František Ladislav Rieger

Rieger studied at the university to become a lawyer and also received a strong education in economic science, a subject that would later be the topic of much of his published political literature.

For the first time, he was rubbing shoulders with prominent Czech intellectuals and leaders, including the historian František Palacký, with whom he was soon to become close friends.

The constitution which he and his fellow assembly members together drafted was woven from the notions of Austroslavism, which advocated allowing Bohemia to become an autonomous federal state within the empire.

[citation needed] In 1858 he started the Slovník naučný ("Reference Book"), the Czech encyclopedia of general knowledge, the first volume of which was published in 1859, the 11th and last in 1874.

Francis Joseph's October Diploma, which officially divided the empire into the dualist Astro-Hungarian monarchy, left Rieger and many Czech nationalists dissatisfied with the lack of response by the government towards their wish for autonomy.

Increasingly dejected and frustrated, Rieger led his party to boycott the Bohemian Diet and newly created Austrian Reichsrat.

He appealed to Napoleon III to support the Czech movement, in spite of the unease felt by some members towards the authoritarian regime of France.

In 1867, his journey with Palacký to Moscow to attend a convention in protest of dualism was falsely interpreted by the Czech press to be a symbolic gesture towards Pan-Slavism.

Despite this evidence of his popularity, his conservatism, his close connection with the Bohemian nobility and his clerical tendencies brought Rieger into conflict with the growing influence of the radical Young Czech party.

He ended his boycott of the Diet and Reichstrat in 1879 and was one of the leaders of the federalist majority supporting Count Taaffe's conservative coalition of Iron Ring.

He continued occasionally to interfere in politics; but his influence was now at an end, though when he died, on 3 March 1903, his funeral in Prague was made the occasion of a magnificent demonstration of respect.