Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/10

8 of country There had been for some time in Bohemia complaints of the partiality of the Romanist officials of king Matthias then the ruler of Bohemia. During an interview, which took place at the Hradčany castle between the Austrian officials and the prominent Bohemian nobles on May 23d 1618, three of the officials were by the Bohemians thrown from the windows of the castle—an event known in history as the defenestration of Prague. War—as was inevitable—immediately broke out; and continued after the death of Matthias. The Bohemians, who had chosen Frederick elector Palatine, husband of the English princess Elisabeth, daughter of James I, as their king, were decisively defeated at the battle of the „White Mountain“ (Bílá Hora) on November 8th 1620.

This defeat and the executions of the Bohemian leaders which took place in the following year, mark an epoch in the history of Bohemia. The ancient constitution of the country which was in many respects not unlike that of England at the same period, was suppressed; almost the whole of the landed property in the country was confiscated and foreign owners, Germans, Spaniards and Italians, took the places of the ancient Bohemian nobles. As these men were mostly ignorant of the national language, the use of German became wide-spread, for a time almost general, in Bohemia.

The history of the country has henceforth but little interest up to a comparatively recent time. Bohemia continued in a lethargic state up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, but after the restoration of European peace in 1815. a movement in favour of a national revival began. This movement was at first merely literary, as was indeed impossible to be otherwise under the absolutist government of prince Metternich. In 1845 however the Estates of Bohemia, who continued to meet, though their legislative powers were very