(b) [The May Manifestations in Prague].
IX. [BOHEMIA AS A BULWARK AGAINST PAN-GERMANISM]
[APPENDIX OF SOME RECENT DOCUMENTS]
WHAT IS AUSTRIA-HUNGARY?
1. The Habsburg Empire is built upon centuries-old traditions of reaction and violence. Its present power is chiefly based on the alliance which Bohemia and Hungary concluded with Austria against the Turkish peril in 1526. The Czechs freely elected the Habsburgs to the throne of Bohemia which remained a fully independent state, its alliance with Austria and Hungary being purely dynastic. But soon the Habsburgs began to violate the liberties of Bohemia which they were bound by oath to observe, and this led finally to the fateful Czech revolution of 1618. At the battle of the White Mountain in 1620 the Czechs suffered a defeat and were cruelly punished for their rebellion. All their nobility were either executed or sent into exile, and their property confiscated. The country was devastated by the imperial hordes, and its population was reduced from 3,000,000 to 800,000 during the Thirty Years' War.
In 1627 Ferdinand II. greatly curtailed the administrative rights of Bohemia, yet he did not dare to deprive her entirely of her independence. In his "Renewed Ordinance of the Land" Ferdinand declared the Bohemian crown to be hereditary in the House of Habsburg, and reserved legislative power to the sovereign. But otherwise the historical rights of Bohemia remained valid, notwithstanding all subsequent arbitrary centralising measures taken by the Habsburgs. Bohemia's rights were repeatedly recognised by each succeeding Habsburg. Legally Bohemia is an independent state to-day.
The heavy persecutions inflicted upon Bohemia had a disastrous effect upon her intellectual life and national development which were completely paralysed until the end of the eighteenth century, when owing to the humanitarian ideals of those times, and as a reaction against the Germanising centralistic efforts of Joseph II., the Czechs again began to recover their national consciousness. This revival marked the beginning of the Czecho-Slovak struggle for the re-establishment of their independence. The movement was at first literary, and only in the forties became political. It was a continuous struggle against reaction and absolutism, and if the Czecho-Slovaks to-day can boast of an advanced civilisation, it is only owing to their perseverance and hard endeavours, and not because of any good-will on the part of the Austrian Government which put every possible obstacle in their way.