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

by C. Edmund Maurice

To the unscrupulous intriguers who were plotting against their power, John and the Archbishop of Mainz were unfortunately soon to supply some just causes of complaint. The death of the Emperor Henry seemed to open to John a chance for claiming the Imperial throne; and, when he found that his youth was held to disqualify him for that dignity, he threw all his influence on to the side of Louis of Bavaria, as he was resolved that no Hapsburg, at any rate, should again become Holy Roman Emperor. This contest withdrew both him and the Archbishop from Bohemia; and the German Councillors who were left to support the queen were little able to stand against Henry of Lipa. John soon found that his championship of the Bavarian cause was likely to involve him in a dangerous war; and, fearing to leave a disturbed Bohemia behind him, he hastened to satisfy his opponents by dismissing his German advisers and taking Henry of Lipa into his counsels.

A new Hungarian war which broke out at this time enabled Henry to increase his power, and he used it for inflicting new oppressions on the Bohemian towns. But a bolder act of presumption at last exhausted the patience of the Court. Henry ventured, without consulting king or queen, to grant Agnes, the queen’s sister, in marriage to a Duke of Silesia. This insolence at last roused John to action, and Lipa was arrested. Before any further steps could be taken, John was once more called to the German war; and he again left the Archbishop of Mainz as his viceroy. Henry of Lipa once more appealed to Bohemian feeling against the German prelate; and, though many of the better men among the Bohemian nobility were now disposed to stand by their queen, they were not strong enough to hold their own against these intrigues. John was now earnestly entreated to return to Bohemia; but, when he hastened back, at the head of his Rhenish forces, his Bohemian advisers urged him to leave the Germans behind, and to throw himself on the support of his faithful nobles. John rejected this advice; he re-entered Bohemia at the head of his German troops, and proceeded to attack the lands of those nobles who had resisted him.

A general panic now seized the Bohemians; they recalled to their minds the tyranny of Otto of Brandenburg; and the rumour quickly spread that John was about to use German soldiers to crush out Bohemian independence. What had been the intrigue of a mere selfish faction, now swelled into a national opposition; and the war raged fiercely. Henry of Lipa, indeed, remained the ostensible leader of the insurgents; but he had so little sympathy with real national feeling, that he called in Frederick of Austria as his ally; and, when John offered terms to the rebels, Henry refused them, on the ground that any treaty of peace must also include the Austrians. At last the Emperor Louis intervened in the struggle. John was persuaded to send away his Rhenish troops, to renew his promise to appoint only Bohemian advisers, and once more to give high office in the State to Henry of Lipa. To these terms the king consented; but Queen Elizabeth, with keener insight, refused altogether to trust this new Councillor; and Henry thereupon devoted his whole energies to making mischief between the king and queen.

The intriguers had now discovered what manner of man they had to deal with. Vain, profligate, and pleasure-seeking, John was easily persuaded by the young nobles that his wife had gained too much power over him; and, when they had once sown in his mind this suspicion, they were able to develop an elaborate romance of imaginary plots, by which the queen was supposed to be undermining the throne of John, and securing the power to herself and her son. John’s selfish vanity soon drove him into violent action. He hastened to the fortress where the queen was then staying, and used such violent language that she fled in terror from the place. Then he removed from her her favourite attendants, carried off her children, and shut up his eldest son for two months in a dark room.

The indignation which this conduct caused among the citizens of Bohemia was much increased by the various forms of extortion which John now proceeded to inflict both on towns and monasteries—extortions devised solely to obtain money for the pleasures of the King and his courtiers. John, indeed, had been as ready as any other King of Bohemia to promise the citizens exemption from certain forms of taxation; and consequently they now complained, not only of oppression, but also of broken faith. Nor was it merely in the matter of taxes that the privileges of the citizens were violated. In earlier times the nobles had claimed the right of demanding forcible quartering in the houses of citizens for those who were engaged on expeditions in the king’s service. This claim naturally led to great abuses, against which Ottakar and Wenceslaus had tried to protect their subjects. In this matter also John had promised to carry out the policy of his predecessors. But he now encouraged even his own kinsmen to demand this compulsory entertainment. One citizen was seized and crucified because he would not give up his money to these intruders; others were plundered and unjustly imprisoned.

At last the citizens of Prague drew up a formal complaint, which they authorised six of their number to present to John. Some mischief-maker persuaded the king that this protest was a first step to insurrection; and his suspicions were further inflamed by the news that the queen had recently come to Prague, and had been received with great honour. Furious at this supposed conspiracy, the king and Henry of Lipa at once marched against Prague. The citizens, astonished at the interpretation which had been put upon their remonstrance, were at first disposed to admit the king, in the hopes of an easy explanation; but some of the nobles, who had remained faithful to the queen, were opposed to this policy; and they offered such determined resistance, that John was compelled to retreat from the city. A sort of truce was patched up for a time, though John insisted that the six citizens who had drawn up the remonstrance should be expelled from the city. Then he hurried away to finish the war between Louis and Frederick; and Henry of Lipa was left chief ruler of the kingdom. He soon succeeded in bringing to an end the temporary reconciliation between John and Elizabeth; and the queen was forced to fly to Bavaria, where she remained for some time, in dependence on her Bavarian relations, since John would not allow any support to be sent to her from Bohemia.

Then followed many years of oppression and disorder, during which John only appeared in Bohemia when he wished to demand money from the citizens, which he then hastened to spend at Paris or on the Rhine, either in the provision of splendid tournaments, or on some of the many wars which the princes of the Empire were waging against each other or against the Imperial towns. John’s special attraction was to Paris, where the court of King Charles was becoming a centre of pleasure and excitement. It was probably his alliance with this king which gradually separated John from the cause of Louis of Bavaria; for Charles felt himself bound to stand by his dependant at Avignon, Pope John XXII., who had always been opposed to the claims of Louis.

During this time of disorder the nobles had gradually succeeded in drawing into their power many of the royal fortresses; and, the central authority being thus fatally weakened, robbery and violence prevailed throughout the country. Poor Elizabeth ventured back to Prague about 1325; and she used her best efforts for the good of her country. On the occasion of a plague, she arranged processions in which sacred relics of great value were publicly exhibited; she endowed monasteries, and protected them, even with a high hand, against the intrusions of the nobles; while, for her personal consolation, she contemplated a thorn from the Sacred Crown, which King Charles of France had sent her as a present during some of the revels which her husband was enjoying at Paris.

Bishop John of Prague might have given her some help in the government of the country; but he was summoned to Avignon to be tried as a protector of heretics, and detained there for thirteen years before he was tried and acquitted. It was impossible, however, to expect that either the queen or the bishop could hold their own against such men as Henry of Lipa; and, after the death of the queen in 1330, even King John began gradually to realise that some better provision must be made for the government of the country. So, three years later, he consented to send his eldest son, who had hitherto been detained at Paris, to try his hand at the restoration of order in Bohemia.

This son had originally been named Wenceslaus, at the time when John was still hoping to conciliate the national feeling of Bohemia; but he had subsequently been re-named Charles, in honour of John’s model and ally, the King of France. He was now seventeen years old; he was welcomed by the Bohemians as the son of their beloved Elizabeth, and his dignified and straightforward manners tended to increase the attachment of his subjects. He speedily showed that enthusiasm for his mother’s country which was to produce such striking results, when once his hand was free. By judicious economy, he tried to buy back for the Crown those castles which had been mortgaged to the nobles; and he made progresses through his dominions, hearing the grievances of the people and trying to redress them. This policy did not suit those disorderly nobles who had hitherto ruled at their pleasure. They easily succeeded in stirring up John’s suspicions against his son, as they had previously done against his wife; and Charles was deprived of his power and sent off to the Tyrol. Not many years elapsed, however, before John discovered that his son would be still necessary to him, if he wished to gain any advantage from the kingdom of Bohemia. But Charles had now realised that his father was habitually sacrificing the honour and freedom of the country for the sake of his own pleasures; and in 1342 the young prince declared that he would only undertake the government of Bohemia if John would consent to stay away from it for two years, and would be content with the sum of five thousand marks during that period.