From a Terrace in Prague

by B. Granville Baker

RAGUE was in holiday vein, happy and optimistic, its prevailing mood, on that day in 1311 when John, Count of Luxemburg, and Elizabeth, daughter of Wenceslaus II, were crowned. No doubt the ceremony took place on the Hradšany, and the steep approaches to the Castle Hill would be thronged with cheerful merrymakers; I wonder whether the Bohemians of those days said "Na zdar!" as frequently as they do to-day!

The Pragers had every reason to be happy and hopeful, for no change could bring about a worse state of affairs than that which had characterized the five years between the death of the last male Přemysl and the elevation of the first Luxemburg to the throne of Bohemia. That period was a sort of interregnum which was filled up with civil war, with murders among relatives, and was bringing Bohemia to the verge of anarchy.

The troubles of the time were largely caused by the newly arrived House of Habsburg, and the state of the Empire at that period reflects German mentality. The seven German Electors had been careful to go outside their own charmed circle for a King, and one who would carry out their wishes. They therefore picked out what we may call a second-class magnate as likely to be amenable. They met with disappointment. Rudolph was out for himself. His victory over Přemysl Ottokar II was welcomed by the Germans, who could never see a neighbour, especially a Slav, growing in importance, without showing signs of consuming jealousy. To break down the power of Ottokar the Bohemian was a meritorious act. To acquire for private and family use some of that King's finest possessions, Upper and Lower Austria, was not appreciated by the Electors. Therefore when Rudolph died the Electors turned down his son Albrecht, who put up for the imperial crown, and elected Adolph of Nassau instead. Adolph also tried to make something out of the post of Emperor, so the Electors threw him over, and he was shortly afterwards killed in battle. Albrecht of Habsburg then came to the throne, and taking up the family policy of profitable matrimonial alliances, married his son Rudolph to the widow of the Přemysl Wenceslaus II, Elizabeth, whom we have already met. I am rather sorry for this Elizabeth. Whether she liked her second husband or not, it must have been uncomfortable to find him becoming more and more unpopular among the people, who in any case had not expressed undue enthusiasm over his accession to their throne. He was chiefly unpopular on account of his meanness; the Bohemians, though thrifty almost to the verge of parsimony among themselves, do not like that trait in a foreigner, especially one who comes to cut some sort of figure as King or what-not amongst them. However, Rudolph died before a year of sovereignty was out, leaving that poor lady Elizabeth a widow for the second time, and under even more trying conditions. Despite all Habsburg precautions towards settling the crown of Bohemia on their own house, the nobles of the country proceeded to assemble a Diet at Prague in order to elect a new King. Elizabeth had to attend that function, and must have had a lurid time of it; the nobles raised no end of a storm, according to the Bohemian historian Palacky. There was one Tobias of Bechyn leading the case for the introduction of another foreigner as ruler, the opposition calling on him not to favour the claims of foreigners, possibly enemies, to rule over Bohemia, whereupon Tobias shouted: "If you wish at any price to obtain a native Prince, go to Stadic, among the peasants; there you will perhaps find a relation of the extinct royal family; bring him here and seat him on the throne of your country." Thereupon ensued pandemonium. One Ulrich of Lichtenburg slew Tobias forthwith, and several other nobles were killed in the fray before the Diet settled down to the conclusion that Henry, Duke of Carinthia, should be called in to rule over Bohemia. Henry was supposed to be popular chiefly because he had married a Přemysl, as we have already reported—Ann, daughter of Wenceslaus II; anyway, Prague received the couple with acclamations. Albrecht of Habsburg objected, as he had fixed on his son Frederick as heir to the Bohemian lands. There were the usual troubles: Albrecht's troops invaded Bohemia and Moravia, and some of them continued to hold a few frontier towns even after Albrecht had been killed by his nephew John and the Electors had gone elsewhere in search of an Emperor.

With characteristic distrust of each other or of any German of first-rate importance, the Electors went to the second-class magnates again, and this time their choice fell on Henry, Count of Luxemburg. Carlyle derives this name of Luxemburg via Luzzenburg from Lützelburg, which he translates into Littleborough. Carlyle is very pleased with this derivation, and uses it to "point a moral and adorn a tale." In all humility I differ from Carlyle in this derivation, my only excuse being that I happen to know the dialect as spoken round about Luxemburg and among the Eiffel people, sufficiently well, and that in their vernacular there is no such word as could be distorted from Lützel-via Luzzen-into Luxem-and then mean "little." It is really refreshing to be able to differ thoroughly, heartily, unreservedly, with a philosopher of old-established authority.

Carlyle likes to point out that this insignificant little dynasty of Luxemburg produced some great men as Emperors. He is quite right there too; but so also did Habsburg. As to the Luxemburgers, it must be borne in mind that though of German origin they were French by sentiment and upbringing—I quote Dr. Seton Watson from memory.

German origin, a phrase that has been very freely used of late years, is a somewhat elastic term, and frequently implies a mental rather than a racial qualification. Of the old original Teutons, the Germans of yore, there are few representatives left over—you may find some in Frisia and about the Porta Westphalica, on the east coast of Yorkshire, too, perhaps; the all-Germans, the Allemanni, as I believe they called themselves at one time, have seldom, if ever, formed a clearly defined political entity. The Franks in the early days of the Merovingians, by no means an estimable people, were probably purely Teuton; they separated more and more from their less civilized race-kindred, and by the time the Frankish Empire had reached its zenith its people had absorbed a good deal of other blood, which mixture crystallized into the French nation and soon broke away from any racial relations with the Teutons. Then the arch-enemies of the Franks, the Saxons, mixed freely with Slavonic races which extended well into the Hanover country and all over Mecklenburg at one time, so that those who are now called Saxons are, next to the Prussians, more thoroughly mixed with Slavs than any other Germans. The Bavarians, again, must have in them a good deal of the persistent Celtic element which they inherited from the Boievari who at one time left Bohemia for Bavaria. The amusing thing is that those who most loudly declaim on the subject of Deutschland über Alles are the most thoroughly mixed of the lot. It is idle to speculate on what would have become of German imperial conceits if the German race and its admixtures, like that of our islands, had been isolated from its neighbours by water instead of being constantly exposed to inroads from all sides, and consequently moved to follow up any success at arms into a neighbour's country. It seems as if a permanent Germanic Empire—material, not only sentimental—were never destined to a long and prosperous existence. These speculations, however, are best left to the historian, and we will return to the city of Prague.

We have seen John of Luxemburg and his wife Elizabeth happily crowned on the Hradšany at Prague and the city relieved by this event from the prospect of prolonged internal disorder. Henry of Carinthia, who succeeded Rudolph, had not proved satisfactory. He also had taken the precaution of marrying a Přemysl, was in fact John's brother-in-law, but he failed to maintain the popularity which he enjoyed when called to the throne, and was eventually chased out of Bohemia to make room for John. Now John was heavily handicapped and did little to remove his disabilities, in fact he rather aggravated them. He was only fourteen when he found himself a King and a married man. His father, a shrewd and enterprising monarch, died before John had really become acquainted with his capital, and so there was no unbiassed adviser to whom the young ruler could turn. John did not live on the best of terms with his mother-in-law, who from the dower-house at Kralove Hradec, called by the Germans Königgratz, interfered a good deal in the affairs of state; the trouble is said to have arisen originally between the two Elizabeths, mother and daughter, and even led to some fighting in which the city of Prague took an active part. By temperament John was not equal to his task; he was, it appears, thoroughly unpractical and entirely embued with all sorts of romantic notions. Those who watched John's doings from afar, and were not immediately affected by their results, could afford to approve of him and call him corona militiæ as did King Edward III of England. John was what may be called the "soul of chivalry," in his opinion Paris was the most chivalrous city in the world, and that is probably why he felt called upon to roam Europe as a knight-errant instead of looking after his wife and her relatives, and incidentally his Kingdom of Bohemia. According to Count Lützow, John intended to re-establish the Round Table of King Arthur, and to this end he invited all the most celebrated knights of Europe to a tournament at Prague; "nobody responded to the call." So John went abroad for his amusement and found it in plenty. To begin with, there was always something doing in his line between rival German Kings and Emperors, so we find him helping Louis, Duke of Bavaria, at Wittelsbach, to victory over the Habsburger Frederick at Mühldorf. Expeditions to Hungary, Italy, France and against the heathen Lithuanians all helped to pass away John's time pleasurably and unprofitably; as Palacky says: "It would be necessary to write the history of all Europe if we attempted to describe all the feuds into which King John entered with chivalrous bravery, but also with frivolity. It then became a proverb, that 'nothing can be done without the help of God and of the King of Bohemia.'"

John proved an expensive luxury to Bohemia, and he reigned for thirty-six years, so his country, although rich, yet peopled by a canny and thrifty population, must have been thankful when at last he was knocked on the head at Crecy. The story is well known to us all, so we need not linger on it. John bequeathed his motto to the Black Prince, who could well afford to pay a graceful compliment by accepting it; after all, not he, but Bohemia, had to pay for John's fun. John kept the mint of his country busy striking ducats, a coin of his own conception, a very good and full-weight coin too, but he probably took most of the ducats abroad for his various diversions; there are, however, a few left in the museum of Prague, I believe. John had quaint ways of raising money; one of them must have led to a great deal of inconvenience to the citizens of Prague, who on Sundays and holidays were wont to make excursions into the country. No one was allowed a drink within a certain radius of the capital; this was all very fine for the publicans of Prague, who no doubt had come to a suitable arrangement with the King, but it fills me with sorrow to reflect on the streams of excursionists and travellers doing the last lap home on a hot summer's day.

There is nothing of beauty in the panorama of Prague as seen from my terrace, which I can ascribe to Bohemia's chivalrous and eccentric King. He was too busy spending his country's wealth in trying to settle other people's quarrels, and raising others of his own, to think of beautifying his capital. Nevertheless I could point out to you traces of beautiful work for which John may indirectly derive some credit. This enterprising monarch had, as I have already mentioned, found occasion to go fighting about in Italy. He was induced thereto by the usual picturesque lack of sufficient reason just at the moment when he was attempting something useful. John's predecessor on the throne, Henry of Carinthia, with whom he had become reconciled, had no male heirs, so Bohemia's King called on Henry at Innsbruck in order to arrange a marriage between the former's second son John Henry and the latter's daughter Margaret, known in German history as Maultasche, of whom Carlyle speaks so unkindly. While at Innsbruck, John was invited by the Lombard town of Brescia to assist it against the Lord of Verona, Mastino della Scala. King John at once dropped the useful business, dashed in amongst the squabbling Italians and won a number of victories which gave him possession of a fair slice of Italy. He proved quite incapable of holding it, and his gains rapidly melted away like snow on the sunny southern slopes of those mountains that shut off the smiling plains of Venetia against the barbarous north. Here John's eldest son Charles comes upon the scene, and this is perhaps the only real good that ever came out of the first Luxemburg ruler of Bohemia, namely, an heir who should live to set up a Golden Prague as fitting capital to a happy and prosperous country.

Charles had had an unhappy childhood between his grandmother, the unfortunate widow Elizabeth, a somewhat uneven-tempered mother, and an erratic and unreasonable father. The unhappy lad had even been imprisoned by his father on suspicion of being concerned in a conspiracy with his mother to dethrone John. Charles must have been about five years at the time, for he was only seven when, a few years after his release, King John took him to the French Court for his education. Here Charles acquired his love of learning, his refined sense of beauty and steadfastness of purpose, all of which he devoted without stint to his country, and to him is chiefly due the glorious composition of the towers and steeples which rise up out of mysterious old Prague. Charles, and through him Prague, benefited by John's Italian venture, in that the gracious spirit of the Renaissance came to Bohemia out of his father's chivalrous exploits. Moreover, Charles, though only seventeen years of age, was thus given an opportunity of proving his metal in the field; he won several victories which, however, were fruitless, and above all learnt the art of governing. So when John and he left Italy, under pressure from the natives, Charles was competent to represent his father at home, while the latter went off on his knight-errantry.