Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 / With a short summary of later events

by C. Edmund Maurice

Perhaps it was a natural consequence of this popular indifference to political progress, as compared with the zeal for the preservation of the national language, and the religious ritual, that, by the close of the twelfth century, we find few traces remaining of those free institutions which seemed to connect themselves with the story of Libus̆a. Even those securities for popular freedom, which undoubtedly prevailed in historical times, had been, in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, corrupted into new sources of tyranny. Of these the most important had been the Z̆upa, or local assembly. This had been formed partly for purposes of self-defence, partly for ecclesiastical organisation; and, though it had centred at one time in a castle, at another in a church, yet it had originally been governed by a judge, elected by the district.

But from the time of Boleslav the Cruel, the Dukes began to make it their practice to grant these local judgeships to nobles who had done them special service; and those nobles were generally allowed either to sell their offices or to bequeath them to their heirs. The temptation to use this position as an instrument of oppression was yet further increased by the profit which the judges were allowed to make out of the fines that they had inflicted. The money thus accumulated was often used for the purchase of neighbouring lands; and thus lands formerly held by freemen, or on the communal system, passed into the power of the official nobles. In the meantime those nobles, who did not become Z̆upani, were able to profit by the growing unpopularity of the local tribunals to strengthen the power of their own feudal courts over their dependants; while the continual wars, and the practice of selling captives into slavery, encouraged the growth of an even more helpless and degraded class. The coolness with which many of the grants of land transfer workmen of various kinds as mere appendages of fields and fishponds, is in itself a proof of the degraded position to which the peasant class in Bohemia had been reduced; and the fact that military service seemed one of the few means of escaping from serfdom led the peasants to favour those wars which in the end increased their misery.

When the peculiarly disturbed state of Bohemia, which followed King Vladislav’s retirement from power, had been for a time brought to an end, or at least modified by the accession of Pr̆emysl Ottakar to the throne of the kingdom, it became necessary to provide some remedy for the miserable state of things which was destroying the country; and above all to find a new opportunity for the development of peaceful trade, and some power which could counteract the lawless intrigues of the nobles. The calling into life of communities which should be out of reach of the power both of feudalism and officialism was the natural method of meeting these difficulties; and, in the ruin of the rest of the country, there seemed to be two places where there still lingered traditions that could be made available for this purpose.

Curiously enough, amid the decay of national freedom, the privileges granted to foreigners still remained undiminished; and, stranger still, it was from these communities that a new material for national life was to be drawn. In the district of Poric̆, which Vratislav had raised into a suburb of Prague, a settlement of German workmen had been planted by that king; and to encourage them in the continuance of their occupations, he had granted them rights of self-government, which had survived the freedom of the Z̆upani, and the other elements of independence which had been enjoyed by the poorer classes of Bohemia. They had been allowed to choose their own judge without interference from any one; and, except in the cases of the most extreme crimes, which were dealt with by the Duke himself, they were allowed to carry on their own affairs according to their own laws. They were never to be compelled to go on military service, except when the actual defence of the country required it. A Bohemian wishing to bring an action against a German was obliged to prove his case through two German witnesses and one Bohemian before a German judge. They were to be safe from that compulsory intrusion into their houses by nobles who came from a distance, which was one of the great burdens of the Bohemian citizens; and in many other matters they were allowed to follow the customs of their own country. The respect felt for these privileges is sufficiently shown by the fact that, even in the time of turbulence and disorder between the abdication of Vladislav, and the accession of Pr̆emysl, we find a formal confirmation by Duke Sobeslav of Vratislav’s grant to the settlers in Poric̆.

Here then Pr̆emysl could find a tradition which might justify him in developing, without violent change, liberties of the greatest importance to his country; and accordingly in 1213 he grants to the citizens of Freudenthal the settlement of their town “in accordance with that Teutonic law which has hitherto been unwonted and unused in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia; but which, having been granted to you first by our illustrious brother Vladislav, Margrave of Moravia, we confirm with our royal authority.” And then, as an important hint of coming developments, and an indication of the thoroughly national purpose of this movement, he grants them, during the life of himself and his brother, the tithes on the metals found within four miles from the city, to be used for the improvement of the aforesaid city.

But, if the new development of town life took root at this time in the western parts of Bohemia, it seems to have had a still earlier growth in the more eastern province of Moravia. That province had always had peculiar traditions of its own. It was a fragment of the old kingdom of Moravia, and had been incorporated in the Bohemian dukedom, at the time of the Hungarian invasion. It always retained a sense of its important position; and Barbarossa himself had increased that feeling when, in granting the royal crown to Vladislav, he spoke of the new dignity as a revival of the old Moravian kingdom. Moreover, by some means or other, a German element seems to have penetrated into this province; and it is now generally believed that in Moravia, as in Bohemia, the first traditions of municipal self-government were drawn from German sources. Nevertheless, when in 1229 King Pr̆emysl recognised the municipal liberties of Brünn (Brno), he evidently refers to them as connected with local rights which had been traditional for a considerable time in that town; and in the book of decisions of the Moravian municipal tribunals, the Law of Brno is sometimes pitted against that Law of Magdeburg which was generally accepted as the model of town rights. Brünn, too, became in a peculiar manner the centre of the towns of Moravia, and its laws became a new source of life to a great portion of the Bohemian kingdom; and its Book of Rights, with its splendid binding and beautiful illuminations, may still be seen in the town council house at Brünn. So, when in 1229 Pr̆emysl Ottakar confirmed the ancient laws of the province of Brünn, he gave a new, and probably more attractive, impulse to the movement for civic self-government.

RADNICE BRNE: OLD DOOR OF TOWN COUNCIL HOUSE OF BRÜNN.

These rights, however, were of gradual growth, and at the time of Pr̆emysl’s decree they were not developed to that point which the subsequent records of their interpretation would lead one to expect. Thus, although we find securities against arbitrary arrest, we do not find that definite arrangement for the production of legal witnesses which was afterwards established; and, though the judge is no longer allowed to decide questions alone, the check upon him seems to be rather that of officials and nobles than of his fellow-citizens. But, whatever defects and limitations we may find in these early provisions for municipal liberty, the movement in its favour was soon to be hastened by one of the most tremendous shocks which had convulsed Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. This was nothing less than the invasion of Genghis Khan and his Tartar hordes, which has already been slightly alluded to in the previous chapter.