The Kingdom of Bohemia Lore Books

Description

A brief history of the Kingdom of Bohemia.

Text

The Kingdom of Bohemia

As far back as the memories recorded in our great chronicles do stretch, our land has been fertile and settled in great abundance and offered refuge to many and exceeded other countries in beauty and bounty.
Before the waning of the first millennium, two empires did exist here side by side—the Great Moravian Empire and the disunited Duchy of Bohemia, in which the Přemylid dynasty did reign supreme and Saint Wenceslas, the patron saint of the land, did hail from this lineage, as did his brother Boleslaus I, who solidified power and unified the land.
His son, Boleslaus II, did promote the parish of Prague into the Diocese of Prague, and thus the land did join the Holy Roman Empire, although no ruler of the Premyslid lineage had yet received the title of king. The first to do so was Vratislaus II, who in the year of our Lord 1086, for coming to the aid of the emperor during the attack on Milan, did earn himself the crown, but his progeny did not have such fortune until Ottokar defended his inherited right to the crown.
It would have been natural for him to then occupy the neighbouring land of Moravia, but he did not, for he wisely and peacefully charged his son with administering this land and thus did make of Moravia a March, which later became not an imperial fiefdom but a royal fiefdom, belonging to the Bohemian Crown.
But the Premyslides were not meant to rule for long, for a murderer’s hand did intervene and this great dynasty was slayed by the sword and the empty throne did then fall to the Luxembourgs, who did annex to this country other territories of great size, so that the Kingdom of Bohemia nearly stretched from sea to sea. The most famed of kings of Bohemia, and the King of the Romans in the same man, was Charles IV of Luxembourg, who did establish great wealth and bounty for the entire land and its fame did spread, for he did promote the diocese to an archdiocese and did command for a great University at Prague to be built and a New Town with a stone bridge to connect it to the Old. The University at Prague did become the home of many a learned man and Prague did become the Seat of the Empire.
Charles’s firstborn son, Wenceslas IV, was bequeathed a land of great riches and prosperity by his father, but he did devote himself more to whores and drink than to wise rule. He did set his own bishops and Rome against him and his incompetence as a ruler was so great that his own brother, who had inherited the ways of a ruler from his father, had him taken prisoner and dethroned.
A note: What has been written here about the good King Wenceslas is a blatant lie. Sigismund, that Ginger Fox, is the son of a whore and traitor to his land! King Wenceslas is the one true King!