This provision pointed to Charles’s chief object in composing the Code; and it was doubtless this very demand which roused to its height the opposition of the nobles. It was not merely this or that privilege which the King was threatening; it was the whole fabric of feudal power, which depended much more on the separate and individual influence of each noble on his estate, than on any decrees of a collective Assembly; and this influence must necessarily give way before a code of written law, set forth by the King, and accepted and supported by the main body of the people.

Charles was no “benevolent despot,” determined to thrust upon his people, by force, principles of government for which they were not prepared. He yielded to the resistance of the nobles, and withdrew the main part of the Majestas Carolina. The concession was undoubtedly a wise one; and, however excellent were many of the changes which he had proposed, there were parts of this remarkable document which make one glad that they were not stereotyped in a code, nor sanctified in the memories of Bohemians by so close a connection with their popular king. Thus, for instance, Charles opens his code with a strong declaration of devotion to the Catholic faith, with a prohibition to Pagans and Saracens against settling in Bohemia, and with a promise to put down heresy with the sword.[4] Again, the declaration of the power of lords over their dependants is only limited by taking from the lords the right of putting out their eyes or cutting off their hands and feet; and though Charles, no doubt, was thinking more of these limitations than of the power which he still left to the nobles; yet it was obvious that such a statement in a code might be used in the very opposite sense to that in which it was written. That is to say, the code might have been appealed to in later times as securing to the nobles all the powers of which it did not expressly deprive them.

But Charles had the statesmanlike instinct which tells a man when to yield and when to stand firm. There was one reform on which he was determined, and which he insisted on carrying out in spite of the opposition of the nobles. This was the abolition of those supposed tests of justice, by which accused persons were compelled to hold, or to walk upon, burning iron, or to prove their innocence by risking drowning. We are so apt to consider these superstitions as bound up with old religious feelings, that we almost instinctively expect to find this kind of abuse supported by the pious and orthodox in those generations, and opposed chiefly by some coldly superior persons who are untouched by the popular feeling of the time. But nothing is clearer than that Charles was stirred to this great reform by an intense sense of piety and reverence. Witness the words by which he had preluded this reform in the Majestas Carolina. “For he who should presume to tempt the omnipotence of God, and to make ridiculous His secret judgment, by forcing his neighbour to perish by means contrary to nature, does not deserve to enjoy the comfort of his own natural life.” In this reform he was steadily supported by Archbishop Arnestus; and, in spite of the opposition of the nobles, he succeeded in getting these terrible abuses suppressed. With regard to the ordeal by battle he was less successful. Indeed he was apparently disposed to accept a rather curious compromise on the subject. Duelling of all kinds he loathed as disorderly; but, in the case of charges of treason, he permitted a prosecutor who could bring nine respectable witnesses to support his charge, to make good his accusation by the final test of the duel. It does not appear, however, that he succeeded in reducing this foolish practice even within these limits.

Lastly, and perhaps best of all, he secured to the peasantry the right of appealing to the King from the feudal courts of their lords. Doubtless the readiness of the nobles to accept this important reform was much increased by Charles’s willingness to do justice as against himself. Thus, in a dispute with some nobles about the possession of a certain castle, he consented to submit the question to two Bohemian nobles chosen for the purpose; and he abode by the compromise which they suggested.

In short, in his position as King of Bohemia, Charles generally appears as one of those exceptional rulers who combine a genuine zeal for reform with a real sense of justice, and that statesmanlike self-restraint which teaches a man the difference between the desirable and the possible, between the ultimate ideal and the immediately practicable. But it is impossible to separate Charles the Emperor from Charles the King of Bohemia. Many of his greatest reforms, such as the establishment of the University and the assertion of the independence of the Prague archbishopric, could not have been carried out so easily, perhaps not at all, unless he had been able to use his authority as Emperor to back his power as King of Bohemia, and to secure also the sympathy and approval of the Pope. So thoroughly was the connection of his Imperial office with his Bohemian kingship recognised by his subjects, that it is the rarest thing to find this popular King mentioned in the chronicles by his proper Bohemian title of Charles I., still less by his early name of Wenceslaus. The Emperor Charles IV. has overshadowed and absorbed Wenceslaus alias Charles I. of Bohemia; and yet so far was he from losing thereby the sympathies of the Bohemians, that it is they and not the Germans who cherish his memory as that of a great and popular ruler.

The German view, indeed, is more nearly represented by the saying of Maximilian I., “Charles was the father of Bohemia, but the stepfather of the Holy Roman Empire.” This saying, like most epigrams that have lived, has a mixture of truth and falsehood. Certainly one of the morals of Charles’s career might seem to be the impossibility of combining these two important offices in a manner which should satisfy the just demands both of Germans and Bohemians. But though, as will presently appear, the weaker and worse part of his policy was connected with his position as Emperor, yet there is evident, even in his plans for Germany, a real enthusiasm for order, good government, and, above all, independence of that Papal power which had paralysed German progress.

The Golden Bull, with which his name is specially connected, shows in many respects these noble aims. The disorderly state into which the Empire had fallen had been largely due to the uncertainty of the Electorate. The titles which carried with them a right of voting for the Emperor, had been so often shared by different claimants, and the lands which originally marked these titles had been so often divided, that few could tell who had really the right of choosing the ruler of Europe; while the irregularity of many elections had given opportunity for the assertion of spurious claims, like those of the Dukes of Bavaria. Charles fixed the Electorate on a clear basis, and settled the lands which gave the right of voting. He also sternly prohibited those private feuds which had done such evil in Germany. Lastly, he boldly asserted the right of the Electors to choose the Emperor, without waiting for confirmation of their choice by the Pope. But, at the same time, he secured for the King of Bohemia the leading position among the Electors of the Empire; he declared his independence of the Imperial courts; and he asserted the right of the Bohemians to choose their own king, as soon as the House of Luxemburg was extinct.

Obviously there was here much to provoke opposition. The smaller princes, fierce at the restriction on their rights of quarrelling, broke into fresh disorders; the dukes of Bavaria took up arms to reassert their suppressed electoral rights; the dukes of Austria were indignant that their claims to the Bohemian succession, founded on the decree passed in King Rudolf’s Assembly, were now definitely repudiated. Charles dealt in different ways with these sets of opponents. The turbulent rioters he forcibly suppressed, but readily admitted to favour when repentant. From Bavaria, however, he thought it necessary to take stronger securities. After he had defeated the Dukes in battle, he succeeded in persuading them to sell to him lands and cities, which he added to the kingdom of Bohemia, and thereby extended that kingdom as far as Nürnberg. It might be plausibly urged that Bohemia needed securities for peace against so turbulent a neighbour as Bavaria; but it was evident, from the additions to his kingdom which Charles carried out at a later time, that this was but part of his scheme for securing to Bohemia that predominance in the Empire which was hinted at in the Golden Bull. Bavaria and the smaller princes being brought to reason, there remained still the struggle with Austria. Here one might have expected that the long-standing feud between Bohemian and Austrian, and between the House of Luxemburg and the House of Hapsburg, would have made the contest deadly in its course and crushing in its results. Strange to say, it ended in a settlement which must, even at the time, have startled some Bohemians, though no doubt they could never have expected that the following century would see the claim then legalised grow into practical results. In consideration of the peaceable abandonment by the House of Hapsburg of its immediate claims, it was promised the succession to the throne of Bohemia as soon as the direct lines of Charles and of his brother John should have come to an end. In all these matters Charles had shown a genuine desire for peace and order, which must surely deserve all recognition.

The same credit cannot be given to another phase of his policy, which arose from his relations with Louis, the son of his former rival, the Emperor Louis of Bavaria. The causes of this quarrel must be shortly told. John, the brother of Charles, had married Margaretha Maultasche, Countess of Tyrol; and he had thereby acquired her lands. Margaretha, who seems to have been as foul in mind as she was ugly in face, made a false charge of impotency against her husband; and, under this excuse, she hastened to welcome the advances of young Louis, the son of the Emperor, who helped her to drive her husband from the Tyrol.

The Emperor recognised a so-called marriage between his son and Margaretha; and this act contributed not a little to the storm of indignation which drove the Bavarian from the throne of the Empire and raised Charles to his place. Charles was scarcely seated on the throne, before he resolved to revenge his brother by a raid on the Tyrol. The raid produced no results but bloodshed and misery; and John was forced to console himself for the loss of his lands by the Margravate of Moravia, and for the loss of Margaretha by marriage with a more faithful wife.

But the quarrel between Charles and Louis was not yet at an end. On the extinction of the line of the former Margraves of Brandenburg, the territory had been granted to Louis by his father, and he had remained in undisturbed possession of it for several years. Suddenly, in 1348, a claimant came forward to the Margravate. This man declared that his name was Waldemar; that he was son of the late Margrave of Brandenburg; that, since 1319, he had been supposed to be dead; that his death had been really pretended, in order to escape from a marriage, which, after its celebration, he had found to be illegal; and lastly that, his wife being now dead, he had come forward to claim his inheritance. The story was sufficiently absurd; and it might have been thought that, even if it were true, a prince who had pretended to be dead for nearly thirty years, might, in the interest of peace, consent to pretend a little longer. Charles’s excuse for crediting the imposture was that, as he was too young to remember the real Waldemar, he trusted in the evidence of the Duke of Saxony and other princes of the Empire, who, after investigating the case, declared their belief in the genuineness of the claim. Encouraged by this evidence, Charles only too gladly seized the opportunity for avenging his brother. He declared war on Louis, removed him from his Margravate, and established Waldemar in his place. Eventually it was proved that the so-called Waldemar was the subject and tool of the Duke of Saxony; and Charles, convinced of the imposture, was forced to reinstate Louis in Brandenburg. But, his attention once fixed on this province, he saw in it a new opportunity for aggrandising his House and Kingdom; and, in restoring it to Louis, he secured to his own son Wenceslaus the succession to the Margravate.

But, if this unfortunate episode illustrates afresh the dangers which Charles had to encounter in combining his positions of German Emperor and Bohemian King, there was at least one side of his policy for which Germans, even more than Bohemians, have cause to thank him. It has already been mentioned that in the Golden Bull Charles had asserted the right of the Electors of the Empire to choose an Emperor without waiting for the confirmation of the Pope. This bold proposal was connected with that desire for a German rather than a Roman Empire, which Rudolf of Hapsburg and other wise rulers had cherished. Charles, as we shall see, had no desire to weaken the Papacy in spiritual matters, and he had been willing enough to go to Rome to be formally crowned in the sacred city; but he wished to free the German princes from that intolerable burden of the rule over Italy which was always involving the Emperors in useless expeditions, and at the same time to prevent the Popes from interfering in German affairs.

In his desire to escape from the burden of Italian politics, Charles had to resist the pressure of two advisers, each remarkable in his special way, and each disposed to revive the memory of that expedition to Italy, which Charles’s grandfather, Henry of Luxemburg, had so rashly attempted. The interview between the first of these advisers and the King must have been most impressive. It was during a temporary coolness between Charles and Pope Clement VI., that Charles, while staying in his palace at Prague, was informed that a merchant, who had recently come to the city, desired to see him on urgent business. The supposed merchant was admitted; but when called on to state his business, replied with the startling words, that he had been sent to Charles by a hermit, to inform him that God the Father and God the Son had hitherto ruled the world; but that in future it would be ruled by the Holy Spirit alone.[5] This formula was apparently familiar to Charles, for he at once recognised the speaker as the ex-tribune Rienzi. Rienzi, when challenged, at once admitted his identity; then he went on to give a sketch of the rise and fall of his government in Rome, and urged Charles to send him back to Rome as his representative. The strain of mysticism in Rienzi’s language, coupled with the Pope’s former warnings, alarmed the orthodox Charles, and he sent at once for Archbishop Arnestus. A few questions from Arnestus soon involved Rienzi in statements which savoured of heresy. The archbishop at once arrested him, and soon after sent him to Avignon, where he was kept as a prisoner for some time. Even from prison Rienzi appealed to Charles for sympathy, on the ground that he was the illegitimate son of the Emperor Henry, and therefore Charles’s uncle. Charles replied that such a consideration would not affect his action, as we all came from Adam; and he urged Rienzi to think of his soul, and not to listen to the friar, whose prophecies would drag him to ruin. The end of Rienzi’s career is well known; how, returning as Senator and Papal representative to the city which he had formerly governed in the name of the People, he was soon after murdered by the Romans, whom he had tried to restore to the “Good State.”

The other adviser, who tried to involve Charles in the responsibilities of the government of Rome, was a man of very different type. This was the poet Petrarch, who had first been interested in Charles by the admiration which the latter had expressed, during a visit to Avignon, for the beautiful Laura. So good a judge of beauty must, of course, be the poet’s ideal ruler; and Petrarch was only too eager to play the part of Dante to the grandson of Henry of Luxemburg. His first appeal to Charles was left unanswered; but, after the fall of Rienzi, the poet returned to the attack, and urged upon the Emperor the duty of coming to Rome, and administering the Holy Roman Empire from its capital. Charles had heard much of Petrarch between the writing of these two letters; and, admiring his graceful style, readily entered into correspondence with him, and pointed out to him the difficulties and dangers of the course which he advised. Petrarch did not cease to urge his proposal, and twice he fancied that his dream was about to be realised; once, when Charles went to Rome to be crowned by the Papal representative, and again, at a later time, when he consented to escort the Pope from Avignon to Rome, and even to compel the Visconti to abandon their opposition to the Papal claims over some of the northern towns of Italy. But the first expedition was merely intended to strengthen his throne by the kind of prestige which the Papal approval was still supposed to give to it; and the second visit was undertaken in the interests of Italian order and Papal dignity. In short, though Charles was anxious for Petrarch’s company, and would have liked him to lecture on literature to the University of Prague, and to the young Wenceslaus, he had no intention of following the poet’s advice in the weighty concerns of government.

Before concluding this general sketch of Charles’s career, it is necessary to refer to a project, the character of which may be easily misunderstood. Even when freed from Italian influence, and united, at least in intellectual interests, with Bohemia, the German Empire might still be exposed to the disorders arising from the contests of its princes, especially at the time of the election of the Emperors. This evil Charles proposed to remove by making the Imperial crown hereditary in the House of Luxemburg. One must not judge this scheme as a mere piece of personal ambition. Doubtless there is always something repugnant to our ideas of strict honesty in those frequent attempts, during the Middle Ages, to turn an elective position to the permanent advantage of the family of its accidental occupant. But we must remember that there is an important difference between the purpose of Charles IV. and other attempts which appear to have the same character. When, for instance, Rudolf of Hapsburg used his Imperial position to turn the Counts of Hapsburg into Dukes of Austria; when the Margrave of Brandenburg made use of his Mastership of the Teutonic knights as a means of uniting East Prussia with Brandenburg; or when the Savoyard Pope Felix used his Papal power to extend the dominions of the House of Savoy; none of these attempts could have profited any one except the ambitious promoters of them. But, if Charles could have made the German Empire hereditary in a House which was already powerful by its position in Bohemia, and could at the same time have delivered it from the terrible encumbrance of the connection with Italy, many a bitter civil war might surely have been spared. His attempt failed; and, from some points of view, one may say that it was well that it failed. But a great design cannot be completely judged by its results alone.

Nor, in the general whirl of thought and feeling, was it easy to foresee on which side any new development of this feeling should be classed; whether it should be condemned as a source of heresy and a disturbance of order, or applauded as a revival of stronger faith and stricter discipline. The Dominicans and Franciscans, called into existence to combat heresy and to strengthen the Papal power, were looked upon by the secular clergy as intruders on their lawful privileges and disturbers of the peace; while the Franciscan renunciation of property gradually led them on to the advocacy of doctrines, which were at least as inconvenient to Popes and Cardinals as to the secular nobles.

It is characteristic of the way in which anxiety for their temporal possessions was colouring all the feelings of the defenders of the Church, that, throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the name with which its champions were most eager to brand their opponents, as indicating the darkest shade of heresy, was the name of “Picard.” This word was a corruption of “Beghard,” the title of a Flemish sect, which had been distinguished for its devotion and zeal for prayer, but which had alarmed the rulers of the world by its advocacy of community of goods.

The confusion produced in men’s minds by the failure of the Church’s armies to recover Palestine, was still further increased by the retirement of the Popes to Avignon, and at a later time by that schism in the Papacy which followed the restoration of the Papal rule in Rome; and, along with the desire for the re-establishment of the unity of the Church, there grew the wish for a revival of peace and purity in the general life of Europe.

Of all the rulers of the fourteenth century Charles IV. seemed the most likely to guide these conflicting movements into channels, which should be at once favourable to the champions of the Papacy, and welcome to the promoters of peace and purity.

As King of Bohemia he had inherited, through his mother’s family, traditions of special devotion to the Church; and most of the circumstances of his career were of a kind to encourage the hopes of the Pope and the clergy. He had been elected to the Imperial throne, in opposition to the most bitterly anti-papal of Emperors, Louis of Bavaria; he had steadily opposed all the proposals which had been made to him, to induce him to assert his Imperial authority over the Italian cities; and he had prefaced the Majestas Carolina with an assertion of his adherence to the Catholic faith, and a denunciation of heresy. No doubt that clause in the Golden Bull which repudiated the necessity of a Papal sanction to the election of an Emperor, had drawn a protest from the Pope; but this error had surely been more than compensated for, by the zeal which Charles had shown for the restoration of the Pope to Rome, and for the maintenance of the Papal authority in Italy.

It must, then, have been with a shock of painful surprise that, in 1359, Pope Innocent VI. found himself suddenly opposed by this orthodox champion of the Church. The first cause of division had been a demand of Charles, that the Pope would repeal some decrees which hindered the Emperor from reforming the discipline of the clergy. Innocent had been so indignant at this demand, that he had tried to rouse the Electors against the Emperor; but he had wholly failed in that attempt, and had been forced to make some concessions to Charles.

The next point of difference was connected with a yet more burning question. Innocent had demanded new tithes from the princes of the Empire. Many of them had refused; and now, at an Assembly at Mainz, the Papal Legate again raised the question, possibly hoping to obtain Charles’s support. But the Emperor answered his demand by an expression of surprise, that the Pope was so much more zealous for collecting money than for reforming the morals of the clergy. Then, turning suddenly to the Dean of Mainz, who was wearing a splendid silken robe ornamented with gold, he made him exchange the magnificent dress for the simple cloth robe which Charles himself wore; and, as he put on the grand dress of the ecclesiastic, he appealed to the spectators to say if he did not now look more like a knight than a dean. This practical exhibition of clerical luxury the Emperor followed by a stern rebuke to the bishops for not enforcing a more strict decorum of life among the clergy; and he even threatened to tax their income for the support of the royal exchequer.

In Germany, unfortunately, there were many nobles who were ready to take advantage of the reforming movement to promote their own ends. That the clergy should live more simply seemed to these nobles a most desirable thing; and to help them to attain so satisfactory a condition, they proceeded to plunder their houses, and lay waste their lands. Such acts were utterly opposed to Charles’s intentions; and he checked these outrages so sternly that the Pope was once more forced to recognise him as his safest and strongest supporter. Perhaps this last circumstance made it easier for Charles to carry out his plans for reformation in Bohemia. In that kingdom, however, he worked by different methods, and with somewhat different objects from those at which he had aimed in his German schemes of reformation; for in Bohemia he trusted rather to the moral effect which could be produced by great preachers than to legislation or forcible repression.

The first of these preachers, whom the King summoned to Prague, was an Austrian named Conrad Waldhauser, who began to come prominently forward in 1360, the year after Charles’s attempt to reform the German clergy. Conrad’s preachings were largely directed against the luxury of women; but he also denounced the tyranny of the nobles and their usurious exactions from the peasantry. His fiercest attacks, however, were aimed against the Mendicant Orders, and specially against their simoniacal attempts to obtain ecclesiastical offices. It was these attacks that brought the greatest danger to the preacher; for the Franciscans were still strong in Papal support; and Conrad was summoned before the Legate to answer a charge of heresy. As both King and Archbishop stood by the accused, the attempts of his enemies were defeated; and he continued till his death in 1369 to exercise great influence in Bohemia.

But Conrad was a German, and preached, of course, in his native language; and Charles felt that, if the reformation were really to take hold of the people, they must be addressed in their own language. He therefore brought forward a preacher of a rather different type from Conrad. This was Milic of Kromĕr̆íz̆, a Moravian of rather plebeian origin. He had early attracted Charles’s attention, and had been already appointed to some office about the court in 1350. He had risen steadily in the king’s favour, and had been raised in 1363 to one of the chief posts in the Chancellery. An ascetic dislike to worldly honours now induced him to resign all these offices, in order to become a preacher. He at first retired to a living in a distant town; but, finding that the beautiful garden which was attached to the pastor’s house gave him too much pleasure, he returned to Prague, and began to preach at the Church of St. Nicholas in the Small District, and afterwards at St. Giles’s in the Old Town.

At first his Moravian accent excited some ridicule; but the eloquence and moral fervour of his preaching soon brought him large audiences; and he was at last called on to preach three times a day in different places. His horror at the evils of the time was so great that he soon began to prophesy the coming of Antichrist; and, at one time, when Charles was, as he considered, falling short of his duty, Milic even denounced the King as Antichrist. The Archbishop of Prague became alarmed at this attack, and put Milic in prison; but Charles himself never resented the opposition of those whom he respected; and Milic was set free again. Like so many of the reformers of the time, he had been greatly distressed at the retirement of the popes to Avignon; and, when Charles was trying to persuade Pope Urban V. to return to Rome, Milic went to Rome, and there also delivered his sermons on the coming of Antichrist. The Roman authorities were alarmed, and Milic was again thrown into prison; but, when the Pope actually returned to Rome, he was again set free and sent back to Prague.

He now abandoned his preaching on Antichrist, and restricted it to the advocacy of moral reforms. The death of Conrad Waldhauser made Milic the undisputed leader among the preachers of Prague; and, while the Teyn Church became the chief scene of his labours, he also prepared discourses for a preacher in another church. His most successful work was in reclaiming fallen women. Of these he had sometimes more than three hundred under his charge, whom he had rescued from an evil life; and he not only built a penitentiary for their residence, but he persuaded the ladies of Prague to give them places in their service. Charles nobly seconded his efforts by pulling down a notorious house of ill-fame, and building a church on the site of it.

But Milic’s fierce denunciations of the sins of the clergy continued to stir up enemies against him; and in 1374 Gregory XI., who had returned to Avignon, sent a warning to the King and Archbishop, as well as to the Bishops of Breslau, Cracow, and Olmütz against the danger of Milic’s teaching. He went to Avignon to defend himself; but, though he succeeded in satisfying the Pope and cardinals of his innocence, he never returned to Bohemia; for he was seized with an illness while at Avignon, and died there on St. Peter’s Day, 1374.

Milic had been assisted by his humble origin in gaining the sympathies of the poor; but even more alarming to the Germans who had gathered in Prague was Milic’s follower Thomas of S̆títný. He was descended from a noble family, and had been one of the earliest pupils of the University of Prague. He was thus able to give a more permanent literary reform to the teachings of the reformers. Nor did he confine himself, as Conrad and Milic had done, to efforts after moral improvement; for he grappled also with those more subtle questions of theology which were coming at that time into prominence. Master Eckhard, the founder of the Mystics, had been appointed at one time as Vicar-General of Bohemia. He had no doubt gained considerable influence in that country; and S̆títný’s utterances, especially about Faith and Love, were coloured by the teaching of the mystical school.

But the chief point of objection urged against S̆títný by his enemies was that he wrote in Bohemian. Since the time of Otto of Brandenburg, the German language had gained much ground in the town councils of Bohemia; and the foundation of the Prague University had brought a rush of German scholars to that city. The arrangements for the votings of the Nations had secured a predominance to the German element in the University; for not only did the Bavarian and Saxon nations represent almost exclusively the German influence; but even in the districts from which the Polish nation was drawn, there was a large German admixture. Of course those students who had come from a great distance had given a special proof of their genuine interest in learning; and they naturally looked upon themselves as the representatives of a higher culture than that of the ordinary townsfolk of Prague. Hence it came that the leading doctors of the University inclined to consider German rather than Bohemian as the suitable language for men of culture, especially when writing on abstruse subjects; and this feeling they were all the more anxious to assert, because, in the general stir of thought, a native Bohemian literature was beginning to attract attention.

Charles himself had studied the language carefully, had favoured the revival of the Slavonic ritual, and, as already mentioned, had chosen Milic of Kromĕr̆íz̆ in order to encourage the popular preaching of Bohemian. Under these circumstances, satirists, poets, and historians began to write in their native language; and the Masters of the University felt that they would have a hard struggle before they could denationalise Bohemia. They were therefore especially irritated when a cultivated nobleman like S̆títný insisted on discussing the most profound and subtle questions of theology in the Bohemian language; and this alarm was certainly not diminished when they found that he coupled these speculations with denunciations of the corruptions of the clergy, the tyrannies of nobles, and even the injustices of kings. Thus, then, a general movement for the reform of morals and the improvement of the clergy was more and more connecting itself with the struggles between German and Bohemian for the supremacy of their respective languages. It is conceivable that even so bitter a controversy as this might have been guided into more peaceable channels by a king who combined zeal for the Church, hearty appreciation of German learning, and a real enthusiasm for Bohemian traditions. But whether or not Charles would have been equal to such a task, there can be little doubt that his death in 1378, and the accession of his son Wenceslaus IV., did prepare the way for the more violent explosion which followed.

A great name is, in any case, a very dangerous inheritance; and when that inheritance implies an obligation on the heir to carry out a great work begun by his predecessor, the tradition generally involves failure and disgrace. In Wenceslaus, as in so many sons of great rulers, some of the qualities which had secured his father’s success were conspicuously wanting. Charles had known when to insist, and when to abstain from insisting, on the reforms which he had most at heart. He had known how far to go in the punishment of offences, and when to pardon graciously; above all, he had known how to respect, and even to utilise, the abilities of honest opponents. None of these lessons of statesmanship could Wenceslaus ever learn; he was absolutely without self-restraint or sense of proportion; and, consequently, though his aims were generally those of a wise and patriotic ruler, he frequently used the methods of a cruel tyrant.

Yet, with all these grave defects, Wenceslaus was far from being the unscrupulous and self-indulgent monster which his enemies delighted to paint him. In the early years of his reign his policy was wise and enlightened, though, even then, it was marked occasionally by that hastiness and uncertainty which belonged to his passionate temperament. But, in the difficult position in which he was placed, every step which he took was a dangerous one, and was certain to encounter fierce opposition.

The first work which his Imperial position imposed on him was the effort to restore order in the Church, by putting an end to the divisions between the rival Popes. In this point he wisely followed the policy of his father, and supported the claims of Pope Urban VI., who was actually living at Rome. The assembly of German princes accepted the decision of the Emperor; and at Prague he received the support both of the University and the Archbishop. But a difficulty at once arose. The Pope of Avignon was, as a matter of course, supported by the King of France; and the old traditions of the House of Luxemburg were in favour of friendly relations with the French kings. Greatly, therefore, to Urban’s indignation, Wenceslaus insisted on renewing his alliance with Charles in the next year to that in which he had recognised Urban as pope; he also refused to support that Pope in his quarrels with the House of Anjou for the possession of Sicily; and an even more vital cause of difference between Urban and Wenceslaus was the determination of the King to assert his authority over the clergy of Bohemia.

It was in these quarrels with his clergy that Wenceslaus first showed that tendency to violent methods, which undermined his own power and inflicted great injury on the cause of Church reformation. In 1385 he was involved in a quarrel with the Dean of Breslau. It appeared that a cask of beer sent to the dean by his brother had been intercepted by the Town Council, on the ground that no foreign beer should be admitted into the town. The dean, therefore, laid an interdict upon Breslau. Wenceslaus came to inquire into the matter, and demanded that the religious services should be celebrated, as long at least as he stayed in the town. The dean refused; and thereupon Wenceslaus banished the whole Chapter of Breslau from the town for two years, and handed over a large part of their property to the citizens.

But the most dangerous of his clerical enemies was the Archbishop of Prague, John of Jenstein. The Archbishop, himself of noble birth, had had a quarrel with the Marshal of the Court about certain rights of fishing on the Elbe; and, in asserting these rights, he had destroyed a weir which the marshal had made. Wenceslaus took the side of his official, and demanded that the Archbishop should make compensation. Jenstein refused; and Wenceslaus thereupon confiscated his property. But these acts, however arbitrary, might possibly have been forgotten, had they not been followed by a more celebrated quarrel.

In the year 1393 the Vice Chamberlain, who was the chief judge of the royal law-court, had put to death two priests. It is uncertain what their offences were; but the Archbishop claimed them as under his jurisdiction, and asserted that they should only have been tried in his court. About the same time, the Archbishop had wished to seize and punish certain Jews, who, after being baptised as Christians, had relapsed into Judaism. As the Jews were under the special protection of the King’s court, the Vice Chamberlain refused to surrender them to the Archbishop. For these two acts of opposition to his power, the Archbishop excommunicated the Vice Chamberlain, and denounced him as a heretic. The King received this news with great indignation; and his anger was still further quickened by a more personal insult. Not long before this time, he had recommended a special favourite to a bishopric in Pomerania; but, as the rulers of Pomerania had resisted the appointment, Wenceslaus had been unable to establish his claim. He was therefore resolved to endow a new bishopric in Bohemia, to which his nominee could be appointed; and the death of the abbot of a monastery in Prague suggested to the King the advisability of suppressing the monastery in order to obtain funds for the endowment of his new bishopric. The Archbishop opposed the creation of this bishopric as a diminution of his own diocese; and he may very likely have considered the suppression of the monastery as an act of injustice. In defiance, therefore, of the King’s order, the Archbishop directed the monks to proceed to the election of a new abbot, which they accordingly did. Wenceslaus hastened back to Prague in great indignation; and the Archbishop fled to the Castle of Raudnice. The King claimed this as a royal castle; and he therefore considered the Archbishop’s flight thither as conclusive proof of an organised conspiracy against the royal authority. Finding that Jenstein would not return to Prague, the king summoned before him the two chief officials of the archbishopric, Puchnic, and John Nepomuc. When they persistently refused to give any evidence against the Archbishop, Wenceslaus ordered them to be tortured. As they continued to defy him, he had them burnt on the hand; and, at last, fixing upon Nepomuc, either as the most defiant or the most important of his victims, he ordered him to be bound hand and foot, and thrown into the Moldau.

This crime was to produce even greater triumphs for the clerical party than those which had followed the murder of Becket; and Wenceslaus seems to have repented of it almost as soon as it was committed. He set Puchnic free, and gave him money compensation for his sufferings; and he recalled Jenstein to Prague. The Archbishop came; a sort of reconciliation was patched up, but its unreality was evident from the first. Jenstein secretly fled to Rome and demanded that the Pope should lay an interdict on Bohemia. At the same time all the clergy appealed to Sigismund, King of Hungary, the brother of Wenceslaus, to come to Bohemia to avenge their wrongs. Strange to say, this second appeal was the only one which produced a result. The new pope, Boniface IX., was eager to obtain the support of Wenceslaus, and therefore took his part against the Archbishop. Sigismund, on the contrary, was always ready to plot against his brother; and he easily found allies among the Bohemian nobility.

For, though the offences of Wenceslaus against the clergy had attracted the most attention, his injuries to the secular nobles had been not less keenly felt. In his desire to weaken the more powerful members of the aristocracy, he had formed a private Council among the small nobility and citizens; and, by their help, he had opposed and counteracted the greater nobles. He had further offended their sense of dignity and decorum by playing the part of Haroun Alraschid, and paying secret visits to the houses of his various subjects, to discover any offences which might have escaped the notice of the ordinary tribunals. This conduct had made him so unpopular with the nobles that, even before Sigismund’s intervention, they had formed a conspiracy against him. The ostensible leader of this conspiracy was the king’s cousin Jodok, the Margrave of Moravia; but perhaps its most powerful member was Henry of Rosenberg. This nobleman, like so many of his time, was a distinguished patron of literature and art; though his influence in such a movement was no doubt due to the more material considerations of his high rank, wide connections, and large territorial influence.

The Rosenbergs were the members of a very powerful group of families called the Vítkovici, who were the practical rulers of the south and south-east of Bohemia. There they exercised an authority which was little short of regal. They had bodies of soldiers at their command; they coined money and built fortresses at their pleasure. They professed to trace their origin to the Italian family of the Orsini; and they had played almost as important a part in the thirteenth century as the Vrs̆ovici had played in the earlier history of Bohemia. Of these Vítkovici the Rosenbergs were the most important branch; and their name shows that they had to a large extent Germanised themselves, even in the time of Ottakar. They had strengthened their position in Bohemia by founding towns and monasteries, planting woods, and building churches; and their fishponds became so important that the town of Prague was mainly supplied from them. So deeply-rooted was their power that the signs of its past greatness are visible even at the present day, in the towns of Krumov, Tr̆ebon̆, Prachatice, the monastery of Hohenfurt, and the castle and village of Rosenberg. It will easily be understood that the leader of so powerful a clan would deeply resent such attempts as those of Wenceslaus to infringe the privileges of the nobility, and to call men of lower rank to his Councils. Nor did the nobles rely solely on Bohemian support. Jodok of Moravia had taken counsel with the Duke of Austria and the Margrave of Meissen, who were always ready for any opportunity of weakening the Bohemian kingdom. Such a combination as this would have been dangerous even to Charles; and Wenceslaus was quite unable to stand against it.

The rebels were quickly ready for action; and in the year 1394, as Wenceslaus was on his way to Prague, he was seized by Jodok and his followers, and imprisoned in the Castle of Prague. The demands of the insurgent nobles were now formulated. They insisted that Wenceslaus should leave them in possession of all the fortresses that had been pledged to them, and that he should appoint Jodok as his Viceroy in Bohemia. Duke John of Görlitz, the youngest brother of Wenceslaus, hastened to the rescue of the king; and, though Jodok succeeded in carrying off his prisoner to Austria, John was welcomed by the citizens of Prague, who swore to recognise him as the administrator of the country till the King should once more be at liberty to act.

In the meantime the princes of the Empire had become indignant at the treatment of their Emperor; and they persuaded the Duke of Austria to set him free. Wenceslaus returned, embittered and suspicious, to his kingdom; and his brother John soon found that the position of liberator and peacemaker was a very difficult one. The rebel nobles had fled to Austria, whence they made raids upon their native country; John attempted to make peace between the king and the insurgents; but, when Wenceslaus found that John had mistaken the extent of the powers entrusted to him by the rebels, he accused his brother of deceiving him, and deprived him of his vice-royalty. Many of the citizens of Prague had become attached to John, and they remonstrated against his deposition. Thereupon Wenceslaus deposed all the members of the Town Council, appointed a new Council in their place, and then went through the town, accompanied by an executioner, who cut off the heads of the King’s leading opponents at the doors of their houses. In his discontent with John, Wenceslaus now appealed to his brother Sigismund. Sigismund came, and John soon after died, not without suspicion of poison. Sigismund at once persuaded Wenceslaus to recognise him as his heir if he should die without sons, to appoint a Council of the nobles, and to promise not to introduce any changes in the government without the consent of that Council.

The hollowness of the peace which followed was very quickly seen. When Jodok came to see the king at Carlstein in the same year, Wenceslaus was so carried away by the recollection of his cousin’s insults, that he had him arrested and imprisoned. Then, suddenly remembering the treaty of peace, he set him free again. But Jodok thought more of his imprisonment than of his liberation; and, though nominally reconciled, the King and the Margrave remained enemies throughout life.

The Bohemian quarrels had, in the meantime, given opportunity for the intrigues of Wenceslaus’s rivals in the Empire. That jealousy which the Electors always felt of the concentration of the Imperial power in any one family, had been for some time directed against the House of Luxemburg. Charles’s extension of Bohemian territory, by the addition of German lands, had caused much suspicion and dislike. But his combination of vigour and self-restraint, and his complete hold over his Bohemian subjects, had prevented the intriguers from making any head during his lifetime. Now, however, the quarrels of Wenceslaus with his subjects had given a double opportunity to his German opponents; for while, on the one hand, they could point to his long detention in Bohemia as a proof of his indifference to Imperial affairs, on the other hand, the disaffection of his Bohemian subjects supplied a hopeful weapon for undermining his power.

His two leading enemies were Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, who aimed at the Imperial dignity, and the Archbishop of Mainz, who had secured his see by a promise to support the intrigues of Rupert. These conspirators succeeded in winning to their side Pope Boniface IX. This Pope had indeed been at first friendly to Wenceslaus; but he had been offended by the readiness with which the King of Bohemia had listened to the French proposals for the election of a new Pope in place of the two rival claimants to the Holy See. Under various pretexts, the Duke of Saxony and the Archbishops of Trier and Köln were drawn into the conspiracy; and so, in February, 1400, the Electors met at Frankfort and resolved to choose a new Emperor.

The most plausible grounds for this deposition were mainly of a negative kind. Wenceslaus was charged with failing to procure a peaceful settlement of the affairs of the Church, and with paying no heed to those wars which were disturbing the Empire. Though Wenceslaus might have found ample excuse for these failures, he could not directly deny them; but the other charges were either false or grossly exaggerated. One of them, however, must be quoted, since it has so much bearing on the troubles which were approaching in the Bohemian kingdom. This was a charge that he “had drowned, burnt, and otherwise murdered and tortured reverend prelates and priests.” This accusation shows that the murder of Nepomuc was to be represented, at the pleasure of Wenceslaus’s enemies, either as part of a general massacre of priests, or as the cruel execution of one specially righteous man.

It was, therefore, as the champion of Holy Church against its oppressor, that Rupert was chosen Holy Roman Emperor. In this character he at once marched into Bohemia and won the support of Jodok and the discontented nobles. Again Wenceslaus was forced to make terms with his enemies; and again Sigismund was called in and appointed Viceroy. But Sigismund gained favour with no party. Jodok and his friends resented the power entrusted to him; the citizens of Bohemia complained of the heavy taxes which he laid upon them; and Wenceslaus resisted his proposal that he should counteract the schemes of Rupert by accompanying Sigismund to Rome, and by accepting the Imperial crown from the Pope. Finding his plans thwarted, Sigismund suddenly seized upon his brother, and carried him off as prisoner to Vienna. From this imprisonment Wenceslaus succeeded in escaping in 1403; and, on his return to Prague, he was welcomed as the liberator of Bohemia from Sigismund.

In the meantime the reform movement had been approaching a crisis. The teacher who, after the death of Milic, had gained most influence in the country, was a Bohemian nobleman named Matthias of Janov. He had not devoted himself so exclusively as Conrad and Milic had done to the denunciation of moral abuses, but had also attacked practices like the worship of images and saints; and he had been the first to bring before the public the question which was afterwards to be so interesting to Bohemians, the granting of the cup to the laity in the Holy Communion. But though this latter fact gives Matthias a kind of historic interest, he seems to have been in the main a source of weakness to the cause which he defended. Never wholly disinterested in his objects, he soon flinched from the attacks of the rulers of the Church; and in 1389 he formally recanted his reforming doctrines.