to tell. A few facts and dates will here be given, to show how the people were gradually deprived of their liberty.
The first account we have of robota, menial service, is in the reign of Boleslav (936–967). Robota, or Socage.During the reign of Boleslav the peasants were compelled to build fortresses and bridges, to keep the horses of their masters, to help hunt, and to feed the dogs and the servants of the hunting expeditions. The tradesmen were required to furnish the nobles under whose jurisdiction they lived, a certain amount of goods; what they could make besides this was their own. In consideration of this service, they received some sort of protection.
Premysl Ottokar II (1253–1278), in establishing cities with special privileges, did a great deal to enslave the common people. By forbidding the tradesmen of small villages to work at their occupations, he reduced them to beggary, so that they had no alternative but to die of starvation, or sell themselves to some wealthy land-owner.
Besides this great wrong against the common people, Ottokar gave the power of capital punishment to the nobility, who found it so profitable that they strove to have it declared hereditary.
Charles IV, one of the best rulers the country ever had, did nothing for the common people that was permanent. By his courts of justice he relieved temporary evils; but as for passing laws to favor the poor, he was too dependent upon the Church and the nobility to presume to do anything so derogatory to the interests of either. The Majestas Carolina proposed by him, but rejected by the nobles, shows plainly the
