More than most peoples, the Czechs are aware of the history that has moulded them and which continues to affect their present and influence their future. In its present form as an independent democratic republic, their country has existed only since 1992; before that, as a little nation, they were more often than not subjected to interference and domination by larger and more powerful neighbours.
Přemyslid origins
Legend has it that Princess Libuša, leader of a Slavonic matriarchal tribe, picked the farmer Přemysl to be her husband. She told him to go look for a village on the banks of the Vltava and to found a town there, which she predicted would achieve great things. This later became Prague, the ‘golden city’.
Beginnings
Located at a natural fording place on the Vltava River, a tributary of the Elbe River, Prague was settled as early as the Stone Age, and remains including tools and jewels have been found in the area. Celtic tribesmen settled here well over 2,000 years ago, followed by a Germanic people. Of more lasting significance, however, was the arrival in the 5th or 6th century AD of the first Slavs, ancestors of the Czechs, who chose to settle on the hilltops for safety. The second half of the 9th century saw the construction of the castle’s original fortifications. It was from here that the Czechs were ruled by the Přemyslid family, a dynasty with mythical roots that extended well into the Middle Ages.
A Saintly Pioneer
In the late 9th century the Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity to the Slavic lands. In around 873, Methodius baptised Prince Bořivoj and his wife Ludmila. Cyril and Methodius went on to be canonised, as did Ludmila, proclaimed patron saint of Bohemia following her assassination. The grandson of Ludmila, first of the rulers named Wenceslas (Václav in Czech), held the crown in the 10th century. During his reign a church dedicated to St Vitus was built at Prague Castle. Wenceslas, who was a fervent believer, became the first of the Czech princes to be murdered while carrying out his holy duties. He was ambushed on his way to Mass and the killer turned out to be none other than his younger brother, Boleslav.
King Wenceslas
Getty Images
Far from being condemned for eliminating Wenceslas, Boleslav assumed power. During his reign, a well-travelled Jewish merchant by the name of Ibrahim ibn Jacob wrote admiringly of Prague as a great and busy trading centre with solid stone buildings. The town became a bishopric in 973, at about the time that the monastery of St George was established.
In the early 11th century Přemyslid rule was extended to neighbouring Moravia by Břetislav I, the great-grandson of Boleslav. He later became a vassal of the German emperor, paving the way for centuries of German influence. Břetislav’s son, Vratislav II, was the first monarch to bear the title of King of Bohemia.
The Wenceslas Dynasty
Prince Wenceslas I, the saint, was not the only Wenceslas I. The second Wenceslas I became king of Bohemia in 1230, and ruled long and well. Encouraging the arts, he presided over a growing prosperity – and population. However, the greatest of the Přemyslid rulers was Ottakar II (1230–78), known as the ‘King of Gold and Iron’ for his prowess in war and the prosperity he brought the kingdom. Ottakar encouraged German merchants, miners and craftsmen to settle in Bohemia and he founded the Lesser Quarter as a German enclave, protected by German law. His ambitions were terminated when he was slain in battle by his Austrian rival for the imperial throne, Rudolf of Habsburg, but under Wenceslas II, Otakar’s son, the economy boomed thanks to large finds of silver, and the Prague groschen became a stable international currency.
The dynasty’s luck eventually ran out with the son of Wenceslas II. In the summer of 1306, early in his reign, the teenage King Wenceslas III went down in history as the last of the Přemyslid kings when he was assassinated in Moravia.
Charles the Great
The Přemyslid dynasty was succeeded by the House of Luxembourg. The first ruler was John (Jan) of Luxembourg, but it was his son Charles IV (Karel IV) who was to shine as ruler of the city. Ruling for 36 years, Charles was deeply involved in the government of Prague and Bohemia. His warm relations with the church led to Prague being promoted to an archbishopric in 1344. Under his direction, centuries of work began on the present St Vitus Cathedral. Early in his reign in 1348, Charles put Prague firmly on the intellectual map by founding Central Europe’s first university. He expanded the city to the New Town, thus providing room forartists, craftsmen and merchants from all over Europe. Finally, he gave Prague its Gothic Charles Bridge. In 1355, Charles acquired yet another royal title when he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
The mosaic of the Last Judgement adorns St Vitus Cathedral
Apa Publications
Religious Strife
Prague should have thrived as the administrative headquarters of the empire that Charles had consolidated, but people and events conspired against it. Charles IV’s son and successor, Wenceslas IV, proved an irresolute leader. He turned his back on revolts and wars and was eventually deposed. In the biggest crisis that Wenceslas failed to address, Prague lived through the skirmishes that were preludes to the Reformation. At Bethlehem Chapel, in the Old Town, a theologian and professor named Jan Hus challenged the excesses of the Catholic Church. Hus’s demands for reform became so vigorous that he was excommunicated, arrested for heresy and burnt at the stake in 1415. In the aftermath of his death his large and loyal following, known as the Hussite Movement, gained momentum, to the dismay of the papacy.
The statue of Jan Hus gazes out over Old Town Square
iStock
In 1419 a reformist mob invaded Prague’s New Town Hall, liberated imprisoned Hussites and threw several Catholic city councillors from the windows. This event, called the First Defenestration of Prague, was to herald a long tradition. The harried brother of the unfortunate Wenceslas, Emperor Sigismund, marshalled Czech Catholic forces and foreign allies in a crusade against the Hussites. However, the rebels fought back. Their under-equipped, but highly motivated, peasant army won some noteworthy victories, such as at the Battle of Vítkov Hill. The rebels were commanded by a brilliant one-eyed soldier named Jan Žižka, but following his death the leadership foundered, and they were eventually defeated.
Sigismund died without leaving a successor. He was followed by the short-lived reigns of his son-in-law Albrecht of Austria, and then of Albrecht’s son, Ladislas. A dynamic politician by the name of George of Poděbrady, who was implicated in the death of Ladislas, was elected to succeed him. George aligned himself with the Hussites, to the displeasure of the neighbouring Catholic kings and the papacy. He was eventually excommunicated and, along with Prague, boycotted by the international diplomatic and business community.
Arrival of the Habsburgs
Absentee kings ruled Bohemia from George’s death until 1526, when the Habsburgs claimed the throne. This zealously Catholic dynasty held sway over what remained of the Holy Roman Empire and focused their attention on protecting their European borders against the very real Ottoman threat. By now the Protestant faith had become a powerful influence, in addition to which Bohemia’s grave religious divisions were simply another thorn in their side.
Uncanny pursuits
Rudolph II (1583–1611), Prague’s emperor under the Renaissance, was fascinated by the occult. He employed a number of alchemists who had access to the castle by means of a network of underground passages.
In 1576 Emperor Rudolph II came to the throne and moved his capital from Vienna to Prague. Imperial patronage spurred the arts and sciences to new heights, and splendid Renaissance buildings further embellished the city. Rudolph’s principal accomplishment was a decree granting freedom of religion to Catholics and Protestants alike. However, the decree was not honoured by Ferdinand II, the Catholic king who succeeded him in 1611, and the inherent religious conflict soon escalated.
The defenestration of 1618, was the starting signal for the disastrous Thirty Years War. A new king, Frederick of the Palatinate, was elected, but in 1620 his Protestant army was routed by the imperial forces on a low hill just outside Prague. What became known as the Battle of White Mountain has gone down as one of the blackest days in Czech history; its aftermath was marked by the public execution of leading Protestants and the expulsion from the country of all those who refused to convert to Catholicism.
The Second Defenestration of Prague
Cornered in Prague Castle by their angry Protestant adversaries on 23 May 1618, two terrified imperial officials begged for mercy, but their pleas went unheeded. Bundled to the window along with their unfortunate secretary, they were forced out, though one of them clung desperately to the sill until his knuckles were broken by a sharp blow from a dagger. Their descent into the moat far below should have killed them, but to everyone’s surprise, they survived the fall, and succeeded in making their escape. According to the Catholic version of the event, they were miraculously borne up by the Virgin Mary; the possibly more realistic Protestant account describes how their fall was broken by the monstrous mound of rubbish that had accumulated in the moat.
Ferdinand’s decisive victory radically changed the now-haggard face of Prague. The period that followed was characterised by later historians as the ‘Darkness’, a time when Czechs were a suppressed majority in their own land, their elite either dead or in exile, their language downgraded, and their favoured religion forbidden. Much of this was true. Confiscated Protestant estates were sold at knock-down prices to Habsburg supporters, many of them of foreign, particularly German, origin. German became the language of polite society, and Czech was eventually spoken only by peasants and the urban poor. Jesuits and other religious orders strove to eliminate the last sparks of Protestantism. However, not all was gloom. Once the country had recovered from the decades of war, a building boom beautified cities and countryside with the glories of Baroque art and architecture. However, the tensions arising between Prague’s German-speaking and Czech-speaking citizens would persist well into the 20th century and have unforetold repercussions.
Prague’s National Theatre, symbol of Czech national pride
iStock
National Awakening
In the 18th century Habsburg rule became more enlightened, notably in the reign of Emperor Joseph II (1780–90). His educational reforms produced a generation of literate Czechs, who became increasingly aware of their past history and their present subjugation. In the early 19th century a new intellectual elite emerged, codifying the Czech language, reviving its literature and agitating for Czech rights within the Empire. By the end of the century, Prague, which Emperor Franz Josef had described earlier as looking ‘every bit a German city’, was completely in the hands of the Czechs; street signs in German had disappeared, and bombastic buildings like the National Museum and National Theatre expressed an ever more confident Czech nationalism.
The 20th Century
When the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in June 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was plunged into World War I. From the ashes of a defeated Austria-Hungary, an independent Czechoslovak republic was proclaimed in October 1918, comprising Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. The first president of the First Republic was Tomáš G. Masaryk, an admired professor of philosophy.
World War II and After
However, simmering tensions between the Czech and Slovak majoity and the country’s sizable German minority came to a head when, in 1938, Hitler demanded self-determination for Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking citizens. In order to appease him, Britain and France handed over the country’s borderlands. In March 1939, after persuading Slovak nationalists to secede and form an ostensibly independent, near-Fascist ‘Slovak State’, Hitler incorporated the remainder of the country into Greater Germany as the ‘Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia’. Six long years of brutal occupation were to follow before Soviet troops liberated the city in May 1945.
At the parliamentary elections of 1946, the communists won nearly 40 percent of the votes. The non-communist pre-war president Edvard Beneš, elected again, invited the veteran communist leader Klement Gottwald to form a coalition cabinet. When, in 1948, several non-communist ministers resigned in protest at his policies, Gottwald packed the government with supporters. When the very popular non-communist Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, son of Tomáš, was found dead below his office window at the foreign ministry it was whispered that he was the victim of another defenestration.
Gottwald, as the new president, framed a five-year economic plan, cracked down on the churches and purged his opponents outside and inside the party; scores were executed and thousands arrested. The show trials went on under Antonín Novotný, while farmers were forced into collectives.
The Prague Spring was brutally crushed by Soviet tanks
Getty Images
The short-lived ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968 saw an attempt by reform Communists led by the Slovak Alexander Dubček to transform the system and create a ‘Socialism with a human face’. This failed, crushed by the Soviet tanks which overran the country in August. For the next two decades, reinstated hardline Communists ruled the roost, buying off the populace by filling the shop shelves with consumer goods, albeit of poor quality. The few dissidents, among them playwright Václav Havel, suffered routine harassment and persecution.
The Velvet Revolution
On 17 November 1989, an event took place that should have been a peaceful student demonstration turned into a mass movement after police attempted to quell the event by clubbing protesters. Thousands then gathered on Wenceslas Square to call for the introduction of democracy, rattling their house keys as a symbol of protest against 40 years of communism. The next day, the regime stepped down in what would become known as Eastern Europe’s quietest revolution.
The Czech Republic
In November 1989 the so-called Velvet Revolution saw Václav Havel elected as president, an office he was to hold for 13 years. While successive governments struggled with the problems of converting the Communist system into a free-market economy, Havel fought for the survival of the country whose freedom he had suffered for. In vain: in 1992, the Czech prime minister Václav Klaus and nationalist Slovak leader Vladimir Mečiar decided that the only way to settle their differences was for Czechoslovakia to be divided. Avoiding the referendum that would almost certainly have put paid to their plans, they engineered the ‘Velvet Divorce’, the creation of separate Czech and Slovak Republics.
Former president Václav Havel
Getty Images
The disappointed Havel submitted himself to re-election as president of his now diminished country, finally being replaced by Klaus in 2003. Despite setbacks, the Czech Republic has steadily integrated itself into the political and economic systems of the West. Membership of NATO came in 1999, and in 2004 the country joined the European Union. Two years previously, in August 2002, a flood had devastated towns and villages along the valley of the Vltava, including Prague.
While recent years have seen Prague prosper, since 2006 the country has experienced a high degree of political instability, with no one party able to command a majority in parliament. In 2013 a corruption and abuse-of-power scandal led to the fall of PM Petr Necas followed by early elections. The political situation did not stabilise until January 2014 when Bohuslav Sobotka became the head of the new coalition government.