Introduces a picturesque character, King John of Bohemia, Count of
Luxemburg, whose final exploit and end should be familiarly known by
every Englishman. This chapter tells of the many chivalrous adventures
undertaken by this monarch, of how little good and how much harm he did
to his country. There is also mention of an English King, of the Black
Prince, and of many other more or less famous persons, who have gone to
swell the gorgeous pageant of those who all down the ages have worked
weal or woe to Bohemia and its capital, Prague. Of John Henry of
Carinthia and his interesting spouse, Margaret Maultasche, of the usual
German machinations against any peace or contentment in Bohemia, of
Popes and anti-Popes, you will hear in this chapter; and finally you
will make the acquaintance of one of Bohemia's greatest rulers, Charles,
first Bohemian King and fourth Roman Emperor of that name. You may gain
some idea of the difficulties Charles had to overcome, and will begin to
realize what he, the great founder, did for his country and its
capital.
Prague was in holiday vein, happy and optimistic, its prevailing mood,
on that day in 1311 when John, Count of Luxemburg, and Elizabeth,
daughter of Wenceslaus II, were crowned. No doubt the ceremony took
place on the Hrad[vs]any, and the steep approaches to the Castle Hill
would be thronged with cheerful merrymakers; I wonder whether the
Bohemians of those days said "_Na zdar_!" as frequently as they do
to-day!
The Pragers had every reason to be happy and hopeful, for no change
could bring about a worse state of affairs than that which had
characterized the five years between the death of the last male
P[vr]emysl and the elevation of the first Luxemburg to the throne of
Bohemia. That period was a sort of interregnum which was filled up with
civil war, with murders among relatives, and was bringing Bohemia to the
verge of anarchy.
The troubles of the time were largely caused by the newly arrived House
of Habsburg, and the state of the Empire at that period reflects German
mentality. The seven German Electors had been careful to go outside
their own charmed circle for a King, and one who would carry out their
wishes. They therefore picked out what we may call a second-class
magnate as likely to be amenable. They met with disappointment. Rudolph
was out for himself. His victory over P[vr]emysl Ottokar II was welcomed
by the Germans, who could never see a neighbour, especially a Slav,
growing in importance, without showing signs of consuming jealousy. To
break down the power of Ottokar the Bohemian was a meritorious act. To
acquire for private and family use some of that King's finest
possessions, Upper and Lower Austria, was not appreciated by the
Electors. Therefore when Rudolph died the Electors turned down his son
Albrecht, who put up for the imperial crown, and elected Adolph of
Nassau instead. Adolph also tried to make something out of the post of
Emperor, so the Electors threw him over, and he was shortly afterwards
killed in battle. Albrecht of Habsburg then came to the throne, and
taking up the family policy of profitable matrimonial alliances, married
his son Rudolph to the widow of the P[vr]emysl Wenceslaus II, Elizabeth,
whom we have already met. I am rather sorry for this Elizabeth. Whether
she liked her second husband or not, it must have been uncomfortable to
find him becoming more and more unpopular among the people, who in any
case had not expressed undue enthusiasm over his accession to their
throne. He was chiefly unpopular on account of his meanness; the
Bohemians, though thrifty almost to the verge of parsimony among
themselves, do not like that trait in a foreigner, especially one who
comes to cut some sort of figure as King or what-not amongst them.
However, Rudolph died before a year of sovereignty was out, leaving that
poor lady Elizabeth a widow for the second time, and under even more
trying conditions. Despite all Habsburg precautions towards settling the
crown of Bohemia on their own house, the nobles of the country proceeded
to assemble a Diet at Prague in order to elect a new King. Elizabeth had
to attend that function, and must have had a lurid time of it; the
nobles raised no end of a storm, according to the Bohemian historian
Palacky. There was one Tobias of Bechyn leading the case for the
introduction of another foreigner as ruler, the opposition calling on
him not to favour the claims of foreigners, possibly enemies, to rule
over Bohemia, whereupon Tobias shouted: "If you wish at any price to
obtain a native Prince, go to Stadic, among the peasants; there you will
perhaps find a relation of the extinct royal family; bring him here and
seat him on the throne of your country." Thereupon ensued pandemonium.
One Ulrich of Lichtenburg slew Tobias forthwith, and several other
nobles were killed in the fray before the Diet settled down to the
conclusion that Henry, Duke of Carinthia, should be called in to rule
over Bohemia. Henry was supposed to be popular chiefly because he had
married a P[vr]emysl, as we have already reported--Ann, daughter of
Wenceslaus II; anyway, Prague received the couple with acclamations.
Albrecht of Habsburg objected, as he had fixed on his son Frederick as
heir to the Bohemian lands. There were the usual troubles: Albrecht's
troops invaded Bohemia and Moravia, and some of them continued to hold a
few frontier towns even after Albrecht had been killed by his nephew
John and the Electors had gone elsewhere in search of an Emperor.
With characteristic distrust of each other or of any German of
first-rate importance, the Electors went to the second-class magnates
again, and this time their choice fell on Henry, Count of Luxemburg.
Carlyle derives this name of Luxemburg via Luzzenburg from Luetzelburg,
which he translates into Littleborough. Carlyle is very pleased with
this derivation, and uses it to "point a moral and adorn a tale." In all
humility I differ from Carlyle in this derivation, my only excuse being
that I happen to know the dialect as spoken round about Luxemburg and
among the Eiffel people, sufficiently well, and that in their vernacular
there is no such word as could be distorted from Luetzel-via Luzzen-into
Luxem-and then mean "little." It is really refreshing to be able to
differ thoroughly, heartily, unreservedly, with a philosopher of
old-established authority.
Carlyle likes to point out that this insignificant little dynasty of
Luxemburg produced some great men as Emperors. He is quite right there
too; but so also did Habsburg. As to the Luxemburgers, it must be borne
in mind that though of German origin they were French by sentiment and
upbringing--I quote Dr. Seton Watson from memory.
German origin, a phrase that has been very freely used of late years, is
a somewhat elastic term, and frequently implies a mental rather than a
racial qualification. Of the old original Teutons, the Germans of yore,
there are few representatives left over--you may find some in Frisia and
about the Porta Westphalica, on the east coast of Yorkshire, too,
perhaps; the all-Germans, the _Allemanni_, as I believe they called
themselves at one time, have seldom, if ever, formed a clearly defined
political entity. The Franks in the early days of the Merovingians, by
no means an estimable people, were probably purely Teuton; they
separated more and more from their less civilized race-kindred, and by
the time the Frankish Empire had reached its zenith its people had
absorbed a good deal of other blood, which mixture crystallized into the
French nation and soon broke away from any racial relations with the
Teutons. Then the arch-enemies of the Franks, the Saxons, mixed freely
with Slavonic races which extended well into the Hanover country and all
over Mecklenburg at one time, so that those who are now called Saxons
are, next to the Prussians, more thoroughly mixed with Slavs than any
other Germans. The Bavarians, again, must have in them a good deal of
the persistent Celtic element which they inherited from the Boievari who
at one time left Bohemia for Bavaria. The amusing thing is that those
who most loudly declaim on the subject of _Deutschland ueber Alles_ are
the most thoroughly mixed of the lot. It is idle to speculate on what
would have become of German imperial conceits if the German race and its
admixtures, like that of our islands, had been isolated from its
neighbours by water instead of being constantly exposed to inroads from
all sides, and consequently moved to follow up any success at arms into
a neighbour's country. It seems as if a permanent Germanic
Empire--material, not only sentimental--were never destined to a long
and prosperous existence. These speculations, however, are best left to
the historian, and we will return to the city of Prague.
We have seen John of Luxemburg and his wife Elizabeth happily crowned on
the Hrad[vs]any at Prague and the city relieved by this event from the
prospect of prolonged internal disorder. Henry of Carinthia, who
succeeded Rudolph, had not proved satisfactory. He also had taken the
precaution of marrying a P[vr]emysl, was in fact John's brother-in-law,
but he failed to maintain the popularity which he enjoyed when called to
the throne, and was eventually chased out of Bohemia to make room for
John. Now John was heavily handicapped and did little to remove his
disabilities, in fact he rather aggravated them. He was only fourteen
when he found himself a King and a married man. His father, a shrewd and
enterprising monarch, died before John had really become acquainted with
his capital, and so there was no unbiassed adviser to whom the young
ruler could turn. John did not live on the best of terms with his
mother-in-law, who from the dower-house at Kralove Hradec, called by the
Germans Koeniggratz, interfered a good deal in the affairs of state; the
trouble is said to have arisen originally between the two Elizabeths,
mother and daughter, and even led to some fighting in which the city of
Prague took an active part. By temperament John was not equal to his
task; he was, it appears, thoroughly unpractical and entirely embued
with all sorts of romantic notions. Those who watched John's doings from
afar, and were not immediately affected by their results, could afford
to approve of him and call him _corona militiae_ as did King Edward III
of England. John was what may be called the "soul of chivalry," in his
opinion Paris was the most chivalrous city in the world, and that is
probably why he felt called upon to roam Europe as a knight-errant
instead of looking after his wife and her relatives, and incidentally
his Kingdom of Bohemia. According to Count Luetzow, John intended to
re-establish the Round Table of King Arthur, and to this end he invited
all the most celebrated knights of Europe to a tournament at Prague;
"nobody responded to the call." So John went abroad for his amusement
and found it in plenty. To begin with, there was always something doing
in his line between rival German Kings and Emperors, so we find him
helping Louis, Duke of Bavaria, at Wittelsbach, to victory over the
Habsburger Frederick at Muehldorf. Expeditions to Hungary, Italy, France
and against the heathen Lithuanians all helped to pass away John's time
pleasurably and unprofitably; as Palacky says: "It would be necessary to
write the history of all Europe if we attempted to describe all the
feuds into which King John entered with chivalrous bravery, but also
with frivolity. It then became a proverb, that 'nothing can be done
without the help of God and of the King of Bohemia.'"
John proved an expensive luxury to Bohemia, and he reigned for
thirty-six years, so his country, although rich, yet peopled by a canny
and thrifty population, must have been thankful when at last he was
knocked on the head at Crecy. The story is well known to us all, so we
need not linger on it. John bequeathed his motto to the Black Prince,
who could well afford to pay a graceful compliment by accepting it;
after all, not he, but Bohemia, had to pay for John's fun. John kept the
mint of his country busy striking ducats, a coin of his own conception,
a very good and full-weight coin too, but he probably took most of the
ducats abroad for his various diversions; there are, however, a few left
in the museum of Prague, I believe. John had quaint ways of raising
money; one of them must have led to a great deal of inconvenience to the
citizens of Prague, who on Sundays and holidays were wont to make
excursions into the country. No one was allowed a drink within a certain
radius of the capital; this was all very fine for the publicans of
Prague, who no doubt had come to a suitable arrangement with the King,
but it fills me with sorrow to reflect on the streams of excursionists
and travellers doing the last lap home on a hot summer's day.
There is nothing of beauty in the panorama of Prague as seen from my
terrace, which I can ascribe to Bohemia's chivalrous and eccentric King.
He was too busy spending his country's wealth in trying to settle other
people's quarrels, and raising others of his own, to think of
beautifying his capital. Nevertheless I could point out to you traces of
beautiful work for which John may indirectly derive some credit. This
enterprising monarch had, as I have already mentioned, found occasion to
go fighting about in Italy. He was induced thereto by the usual
picturesque lack of sufficient reason just at the moment when he was
attempting something useful. John's predecessor on the throne, Henry of
Carinthia, with whom he had become reconciled, had no male heirs, so
Bohemia's King called on Henry at Innsbruck in order to arrange a
marriage between the former's second son John Henry and the latter's
daughter Margaret, known in German history as Maultasche, of whom
Carlyle speaks so unkindly. While at Innsbruck, John was invited by the
Lombard town of Brescia to assist it against the Lord of Verona, Mastino
della Scala. King John at once dropped the useful business, dashed in
amongst the squabbling Italians and won a number of victories which gave
him possession of a fair slice of Italy. He proved quite incapable of
holding it, and his gains rapidly melted away like snow on the sunny
southern slopes of those mountains that shut off the smiling plains of
Venetia against the barbarous north. Here John's eldest son Charles
comes upon the scene, and this is perhaps the only real good that ever
came out of the first Luxemburg ruler of Bohemia, namely, an heir who
should live to set up a Golden Prague as fitting capital to a happy and
prosperous country.
Charles had had an unhappy childhood between his grandmother, the
unfortunate widow Elizabeth, a somewhat uneven-tempered mother, and an
erratic and unreasonable father. The unhappy lad had even been
imprisoned by his father on suspicion of being concerned in a conspiracy
with his mother to dethrone John. Charles must have been about five
years at the time, for he was only seven when, a few years after his
release, King John took him to the French Court for his education. Here
Charles acquired his love of learning, his refined sense of beauty and
steadfastness of purpose, all of which he devoted without stint to his
country, and to him is chiefly due the glorious composition of the
towers and steeples which rise up out of mysterious old Prague. Charles,
and through him Prague, benefited by John's Italian venture, in that the
gracious spirit of the Renaissance came to Bohemia out of his father's
chivalrous exploits. Moreover, Charles, though only seventeen years of
age, was thus given an opportunity of proving his metal in the field; he
won several victories which, however, were fruitless, and above all
learnt the art of governing. So when John and he left Italy, under
pressure from the natives, Charles was competent to represent his father
at home, while the latter went off on his knight-errantry.
As may be easily imagined, the people of Bohemia, and notably the
burghers of Prague, had become discontented under the exactions imposed
upon them by their extravagant King and were not inclined to look kindly
upon a Luxemburg successor. Prague, like other continental cities, had
become aware of its importance, and was quite prepared to resort to arms
in order to emphasize its opinion. The city had already taken to arms in
support of their native Queen Elizabeth against her stranger husband
John, so Charles had no easy time at first. However, he had the
qualities his father lacked, complete self-possession and steadfastness
of purpose; moreover, unlike his father, he was in thorough sympathy
with his people, which John never was, and spoke their language well,
which feat, it appears, John never attempted. Father and son seldom
agreed on any subject; probably John considered Charles no sportsman,
and told him so frequently. I cannot imagine John's conversation as
anything but _ad hominem_, and his jokes as weighty as a kick from a
troop-horse, and as pleasant. With a little thinking you can find
another, quite recent monarch, who takes after John of Luxemburg in some
respects, though he failed to achieve such a picturesque ending. And the
occasion of John's chivalrous exit arose out of his second marriage. It
really makes a pretty picture if you try to figure to yourself John and
his son Charles setting out together for Paris both with the intention
of marrying a French Princess, for John, undeniably brave, was braced up
for this second venture. John married Beatrice of Bourbon, Charles
Blanche of Valois; if I know anything of John, he probably stayed in
Paris, whereas Charles would hurry back to Prague to continue his
programme of improvements. Amongst these improvements is one directly
inspired by Blanche, his "snow-white" bride, which you may see to this
day. I could just point it out to you, the Church of "St. Mary of the
Snow," but it is difficult to pick out among the sea of roofs. Although
it is the tallest church in Prague, it no longer has steeple or spire
pointing to the sky; whatever of the kind there was disappeared during
some street-fighting or other which frequently took place around this
church. If you follow the Narodni T[vr]ida straight along from the river
towards the Vaclavske Nam[ve]sti you will see "St. Mary's of the Snow"
on the right, tucked away behind some quaint old buildings formerly the
Carmelite Monastery founded by Charles.
It would seem that Charles, when in doubt, either built a new church or
restored an old one. There was a good deal to do in Prague in the latter
line of business especially, and Charles, with the real founder's zeal,
set about putting his capital in order. He was rather handicapped by an
expensive father, who, however, had no particular objection to repairing
religious institutions, his trouble being that he generally had no money
left for constructive work after he had been round dealing out
destruction, impelled thereto by his chivalrous conceit. I can quite
imagine John as a man subconsciously religious and intermittently
pious, so, for instance, he would probably invoke all the saints he
could think of, to aid him in some warlike enterprise, then dash into
the fray forgetting all about the saints; one does. He might perchance
remember one or other of those he had invoked, after the fun was over,
and stand them a candle or so, if he could borrow the money for this
gift from his loyal subjects. I know of one case at least where John
bestowed largess upon a deserving institution. This happened in 1342,
six years before Bohemia's adventurous King had died in the King of
England's tent on the battlefield of Crecy. The object of the monarch's
generosity was the monastery of Emaus. John, though always jealous of
his son's popularity, had handed a considerable share of the government
of Bohemia and Moravia to the latter and probably let Charles carry on
as long as he, John, was not bothered with domestic details, and always
could touch a bit for any tempting military expedition that offered.
Emaus seems to have been a favourite enterprise of Charles. You remember
that I have pointed out the place to you; I can just see it from the
terrace with its twin towers of raw sienna tone. I also told you about
the heathen burial ground, Na Morani, about the Church of St. Cosmas and
Damian, and how St. Wenceslaus worshipped at their shrine. King Charles
seems to have acquired the same general regard for those two saints, and
this may have decided him to found a monastery on the rocky eminence
whereon Emaus has withstood many vicissitudes during the stormy course
of several centuries of Bohemia's history. Charles must have conceived
the plan of founding this monastery some time before the middle of the
fourteenth century, for we find the following entry in its chronicles
which speaks of John and Charles, and in a Latin quaintly picturesque
and careless: "Nos Johannes dei gracia Boemie rex ac Lucemburgensis
comes et Karolus eius primogenitus marchio Morawie." It would not be
easy to get any more mistakes of grammar and spelling into this
sentence. So John had made a donation to the new foundation--out of
some one else's pocket; the butchers of Prague were privileged to pay
for the King's generosity.
Charles was of a careful, saving disposition; he also raised funds out
of other people's purses for his good works. So we find again among the
records of Emaus that he called upon the butchers to find the necessary
money; the meatstalls of the Mala Strana were privileged to find a
revenue of sixteen Bohemian silver groschen, a coin dating from the days
of Wenceslaus II, towards the new foundation. The different taxes and
excise duties were also made to contribute, a tithe of the wine tax,
some appropriate sums from bridge and water tolls; besides these sources
of revenue Charles endowed Emaus with landed property, farms and fields
and vineyards. Begun in the reign of John, the building and institution
of this new monastery was not completed until 1372, when Charles had for
many years been in a position to describe himself as "Carolus Dei
gratiae Rom. rex, semper augustus et Boemiae rex." Monday after Easter
1372 was the great day on which the Church and monastery were solemnly
consecrated and dedicated to Saints Hieronymus, Adalbert, Procop, Cyril
and Methodius, but as the consecration gospel told the moving story of
the Risen Saviour walking with two disciples, who knew Him not, towards
Emaus, the name of that place clung to church and monastery ever after.
Though Emaus started out under such very august patronage, it had to put
up with many vicissitudes, among the minor ones being acts of
trangression on its grounds by neighbours; so, for instance, we hear of
one good man Odelenus, who would dig under the monastery wall to the
endangering of the same, and as the stout burgher would not desist nor
fill up the excavations he had made, he was excommunicated with all due
solemnity.
It is said that Charles intended Emaus solely for the benefit of those
who still held to the Slavonic liturgy, from the very outset. But I find
that Charles did not approach the Pope on this subject and get his
sanction for the Archbishop of Prague to grant the Benedictine monks of
Emaus licence to perform the Slavonic ritual, until the papacy of
Clement VI. I gather that he had waited until he could find an amenable
pontiff; what is more, Clement VI as anti-Pope, probably did not cut
much ice even had he been addicted to that practice. It was undoubtedly
due to the fact that the Slavonic liturgy was still in force that Emaus
escaped destruction at the hands of the Hussites, as the monks were
Utraquists and remained of that persuasion until the last Slavonic
abbot, Adam Benedict Bawarowsky, with two surviving monks, was turned
out to make room for Spanish Benedictines from Montserrat under their
abbot, Benedict di Pennabosa y Mondragon. These Spaniards were inducted
by Emperor Ferdinand III, King of Bohemia, himself.
Of those early, ardent days in the annals of Emaus there is but little
left to recall Charles and his works. The library of the Benedictines
was destroyed by fire; only two works were saved, the "Emaus-Reimser
Evangelium" and the "Registrum Literarum monasterii Slavorum." The
frescoes which adorn the cloisters seem as fresh to-day as when the
Italian masters, brought to Prague by Charles, stood aside to let the
monarch see the finished work, and that was several years before the
consecration festival. The interior of the church is beautiful, its
slender Gothic columns vanishing into the hallowed shadows of the roof.
The "plain song" of the remaining monks still rings with the fervour of
simple, steadfast faith. The main building of the monastery is now an
academy of music where the rising generation is being taught to
appreciate the latest eccentricities of modern music.
Charles IV, first Bohemian King of that name, ruled from 1346 to 1378,
so the building of Emaus covered pretty nearly all the years of his
reign and in fact went back to the unhappy times before he ascended the
throne. His father was evidently a difficult person to live with; not
only his extravagance and erratic habits, but also a thoroughly
unjustified suspicion of his elder son, must have caused the latter a
great deal of misery. Instead of following the precedent of the
P[vr]emysls in dynastic disputes, Charles wisely abstained from open
opposition to John, although the people's affection had been transferred
from father to son. Added to this there were the usual troubles caused
by the German Princes. John had never even been "placed" in the running
for the imperial crown; goodness knows what would have happened if the
weal of the Holy Roman Empire had depended on him. Louis of Wittelsbach,
who contested the imperial throne with Frederick the Fair of Austria,
and had beaten the latter handsomely at Muehldorf, was nevertheless none
too safely seated, and became involved in the unending squabbles with
the Papacy, aggravated in his case by the removal of the Pope to
Avignon. John, of course, sided against Louis and with the Pope, so
Louis joined with the German Princes in trying to deprive John Henry of
the Tyrol and Carinthia, which the latter considered his property on
marrying Margaret Maultasche; he was lucky enough to retain possession
of the Tyrol while the Austrian Dukes kept Carinthia. That little matter
settled, John went off and fought the Lithuanians again--he called it a
crusade--and came home from that campaign without the sight of one eye,
which he had lost through illness, a loss which soon led to complete
blindness but not to any disinclination to go out anywhere and fight
anyone. Father John must have been a considerable nuisance in the
family. In the meantime Margaret added her mite to the general gaiety of
nations by falling in love with Louis of Brandenburg, the handsome son
of Emperor Louis; she counterbalanced this by a violent hatred of her
husband, the unlucky John Henry. So Charles had his hands full, and he
seems to have been the only level-headed member of the family. With all
these troubles about him he nevertheless continued to manage the affairs
of Bohemia and Moravia, to straighten out the finances of the Kingdom
while finding sufficient pocket-money for his father's hobby of serving
any other cause but his own, and also to soothe the ruffled feelings of
John Henry and keep some of that Prince's property for the House of
Luxemburg. It was during this hectic time that Charles managed to get
the Pope to raise the Bishop of Prague to the rank of Archbishop, an
important step, as it set the new Archbishopric free from that of Maintz
and thus gave it an opportunity of developing on its own rather than on
German lines. Count Luetzow points out the absurdity of the situation
caused by keeping the Bishopric of Prague under the Archbishop of Maintz
as follows: "It is curious to read that Charles was obliged to declare
on his oath that the language of Bohemia was a Slavonic one, entirely
different from the German language; that the distance from Prague to
Maintz was of about twelve day-journeys; and that the road lay through
other dioceses."
This concession on the part of the Pope was probably the result of the
visit John and Charles paid to the pontiff at Avignon; it had as
corollary that in future the Kings of Bohemia should be crowned by the
Archbishop of Prague. The first Archbishop of the new See was a Czech
and a strong man--Ernest of Pardubic. Another result of the trip which
father and son took to Avignon together seems to have been a more
complete reconciliation between the two.
We may linger for a while longer on that pathetic figure, the blind King
of Bohemia, before his exciting but futile career closes on the field of
Crecy. First we see him taking part in the solemn ceremony of installing
the new Archbishop; this would have taken place at the Cathedral Church
of St. Vitus on the Hrad[vs]any, amid surroundings bearing strong
evidence of the harm John's reign had brought on Bohemia, and on Prague
in particular, for we read that Charles found the castle, and probably
the church as well, in a state nearly approaching ruin from neglect.
Here again he had work to hand, and did it nobly; of this more later on.
After Ernest of Pardubic had been safely installed, King John started
off on another crusade against the heathen Lithuanians, probably as
payment for the concessions on the part of the Pope. No sooner was John
thoroughly engaged with his northern enemies than the German Louis
stirred up Hungary and Poland, and several others, against him. John
hurriedly returned home, beating Casimir of Poland and a Hungarian army
on the way, made some sort of an alliance with other enemies of his, and
eventually, with the aid of the Pope and five German Electors, got Louis
chased from the throne and his son Charles elected as German King
instead. All this happened in the early months of 1346. Meanwhile, by
July of that year, on the day following Charles's election, King Edward
III of England and the Black Prince had landed on the coast of France,
and were setting out through Normandy for Paris. On August 26th, St.
Rufus Day again, the anniversary of the death of P[vr]emysl Ottokar II,
John, King of Bohemia, brave, chivalrous and utterly misguided, died in
the tent of a knightly enemy, leaving him as device the appropriate
motto "_Ich dien!_"
Indeed, John had served every interest but his own; and Charles his son,
elected Emperor as fourth of that name, and first as King of Bohemia,
took into his own firm hands the tangled coils of Central European
affairs, making as centre of his activities his own city of Prague.