Podiebrad: Bohemia Past and Present

Extract

The word Bohemia, it is well known, is a conventional appellation devoid of truth; a name derived from the Boij, a Gallic tribe which settled in that country, 587 B.C. In the seventh century, the Czechs, a Slavonian people, conquered it, and that branch of the great Slavonian race has ever possessed a distinct and original life, as well as a vernacular culture, that has not met with the attention it deserves at the hands of historical students. The Germans of the hereditary house of Habsburg, proclaim that the Czechs owe everything to them— arts, science, civilisation; they have often done so in a somewhat insulting language, despite several glorious epochs in the history of Bohemia, namely, the reign of Ottokar, the competitor of Rodolf of Habsburg to the imperial crown, in 1272; the greatness of the University of Prag, in the fourteenth century, and the glorious episode of George of Podiebrad. As to the Bohemian kingdom of Ottokar, by its importance and extent, it alone deserves a special history. It comprised, besides Bohemia proper, great part of modern Prussia, Carinthia, Croatia, Illyria; it extended from the Baltic to the Adriatic sea, with the harbour of Nao on the latter, thus justifying, as it were, Shakespeare, in whose “ Winter's Tale ” a Sicilian fleet sails into Bohemia, a statement that was eagerly ridiculed by Ben Jonson and others.