more independent of the king, and the common people were crushed deeper into serfdom. On the death of Louis, in a battle against the Turks at Mohacz, Bohemia passed into the hands of Ferdinand of Austria, who treated the kingdom in the most despotic manner, and in 1547 declared it a hereditary possession. He was followed in succession by his son Maximilian II. and his grandson Rudolph II., who left the country as distracted as they found it. The son of Matthias, the next king, was rejected by the Protestant party, which chose in his stead Frederick V. of the Palatinate; but the victory at the White Mountain in 1620 left Bohemia at the mercy of the emperor, who inflicted a terrible vengeance on his enemies, and in 1627 declared the country a purely Catholic and hereditary kingdom of the empire. Owing to this no fewer than 30,000 families are said to have gone into exile and the population of the country was reduced to 800,000. On the death of Charles VI. Charles Albert of Bavaria laid claim to the crown, which continued to be an object of dispute though the Silesian campaigns and the Seven Years' War, but was successfully defended by Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II. The country was greatly benefited in many ways by the government of that monarch; but he destroyed the independence of the royal towns, and treated the whole land as a mere province of the empire. Its religious condition was considerably improved, however, by an edict of toleration published in 1781. Under the succeeding reigns the circumstances of Bohemia underwent but little alteration, and it was hardly affected by the first French Revolution. In 1848, however, a determined "national" movement agitated the country. The demands of the Liberal party gradually increased, and nothing short of a full share in the constitutional government of their country would suffice. The movement was not confined to Bohemia, but spread through the whole Austrian empire, to the article on which (p. 137 of the present volume) the reader is referred. (See Freher, Rerum Bohemicarum Antiqui Scriptores, 1602; Dobner, Monumenta Historica, 1764–68; Pelzel, Geschichte der Böhmen, 1817; Palacky, Geschichte von Böhmen, 1839; Jordan, Geschichte des böhm. Volks und Landes, 1845–47.)
Literature.
The Bohemians or Czechs speak a Slavonic language, which has been subjected to literary culture from about (if not before) the 9th century. A few fragments of a pre-Christian literature have been preserved in a manuscript discovered by Hanka in 1817 in the church-steeple of Königinhof; but the first productions of any extent are due to the activity of the early German Christians, and are composed for the most part in the Latin language. Against this powerful exotic speech the vernacular had a long and dubious struggle, especially in the ecclesiastical domain, and it was still striving against its encroachments when the political circumstances of the nation exposed it to the more dangerous, because more popular and less artificial, rivalry of German. From the court and the capital outward over the nobility and the country there spread a Germanizing energy that at first seemed likely to destroy everything that was distinctively Bohemian; but here and there the national language and customs were fostered and preserved by a few patriotic spirits, among whom the monks of the Slavonic monastery of Sazawa were especially conspicuous. At length the native language obtained the imperial patronage (under Charles IV.) Dalimil wrote his Rhyming Chronicle of Bohemia (1314); and translations began to be made from Latin and other languages. Among these were Mandeville's Travels; and about the end of the 14th century a complete version of the Scriptures, the manuscript of which is preserved at Nikolsburg in Moravia. Thomas Stitny the domestic moralist, Duba the jurist, and Flaska the didactic poet, |style="padding-inline-start:10px; padding-inline-end:10px; border-inline-start:none; border-inline-end:none;"| deserve to be mentioned as original writers. The next generation saw the attempts at once at religious and at linguistic reform that came to so sad an end in the buming of John Huss and the persecutions that followed. The Bohemian language was, indeed, brought into general use and served the disputants of both sides; but little was consigned to its keeping except the ephemeral productions of ecclesiastical and political strife. A large collection of these works, saved from destruction by the invading Swedes, is still preserved in the library of Stockholm. Of more permanent interest may be mentioned Paul Zidek's History of the World, written for George of Podiebrad; the interesting travels of Leo of Rosmital and his companions through various countries of Europe; and those of Kabatnik in Egypt and Asia Minor, and of John of Lobkowitz in Palestine. The 16th century saw a remarkable development of Bohemian prose in various departments of literature. Weleslawin, Paprocky, and Hayek of Liboczun wrote popular histories; Wratislas of Mitrovic and Prefat of Wlkanow gave accounts of their travels; and Nicolas Konec, Dobrensky, and Lomnicky produced didactic works of different kinds. A valuable translation of the Bible was published at Kralitz in Moravia by eight learned Bohemian Brethren at the instigation of John of Zerotin; and various versions of the classics appeared from time to time. A long period of literary decadence followed the battle of the White Mountain in 1620. The best blood of the nation went into exile, and what Bohemian literature was produced appeared for the most part in foreign cities. In 1774 a severe blow was struck at the native language by Maria Theresa's imperial decree which enforced the use of German in the higher and middle schools of the country. Before long, however, the defence of the mother tongue was taken up by Count Kinsky, Hanka of Hankenstein, the historian Pelzel, and the Jesuit Balbin,—by the last mentioned in a Dissertatio apologetica pro lingua Bohemica. The language became the object of the scientific investigations of Dobrowsky, and the remains of the early periods were edited by Dobner, Prochazka, and other philologists. A chair of the Bohemian language was founded in the University of Prague, and in 1818 a Bohemian museum was established in connection with a society that devoted itself to the study of national antiquities, and published a valuable journal. Puchmayer (1795–1820) gave an impulse to national poetry, and has been succeeded by Langer, Roko, Wocel, Schneider, Czelakowsky, and Kollar, and a great number of other writers. In the department of science Presl, Sadek. Amerling, Smetana, Petcina, Sloboda, and Opiz have attained distinction. Grammars of the Czech language have been produced by Burian, Hanka, Maly, Sembera, and Tomicek; Sumawsky published a great German-Bohemian dictionary; Spatny, a Bohemian-German and German-Bohemian technological dictionary; and Jungmann a large Bohemian-German lexicon. The names of even the prominent writers in philosophy, theology, and politics are too numerous to be mentioned. (See Schafarik's Slavisch Alterthümer, 1842, and Geschichte der Slav. Sprache, 1826 ; Jungmann's Geschichte der Böhm. Sprache und Literatur, 1825.)
