Meissen on his way, and extended his dominions to the Elster and the Saale. He also occupied Bohemia, till driven out by the emperor Henry IV. in 1004. The German war was terminated in 1018 by the peace of Bautzen, greatly to the advantage of Boleslaus, who retained Lusatia. He then turned his arms against Jaroslav, grand duke of Kiev, whom he routed on the banks of the Bug, then the boundary between Russia and Poland. For ten months Boleslaus remained at Kiev, whence he addressed triumphant letters to the emperors of the East and West. At his death in 1025 he left Poland one of the mightiest states of Europe, extending from the Bug to the Elbe, and from the Baltic to the Danube, and possessing besides the overlordship of Russia. But his greatest achievement was the establishment in Poland of a native church, the first step towards political independence.
See J. N. Pawlowski, St Adalbert (Danzig, 1860); Chronica Nestoris (Vienna, 1860); Heinrich R. von Zeissberg, Die Kriege Kaiser Heinrichs II. mit Herzog Boleslaw I. (Vienna, 1868).
BOLESLAUS II., called “The Bold,” king of Poland (1039–1081), eldest son of Casimir I., succeeded his father in 1058. The domestic order and tranquillity of the kingdom had been restored by his painstaking father, but Poland had shrunk territorially since the age of his grandfather Boleslaus I., and it was the aim of Boleslaus II. to restore her dignity and importance. The nearest enemy was Bohemia, to whom Poland had lately been compelled to pay tribute for her oldest possession, Silesia. But Boleslaus’s first Bohemian war proved unsuccessful, and was terminated by the marriage of his sister Swatawa with the Czech king Wratyslaus II. On the other hand Boleslaus’s ally, the fugitive Magyar prince Bela, succeeded with Polish assistance in winning the crown of Hungary. In the East Boleslaus was more successful. In 1069 he succeeded in placing Izaslaus on the throne of Kiev, thereby confirming Poland’s overlordship over Russia and enabling Boleslaus to chastise his other enemies, Bohemia among them, with the co-operation of his Russian auxiliaries. But Wratyslaus of Bohemia speedily appealed to the emperor for help, and a war between Poland and the Empire was only prevented by the sudden rupture of Henry IV. with the Holy See and the momentous events which led to the humiliating surrender of the emperor at Canossa. There is nothing to show that Boleslaus took any part in this struggle, though at this time he was on the best of terms with Gregory VII. and there was some talk of sending papal legates to restore order in the Polish Church. On the 26th of December 1076 Boleslaus encircled his own brows with the royal diadem, a striking proof that the Polish kings did not even yet consider their title quite secure. A second successful expedition to Kiev to reinstate his protégé Izaslaus, is Boleslaus’s last recorded exploit. Almost immediately afterwards (1079) we find him an exile in Hungary, where he died about 1081. The cause of this sudden eclipse was the cruel vengeance he took on the milites, or noble order, who, emulating the example of their brethren in Bohemia, were already attempting to curb the royal power. The churchmen headed by Stanislaus Szczepanowski, bishop of Cracow, took the side of the nobles, whose grievances seem to have been real. Boleslaus in his fury slew the saintly bishop, but so general was the popular indignation that he had to fly his kingdom.
See M. Maksymilian Gumplowicz, Zur Geschichte Polens im Mittelalter (Innsbruck, 1898); W. P. Augerstein, Der Konflikt des polnischen Königs Boleslaw II. mit dem Bischof Stanislaus (Thorn, 1895).
BOLESLAUS III., king of Poland (1086–1139), the son of Wladislaus I. and Judith of Bohemia, was born on the 23rd of December 1086 and succeeded his father in 1102. His earlier years were troubled continually by the intrigues of his natural half-brother Zbigniew, who till he was imprisoned and blinded involved Boleslaus in frequent contests with Bohemia and the emperor Henry V. The first of the German wars began in 1109, when Henry, materially assisted by the Bohemians, invaded Silesia. It was mainly a war of sieges, Henry sitting down before Lubusz, Glogau and Breslau, all of which he failed to take. The Poles avoided an encounter in the open field, but harried the Germans so successfully around Breslau that the plain was covered with corpses, which Henry had to leave to the dogs on his disastrous retreat; hence the scene of the action was known as “the field of dogs.” The chief political result of this disaster was the complete independence of Poland for the next quarter of a century. It was during this respite that Boleslaus devoted himself to the main business of his life—the subjugation of Pomerania (i.e. the maritime province) with the view of gaining access to the sea. Pomerania, protected on the south by virgin forests and almost impenetrable morasses, was in those days inhabited by a valiant and savage Slavonic race akin to the Wends, who clung to paganism with unconquerable obstinacy. The possession of a seaboard enabled them to maintain fleets and build relatively large towns such as Stettin and Kolberg, whilst they ravaged at will the territories of their southern neighbours the Poles. In self-defence Boleslaus was obliged to subdue them. The struggle began in 1109, when Boleslaus inflicted a terrible defeat on the Pomeranians at Nackel which compelled their temporary submission. In 1120–1124 the rebellion of his vassal Prince Warceslaus of Stettin again brought Boleslaus into the country, but the resistance was as stout as ever, and only after 18,000 of his followers had fallen and 8000 more had been expatriated did Warceslaus submit to his conqueror. The obstinacy of the resistance convinced Boleslaus that Pomerania must be christianized before it could be completely subdued; and this important work was partially accomplished by St Otto, bishop of Bamberg, an old friend of Boleslaus’s father, who knew the Slavonic languages. In 1124 the southern portions of the land were converted by St Otto, but it was only under the threat of extermination if they persisted in their evil ways that the people of Stettin accepted the faith in the following year. In 1128, at the council of Usedom, St Otto appointed his disciple Boniface bishop of Julin, the first Pomeranian diocese, and the foundation of a better order of things was laid. In his later years Boleslaus waged an unsuccessful war with Hungary and Bohemia, and was forced to claim the mediation of the emperor Lothair, to whom he did homage for Pomerania and Rügen at the diet of Merseburg in 1135. He died in 1139.
See Gallus, Chronicon, ed. Finkal (Cracow, 1899); Maksymilian Gumplowicz, Zur Geschichte Polens im Mittelalter (Innsbruck, 1898).
BOLETUS, a well-marked genus of fungi (order Polyporeae), characterized by the central stem, the cap or pileus, the soft, fleshy tissue, and the vertical, closely-packed tubes or pores which cover the under surface of the pileus and are easily detachable. The species all grow on the ground, in woods or under trees, in the early autumn. They are brown, red or yellow in colour; the pores also vary in colour from pure white to brown, red, yellow or green, and are from one or two lines to nearly an inch long. A few are poisonous; several are good for eating. One of the greatest favourites for the table is Boletus edulis, recognized by its brown cap and white pores which become green when old. It is the ceps of the continental European markets. There are forty-nine British species of Boletus.
BOLEYN (or Bullen), ANNE (c. 1507–1536), queen of Henry VIII. of England, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, afterwards earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde, and of Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, afterwards duke of Norfolk, was born, according to Camden, in 1507, but her birth has been ascribed, though not conclusively, to an earlier date (to 1502 or 1501) by some later writers.[1] In 1514 she accompanied Mary Tudor to France on the marriage of the princess to Louis XII., remained there after the king’s death, and became one of the women in waiting to Queen Claude, wife of Francis I. She returned in 1521 or 1522 to England, where she had many admirers and suitors. Among the former was the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt,[2] and among the latter, Henry Percy, heir of the earl of Northumberland, a marriage with whom, however, was stopped by the king and another match provided for her in the
