Page:Bohemia An Historical Sketch.djvu/19



Many English visitors to my Bohemian home have remarked to me on the absence of any history of my country in the English language. German and Bohemian (Cech) historians are numerous, and include many who have written in the present century, since freedom of writing and of research into archives have existed in Austria. Most of these are valuable and trustworthy; but I think I may lay claim to having compiled the first narrative or sketch of Bohemian history in English from original and other authorities.

My little work professes to be no more than a sketch, and I have purposely selected this title for the volume.

I have, therefore, though briefly noticing the earliest records of Bohemia, devoted most of my attention to the period of the Hussite wars and of Bohemian independence. Bohemia as an independent State practically ceased to exist after the battle of the White Mountain (often, I think, called the battle of Prague by English writers) in 1620; and at this point my sketch of Bohemian history ceases.

But up to that date, the annals of Bohemia are full of picturesque incident, and have considerable bearing on the general development of Europe. In King John Bohemia gives us the embodiment of mediæval chivalry, and its most remarkable crowned representative. The religious questions that afterwards convulsed Europe were first thrashed out in Bohemia, and John Hus and his followers maintained and developed there the ideas that were first broached by Wycliffe in England, but for the time found little support in that reformer's native country. These points are, I think, clearly brought out. Political liberty and democratic principles, unsuccessfully contended for as they were, receive some of their earliest illustrations from Bohemian history.