there is concealed the admission of the important constitutional
principle, that the king had no right to demand the service of his
subjects in a foreign war. In saner moods and at later periods,
Bohemians were eager to assert this great liberty. But, for the moment,
the king’s appeal acted like magic in silencing opposition and rousing
enthusiasm for the war. Songs were composed and speeches delivered in
honour of the siege of Milan; and, while the young nobility disregarded
the warnings of their elders and hastened to take up arms in the
Imperial cause, the peasants gladly left their wearisome occupations
and oppressed condition to flock to the banner of their beloved king.
The splendid services accomplished by Vladislav in that ill-fated war
strengthened his influence in the Councils of the Empire; and it is
at least pleasant to mention that, at the siege of Brescia, the King
of Bohemia used his influence with Barbarossa to soften the terms
offered to the unfortunate Brescians. His personal share in the war
was indeed cut short, partly by ill-health, partly by the necessity
of returning to Bohemia, which was disturbed by the insurrection of a
new pretender. But his son Frederick and his brother Theobald brought
new reinforcements to the camp of Barbarossa; and a large part of all
the glory that could be won in such a cause was due to the Bohemian
soldiers.
Nor was Vladislav less successful in rousing the enthusiasm of his
subjects in favour of another war, which had as little connection as
the Italian expedition had had with the welfare of Bohemia. Queen
Geysa, of Hungary, appealed to Vladislav in 1164 to help her young son
in his struggle against a pretender to the Hungarian throne. Again
Vladislav promised his help, and again the constitutional protest
against his promise produced an explanation which served to show
the deference of the king to the laws, while its complete success
proved his personal popularity in the country. This campaign gave
additional proof of the king’s military reputation; for the Emperor of
Constantinople, who had invaded Hungary on behalf of the rebels, was
eager to make a special peace with his Bohemian opponent; and when he
failed to effect this purpose, he speedily returned to his own country
and accepted the proposals of Vladislav about the terms of his peace
with Queen Geysa.
The reign of Vladislav stands out strangely in the middle of the
disorderly twelfth century. We see there a king suppressing disorder
without suppressing freedom; armed insurrection by selfish intriguers,
changing as if by magic into constitutional opposition on behalf of
most important liberties; and all these gains apparently connected with
an increase in military glory and national prestige, such as might well
dazzle even men of some sagacity and foresight.
But the glory, and, what was of far more importance, the peace of
Bohemia, were of short duration. The death of Bishop Daniel broke the
chief link between Vladislav and Barbarossa. The bishop had remained
with the Emperor during his Italian campaign; his counsels had always
been welcome, and his influence had, no doubt, been a strong force
in securing Bohemia to the Imperial cause. Nor did his death produce
a merely negative effect on the relations between Bohemia and the
Empire. It brought into play another influence which was exerted on the
opposite side.
Vladislav’s queen, Judith, favoured the party of Pope Alexander III.;
and by her advice a Saxon bishop, who had taken the Papal side, was
elected as Daniel’s successor. As the new bishop was totally ignorant
of the Bohemian language, his election weakened Vladislav’s popularity
with his people as much as his favour with the Emperor. Three years
later, the enemies of the king once more found their opportunity to
make use of these discontents against him. Vladislav, without any
consultation with the nobles, and without any notice to the Emperor,
resigned his power to his son Frederick; and the intriguers, whom he
had with such difficulty suppressed, were now easily able to rouse an
insurrection against his successor. Then followed twenty-five years of
miserable dynastic squabbles, during which Conrad of Moravia was able
to play the part of king-maker, and, by the help of the puppets whom he
placed on the throne of Bohemia, to secure a temporary independence for
the province which he governed.
At last the contest was brought to an end by the accession of King
Pr̆emysl to the throne in 1198; and he settled the question of Moravian
government by conceding the rule of that province to his brother
Vladislav. Pr̆emysl came at the right moment to recover for Bohemia the
power and influence of which the civil wars of a quarter of a century
had deprived her. Once more, as in the time of Henry IV., Germany’s
difficulty was Bohemia’s opportunity. The death of Henry VI., the
son of Barbarossa, had thrown the Empire into all the disorder which
arises from a disputed succession; and Pr̆emysl found his interest in
playing off one rival emperor against another, just as the Emperors
had previously played with the rival candidates to the Bohemian
throne. Philip and Otto soon found that their respective causes were
practically at the mercy of the Bohemian king; and, if Dubravsky has
any authority for saying that Pr̆emysl’s surname of Ottakar was a
tribute to his devotion to Otto, never, certainly, did a nickname
convey keener irony.
Nor did the election of Frederick II. diminish the power of Pr̆emysl.
His influence had considerably contributed to that election; and
Frederick’s lifelong war against popes and priests compelled him to
rely on any friend who would stand by him against those dangerous
antagonists. In his eagerness to secure Pr̆emysl’s help, the Emperor
confirmed to the Bohemian crown those German territories in Silesia
and the Lausitz, which had so long been the subject of dispute. He
also granted to Pr̆emysl the power of appointing bishops in Bohemia
without any outside interference. Pr̆emysl’s sympathies with Frederick
were further quickened by the struggles with the clergy of Bohemia in
which he found himself involved. The same difficulties which our Henry
II. had so recently experienced, in his attempts to bring the clergy
under the authority of lay tribunals, were harassing Pr̆emysl during
a large part of his reign; and his attitude in these matters provoked
against him Papal censures as stern as those which were aimed at his
Imperial ally. The contest between king and priest in Bohemia ended in
a compromise; but the substantial victory probably remained with the
king.
Pr̆emysl’s vigour tended, no doubt, to reconcile the discontented
nobles to his rule; but, in the reign of his son Wenceslaus, the
opposition again began to make head. Young Pr̆emysl Ottakar, the son
of Wenceslaus, had been appointed Margrave of Moravia; and the power
connected with this office induced the nobles to make the young prince
the centre of their intrigues. The terrible events of 1241 suppressed
faction for a time in Bohemia; for in that year the invasion of Genghis
Khan shook all the States of Europe to their centre, and gradually
forced into the background any minor cause of division. The details of
this invasion are more properly connected with the events to be dealt
with in the following chapter. Here it is enough to say that the panic
produced by this invasion enabled Wenceslaus to rally round him the
whole forces of the kingdom, and to establish the reputation of Bohemia
as the champion of European civilisation.
But there was one ruler, in whom neither fear of danger nor gratitude
for deliverance could quench his hostility to the Slavonic kingdom.
This was Frederick of Babenberg, Duke of Austria, who was otherwise
known as Frederick the Quarrelsome. Ever since the time when Vratislav
had defeated the Margrave Leopold in his rising against Henry IV., the
rulers of Austria had been doubtful friends to Bohemia; and, though
accident might sometimes have forced them into an alliance, their
ordinary attitude was that of suspicion, if not of open hostility.
Frederick the Quarrelsome was one of the bitterest in his opposition.
He invaded Moravia in the very year after the repulse of the Mongols;
and he continued the struggle till his death.
That death, however, instead of bringing peace to Wenceslaus, only
raised against him a far more formidable opponent. The Emperor
Frederick had opposed the efforts of his turbulent namesake; but, when
the Duke died without an heir, it seemed an excellent opportunity for
seizing Austria as a fief of the Empire. Wenceslaus, on the other hand,
desired to secure the dukedom for his son Vladislav; and, in spite of
Imperial opposition, he seems to have won for his son the sympathies,
of a part, at least, of the Austrian nobles.
Thus then ended abruptly that alliance between Bohemia and the Empire
which had been so useful to both parties. Neither Wenceslaus nor
Frederick lost time in their declarations of hostility to each other.
In 1247 Wenceslaus openly joined in the schemes of Innocent IV., for
deposing the Emperor, and setting up William of Holland in his place;
and Frederick revenged himself by stirring up the discontented Bohemian
nobles against their king. The struggle was a sharp one; the rebels
succeeded for a time in deposing Wenceslaus and setting up young
Ottakar in his stead; but the threats of Innocent IV. brought them
back to their allegiance; and a compromise by which young Ottakar was
confirmed in his former government of Moravia removed him from the
ranks of his father’s enemies. The death of Frederick II. once more
plunged the Empire into disorder. Wenceslaus saw his opportunity in
this confusion; and, as Vladislav was now dead, the King persuaded
young Ottakar to seize the dukedom of Austria for himself. The
Austrians accepted their new duke without any apparent reluctance;
and thus, when Wenceslaus died in 1253, Ottakar II. became king of a
Bohemia, which included not only Silesia and the Lausitz, but also the
dukedom of Austria.
IV.
THE GROWTH OF BOHEMIAN LIFE FROM ACCESSION OF PR̆EMYSL OTTAKAR I. TO
DEATH OF PR̆EMYSL OTTAKAR II.
(1198-1278.)
In the present century the development of national constitutions
has had a special interest for historians. This interest has arisen
partly from the spectacle of the unusual number of new experiments
in government which have been made in our own time; partly from the
growing sense that the history of wars and Courts has become less
important, and that the growth of law and of popular life ought to
take the place of those exploded subjects of interest. But the exact
legal position of the different component parts of a nation is not
generally easy to ascertain at an early period of its history; nor,
when it is ascertained, has the knowledge always brought us nearer to
the discovery of the really living and progressive force in the nation
at that period.
Thus, in the case of Bohemia, though we get continual hints of national
feeling and popular aspiration, these do not always centre in legally
constituted bodies, nor do they keep pace with any orderly line of
constitutional development. Assemblies seem constantly to have met, but
these were, in the main, assemblies of nobles; and the general national
feeling more often took the form of an enthusiasm for the Bohemian
language, or the reverence for a native saint, than of a demand for the
extension of the rights of any class, or for a limitation of the royal
power.
Perhaps it was a natural consequence of this popular indifference to
political progress, as compared with the zeal for the preservation of
the national language, and the religious ritual, that, by the close
of the twelfth century, we find few traces remaining of those free
institutions which seemed to connect themselves with the story of
Libus̆a. Even those securities for popular freedom, which undoubtedly
prevailed in historical times, had been, in the course of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, corrupted into new sources of tyranny. Of these
the most important had been the Z̆upa, or local assembly. This had been
formed partly for purposes of self-defence, partly for ecclesiastical
organisation; and, though it had centred at one time in a castle, at
another in a church, yet it had originally been governed by a judge,
elected by the district.
But from the time of Boleslav the Cruel, the Dukes began to make it
their practice to grant these local judgeships to nobles who had done
them special service; and those nobles were generally allowed either to
sell their offices or to bequeath them to their heirs. The temptation
to use this position as an instrument of oppression was yet further
increased by the profit which the judges were allowed to make out of
the fines that they had inflicted. The money thus accumulated was often
used for the purchase of neighbouring lands; and thus lands formerly
held by freemen, or on the communal system, passed into the power of
the official nobles. In the meantime those nobles, who did not become
Z̆upani, were able to profit by the growing unpopularity of the local
tribunals to strengthen the power of their own feudal courts over their
dependants; while the continual wars, and the practice of selling
captives into slavery, encouraged the growth of an even more helpless
and degraded class. The coolness with which many of the grants of land
transfer workmen of various kinds as mere appendages of fields and
fishponds, is in itself a proof of the degraded position to which the
peasant class in Bohemia had been reduced; and the fact that military
service seemed one of the few means of escaping from serfdom led the
peasants to favour those wars which in the end increased their misery.
When the peculiarly disturbed state of Bohemia, which followed King
Vladislav’s retirement from power, had been for a time brought to an
end, or at least modified by the accession of Pr̆emysl Ottakar to the
throne of the kingdom, it became necessary to provide some remedy for
the miserable state of things which was destroying the country; and
above all to find a new opportunity for the development of peaceful
trade, and some power which could counteract the lawless intrigues of
the nobles. The calling into life of communities which should be out of
reach of the power both of feudalism and officialism was the natural
method of meeting these difficulties; and, in the ruin of the rest of
the country, there seemed to be two places where there still lingered
traditions that could be made available for this purpose.
Curiously enough, amid the decay of national freedom, the privileges
granted to foreigners still remained undiminished; and, stranger
still, it was from these communities that a new material for national
life was to be drawn. In the district of Poric̆, which Vratislav had
raised into a suburb of Prague, a settlement of German workmen had
been planted by that king; and to encourage them in the continuance of
their occupations, he had granted them rights of self-government, which
had survived the freedom of the Z̆upani, and the other elements of
independence which had been enjoyed by the poorer classes of Bohemia.
They had been allowed to choose their own judge without interference
from any one; and, except in the cases of the most extreme crimes,
which were dealt with by the Duke himself, they were allowed to carry
on their own affairs according to their own laws. They were never to
be compelled to go on military service, except when the actual defence
of the country required it. A Bohemian wishing to bring an action
against a German was obliged to prove his case through two German
witnesses and one Bohemian before a German judge. They were to be safe
from that compulsory intrusion into their houses by nobles who came
from a distance, which was one of the great burdens of the Bohemian
citizens; and in many other matters they were allowed to follow the
customs of their own country. The respect felt for these privileges
is sufficiently shown by the fact that, even in the time of turbulence
and disorder between the abdication of Vladislav, and the accession of
Pr̆emysl, we find a formal confirmation by Duke Sobeslav of Vratislav’s
grant to the settlers in Poric̆.
Here then Pr̆emysl could find a tradition which might justify him
in developing, without violent change, liberties of the greatest
importance to his country; and accordingly in 1213 he grants to the
citizens of Freudenthal the settlement of their town “in accordance
with that Teutonic law which has hitherto been unwonted and unused in
the lands of Bohemia and Moravia; but which, having been granted to
you first by our illustrious brother Vladislav, Margrave of Moravia,
we confirm with our royal authority.” And then, as an important hint
of coming developments, and an indication of the thoroughly national
purpose of this movement, he grants them, during the life of himself
and his brother, the tithes on the metals found within four miles from
the city, to be used for the improvement of the aforesaid city.
But, if the new development of town life took root at this time in the
western parts of Bohemia, it seems to have had a still earlier growth
in the more eastern province of Moravia. That province had always had
peculiar traditions of its own. It was a fragment of the old kingdom of
Moravia, and had been incorporated in the Bohemian dukedom, at the time
of the Hungarian invasion. It always retained a sense of its important
position; and Barbarossa himself had increased that feeling when, in
granting the royal crown to Vladislav, he spoke of the new dignity as a
revival of the old Moravian kingdom. Moreover, by some means or other,
a German element seems to have penetrated into this province; and it
is now generally believed that in Moravia, as in Bohemia, the first
traditions of municipal self-government were drawn from German sources.
Nevertheless, when in 1229 King Pr̆emysl recognised the municipal
liberties of Brünn (Brno), he evidently refers to them as connected
with local rights which had been traditional for a considerable time
in that town; and in the book of decisions of the Moravian municipal
tribunals, the Law of Brno is sometimes pitted against that Law of
Magdeburg which was generally accepted as the model of town rights.
Brünn, too, became in a peculiar manner the centre of the towns of
Moravia, and its laws became a new source of life to a great portion
of the Bohemian kingdom; and its Book of Rights, with its splendid
binding and beautiful illuminations, may still be seen in the town
council house at Brünn. So, when in 1229 Pr̆emysl Ottakar confirmed the
ancient laws of the province of Brünn, he gave a new, and probably more
attractive, impulse to the movement for civic self-government.
[Illustration: RADNICE BRNE: OLD DOOR OF TOWN COUNCIL HOUSE OF BRÜNN.]
These rights, however, were of gradual growth, and at the time of
Pr̆emysl’s decree they were not developed to that point which the
subsequent records of their interpretation would lead one to expect.
Thus, although we find securities against arbitrary arrest, we do not
find that definite arrangement for the production of legal witnesses
which was afterwards established; and, though the judge is no longer
allowed to decide questions alone, the check upon him seems to be
rather that of officials and nobles than of his fellow-citizens. But,
whatever defects and limitations we may find in these early provisions
for municipal liberty, the movement in its favour was soon to be
hastened by one of the most tremendous shocks which had convulsed
Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. This was nothing less than
the invasion of Genghis Khan and his Tartar hordes, which has already
been slightly alluded to in the previous chapter.
It appears that the Cumani, a still barbarous tribe, had come into
collision with the Tartars in Asia; and, either flying from Tartar
vengeance, or following a new career of conquest, the Cumani entered
Hungary. There they joined with some of their kinsmen who had formerly
settled there, and began to harass the Hungarians. The Tartars quickly
followed on their heels; and, having overrun Russia, they made their
way into Hungary, defeated King Bela, and laid waste his territory,
killing men, women, and children. From thence they swept over Poland,
and advanced into Moravia, while others attacked Bulgaria and Greece.
The terror-struck descriptions of the writers of the period seem to
combine the memories of Gothic and Hunnish invasions with the imagery
of the Apocalypse. Like so many conquerors, Genghis Khan seems to have
had a conception of a special mission to destroy imposed on him by some
invisible Power; and he and his followers were looked on, for a time,
as irresistible. He had twelve thousand men wearing breastplates of
skin, and always on horseback, and twenty or thirty horses without any
one to guide them following every rider; for the Mongol Tartars could
do nothing on foot because of their short legs and long bodies. They
were killing all except those children whom Genghis Khan was branding
on the face with his mark. Their women were said to fight on horseback;
and those who slaughtered the most were the most admired.
While Europe was panic-struck, and every man was calling on his
neighbour for help, Pope Gregory IX. and the Emperor Frederick II.
were fighting with each other for the possession of Sicily; and,
while Frederick pleaded that he could not put himself at the head of
the Imperial forces till Gregory would let him alone, the friends
and admirers of Gregory were accusing Frederick of having himself
invited in the Tartars; and some even declared that they had seen
his messengers in the Tartar army. Alone almost among the princes of
Europe, Wenceslaus of Bohemia, who had now succeeded to the throne,
seems to have preserved some nerve and sense. He called upon the Duke
of Austria, the Patriarch of Aquileia, the Duke of Carinthia, and the
Margrave of Baden to help him to gather together his forces near Olmütz
(Olomouci); and he made so determined a stand that the invasion was
rolled back upon Hungary.
Even after this defeat of the Tartars the terror of them hung for years
over Europe; but, though Bohemia itself was not yet free from danger,
Wenceslaus, as King of Bohemia, and his son Pr̆emysl Ottakar, as
Margrave of Moravia, now set themselves to redress the injuries done
by the Tartar invasion. In 1243 they began to enlarge and restore the
towns which had been destroyed by the Tartars; and in order to induce
the frightened citizens to devote themselves to this work, they found
it necessary to encourage them by the grant of further liberties.
The conception of municipal government evidently makes great strides
at this time. Accused persons are now more carefully guarded from
arbitrary sentences; and we also find the jury rising to an equality
with the judge in the decision of certain matters. More clearly,
too, do we detect the determination to put a check on the tyranny of
the nobles by the development of civic liberties. “We will,” says
Wenceslaus, in his extension of the privileges of Brünn, “and we
irrefragably decree that no baron or noble of the land shall have power
in the city of Brünn, or shall do any violence in it, or shall detain
any one, without the license and proclamation of the judge of the city;
and we will that, whoever of the citizens has servants or possessions
outside the city, shall not be summoned by the provincial judge, or
the officials of the province, but shall be judged by the judge of the
city.”
[Illustration: JÍHLAVA (IGLAU), THE GREAT MINING CENTRE IN MORAVIA.]
The power of demising property without interference from others,
freedom of marriage or non-marriage to widows and maidens, various
forms of protection against violence, facilities for holding markets,
and the removal of customs duties--such are the chief subjects dealt
with in these civic constitutions. The discovery and working of
minerals, which largely date from this time, led to new opportunities
of self-government. In the town of Iglau (Jíhlava), where miners had
been prominent in the defence of their country against the Tartars, the
powers granted to them and the neighbouring citizens were particularly
large. “We wish and command,” say Wenceslaus and Pr̆emysl Ottakar his
son, “that, whatever the jury of our city and the jury of the miners
have ordained, for the commercial good, should be inviolably observed
by all.” Even tax-collectors of the king are to consult the miners in
certain matters; while special securities are given against possible
defalcations by debtors of noble birth.