If tried by the standard of ordinary conquerors, Rudolf of Hapsburg must be admitted to have been merciful, and even generous, in his dealings with Bohemia. Although, after the death of Ottakar, he continued for some time to hold Moravia as a conquered province, he set himself to restore those Moravian cities which had suffered by the war; and he readily confirmed all the municipal liberties, which had been granted by Ottakar and previous kings. He always treated Kunigunda as a Queen; he secured to her, not only her own money dowry, but also that district of Opava (in Moravia) which had been specially settled upon her; and, as will be seen, he protected her from the cruelty of the friends in whom she had too rashly trusted. To her son, Wenceslaus, he was even more generous. The daughter whom he had promised in 1276 to the son of the still powerful King of Bohemia, he was still ready to give to the orphan of a defeated and conquered man.

As soon as the boy’s age permitted such a step, he restored him to his father’s throne, and helped him, sometimes by wise advice and sometimes by force of arms, to maintain his power over his subjects. Doubtless this policy, however magnanimous, was part of a scheme of action which tended to strengthen and increase Rudolf’s power. The towns in Moravia, whose liberties he confirmed, he raised into free cities of the German Empire; and he saw the wisdom of winning to his side, and holding in friendly subjection, the young and spirited King of a kingdom which had so often been a hindrance to schemes of Imperial policy. Yet, allowing for these considerations, it cannot be denied that the consistent execution of such a policy must have required a masterly self-restraint, and a splendid coolness of judgment, not often found in conquerors of any time.

But the feat which he had attempted was one which many circumstances combined to make impossible; and men, of a very opposite type to Rudolf’s, speedily frustrated his efforts for a peaceable and gradual absorption of Bohemia in the German Empire. Queen Kunigunda had naturally desired to make a further stand against her husband’s conqueror; and she called to her aid the son of that Otto of Brandenburg who had been Ottakar’s companion in arms, and afterwards his brother-in-law. He came; and the queen had speedy cause to regret her invitation. The struggle between Otto and Rudolf was of short duration, and the Margrave was soon willing to accept the Emperor’s terms of peace and one of his inexhaustible tribe of daughters.

Otto soon showed that it was not for the sake of the wife and son of his old friend that he had come to Bohemia. Under pretence of investigating some old charter of Ottakar’s, Otto sent German soldiers to Prague to find out the places where Ottakar’s bailiff had kept the royal treasure. These soldiers entered one of the chief monasteries, and there discovered a large chest which had been used by many people during the war as a storehouse for food, clothes, and other property. This chest the Germans at once broke open and plundered of its contents; and then, as if determined to offend the national feeling to the utmost, they rushed into the chapel of St. Wenceslaus and rifled the tomb of the saint.

These outrages were followed by a yet more daring act of violence. Otto suddenly entered Prague by night, seized the queen and prince in their rooms, while still half dressed, and carried them off to a fortress, where he set German soldiers to guard them, and would permit no Bohemian to see them. Some Bohemian nobles demanded the release of these captives, and Otto promised to set them free; but he broke his promise. Kunigunda, indeed, by a series of ruses, succeeded in escaping from her imprisonment and taking refuge in her own special dominions at Opava; but her boy remained a prisoner in Otto’s hands.

In the meantime the soldiers, who had been brought in by Otto to carry out his tyrannical purposes, began a series of plundering expeditions on their own account. The unfortunate peasants fled from their fields and took refuge in the woods, leaving the lands wholly uncultivated. Even worse calamities fell on the towns. The large-minded policy of the two Ottakars and of Wenceslaus I. now proved a source of evil and division. They had tried to induce Germans and Bohemians to live together in towns, established under German municipal laws, and often peopled in the first instance by German immigrants. But these enlightened kings had not been able thereby to stifle race-hatred and jealousy; and the German settlers now looked upon the wild soldiers of Otto as their allies against the native Bohemian citizens. They invited the leaders of the plundering parties into the towns, and with their help expelled the Bohemians. Prague was the only city strong enough to resist this Germanising process; and Tobias, the Bishop of Prague, tried to rally the faithful nobles of the kingdom round Kunigunda. This effort was a desperate one; and, even when Otto left Bohemia for a time, his viceroy, the Bishop of Brandenburg, carried his ruthless policy still further, plundering the clergy and treating the remonstrances of Bishop Tobias with scorn and insolence.

At last the Bohemians were forced to call in their former conqueror to deliver them from this cruel tyranny; and Otto soon succumbed to the Imperial forces. He consented to summon an Assembly at Prague, at which he appointed Bishop Tobias as chief ruler of the kingdom; and he further issued a decree that those Germans who had entered Bohemia for the purposes of plunder should leave the country within three days. He again promised to release young Wenceslaus, and again broke his promise. The German robbers, awed doubtless by the power of Rudolf, hastened to obey the orders of their master. But the evil seed which they had sown did not cease to produce its natural fruits.

It must be remembered that for three years the lands had been left uncultivated; and trade, except where carried on by Germans, had been totally paralysed. The consequence of these misfortunes was a terrible famine. Unemployed workmen and starving peasants crowded into Prague and enforced by violence their demands for food and clothing. Driven out by the authorities of the city, they perished of cold in the woods; large holes were filled with the dead bodies; family affection ceased in the bitter struggle for life; and, when all kinds of strange food had been tried and exhausted, mothers killed and ate their own children.

At last, in 1283, a better harvest began to restore some hope for a return to human conditions of life. Then wild rumours and speculations fed the rising expectation. A beautiful rainbow was the source of bright prophecies; and a half belief began to arise in some minds that King Ottakar was not really dead, and would return in triumph. Suddenly a definite announcement took the place of dreams and fancies. Not Ottakar, but his son Wenceslaus, was to return to reign in Bohemia. Base and sordid to the last, Otto had demanded from the half-starved Bohemians a ransom of 35,000 marks, as compensation for what he called his care and expense in guarding the young Bohemian king, in reality as a bribe not to break any more promises. But the sum was paid, and no doubt willingly.

There is something inexpressibly touching in the enthusiasm which greeted the return of the twelve-year-old king. Men, hardly recovered from years of starvation and plague, seemed at once convinced that at last a better time was coming; and on June 9, 1283, barons, knights, clergy, citizens, and peasants flocked out to meet the young king, Bishop Tobias leading the motley throng, and all singing the hymn of St. Adalbert, the opening words of which had served Ottakar as a war-cry at the fatal battle of the Marchfeld.

But the troubles of Bohemia were not yet at an end. The boy followed his most natural instinct in appealing to his mother to join him in Prague. Unfortunately, Kunigunda had in the meantime formed a connection which proved most dangerous to the peace and order of the country. Zavis̆ of Falkenstein belonged to a noble family of Moravia, and he had succeeded in securing the queen’s affection during her residence in Opava. Whether the marriage, which was recognised at a later time, had already taken place, or whether, as some said, their connection was one of illicit love, certain it is that it was the affection between them, rather than the form of its expression, which excited the indignation and jealousy of the Bohemian nobles; and Zavis̆ soon justified that indignation.

No sooner did he appear at the Court of Prague than he set himself to oppose and drive away such patriots as Bishop Tobias, and to put his own favourites in their place. An insurrection quickly followed; and though Rudolf exerted himself to pacify the insurgents, he soon showed in an unmistakable manner his own distrust of the new ruler of Bohemia.

In January, 1285, Wenceslaus, now arrived at his fourteenth year, was married to Guta, the daughter of Rudolf. Zavis̆ was so conscious of Rudolf’s distrust, that he did not venture to enter the town where the marriage was solemnised. This absence, however, did not satisfy the Emperor; and he took the extreme step of carrying back Guta with him, after her marriage, to preserve her from the influences which prevailed at Prague. Either encouraged by these signs of Rudolf’s feelings, or irritated by some new insolence on the part of Zavis̆, the Bohemian nobles raised a second insurrection; but they were again unsuccessful, and it was not till the death of Kunigunda, in 1287, that Wenceslaus succeeded in shaking off the power of his stepfather.

An excellent excuse for this final effort for freedom was supplied by Rudolf, who declared that he would not restore Guta to her husband until Zavis̆ was banished from the court. Wenceslaus was, no doubt, glad enough to get back his wife in exchange for his stepfather; and, when Zavis̆ intrigued with the King of Hungary and tried to entrap Wenceslaus, the young king decoyed him back to Prague and there imprisoned him. The friends of Zavis̆, both in Hungary and Bohemia, attempted his rescue; but Rudolf again intervened; and after the Hungarian invasion had been repelled, Wenceslaus was at last persuaded by his Imperial father-in-law to put Zavis̆ to death.

The young king now devoted himself to the restoration of order. He broke down castles, encouraged trade, extended the liberties of the cities, and gained a high reputation for justice. He even attempted to substitute for the vague mass of traditional custom a regular code of written laws; but in this attempt he was defeated by the nobles, who often showed themselves too strong for him.

The fatality which seemed to attend the best and most law-loving kings of Bohemia dragged Wenceslaus also into the complications of Imperial and Polish politics. In 1291 Rudolf died; and it soon became evident how bitter was the hostility which the Hapsburg family had excited among the princes of Germany.

Albert, the son of Rudolf, had indeed made good his power in the dukedoms of Austria and Styria, but he had shown little sign of his father’s vigour or ability; and the suspicion felt by the Bohemians towards the whole house of Hapsburg was increased, in the case of Albert, by the personal quarrels which had embittered his relations with his brother-in-law, Wenceslaus. Rudolf, indeed, had made great efforts to preserve the peace; but, as soon as he was dead, the quarrel again broke out, and Wenceslaus joined with other Electors of the Empire to choose Adolf of Nassau as Emperor, in opposition to Albert.

His success in securing this election left the King of Bohemia free to carry on the struggle with Poland. He recovered the often-disputed town of Cracow, and resumed that claim to the kingdom of Poland which, in some form or other, had been traditional in Bohemia since the time of King Vladislav. Adolf would gladly have strengthened the allegiance of Wenceslaus by this or any other concession; but Albert had an advantage which eventually enabled him to outbid his rival. He still retained in his hands the towns of Eger (Cheb) and Pilsen (Plz̆en), which his father had never surrendered to Bohemia. These towns, from their nearness to the Bavarian frontier, might be specially dangerous to the Bohemians if held by an enemy of their country; and their restoration to Wenceslaus meant the practical revival of Bohemian independence. This bribe therefore proved too strong for Wenceslaus’s faith; he withdrew his support from Adolf, and helped to place Albert on the throne of the Empire. In the following year the King of Poland finally surrendered his crown to Wenceslaus; and in 1300 Albert gave his Imperial sanction to the union of Poland with Bohemia.

There was yet another kingdom whose internal affairs had always a dangerous attraction for the kings of Bohemia. In 1301 the direct line of the old kings of Hungary came to an end; and a Hungarian bishop, backed by some of the nobles, offered the crown to Wenceslaus. The young king, though refusing the offer on his own account, was disposed to accept it on behalf of his son; but this acceptance brought upon him the hostility of the two greatest Powers of Europe. The Pope complained that the election was uncanonical; because the bishop who had taken the leading part in it was not authorised to crown the kings of Hungary. The Emperor Albert, on his side, had already become suspicious of the growing power of Bohemia; and, according to one chronicler, his avarice had been excited by the fame of the silver mines at Kuttenberg (Kutna Hora). Wenceslaus, indeed, though ready enough to hold his own against the Emperor, was as anxious as his father had been to remain on good terms with the Pope. He acknowledged the irregularity in the form of his son’s election; and, at the same time, he entreated the Pope to secure him the crown in a canonical manner. But it soon appeared that Boniface’s complaint about the form of election was a mere pretext, and that the Pope was really intending to grant the crown of Hungary to the King of Naples. To this arrangement Wenceslaus would not consent; and hence it came that in 1304 he was compelled to defend Bohemia against the forces of the Empire, supported by the authority of the Pope. This time, however, there was no division in the national feeling. However unwelcome some of Wenceslaus’s schemes might be to the Bohemian nobles, they had too recently learnt, by bitter experience, the folly of deserting a national king for a foreign invader. The Bohemians offered a unanimous resistance to the Imperial army, and Albert was forced to retreat.

But the doom of the male line of the House of Pr̆emysl was, none the less, hopelessly fixed. Wenceslaus died in the following year; and his son, after resigning his claim to the kingdom of Hungary, gave himself up to dissipation and profligacy. The Poles began to revolt; and during an expedition to Cracow the last of the male line of the Pr̆emyslovci was murdered by a traitor.

It seemed for the moment as if the turn of the House of Hapsburg had once more come. During the bitter divisions in the Bohemian Assembly which followed the death of their king, Albert succeeded in thrusting his son Rudolf on the attention of the Electors; and the majority of those who were present consented to elect this prince to the Bohemian throne, and even to declare their crown hereditary in the House of Hapsburg. But this success was only momentary, for a fierce hatred of the Hapsburgs was deeply rooted in the Bohemians; and, by a curious irony of fortune, the opponents of Rudolf called to their aid the son of that Duke of Carinthia who had won his Dukedom by supporting Rudolf’s grandfather against Ottakar II. Rudolf died after a few months; and the majority of the next Assembly chose Henry of Carinthia as their king.

But Albert would not yet yield; and he set up his son Frederick as Rudolf’s successor. The fight was a fierce one; and it was soon changed from the attempt of an Emperor to conquer a new kingdom into a struggle of the House of Hapsburg to maintain its political existence. The opposition to that House was due, not only to the bitter Bohemian feeling against the German oppressor, nor yet to the jealousy felt by the great Princes of the Empire towards successful upstarts, but also to the hatred of those townsmen and peasants who had looked to Rudolf as their protector, and who found in his descendants their most deadly enemies.

In May, 1308, the Emperor Albert was murdered by his nephew; and, as the murderer was the son of Ottakar’s daughter, he was looked upon by the Bohemians as the avenger of his grandfather. The Electors of the Empire were now resolved that no further chance should be given to the House of Hapsburg; and Henry of Luxemburg was elected to the Imperial throne. The fate of Bohemia once more followed that of the Empire; for the new Emperor quickly saw his opportunity in the unpopularity of both the claimants of the Bohemian crown. He secured the hand of Elizabeth, the daughter of Wenceslaus, for his son John, and thus paved the way for the latter’s succession to the Bohemian throne. Hence it came about that in 1310 the Estates of Prague enthusiastically welcomed John of Luxemburg as their king.

It even seemed, for the moment, as if this election would be the signal for a yet more complete victory of the House of Luxemburg over that of Hapsburg; for, at the very same time, the Austrians suddenly rose against their Dukes, and expelled them from all but three towns of the Duchy. But the Emperor Henry refused to encourage this insurrection; and the Hapsburgs continued to maintain their position as Dukes of Austria.

Few kings have ever succeeded to the rule of a foreign country with a better hope of popularity than did John of Luxemburg. The terrible years of anarchy had made the Bohemians desirous of a strong government, and ready to welcome any one who seemed to have force and vigour enough to restore order. As the rival of the hated House of Hapsburg, and the deliverer from the incapable Henry of Carinthia, the new king was specially acceptable; while his marriage with the daughter of Wenceslaus might have almost cheated the enthusiastic Bohemians into the belief that they were once more to be governed by a national sovereign. John, too, seemed willing enough to meet these aspirations more than half way. He not only recognised that claim, which had been formerly asserted against Vladislav, that Bohemians should not be called to fight outside their kingdom; but he declared that no official should be appointed in Bohemia or Moravia who was not a native of those countries; and, more startling still, that none but natives should be suffered to buy lands, inheritances, fortresses, or any other rights within the country.

But it soon became evident that, if these promises were to be kept to the ear, they were certain to be broken to the sense. The earliest cause of offence, was, no doubt, one which might be excused to a boy of fourteen. By the advice of his father, John accepted the Archbishop of Mainz as his chief counsellor, and gradually drew around him a number of German courtiers. It appears, indeed, from trustworthy evidence, that this German Churchman preserved better order in Bohemia than that which prevailed in the latter part of John’s reign; yet his position was, notwithstanding, a most difficult one, and several circumstances combined to make it impossible.

The national feeling of independence, which had been roused to new life by the promises of John, was unfortunately manipulated at this period by one of those unscrupulous intriguers who sometimes drift to the front in times of disorder. His name was Henry of Lipa; and he had already played a part in the reign of Henry of Carinthia, in exciting the nobles of Bohemia against the rulers of the towns.

Ever since the time of Ottakar II. the claim of the towns to a share in the government of Bohemia was being more strongly asserted; and a controversy which, under their native rulers, might have been settled by peaceful means, had led, in a time of foreign tyranny, to an outbreak of civil war. In the first phase of the struggle, the towns had so far made good their claim that they were admitted to share in the discussions of the Assembly which offered the crown to John; and such a victory must have tended to prejudice men like Henry of Lipa against the new king.

Nor was it difficult to give a national colouring to the class selfishness of the nobles. It will be remembered that Ottakar II. had introduced a large German element into the towns which he had founded. This measure of wise policy had been changed into a means of cruel oppression by Otto of Brandenburg; and, unfortunately for the cause of the towns, Otto had been, apparently, the first ruler who summoned their representatives to share in the deliberations of the Estates of the Realm.

Moreover, Henry of Lipa added to his class prejudices a more personal reason for opposing the existing government. He was attached to the widow of the late King Rudolf, who was known to her supporters as the Queen of Grätz; and he was resolved to make good both her claims and his own at the expense of the peace and order of the country.

To the unscrupulous intriguers who were plotting against their power, John and the Archbishop of Mainz were unfortunately soon to supply some just causes of complaint. The death of the Emperor Henry seemed to open to John a chance for claiming the Imperial throne; and, when he found that his youth was held to disqualify him for that dignity, he threw all his influence on to the side of Louis of Bavaria, as he was resolved that no Hapsburg, at any rate, should again become Holy Roman Emperor. This contest withdrew both him and the Archbishop from Bohemia; and the German Councillors who were left to support the queen were little able to stand against Henry of Lipa. John soon found that his championship of the Bavarian cause was likely to involve him in a dangerous war; and, fearing to leave a disturbed Bohemia behind him, he hastened to satisfy his opponents by dismissing his German advisers and taking Henry of Lipa into his counsels.

A new Hungarian war which broke out at this time enabled Henry to increase his power, and he used it for inflicting new oppressions on the Bohemian towns. But a bolder act of presumption at last exhausted the patience of the Court. Henry ventured, without consulting king or queen, to grant Agnes, the queen’s sister, in marriage to a Duke of Silesia. This insolence at last roused John to action, and Lipa was arrested. Before any further steps could be taken, John was once more called to the German war; and he again left the Archbishop of Mainz as his viceroy. Henry of Lipa once more appealed to Bohemian feeling against the German prelate; and, though many of the better men among the Bohemian nobility were now disposed to stand by their queen, they were not strong enough to hold their own against these intrigues. John was now earnestly entreated to return to Bohemia; but, when he hastened back, at the head of his Rhenish forces, his Bohemian advisers urged him to leave the Germans behind, and to throw himself on the support of his faithful nobles. John rejected this advice; he re-entered Bohemia at the head of his German troops, and proceeded to attack the lands of those nobles who had resisted him.

A general panic now seized the Bohemians; they recalled to their minds the tyranny of Otto of Brandenburg; and the rumour quickly spread that John was about to use German soldiers to crush out Bohemian independence. What had been the intrigue of a mere selfish faction, now swelled into a national opposition; and the war raged fiercely. Henry of Lipa, indeed, remained the ostensible leader of the insurgents; but he had so little sympathy with real national feeling, that he called in Frederick of Austria as his ally; and, when John offered terms to the rebels, Henry refused them, on the ground that any treaty of peace must also include the Austrians. At last the Emperor Louis intervened in the struggle. John was persuaded to send away his Rhenish troops, to renew his promise to appoint only Bohemian advisers, and once more to give high office in the State to Henry of Lipa. To these terms the king consented; but Queen Elizabeth, with keener insight, refused altogether to trust this new Councillor; and Henry thereupon devoted his whole energies to making mischief between the king and queen.

The intriguers had now discovered what manner of man they had to deal with. Vain, profligate, and pleasure-seeking, John was easily persuaded by the young nobles that his wife had gained too much power over him; and, when they had once sown in his mind this suspicion, they were able to develop an elaborate romance of imaginary plots, by which the queen was supposed to be undermining the throne of John, and securing the power to herself and her son. John’s selfish vanity soon drove him into violent action. He hastened to the fortress where the queen was then staying, and used such violent language that she fled in terror from the place. Then he removed from her her favourite attendants, carried off her children, and shut up his eldest son for two months in a dark room.

The indignation which this conduct caused among the citizens of Bohemia was much increased by the various forms of extortion which John now proceeded to inflict both on towns and monasteries—extortions devised solely to obtain money for the pleasures of the King and his courtiers. John, indeed, had been as ready as any other King of Bohemia to promise the citizens exemption from certain forms of taxation; and consequently they now complained, not only of oppression, but also of broken faith. Nor was it merely in the matter of taxes that the privileges of the citizens were violated. In earlier times the nobles had claimed the right of demanding forcible quartering in the houses of citizens for those who were engaged on expeditions in the king’s service. This claim naturally led to great abuses, against which Ottakar and Wenceslaus had tried to protect their subjects. In this matter also John had promised to carry out the policy of his predecessors. But he now encouraged even his own kinsmen to demand this compulsory entertainment. One citizen was seized and crucified because he would not give up his money to these intruders; others were plundered and unjustly imprisoned.

At last the citizens of Prague drew up a formal complaint, which they authorised six of their number to present to John. Some mischief-maker persuaded the king that this protest was a first step to insurrection; and his suspicions were further inflamed by the news that the queen had recently come to Prague, and had been received with great honour. Furious at this supposed conspiracy, the king and Henry of Lipa at once marched against Prague. The citizens, astonished at the interpretation which had been put upon their remonstrance, were at first disposed to admit the king, in the hopes of an easy explanation; but some of the nobles, who had remained faithful to the queen, were opposed to this policy; and they offered such determined resistance, that John was compelled to retreat from the city. A sort of truce was patched up for a time, though John insisted that the six citizens who had drawn up the remonstrance should be expelled from the city. Then he hurried away to finish the war between Louis and Frederick; and Henry of Lipa was left chief ruler of the kingdom. He soon succeeded in bringing to an end the temporary reconciliation between John and Elizabeth; and the queen was forced to fly to Bavaria, where she remained for some time, in dependence on her Bavarian relations, since John would not allow any support to be sent to her from Bohemia.

Then followed many years of oppression and disorder, during which John only appeared in Bohemia when he wished to demand money from the citizens, which he then hastened to spend at Paris or on the Rhine, either in the provision of splendid tournaments, or on some of the many wars which the princes of the Empire were waging against each other or against the Imperial towns. John’s special attraction was to Paris, where the court of King Charles was becoming a centre of pleasure and excitement. It was probably his alliance with this king which gradually separated John from the cause of Louis of Bavaria; for Charles felt himself bound to stand by his dependant at Avignon, Pope John XXII., who had always been opposed to the claims of Louis.

During this time of disorder the nobles had gradually succeeded in drawing into their power many of the royal fortresses; and, the central authority being thus fatally weakened, robbery and violence prevailed throughout the country. Poor Elizabeth ventured back to Prague about 1325; and she used her best efforts for the good of her country. On the occasion of a plague, she arranged processions in which sacred relics of great value were publicly exhibited; she endowed monasteries, and protected them, even with a high hand, against the intrusions of the nobles; while, for her personal consolation, she contemplated a thorn from the Sacred Crown, which King Charles of France had sent her as a present during some of the revels which her husband was enjoying at Paris.

Bishop John of Prague might have given her some help in the government of the country; but he was summoned to Avignon to be tried as a protector of heretics, and detained there for thirteen years before he was tried and acquitted. It was impossible, however, to expect that either the queen or the bishop could hold their own against such men as Henry of Lipa; and, after the death of the queen in 1330, even King John began gradually to realise that some better provision must be made for the government of the country. So, three years later, he consented to send his eldest son, who had hitherto been detained at Paris, to try his hand at the restoration of order in Bohemia.

This son had originally been named Wenceslaus, at the time when John was still hoping to conciliate the national feeling of Bohemia; but he had subsequently been re-named Charles, in honour of John’s model and ally, the King of France. He was now seventeen years old; he was welcomed by the Bohemians as the son of their beloved Elizabeth, and his dignified and straightforward manners tended to increase the attachment of his subjects. He speedily showed that enthusiasm for his mother’s country which was to produce such striking results, when once his hand was free. By judicious economy, he tried to buy back for the Crown those castles which had been mortgaged to the nobles; and he made progresses through his dominions, hearing the grievances of the people and trying to redress them. This policy did not suit those disorderly nobles who had hitherto ruled at their pleasure. They easily succeeded in stirring up John’s suspicions against his son, as they had previously done against his wife; and Charles was deprived of his power and sent off to the Tyrol. Not many years elapsed, however, before John discovered that his son would be still necessary to him, if he wished to gain any advantage from the kingdom of Bohemia. But Charles had now realised that his father was habitually sacrificing the honour and freedom of the country for the sake of his own pleasures; and in 1342 the young prince declared that he would only undertake the government of Bohemia if John would consent to stay away from it for two years, and would be content with the sum of five thousand marks during that period.

The popular feeling in Bohemia was strongly in favour of Charles, as against his father. Indeed, so hated had the latter become, that, when he was shortly after afflicted with blindness, many Bohemians considered that this suffering was a judgment upon him for his cruelty and oppression. He therefore considered it advisable to accept these terms; and Charles’s position was made still easier by the friendship of Pope Clement VI., who, while anxious to conciliate the friendship of John, was keenly alive to the desirability of securing to his side the national sentiment of Bohemia. He therefore raised the Church of Prague into an archbishopric, emancipating it entirely from the archbishopric of Mainz; and he also conceded that often disputed demand for the use of the Slavonic ritual in the monasteries of Bohemia.

Indeed, both John and Clement had a very special reason for desiring to keep the popular young prince in friendly alliance with them. The ambition, which John had once cherished on his own behalf, had now been turned into a desire for the exaltation of his son. For different reasons both the King and the Pope were now eager for the overthrow of Louis of Bavaria; and they heartily agreed that Charles was the most hopeful candidate for the Imperial throne. The other Electors were equally ready for this change; and in July, 1346, Charles was chosen Holy Roman Emperor. Such a step could not long fail to produce dangerous results; but, before the opponents of the new Emperor were prepared for action, the attention of Europe was distracted from their quarrels by a war between England and France. John eagerly rushed to the support of his old ally; and, in August, 1346, he died fighting at the battle of Crecy—a death much admired by the readers of romances, and an infinite relief to the oppressed Bohemians.

In writing the life of men who have played a great part in the affairs of the world, it is generally possible to find some hint in the earlier periods of their life of a preparation for the important work which has distinguished their later years. In the case of Charles IV. this link seems at first sight exceptionally difficult to find. He had been torn away from his mother’s influence in his earliest childhood; treated with exceptional harshness, at that tender age, by his father; kept away so long from the country which he was afterwards to govern, that when he first returned to it he had completely forgotten the Bohemian language; suddenly thrust into a partial government of the country, at the age of seventeen; regarded by his father and those who surrounded him with the utmost suspicion, and snatched away from the government when he was just beginning to get a firm hold of it. Then he was dragged into Italian wars with which he had little sympathy, and where men seemed to fight as much with poison as with swords; a witness of his father’s dissolute life, and surrounded by evil companions; and, to crown all his difficulties, when he had attained to full manhood, but had not yet become king of Bohemia, he had been suddenly raised to the highest dignity in Europe. Such was the preparation which Charles had received for the government of a kingdom which required special knowledge, special sympathies, and somewhat exclusive care.

But in the fragment of autobiography which Charles has left us, he has himself supplied the clue to at least some part of this difficulty. That residence in Paris, and intimacy with the King of France, which was to John merely a new opportunity for self-indulgence and luxury, gave to Charles both that interest in the higher education of a people which was of so much service to Bohemia, and a personal zeal for study which doubtless saved him from many of the evils which surrounded him. The King of France took a great fancy to his young namesake; and, though he and most of his family were ignorant of literature, he saw the value of it for others, and urged his chaplain to encourage Charles in his studies. Paris was at that time the centre of learning. It contained the most completely organised University, except that of Bologna; and it attracted students from many parts of Europe. The influence of the king’s chaplain doubtless developed in Charles that reverence for the clergy and the pope which was, perhaps, more of a real moral conviction in him than in any prince of his time. He was also fortunate in the ease with which he acquired new languages; and this gift enabled him to recover his power of speaking Bohemian without losing his knowledge of German. Whence he could have derived that intense Bohemian feeling, which showed itself in all the more important acts of his life, sometimes even to the prejudice of his work as German Emperor, it is very difficult to say; but, doubtless, the fervent and practical piety, which always distinguished him, led him to cling to such traditions as he could gather about the mother of whom he had seen so little; and the zeal for her country, when he saw the wrongs inflicted on it by his father, would have been quickened in him by that hatred of injustice and oppression which was so strong an element in his character. But, be the causes what they may, certain it is that the first important use which he made of his double power of Bohemian king and German emperor was to lay the foundations of a scheme for making Prague the intellectual centre, not only of Bohemia, but of the whole Empire.

In Bohemia, as elsewhere, book-learning had primarily been considered as part of the training of the clergy. Under Ottakar II., indeed, an attempt had been made to enlarge the range of studies, and perhaps to interest in them people of other professions and races. But, after the fall of Ottakar, Rudolf had feared anything which would attract his Austrian subjects to Bohemia; and the Austrian students had been ordered to leave Prague. Wenceslaus II. had tried to revive and develop his father’s ideas; but, as it was not even then understood that a University could be intended for all men, the nobles successfully opposed the scheme, as an attempt to increase the power of the clergy.

Charles soon showed that, while anxious to work with the clergy in this, as in other matters, he yet aimed at something much higher and wider than a mere clerical school. Doctors of law, medicine, and natural science were summoned to join in his new institution; and the Faculties were organised, partly on the model of Paris and partly of Bologna. The Rector, who was elected by masters and students, was the chief judge of the University; but, in the matters which purely related to their own art or science, the elected heads of the Faculties were left to manage their own affairs. Important as the lectures at the University were considered, a great deal of the instruction was conveyed through the medium of public discussions, in some of which all the Masters of Arts were compelled to take part. Questions of the alterations of the Statutes were decided by a general assembly, in which masters and students had equal votes.

But one of the most distinctive points of Charles’s scheme, and one which produced most important effects both for good and evil, was the division of the University into four Nations. These were called respectively the Bohemian, Bavarian, Polish, and Saxon. The Bohemian Nation included Hungary; the Bavarian, most of South Germany; the Polish, Prussia and Silesia; and the Saxon, all the rest of North Germany, with Denmark and Sweden. Each of these Nations chose one Elector; the four Electors chose seven others; the seven chose five; and then these five chose the Rector of the University. For special cases, not dealt with by the general assembly, a council of eight was appointed, containing two representatives from each Nation. How much Charles desired to make his University a centre for the whole Empire may be gathered from the fact that among the first eight professors one was a Saxon, one a Westphalian, and one a Frenchman. The tendency to welcome men of learning was characteristic of Charles’s reign; nor was his welcome confined to teachers and writers; artists also shared his patronage; and his reign was marked by efforts after external splendour and stern morality which are seldom found in combination. The most remarkable outward symbol of these divergent tendencies is the celebrated fortress of Carlstein (Karluv Tyn, Charles’s town), which, in its form, its decoration, and special objects, seems to combine the memories of Charles’s work as king, as moral reformer, and as patron of Art. Devised for the better protection of the crown jewels, and, at a somewhat later period, of the charters of Bohemia, it also afforded a place of retirement for periods of strict and almost ascetic devotion; while the pictures on its walls, and the precious stones which cover its roof, recall the memory of the encouragement which the King gave to the Arts of his time.

But the attempt to combine his work as Emperor with his work as King of Bohemia was to be the great difficulty of his career; and scarcely had he succeeded in bringing the University into working order before the great rush of students began to alarm the inhabitants of Prague. Complaints were made of disorders, of the high price of provisions, and of difficulties arising from the want of accommodation in the city. This last objection Charles proceeded to meet by founding a new suburb of Prague, to be united by ditch, wall, and bridge with the old city, and to enjoy the same privileges as the rest of Prague. This helped forward Charles’s plans for raising Prague into Imperial importance; and the work of uniting all the different parts of the city was undertaken on so splendid a scale that, in a time of famine, Charles was able to solve “the problem of the unemployed,” by setting more than a thousand men to work on the new walls. But there still remained the disorders which had been brought about by the arrival of German students, who distrusted the justice of Bohemian tribunals. In order to restore peace, Charles placed the University directly under his own authority, and allowed no appeal from the decisions of the Rector, except to the highest court. This creation of an independent corporation of learning was a necessary stage in the growth of the University, and contained seeds both of good and evil, to be developed at a later time.

In the founding of this University, Charles had aimed at the accomplishment of two different objects; the establishment of an intellectual centre for the Empire, and the development of a new life in Bohemia. The second of these objects was probably the one nearest to his heart; and it was not only by the encouragement of learning that he hoped to promote it, but by attention to every phase of national well-being. He, like his grandfather Wenceslaus, desired to substitute a written code of laws for the floating mass of customs and traditions by which Bohemia was, in great part, governed. How far Wenceslaus had gone towards the execution of this plan cannot be ascertained; but Charles actually drew up his code, and gave it the name of the Majestas Carolina. If we may judge from his preface, and from the subject which stands first in the code, the cause of oppression and disorder which most impressed him in Bohemia was the alienation of royal lands by the Kings. The power which special nobles had gained, through these grants, had been often used in a most disorderly manner. The efficiency of the central Executive had been unduly weakened; and an excuse had been given for those continual demands for exceptional taxation, which had so painfully marked the reign of King John. Charles therefore drew up a careful list of the cities and lands, which, under no circumstances, should be alienated by the King, nor should any grant of them be asked for by others. Special arrangements were made for the registration, in a public court, of lands sold by the nobles; lands were not to be granted to the “dead hand”; special means of remedy were to be provided against oppression by the King; special restrictions were to be placed on the power of nobles over their dependants. Other provisions of various importance were contained in this document; but the great, and essential, point about it was, that these “Constitutions” were to be read four times a year in Bohemia, before a full assembly of the people, that all might know the laws by which they were governed.