Page:Bohemia's claim to independence.djvu/8

 The ruthless persecution following the battle of White Mountain almost wiped out the Czechs as a distinct national individuality. A policy of Germanization was followed unmercifully, even by so liberal an Emperor as Joseph Second, whose ambition it was to erect a strong and ethnically unified Austria against the ambitions of such Prussian Kings as Frederick the Great. Indeed, toward the end of the eighteenth century, the Czech nation was looked upon as dead.

Yet the vitality of the nation was such that it arose from its grave. This modern miracle is largely a triumph of democracy, because it was the vitality of the plain people, as Lincoln always called them, of the peasants especially, that withstood all the assaults of the Germanizing elements. Beginning with the nineteenth century, Czech men of letters begin to appear, and the revolutionary year of 1848 brings a political renaissance.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the nation reached a cultural level surpassing that of any other nationality in Austria. In literature and arts it is second to no nation of its numerical strength; economically it has been making rapid strides forward, being second only to the Austrian Germans, while in cultural