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 trouble with the German king, Henry the Fowler, who was at enmity with most Slavic nations. It is supposed that she sent aid to her kinsmen at Luticia, with whom Henry was at war.

When the enemy invaded the country, Václav, although only twenty years of age, assumed control of the government, and prepared to defend the country. The war which followed, although neither very long nor bloody, proved most momentous in its results to Bohemia. When the German army invaded the country, and coming almost to the very gates of Prague threatened destruction to the city, Václav decided to make a treaty of peace. He agreed to place the Bohemian Church under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ratisbon, to pay an annual tribute of five hundred pounds of silver and one hundred and twenty oxen. This was in the year 928 A. D., which marks the beginning of that fearful struggle between Germany and Bohemia that lasted for so many centuries, and has not been fought out to this day. There had been war between the two nations before, and doubtless would have been after this, but by this treaty, Václav, so to speak, put the Bohemian nation in subjection to the Germans, and thus gave them a moral right to interfere in the affairs of that nation.

VcálavVáclav [sic]’s brother Boleslav, his mother, and many lords protested against this treaty; but he would not heed their counsel. Educated entirely by his pious grandmother, he desired above all things peace, so that nothing should hinder the spread of Christianity in his dominions. Then, too, war was repugnant to his tastes; he preferred to attend church, to help to serve mass, to engage in long prayers, to give alms, and