Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/110

 of the short-lived parliamentary assembly that met at Vienna in the spring of 1848 and was transferred to KroměřiceKroměříž [sic] in the autumn of that year. Palacký was also a member of the ill-omened Slavic congress of Prague, and was asked to take part in the German assembly at Frankfurt. Previously to the meeting of the German parliament, the most prominent German statesmen met in conference. As the treaty of Vienna had though without the consent of the estates included Bohemia in the Germanic confederation, Palacký was invited to take part in this conference. His answer caused great sensation, and became a watchword to the Bohemians. Palacký wrote: ‘I am not a German, but a Bohemian. Whatever talent I possess is at the service of my own country. My nation is certainly a small one, but it has always maintained its historic individuality. The rulers of Bohemia have often been on terms of intimacy with the German princes, but the Bohemian people has never considered itself as German.’

Almost all the ephemeral attempts at establishing constitutional government in continental countries in the year 1848 failed. Austria, at the end of the year 1852, was again an absolutist country. Daring this period of absolutism, which lasted up to the year 1860, Palacký retired into private life, devoting himself entirely to the continuation of his great historical work. Censure was indeed not re-established, but Palacký now encountered a much more serious danger. The whole Austrian empire was then under martial law, and the authorities seriously considered whether the great historian should be tried by a court martial.