History of the Czech lands
They ruled for half a century before the king Louis Jagiellon died in the Battle of Mohács and the empty throne was given to the House of Habsburg.
After the death of the Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg, the religious and political tensions grew, resulting in the Second Defenestration of Prague, which sparked the Thirty Years' War.
In the Cleveland Agreement of 1915, the Czech and Slovak representatives declared their goal of creating a common state, based on the right of a people to self-determination.
The archeological site in Předmostí at Přerov represents the largest accumulation of human remains of the Gravettian culture,[10] known for creating so-called Venus figurines.
The key archeological site of the Hallstatt culture in the Czech Lands is the Býčí skála Cave, where a rare bronze statue of a bull was found.
After his death, the realm was split among his sons and soon after fell to ruin due to infighting and constant Magyar raids during the start of the 10th century.
[14] His son Spytihněv I together with the head of another major Bohemian tribe Witizla used the collapse of Great Moravia and in 895 swore allegiance to the East Frankish king Arnulf of Carinthia.
Spytihněv's nephew Wenceslaus (later proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church) ruled from 921 and had to submit to the Saxon king Henry I in order to maintain his ducal authority.
His son Břetislav I led many ambitious conquests and later revolted against the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III hoping to gain a full autonomy for the Duchy of Bohemia.
Despite the initial success in Battle at Brůdek, he could not withstand the second invasion of the imperial army and ultimately had to renounce all of his conquests save for Moravia and recognize Henry III as his sovereign.
[16] Among the more notable rulers belong (Vratislaus II and Vladislaus) who were awarded lifetime titles of kings by the Holy Roman Emperors for their services.
His reign marked the start of the German eastward colonization, which over time significantly altered the language composition of the Czech Lands.
The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of the House of Luxembourg married his son John to Wenceslaus III's sister Elisabeth and secured for him the Bohemian throne.
[23] A year after, he was excommunicated by the new Pope Paul II, which gave a justification for the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus to invade the Czech Lands and start the Bohemian–Hungarian War.
After ten years of fighting, the Bohemian-Hungarian War finally ended by signing of the Peace of Olomouc in 1479, in which Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia were ceded to Matthias Corvinus for the rest of his life and both monarchs were allowed to use the title of King of Bohemia.
The next year the Czech estates refused to gather an army again and rebelled, for which they were punished after the Schmalkaldic League decisively lost the Battle of Mühlberg.
As a result, Ferdinand I managed to strengthen his position in the Land of the Bohemian Crown,[26] limit city privileges and begin the process of recatholicization by inviting the Jesuit Order to Prague in 1556.
He approved Czech Confession (Confessio Bohemica in Latin) – a new document confirming religious freedoms – replacing the older Compacts of Basel, that did not take non-Utraquist Protestants into account.
He also showed his religious tolerance by reaffirming the Statuta Judaeorum – a document providing legal protection for the Jews in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown.
In 1605 Rudolf II was forced by his other family members to cede the rule of Hungary to his younger brother Archduke Matthias following the Bocskai Uprising after the Long Turkish War.
The Diets of Bohemia confirmed Ferdinand's position as Matthias' successor only after he had promised to respect the Letter of Majesty – a document granting religious freedoms, signed by Rudolf II.
Spanish army in the Netherlands made sure forces of Protestant Union could not join the revolt happening in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and in Austria.
Regardless, after her father's death, Maria Theresa had to defend her inheritance from the coalition of Prussia, Bavaria, France, Spain, Saxony and Poland in the War of Austrian Succession, that broke out mere weeks after her coronation in 1740.
She tried to follow the ideas of Enlightenment, she established compulsory secular primary schools,[35] but also state censorship of books that were deemed to be against the Catholic religion.
He enforced many reforms, among the most notable are the abolition of serfdom, Patent of Toleration expanding religious freedom and the dissolution of all monastic orders not involved in education, healthcare or science.
In 1836, one year after his succession, he was crowned the King of Bohemia under the name of Ferdinand V. Throughout the 19th century, the nationalist tendencies and movements in the Czech lands known as the Czech National Revival slowly grew, led by activists such as linguists Josef Dobrovský and Josef Jungmann, historian and politician František Palacký or writer Božena Němcová and journalist Karel Havlíček Borovský.
The Great Depression starting at the end of 1920's together with the rise of the National Socialist Party in neighbouring Germany during the 1930s caused increasing tensions between the different nationalist groups in Czechoslovakia.
[41] That proved to be a mistake as in 1938, both allied countries agreed to Hitler's demands and co-signed the Munich Treaty, stripping the Czechoslovakia of its borderlands, leaving it indefensible.
The Slovak Republic declared its independence from Czechoslovakia and became Germany's client state, while two days later the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed.
During World War II – given the high level of industrialization of pre-war Czechoslovakia – the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia served as a major hub of military production for Germany.
