King Wenceslaus became King also of Poland and eventually, when the male line of the Hungarian kings died out, he was offered the crown of Hungary as well. He accepted it for his son, who succeeded him, but who turned out to be a weak and dissolute man, and with his death ended the male line of the house of Premsyl.
PRAGUE: THE HRADSCHIN, FROM WALLENSTEINSTRASSE
Various experiments in rulers followed, more or less unsatisfactory, including John of Luxembourg, who became blind, and was killed at Crécy, as mentioned above. His son Charles held the dignity of Emperor (as Charles IV.), as well as that of King of Bohemia. Charles founded the first German university, that of Prague, and was the originator of the Golden Bull, a charter which settled—so far as it could be settled—the difficult question of the right of election to the position of emperor. He was succeeded in turn by his two sons. In the reign of the second, named Sigismund, arose the celebrated reformer John Huss, or Hus, a Bohemian, whose fame is second only to that of Wyclif in England. He was born in 1369 at the village of Huss, from which, as was common in those days, he derived the surname which distinguished him from other Johns.
The people of Bohemia are the Czechs, the most important branch of the Slav race, and they have a burning sense of their national dignity, which seems to be centred more in the preservation of their language than in anything else. Up to the Middle Ages Latin had everywhere been the language of communication in Bohemia for all official and religious purposes, as it had in Austria and Hungary, but when John Huss came into prominence it was chiefly because he fanned the flame of nationalism, and was the first to bring out in Czech books and pamphlets stirring up patriotism and appealing everywhere to the strong sense of nationality in the people. Consequently he was adored by them. He was a disciple and follower of Wyclif, who was a little senior to him. Mr. Geoffrey Drage, in his interesting book Austria-Hungary, thus sums him up:
The Wyclif of Bohemia, like his English forerunner, embodied all that was required to satisfy the moral needs of the time. A priest, he preached the reform of the Church; a scholar, he popularized the Divine Word in the common language; a patriot, he tried to rescue the Bohemian nationality from the intellectual oppression of the German minority.
Huss denounced the abuses then to be found in the Church strenuously and at all times. Papal wrath was aroused against him. He was summoned to the Council of Constance, and went under a safe-conduct, but was imprisoned and, after some time, burnt to death on July 6, 1415, his birthday, a fate which fell also on his fellow-citizen and follower, Jerome of Prague. The end of these two earnest men aroused a storm of wrath in their native country and the doctrines of the Reformation swept over the land. Civil war followed, and continued until the demands of the Hussites were granted. The great leader of the Hussites was Zizka, who showed admirable judgment and courage. His name is held in little less reverence than those of Huss and Jerome themselves.
Though the kings of Bohemia were nominally elective, yet as a rule the crown descended from father to son as smoothly as in countries where the dignity was hereditary. That is to say, when there was a son to succeed, but it very frequently happened that, as in the case of other titles when heirs are earnestly desired, heirs very often failed to put in an appearance. As Sigismund had no sons, he managed to secure the succession of the throne to Albert, Archduke of Austria, who had married his daughter. Albert, however, reigned a very short time. A posthumous son was born to him, and after considerable debate, he was crowned king at the age of fourteen, only to die unmarried five years later, as a result of the terrible plague which acted as such a scourge in the Middle Ages.
The Bohemians were therefore once more in the unenviable position of having to choose a king, and the influence which the Reformed doctrines had by this time gained is shown in the choice of the first “heretic” king, a national leader called George of Podebrad. After Podebrad’s death thirteen years later, there was great rivalry for the vacant place, numberless claimants starting up in the persons of the rulers of the small kingdoms adjoining Bohemia, but at length the son of the King of Poland was selected, as there was a very close community of interest between Poland and Bohemia. He eventually became King of Hungary also, and was succeeded in all three kingdoms by his son Louis.
Louis was the unfortunate monarch who perished in the debacle at the battle of Mohács in Hungary, when the Turks swept in like a tidal wave and submerged the unhappy country for generations. So fearful an impression did this disaster make upon the minds of the Hungarians that even to this day, when a man loses house or land or parents or children, it is a saying, “More was lost on Mohács field.”