An excellent excuse for this final effort for freedom was supplied by Rudolf, who declared that he would not restore Guta to her husband until Zavis̆ was banished from the court. Wenceslaus was, no doubt, glad enough to get back his wife in exchange for his stepfather; and, when Zavis̆ intrigued with the King of Hungary and tried to entrap Wenceslaus, the young king decoyed him back to Prague and there imprisoned him. The friends of Zavis̆, both in Hungary and Bohemia, attempted his rescue; but Rudolf again intervened; and after the Hungarian invasion had been repelled, Wenceslaus was at last persuaded by his Imperial father-in-law to put Zavis̆ to death.
The young king now devoted himself to the restoration of order. He broke down castles, encouraged trade, extended the liberties of the cities, and gained a high reputation for justice. He even attempted to substitute for the vague mass of traditional custom a regular code of written laws; but in this attempt he was defeated by the nobles, who often showed themselves too strong for him.
The fatality which seemed to attend the best and most law-loving kings of Bohemia dragged Wenceslaus also into the complications of Imperial and Polish politics. In 1291 Rudolf died; and it soon became evident how bitter was the hostility which the Hapsburg family had excited among the princes of Germany.
Albert, the son of Rudolf, had indeed made good his power in the dukedoms of Austria and Styria, but he had shown little sign of his father’s vigour or ability; and the suspicion felt by the Bohemians towards the whole house of Hapsburg was increased, in the case of Albert, by the personal quarrels which had embittered his relations with his brother-in-law, Wenceslaus. Rudolf, indeed, had made great efforts to preserve the peace; but, as soon as he was dead, the quarrel again broke out, and Wenceslaus joined with other Electors of the Empire to choose Adolf of Nassau as Emperor, in opposition to Albert.
His success in securing this election left the King of Bohemia free to carry on the struggle with Poland. He recovered the often-disputed town of Cracow, and resumed that claim to the kingdom of Poland which, in some form or other, had been traditional in Bohemia since the time of King Vladislav. Adolf would gladly have strengthened the allegiance of Wenceslaus by this or any other concession; but Albert had an advantage which eventually enabled him to outbid his rival. He still retained in his hands the towns of Eger (Cheb) and Pilsen (Plz̆en), which his father had never surrendered to Bohemia. These towns, from their nearness to the Bavarian frontier, might be specially dangerous to the Bohemians if held by an enemy of their country; and their restoration to Wenceslaus meant the practical revival of Bohemian independence. This bribe therefore proved too strong for Wenceslaus’s faith; he withdrew his support from Adolf, and helped to place Albert on the throne of the Empire. In the following year the King of Poland finally surrendered his crown to Wenceslaus; and in 1300 Albert gave his Imperial sanction to the union of Poland with Bohemia.
There was yet another kingdom whose internal affairs had always a dangerous attraction for the kings of Bohemia. In 1301 the direct line of the old kings of Hungary came to an end; and a Hungarian bishop, backed by some of the nobles, offered the crown to Wenceslaus. The young king, though refusing the offer on his own account, was disposed to accept it on behalf of his son; but this acceptance brought upon him the hostility of the two greatest Powers of Europe. The Pope complained that the election was uncanonical; because the bishop who had taken the leading part in it was not authorised to crown the kings of Hungary. The Emperor Albert, on his side, had already become suspicious of the growing power of Bohemia; and, according to one chronicler, his avarice had been excited by the fame of the silver mines at Kuttenberg (Kutna Hora). Wenceslaus, indeed, though ready enough to hold his own against the Emperor, was as anxious as his father had been to remain on good terms with the Pope. He acknowledged the irregularity in the form of his son’s election; and, at the same time, he entreated the Pope to secure him the crown in a canonical manner. But it soon appeared that Boniface’s complaint about the form of election was a mere pretext, and that the Pope was really intending to grant the crown of Hungary to the King of Naples. To this arrangement Wenceslaus would not consent; and hence it came that in 1304 he was compelled to defend Bohemia against the forces of the Empire, supported by the authority of the Pope. This time, however, there was no division in the national feeling. However unwelcome some of Wenceslaus’s schemes might be to the Bohemian nobles, they had too recently learnt, by bitter experience, the folly of deserting a national king for a foreign invader. The Bohemians offered a unanimous resistance to the Imperial army, and Albert was forced to retreat.
But the doom of the male line of the House of Pr̆emysl was, none the less, hopelessly fixed. Wenceslaus died in the following year; and his son, after resigning his claim to the kingdom of Hungary, gave himself up to dissipation and profligacy. The Poles began to revolt; and during an expedition to Cracow the last of the male line of the Pr̆emyslovci was murdered by a traitor.
CATHEDRAL OF OLMÜTZ On SITE OF CASTLE WHERE WENCESLAUS III. WAS MURDERED.