Duchy of Bohemia

Duchy of Bohemia
České knížectví (cs) Ducatus Bohemiæ (la)
State of the Holy Roman Empire
←   ← 870–1198 →
Coat of arms of the Přemyslid dynasty
Central Europe, 1138–1254, showing D Bohemiæ and Moravia
Capital		Prague
Languages		Old West Slavic
Government		Principality
Duke
•	ca 875–888/9	Bořivoj I (first duke)
•	1192–93, 1197–98	Ottokar I (last duke, king to 1230)
History
•	Duchy established	ca 870
•	Bořivoj I moved seat to Prague	875
•	became part of the Holy Roman Empire	1004
•	Raised to kingdom	1198

The Duchy of Bohemia, sometimes also referred to as the Czech Duchy^[1][2] (Czech: České knížectví), was formerly part of Great Moravia and became an independent principality in the 9th century. It became part of the Holy Roman Empire from the early 11th century. The Přemyslid dynasty which had ruled Bohemia since the 9th century remained in power throughout the High Middle Ages, until the extinction of the male line with the death of Wenceslaus III of Bohemia in 1306. The Duchy of Bohemia was raised to a hereditary kingdom under Ottokar I in 1198.

History

The lands encompassed by the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, the Sudetes and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands were settled by West Slavic peoples about 550 and in the 7th century the local Czech tribes were part of the union led by the Frankish merchant Samo (d. 658). Bohemia as a geographical term, probably derived from the Celtic (Gallic) Boii tribes, first appeared in 9th century Frankish sources. In 805 Emperor Charlemagne prepared to conquer the lands, invading Bohemia in 805 and laying siege to the fortress of Canburg. However the Czech forces shirked from open battle and retired into the deep forests to launch guerilla attacks. After forty days the emperor had to withdraw his forces for the lack of supplies. When the Frankish forces returned the next year burning and plundering the Bohemian lands, the local tribes finally had to submit and became dependent on the Carolingian Empire

While the Frankish realm disintegrated in the mid 9th century, Bohemia came in the reach of the Great Moravian state set up about 830. In 874 the Mojmir duke Svatopluk I reached an agreement with the East Frankish king Louis the German and confirmed his Bohemian dominion.^[3] With the fragmentation of Great Moravia under the pressure of the Magyar incursions around 900, Bohemia began to form as an independent principality. Already in 880, the Přemyslid prince Bořivoj from Levý Hradec, initially a deputy of Duke Svatopluk I who had been baptised by the Great Moravian archbishop Methodius of Salonica in 874, moved his residence to Prague Castle and started to subjugate the Vltava Basin.

Great Moravia briefly regained control over the emerging Bohemian principality upon Bořivoj's death in 888/890 until in 895, his son Spytihněv together with the Slavník prince Witizla swore allegiance to the East Frankish king Arnulf of Carinthia in Regensburg. He and his younger brother Vratislaus then ruled over Central Bohemia around Prague. They were able to protect their realm from the Magyar forces which crushed an East Frankish army in the 907 Battle of Pressburg during the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin. Cut off from Byzantium by the Hungarian presence, the Bohemian principality existed as independent state though still in the shadow of East Francia; the dukes paid tribute to the Bavarian dukes in exchange for the confirmation of the peace treaty. Vratislaus' son Wenceslaus, who ruled from 921, was already accepted as head of the Bohemian tribal union, however, he had to cope with the enmity of his neighbour Duke Arnulf of Bavaria and his mighty ally, the Saxon king Henry I of Germany. Wenceslaus maintained his ducal authority by submitting to King Henry in 929, whereafter he was murdered by his brother Boleslaus.

Bohemia under Boleslaus I and Boleslaus II

Assuming the Bohemian throne in 935, Duke Boleslaus conquered the adjacent lands of Moravia and Silesia, and expanded farther to Kraków in the east. He offered opposition to Henry's successor King Otto I, stopped paying the tribute, attacked an ally of the Saxons in northwest Bohemia and in 936 moved into Thuringia. After a prolonged armed conflict, King Otto I besieged a castle owned by Boleslaus' son in 950 and Boleslaus finally signed a peace treaty whereby he recognized Otto's suzerainty and promised to resume the payment of the tribute. As the king's ally his Bohemian troops together with the German forces fought in the 955 Battle of Lechfeld^[4] and after the defeat of the Magyars received the lands of Moravia in recognition of his services. Overwhelming marauding Hungarians has the same benefits for Germans and Czechs. Less obvious is what Boleslav wanted to gain with his participation in the war against the Obotrite tribes in far north, when he later went on to crush an uprising of two Slavic dukes (Stojgněv and Nakon) in the Saxon Billung March. Probably Boleslav wanted to ensure that the German neighbors does not interfere him in spreading the Bohemian estates to the east.^[5]

Significantly, the Bishopric of Prague, founded in 973 during the reign of Duke Boleslaus II, was subordinated to the Archbishopric of Mainz. Thus, at the same time that Přemyslid rulers used the German alliance to consolidate their rule against a perpetually rebellious regional nobility, they struggled to retain their autonomy in relation to the empire. The Bohemian principality was definitively consolidated in 995, when the Přemyslids defeated their Slavník rivals, unified the Czech tribes and established a form of centralized rule, however shaken by internal dynastic struggles. Already in 1002 Duke Vladivoj reached his enfeoffment with the Duchy of Bohemia from the hands of King Henry II of Germany, whereupon the internally fully sovereign Bohemian Duchy became part of the Holy Roman Empire. After Vladivoj died the next year, the Polish duke Bolesław I Chrobry invaded Bohemia and Moravia. In 1004, after the Poles were again expelled from Bohemia with help from the German King Henry II, Duke Jaromír received his country in fief from the king.^[6]

Duke Bretislaus I of Bohemia re-acquired the Moravian lands in 1029, which from that time on then usually was ruled by a younger son of the Bohemian king. About 1031 Bretislaus invaded Hungary in order to prevent its future expansion and in 1035 he helped Emperor against the Lusatians. In 1039 he invaded Poland, captured Poznań and ravaged Gniezno, after that he conquered part of Silesia including Wrocław. The destruction of Gniezno pushed the Polish rulers to move their capital to Kraków. In 1040 Bretislaus defeated the German King Henry's invasion into Bohemia in the battle at Brůdek. But next year Henry sieged Bretislaus in Prague and forced him to renounce all of his conquests except Moravia. In 1047 Henry negotiated a peace treaty between Bretislaus and the Poles.

The son of Bretislaus, Vratislaus II. supported Henry against the Pope, anti-kings and rebellions in Saxony in his long reign. The Bohemian troops showed conspicuous bravery and in 1083 he entered with Henry and their armed forces the Rome. Henry granted him for his support the royal lifetime title and Vratislaus became the first King of Bohemia in 1085. For his successor Bretislaus II foreign policy was aimed mainly against the Silesian conflict, when the Poles did not pay a fee for resigned areas by Bretislaus I.

In 1147 Bohemian Duke Vladislaus II accompanied German King Conrad III on the Second Crusade, but halted his march at Constantinople. Thanks to his military support against northern Italian cities (especially Milan) for the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Vladislav was elected king of Bohemia on 11 January 1158, becoming the second Bohemian king.

During the German civil war between the Hohenstaufens (Philip of Swabia) and the Welfs (Otto IV), Ottokar I of Bohemia decided to support the Philip of Swabia, for which he was awarded by a royal coronation in 1198, this time the title was hereditary. In 1200, Ottokar abandoned his pact with Philip and declared for the Welf faction. Both Otto and Pope Innocent III subsequently accepted Ottokar as hereditary King of Bohemia. The Bohemian principality was then reborn into the Bohemian kingdom. In 1212 all the privileges were summarized and confirmed in the Golden Bull of Sicily.

Kingdom of Bohemia

The lands of King Ottokar II of Bohemia

In 1212, Ottokar I (1192–93 and 1197–1230), bearing the title "king" since 1198,^[7] extracted the Golden Bull of Sicily (a formal edict) from the emperor confirming the royal title for Ottokar and his descendants and the Duchy was raised to a Kingdom. Bohemian king should be exempt from all future obligations to the Holy Roman Empire except for participation in the imperial councils. The imperial prerogative to ratify each Bohemian ruler and to appoint the bishop of Prague was revoked. To make it possible for his son to rule the country, Ottokar established inheritance by male-preference primogeniture, before which the oldest child could rule the country, irrespective of gender. The country then reached its greatest territorial extent and is considered as the Golden Age. In 1310, the Bohemian crown fell to the House of Luxembourg, until the death of Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1437. After the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Bohemia remained under Habsburg rule until the collapse of Austria-Hungary after the First World War.

See also

• Christianization of Bohemia
• History of the Czech lands
• Holy Roman Empire

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.

Sources

• Berend, Nora; Urbańczyk, Przemysław; Wiszewski, Przemysław (2013). Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c.900–c.1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107651395. 
• Bradbury, Jim (2004). The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare. Routledge. ISBN 978-1134598472.