Lands of the Bohemian Crown | |||||||||
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![]() Lands of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire (1618) | |||||||||
![]() Lands of the Bohemian Crown around 1620 | |||||||||
Status | States of the Holy Roman Empire Crown lands of the Habsburg monarchy (after 1526) | ||||||||
Capital | Prague | ||||||||
Common languages | Czech, German, Latin | ||||||||
Religion | |||||||||
Government | Confederate hereditary monarchy (1619–1620) | ||||||||
King | |||||||||
• 1526–1564 | Ferdinand I (first Habsburg on the throne) | ||||||||
• 1619–1620 | Frederick I | ||||||||
History | |||||||||
1526 | |||||||||
1648 | |||||||||
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Today part of |
Although the Kingdom of Bohemia, both of the Lusatias, the Margraviate of Moravia, and Silesia were all under Habsburg rule, they followed different paths of development. Moravians and Silesians had accepted the hereditary right of the Austrian Habsburgs to rule and thus escaped the intense struggle between native estates and the Habsburg monarchy that was to characterize Bohemian history. [1] In contrast, the Bohemian Kingdom had entrenched estates that were ready to defend what they considered their rights and liberties. [1] The Habsburgs pursued a policy of centralization and conflict arose, which was further complicated by ethnic and religious issues. [1]
Habsburg rule brought two centuries of conflict between the Bohemian estates and the monarchy. [1] As a result of this struggle, the Czechs lost a major portion of their native aristocracy, their particular form of religion (Hussitism), and even the widespread use of the Czech language. [1] The Habsburg policy of centralization began with its first ruler, King Ferdinand (1526–64). [1] His efforts to eliminate the influence of the Bohemian estates were met with resistance. [1] But the Bohemian estates were themselves divided, primarily on religious lines. [1] By several adroit political maneuvers, Ferdinand was able to establish hereditary succession to the Bohemian crown for the Habsburgs. [1] The estates' inability to establish the principle of electing or even confirming a monarch made their position considerably weaker. [1]
The conflict in Bohemia was complicated further by the Reformation and the subsequent wars of religion in Central Europe. [1] Adherents of the Czech Reformed Church (Hussites) opposed the Roman Catholic Habsburgs, who were in turn supported by the Czech and German Catholics. [1] The Lutheran Reformation of 1517 introduced an added dimension to the struggle: much of the German burgher population of Bohemia adopted one of the new Protestant creeds (both Lutheran and Calvinist); the Hussites split, and one faction allied with the German Protestants. [1] In 1537, Ferdinand conceded to the Czechs, recognized the Compacts of Basel, and accepted moderate Utraquism. [1] The reconciliation, however, was of brief duration. [1]
In 1546 German Protestants united in the Schmalkaldic League to wage war against the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. [1] Whereas Ferdinand wanted to aid his brother, the Hussite and pro-Protestant Czech nobility sympathized with the German Protestant princes. [1] Armed conflict between Ferdinand and the Bohemian estates broke out in 1547. [1] But the Bohemians were not unified; victory went to Ferdinand, and reprisals against the Czech rebels followed. [1] The property of Czech Utraquist nobility was confiscated and their privileges abrogated. [1] Four rebels (two lesser nobles and two burghers) were executed in the square before the royal palace. [1] Members of the Unity of the Brethren, a Hussite church that had figured prominently in the rebellion, were bitterly persecuted. [1] Their leader, Bishop Jan Augusta, was sentenced to sixteen years' imprisonment. [1] Ferdinand, now Holy Roman Emperor (1556–64), attempted to extend the influence of Catholicism in Bohemia by forming the Jesuit Academy in Prague and by bringing Jesuit missionaries into Bohemia. [1]
Discord between Habsburgs and Czechs and between Catholics and the followers of the reformed creeds erupted again into an open clash in the early seventeenth century. [1] At that time, the Czechs were able to take advantage of the struggle between two contenders to the imperial throne, and in 1609 they extracted a Letter of Majesty from Emperor Rudolf II (1576–1612) that promised toleration of the Czech Reformed Church, gave control of Charles University to the Czech estates, and made other concessions. [1] Rudolf's successor, Matthias (1612–17), proved to be an ardent Catholic and quickly moved against the estates. [1] Violation of promises contained in the Letter of Majesty regarding royal and church domains and Matthias's reliance on a council composed of ardent Catholics further increased tensions. [1]
In 1618 two Catholic imperial councillors were thrown out of a window of Prague Castle (one of the so-called Defenestrations of Prague), signaling an open revolt by the Bohemian estates against the Habsburgs and started the Thirty Years' War. [1] The Bohemian estates decided to levy an army, decreed the expulsion of the Jesuits, and proclaimed the Bohemian throne to be elective. [1] They elected a Calvinist, Frederick of the Palatinate, to the Bohemian throne. [1] Frederick then tried to muster further support for the Bohemian cause, even attempting to convince the Ottoman Empire to provide military support in exchange for tribute. [2] On November 8, 1620, the Czech estates confronted the imperial forces in the Battle of White Mountain near Prague and were decisively defeated. [1]
The Czech defeat at the Battle of White Mountain was followed by measures that effectively secured Habsburg authority and the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church. [1] Many Czech nobles were executed; most others were forced to flee the kingdom. [1] An estimated five-sixths of the Czech nobility went into exile soon after the Battle of White Mountain, and their properties were confiscated. [1] Large numbers of Czech and German Protestant burghers emigrated. [1] In 1622, Charles University was merged with the Jesuit Academy, and the entire education system of the Bohemian Kingdom was placed under Jesuit control. [1] In 1624 all non-Catholic priests were expelled by royal decree. [1]
The Revised Ordinance of the Land (1627) established a legal basis for Habsburg absolutism. [1] All Czech lands were declared hereditary property of the Habsburg family. [1] The German language was made equal to the Czech language.[ citation needed ] The legislative function of the diets of both Bohemia and Moravia was revoked; all subsequent legislation was to be by royal decree, receiving only formal approval from the diets. [1] The highest officials of the kingdom, to be chosen from among the local nobility, would be strictly subordinate to the king. [1] Thus, little remained of an autonomous and distinct Bohemian Kingdom. [1]
Habsburg rule was further buttressed by the large-scale immigration into Bohemia of Catholic Germans from south German territories. [1] The Germans received most of the land confiscated from Czech owners and came to constitute the new Bohemian nobility. [1] The remaining Czech Catholic nobles gradually abandoned Czech particularism and became loyal servants of the imperial system. [1] German Catholic immigrants took over commerce and industry as well. [1]
The religious wars continued after the Czech defeat. [1] The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) of the German Protestant princes against the Holy Roman Emperor involved foreign powers and extended beyond German territory. [1] Czechs fought on all sides: most of the rebellious Czech generals joined Protestant armies; Albrecht of Wallenstein was the most prominent Czech defector to the imperial cause. [1] Bohemia served as a battlefield throughout the war. [1] Prince Bethlen Gabor's Hungarian forces, reinforced by Turkish mercenaries, fought against the emperor and periodically devastated Slovakia and Moravia. [1] Protestant German armies and, later, Danish and Swedish armies, laid waste the Czech provinces. [1] Cities, villages, and castle fortresses were destroyed. [1] Lusatia was incorporated into Saxony in 1635. [1]
In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia confirmed the incorporation of the Bohemian Kingdom into the Habsburg imperial system, which established its seat in Vienna. [1] The Bohemian Kingdom de facto lost its independence ( de jure only under Maria Theresa).[ citation needed ]
History of the Czech lands |
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Czechs call the following period, from 1620/1648 till the late 18th century, the "Dark Age".[ citation needed ] It is characterized by devastation by foreign troops; Germanization; and economic and political decline.[ citation needed ] The struggle between the Bohemian estates and Habsburg absolutism resulted in the complete subordination of the Bohemian estates to Habsburg interests. [1] In the aftermath of the defeat at White Mountain, the Czechs lost their native noble class, their reformed religion, and a vibrant Czech Protestant culture. [1] The German language became more prominent in government and polite society. [1]
The Kingdom of Bohemia became little more than a province of the Habsburg realm.[ citation needed ]
After the Thirty Years' War (1618 and 1648), from the original 2.6 million inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia, there remained approximately 950,000 inhabitants in Bohemia and only 600,000 inhabitants in Moravia.[ citation needed ]
The Hussites were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus, who became the best known representative of the Bohemian Reformation.
The Defenestrations of Prague were three incidents in the history of Bohemia in which people were defenestrated. Though already existing in Middle French, the word defenestrate is believed to have first been used in English in reference to the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors out of a window of the Hradčany Castle and wrote an extensive apologia explaining their action. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, defenestration was not uncommon—the act carried elements of lynching and mob violence in the form of murder committed together.
The history of the Czech lands – an area roughly corresponding to the present-day Czech Republic – starts approximately 800,000 years BCE. A simple chopper from that age was discovered at the Red Hill archeological site in Brno. Many different primitive cultures left their traces throughout the Stone Age, which lasted approximately until 2000 BCE. The most widely known culture present in the Czech lands during the pre-historical era is the Únětice Culture, leaving traces for about five centuries from the end of the Stone Age to the start of the Bronze Age. Celts – who came during the 5th century BCE – are the first people known by name. One of the Celtic tribes were the Boii (plural), who gave the Czech lands their first name Boiohaemum – Latin for the Land of Boii. Before the beginning of the Common Era the Celts were mostly pushed out by Germanic tribes. The most notable of those tribes were the Marcomanni and traces of their wars with the Roman Empire were left in south Moravia.
Matthias was Holy Roman Emperor from 1612 to 1619, Archduke of Austria from 1608 to 1619, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1608 to 1618, and King of Bohemia from 1611 to 1617. His personal motto was Concordia lumine maior.
Ferdinand II was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia from 1619 until his death in 1637. He was the son of Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria and Maria of Bavaria. His parents were devout Catholics, and, in 1590, they sent him to study at the Jesuits' college in Ingolstadt because they wanted to isolate him from the Lutheran nobles. In July that same year (1590), when Ferdinand was 12 years old, his father died, and he inherited Inner Austria–Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and smaller provinces. His cousin, the childless Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was the head of the Habsburg family, appointed regents to administer these lands.
The Battle of White Mountain was an important battle in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War. It led to the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt and ensured Habsburg control for the next three hundred years.
Frederick V was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine in the Holy Roman Empire from 1610 to 1623, and reigned as King of Bohemia from 1619 to 1620. He was forced to abdicate both roles, and the brevity of his reign in Bohemia earned him the derisive sobriquet "the Winter King".
Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, also von Waldstein, was a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). His successful martial career made him one of the richest and most influential men in the Holy Roman Empire by the time of his death. Wallenstein became the supreme commander of the armies of the Imperial Army of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and was a major figure of the Thirty Years' War.
The Czech lands, then also known as Lands of the Bohemian Crown, were largely subject to the Habsburgs from the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. There were invasions by the Turks early in the period, and by the Prussians in the next century. The Habsburgs consolidated their rule and under Maria Theresa (1740–1780) adopted enlightened absolutism, with distinct institutions of the Bohemian Kingdom absorbed into centralized structures. After the Napoleonic Wars and the establishment of the Austrian Empire, a Czech National Revival began as a scholarly trend among educated Czechs, led by figures such as František Palacký. Czech nationalism took a more politically active form during the 1848 revolution, and began to come into conflict not only with the Habsburgs but with emerging German nationalism.
The House of Lobkowicz is a Czech noble family that dates back to the 14th century and is one of the oldest Bohemian noble families. The family also belongs to the German, Austrian and Belgian nobility. The first Lobkowiczs were members of the gentry of north-eastern Bohemia in the late 14th century. The family's Imperial immediacy over Princely county of Störnstein was mediatized by Bavaria in 1807. As such, the House of Lobkowicz belong to the small group of families that constitute the Hochadel.
Czech nobility consists of the noble families from historical Czech lands, especially in their narrow sense, i.e. nobility of Bohemia proper, Moravia and Austrian Silesia – whether these families originated from those countries or moved into them through the centuries. These are connected with the history of Great Moravia, Duchy of Bohemia, later Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia, the Duchies of Silesia and the Crown of Bohemia, the constitutional predecessor state of the modern-day Czech Republic.
The Lands of the Bohemian Crown were a number of incorporated states in Central Europe during the medieval and early modern periods connected by feudal relations under the Bohemian kings. The crown lands primarily consisted of the Kingdom of Bohemia, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire according to the Golden Bull of 1356, the Margraviate of Moravia, the Duchies of Silesia, and the two Lusatias, known as the Margraviate of Upper Lusatia and the Margraviate of Lower Lusatia, as well as other territories throughout its history. This agglomeration of states nominally under the rule of the Bohemian kings was historically referred to simply as Bohemia. They are now sometimes referred to in scholarship as the Czech lands, a direct translation of the Czech abbreviated name.
The Kingdom of Bohemia, sometimes in English literature referred to as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe, the predecessor of the modern Czech Republic. It was an Imperial State in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Bohemian king was a prince-elector of the empire. The kings of Bohemia, besides the region of Bohemia proper itself, also ruled other lands belonging to the Bohemian Crown, which at various times included Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and parts of Saxony, Brandenburg, and Bavaria.
The history of Prague covers more than a thousand years, during which time the city grew from the Vyšehrad Castle to the capital of a modern European state, the Czech Republic.
The history of Moravia, one of the Czech lands, is diverse and characterized by many periods of foreign governance.
This article covers the period from the origin of the Moravian Church, as well as the related Hussite Church and Unity of the Brethren, in the early fourteenth century to the beginning of mission work in 1732. Further expanding the article, attention will also be paid to the early Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, following their first arrival in Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1740.
Count Jindřich Matyáš of Thurn-Valsassina, was one of the leaders of the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against Emperor Ferdinand II. He took part in events that led to the Thirty Years' War, and after the war he became a military leader and diplomat in Swedish service, who eventually resided in Swedish Estonia.
The Bohemian Revolt was an uprising of the Bohemian estates against the rule of the Habsburg dynasty that began the Thirty Years' War. It was caused by both religious and power disputes. The estates were almost entirely Protestant, mostly Utraquist Hussite but there was also a substantial German population that endorsed Lutheranism. The dispute culminated after several battles in the final Battle of White Mountain, where the estates suffered a decisive defeat. This started re-Catholisation of the Czech lands, but also expanded the scope of the Thirty Years' War by drawing Denmark and Sweden into it. The conflict spread to the rest of Europe and devastated vast areas of Central Europe, including the Czech lands, which were particularly stricken by its violent atrocities.
Kłodzko Land is a historical region in southwestern Poland.
The Margraviate of Moravia was one of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire existing from 1182 to 1918. It was officially administrated by a margrave in cooperation with a provincial diet. It was variously a de facto independent state, and also subject to the Duchy, later the Kingdom of Bohemia. It comprised the historical region called Moravia, which lies within the present-day Czech Republic.
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