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

by C. Edmund Maurice

But Charles had the statesmanlike instinct which tells a man when to yield and when to stand firm. There was one reform on which he was determined, and which he insisted on carrying out in spite of the opposition of the nobles. This was the abolition of those supposed tests of justice, by which accused persons were compelled to hold, or to walk upon, burning iron, or to prove their innocence by risking drowning. We are so apt to consider these superstitions as bound up with old religious feelings, that we almost instinctively expect to find this kind of abuse supported by the pious and orthodox in those generations, and opposed chiefly by some coldly superior persons who are untouched by the popular feeling of the time. But nothing is clearer than that Charles was stirred to this great reform by an intense sense of piety and reverence. Witness the words by which he had preluded this reform in the Majestas Carolina. “For he who should presume to tempt the omnipotence of God, and to make ridiculous His secret judgment, by forcing his neighbour to perish by means contrary to nature, does not deserve to enjoy the comfort of his own natural life.” In this reform he was steadily supported by Archbishop Arnestus; and, in spite of the opposition of the nobles, he succeeded in getting these terrible abuses suppressed. With regard to the ordeal by battle he was less successful. Indeed he was apparently disposed to accept a rather curious compromise on the subject. Duelling of all kinds he loathed as disorderly; but, in the case of charges of treason, he permitted a prosecutor who could bring nine respectable witnesses to support his charge, to make good his accusation by the final test of the duel. It does not appear, however, that he succeeded in reducing this foolish practice even within these limits.

Lastly, and perhaps best of all, he secured to the peasantry the right of appealing to the King from the feudal courts of their lords. Doubtless the readiness of the nobles to accept this important reform was much increased by Charles’s willingness to do justice as against himself. Thus, in a dispute with some nobles about the possession of a certain castle, he consented to submit the question to two Bohemian nobles chosen for the purpose; and he abode by the compromise which they suggested.

In short, in his position as King of Bohemia, Charles generally appears as one of those exceptional rulers who combine a genuine zeal for reform with a real sense of justice, and that statesmanlike self-restraint which teaches a man the difference between the desirable and the possible, between the ultimate ideal and the immediately practicable. But it is impossible to separate Charles the Emperor from Charles the King of Bohemia. Many of his greatest reforms, such as the establishment of the University and the assertion of the independence of the Prague archbishopric, could not have been carried out so easily, perhaps not at all, unless he had been able to use his authority as Emperor to back his power as King of Bohemia, and to secure also the sympathy and approval of the Pope. So thoroughly was the connection of his Imperial office with his Bohemian kingship recognised by his subjects, that it is the rarest thing to find this popular King mentioned in the chronicles by his proper Bohemian title of Charles I., still less by his early name of Wenceslaus. The Emperor Charles IV. has overshadowed and absorbed Wenceslaus alias Charles I. of Bohemia; and yet so far was he from losing thereby the sympathies of the Bohemians, that it is they and not the Germans who cherish his memory as that of a great and popular ruler.

The German view, indeed, is more nearly represented by the saying of Maximilian I., “Charles was the father of Bohemia, but the stepfather of the Holy Roman Empire.” This saying, like most epigrams that have lived, has a mixture of truth and falsehood. Certainly one of the morals of Charles’s career might seem to be the impossibility of combining these two important offices in a manner which should satisfy the just demands both of Germans and Bohemians. But though, as will presently appear, the weaker and worse part of his policy was connected with his position as Emperor, yet there is evident, even in his plans for Germany, a real enthusiasm for order, good government, and, above all, independence of that Papal power which had paralysed German progress.

The Golden Bull, with which his name is specially connected, shows in many respects these noble aims. The disorderly state into which the Empire had fallen had been largely due to the uncertainty of the Electorate. The titles which carried with them a right of voting for the Emperor, had been so often shared by different claimants, and the lands which originally marked these titles had been so often divided, that few could tell who had really the right of choosing the ruler of Europe; while the irregularity of many elections had given opportunity for the assertion of spurious claims, like those of the Dukes of Bavaria. Charles fixed the Electorate on a clear basis, and settled the lands which gave the right of voting. He also sternly prohibited those private feuds which had done such evil in Germany. Lastly, he boldly asserted the right of the Electors to choose the Emperor, without waiting for confirmation of their choice by the Pope. But, at the same time, he secured for the King of Bohemia the leading position among the Electors of the Empire; he declared his independence of the Imperial courts; and he asserted the right of the Bohemians to choose their own king, as soon as the House of Luxemburg was extinct.

Obviously there was here much to provoke opposition. The smaller princes, fierce at the restriction on their rights of quarrelling, broke into fresh disorders; the dukes of Bavaria took up arms to reassert their suppressed electoral rights; the dukes of Austria were indignant that their claims to the Bohemian succession, founded on the decree passed in King Rudolf’s Assembly, were now definitely repudiated. Charles dealt in different ways with these sets of opponents. The turbulent rioters he forcibly suppressed, but readily admitted to favour when repentant. From Bavaria, however, he thought it necessary to take stronger securities. After he had defeated the Dukes in battle, he succeeded in persuading them to sell to him lands and cities, which he added to the kingdom of Bohemia, and thereby extended that kingdom as far as Nürnberg. It might be plausibly urged that Bohemia needed securities for peace against so turbulent a neighbour as Bavaria; but it was evident, from the additions to his kingdom which Charles carried out at a later time, that this was but part of his scheme for securing to Bohemia that predominance in the Empire which was hinted at in the Golden Bull. Bavaria and the smaller princes being brought to reason, there remained still the struggle with Austria. Here one might have expected that the long-standing feud between Bohemian and Austrian, and between the House of Luxemburg and the House of Hapsburg, would have made the contest deadly in its course and crushing in its results. Strange to say, it ended in a settlement which must, even at the time, have startled some Bohemians, though no doubt they could never have expected that the following century would see the claim then legalised grow into practical results. In consideration of the peaceable abandonment by the House of Hapsburg of its immediate claims, it was promised the succession to the throne of Bohemia as soon as the direct lines of Charles and of his brother John should have come to an end. In all these matters Charles had shown a genuine desire for peace and order, which must surely deserve all recognition.

The same credit cannot be given to another phase of his policy, which arose from his relations with Louis, the son of his former rival, the Emperor Louis of Bavaria. The causes of this quarrel must be shortly told. John, the brother of Charles, had married Margaretha Maultasche, Countess of Tyrol; and he had thereby acquired her lands. Margaretha, who seems to have been as foul in mind as she was ugly in face, made a false charge of impotency against her husband; and, under this excuse, she hastened to welcome the advances of young Louis, the son of the Emperor, who helped her to drive her husband from the Tyrol.

The Emperor recognised a so-called marriage between his son and Margaretha; and this act contributed not a little to the storm of indignation which drove the Bavarian from the throne of the Empire and raised Charles to his place. Charles was scarcely seated on the throne, before he resolved to revenge his brother by a raid on the Tyrol. The raid produced no results but bloodshed and misery; and John was forced to console himself for the loss of his lands by the Margravate of Moravia, and for the loss of Margaretha by marriage with a more faithful wife.

But the quarrel between Charles and Louis was not yet at an end. On the extinction of the line of the former Margraves of Brandenburg, the territory had been granted to Louis by his father, and he had remained in undisturbed possession of it for several years. Suddenly, in 1348, a claimant came forward to the Margravate. This man declared that his name was Waldemar; that he was son of the late Margrave of Brandenburg; that, since 1319, he had been supposed to be dead; that his death had been really pretended, in order to escape from a marriage, which, after its celebration, he had found to be illegal; and lastly that, his wife being now dead, he had come forward to claim his inheritance. The story was sufficiently absurd; and it might have been thought that, even if it were true, a prince who had pretended to be dead for nearly thirty years, might, in the interest of peace, consent to pretend a little longer. Charles’s excuse for crediting the imposture was that, as he was too young to remember the real Waldemar, he trusted in the evidence of the Duke of Saxony and other princes of the Empire, who, after investigating the case, declared their belief in the genuineness of the claim. Encouraged by this evidence, Charles only too gladly seized the opportunity for avenging his brother. He declared war on Louis, removed him from his Margravate, and established Waldemar in his place. Eventually it was proved that the so-called Waldemar was the subject and tool of the Duke of Saxony; and Charles, convinced of the imposture, was forced to reinstate Louis in Brandenburg. But, his attention once fixed on this province, he saw in it a new opportunity for aggrandising his House and Kingdom; and, in restoring it to Louis, he secured to his own son Wenceslaus the succession to the Margravate.

But, if this unfortunate episode illustrates afresh the dangers which Charles had to encounter in combining his positions of German Emperor and Bohemian King, there was at least one side of his policy for which Germans, even more than Bohemians, have cause to thank him. It has already been mentioned that in the Golden Bull Charles had asserted the right of the Electors of the Empire to choose an Emperor without waiting for the confirmation of the Pope. This bold proposal was connected with that desire for a German rather than a Roman Empire, which Rudolf of Hapsburg and other wise rulers had cherished. Charles, as we shall see, had no desire to weaken the Papacy in spiritual matters, and he had been willing enough to go to Rome to be formally crowned in the sacred city; but he wished to free the German princes from that intolerable burden of the rule over Italy which was always involving the Emperors in useless expeditions, and at the same time to prevent the Popes from interfering in German affairs.