Page:The future of Bohemia by Seton-Watson (1915).pdf/10

 For our present purpose it is sufficient to note that as early as the seventh century there already was a Czech State, periodically at war with the neighbouring German tribes and varying greatly in extent and territory with every generation. Under the national Slav dynasty of the Přemysls it was gradually consolidated; two princes of that house acquired the kingly title, but it was not till the very end of the twelfth century that Bohemia finally became a kingdom. In the thirteenth century Ottokar of Bohemia (1253–78) was also Duke of Austria and Styria, until he was overthrown and stripped of his German provinces by Rudolf of Habsburg, the founder of the Austrian Imperial family.

But the heroic era of Bohemia lies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, first under a French dynasty, the Kings of the House of Luxemburg, and later under a national King, elected from the ranks of her own nobility. The outstanding feature of this period, as of earlier and later periods of Bohemian history, is the perennial racial struggle between Czech and German.

In passing, it may be worth while pointing out that the Prince of Wales’s plumes, so familiar to us as an emblem, were won upon the battlefield of Crecy from the blind King John of Bohemia, after he had fallen in a mad but gallant charge. John’s son and successor Charles, who was also Emperor, won for Bohemia a position of European importance. Under his wise and