Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/24

10 Living under an intolerant Catholic dynasty which for a long time in the Middle Ages was also the ruler of the German Empire, the Czech nation soon found itself in a desperate situation. The reigning dynasty resolved on the conversion of Bohemia to Catholicism, and to achieve this and called to their aid the Germans, who were hostile to us and who during the preceding centuries had been in continual conflict with us. Jealous of might, having an insatiable thirst for aggrandisement, and an unparalleled dynastic pride, and employing without hesitation any means which seemed most effectual, the House of Austria tried by every conceivable method to exterminate us.

When the Czechs in 1526 voluntarily accepted a prince of the House of Habsburg for their sovereign, they acted in complete independence. But the Habsburgs, becoming masters of Bohemia, determined to deprive the Czechs of their independence, both religious and political.

From the very outset of the Hahsburg reign in Bohemia, an irreconcilable antagonism sprung up between the Crown and the nation, and a relentless conflict ensued of which the following gives some account:—

The three portions of the Austrian monarchy, that is to say, the Bohemian (Czech) lands, the