on with strengthened resolve.
They were to embark in 1,000-man battalions, each on a special train.
When the first battalion reached Penza, they received a telegram in which
Stalin listed the conditions for their travel.
They were to go as free citizens, but would have to give up their Tsarist
officers and could carry only such arms as needed to protect themselves from
counterrevolutionaries (this being defined as 168 rifles and one machine gun per
train), and would be accompanied by commissars of the Penza Soviet.
The Czechoslovaks suspected German pressure behind the order, and had no
confidence in the Bolsheviks. They
reluctantly surrendered a few weapons, kept some openly, and concealed the rest.
At this point, Allied strategy in Russia was in chaos. The Allies conducted free-wheeling negotiations with any side
that showed even a faint hope of reopening the Eastern Front - together and
separately. The French still wanted
to ship the Czech Legion around the world to join the Western Front.
The British now regarded the Bolsheviks as traitors - they were
supporting a Cossack named Gregori Semenov against the Bolsheviks and wanted
legion forces in Siberia to link up with Semenov.
This force, as a new Russian Army, was to open a new front against the
Germans. Those west of the Urals
were to meet with British forces at Archangel and protect its
ports. Eduard Benes agreed
to the British proposal, but the French insisted that wherever the Czech Legion
went in Russia, its ultimate destination had to be the Western Front.
Transportation was difficult to arrange and the transfer proceeded
slowly. Only 16,000 of the legion
had reached Vladivostok by mid-May 1918. The
rest were spread along the Trans-Siberian railway, with major units still just
outside the Russian Republic in the Volga region and the Urals.
The Czechoslovaks, though many were socialists, tried to avoid becoming
entangled in Russia's internal politics as they traveled; they wanted simply to
leave. They ignored the approaches
of the Volunteer Army and the Bolsheviks, who often used Czech communists as
intermediaries. They got food and
other necessities from farm cooperatives.
Along the same one-track railway, former German prisoners of war were
also being transported, in accordance with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The Soviet government, not wishing to provoke further conflict, gave
priority to the evacuation of the Germans.
At the same time, bands of insurgents operated along the Trans-Siberian
railway, Japanese troops had landed at Vladivostok, and there were military
clashes in areas of the Far East and Siberia.
All this slowed the movement of the Czech Legion and gave rise to many
rumors, often promulgated by those opposing the Soviet government.
The Czechoslovaks found themselves in an untenable situation.
Rumors began to circulate among the legion that the Russians were going
to surrender them to the Germans.
Their eventual involvement in Russian affairs in May was not a deliberate
reversal of the policy of armed neutrality.
Germany, displeased that tens of thousands of fresh Czechoslovak troops
would wind up on the Western Front, asked Moscow to delay their evacuation.
Moscow agreed, but had no effective way to enforc
