Page:Bohemia An Historical Sketch.djvu/95

 the first measures of Charles consisted in the re-establishment of a regular administration of the law. During the reign of King John the former law-courts had, in consequence of the anarchical state of the country, almost entirely ceased to exist. Charles now divided the whole country into thirteen districts for the administration of justice, and he established a court of justice in the central town of each of these districts.

He also created, or perhaps re-established, a High Court of Law at Prague. In all these courts of law the Bohemian language was to be exclusively used. What has more than anything else endeared the memory of Charles to the Bohemian people is the favour he always showed to the national language, to which the Bohemians have at all times been devotedly attached. During the period from the reign of Přemysl Ottokar I to that of King John (1192–1346), the Bohemian language was several times near sharing the fate of the Slav dialects of Northern Germany. The greater development of the Bohemian language, which at that time already possessed a literature of its own, and the influence of the Bohemian nobles, who from hostility to the German settlers soon again began to use their native tongue, preserved it from that fate. It was by the influence of Charles alone that Bohemian again became the language of the court, and he himself—though he used the Latin language for his writings —soon spoke the language of his country fluently. It is said that on his first return from France (where he was educated), his earliest thought was to acquire a thorough knowledge of the Bohemian tongue. One of the consequences of Charles's predilection for the Bohemian language was that, though maintaining the privileges conferred by his predecessors on the German colonists, he yet secured equality for the Bohemian language in the towns that were mainly inhabited by Germans. Charles decreed that at the assemblies of the town magistrates the speakers should, according to their own choice, use either the Bohemian or the German language, that no one speaking German only should be