Czechia

The earliest substantial state in the Czech lands was Great Moravia, a Slavic realm that emerged in the ninth century in the valleys of the Morava and Danube. Its decisive moment came in 862, when Prince Rostislav asked Constantinople for missionaries who could preach in a tongue his people understood and counter Frankish ecclesiastical influence. About 863 the Byzantine emperor sent the brothers Cyril and Methodius, natives of Thessalonica fluent in a Slavic dialect, who translated the Christian liturgy into what became Old Church Slavonic and devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the first script created specifically for a Slavic language. The brothers are venerated as the 'Apostles of the Slavs', and their mission anchored the Czech lands to Christendom even though Great Moravia itself collapsed under Magyar pressure in the early tenth century.

As Great Moravia fell, leadership of the western Slavs passed to the dukes of Bohemia of the Premyslid line, centred on Prague. The most celebrated of these early rulers was Wenceslas (Vaclav), duke of Bohemia, a pious Christian prince who encouraged the work of missionary priests. Murdered by his brother Boleslav about 929 (some accounts place the killing in 935), Wenceslas was almost immediately regarded as a martyr and became the patron saint of the Czech nation; the crown of Bohemia would later be known as the Crown of Saint Wenceslas, the symbol of Czech statehood.

Over the following centuries the Premyslids consolidated their duchy, balanced between independence and the orbit of the Holy Roman Empire. They extended Christianity, founded bishoprics and built Prague into a centre of trade and power. By the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the dukes had won recognition as kings, and in 1212 the Golden Bull of Sicily, issued by Emperor Frederick II, confirmed the royal title as hereditary, raising Bohemia from a duchy to a kingdom within the Empire.

Turning points

1. c. 863Religion

   Mission of Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia

   At the request of Prince Rostislav, the Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius came to Great Moravia, translated the liturgy into Old Church Slavonic and devised the Glagolitic alphabet, bringing Christianity to the Slavs.

   [1] [2]

2. early 10th c.War & Rupture

   Fall of Great Moravia

   Weakened by internal division and overwhelmed by the Magyars, Great Moravia disintegrated in the early tenth century, and leadership of the western Slavs shifted to the Premyslid dukes of Bohemia.

   ↗See the data

   [2]

3. c. 929Religion

   Martyrdom of Saint Wenceslas

   Wenceslas (Vaclav), Premyslid duke of Bohemia and promoter of Christianity, was murdered by his brother and was at once venerated as a martyr, becoming the patron saint of the Czech nation.

   [3]

4. 1212Politics & Power

   Golden Bull of Sicily and the Kingdom of Bohemia

   The Golden Bull of Sicily, issued by Emperor Frederick II, confirmed the royal title of the Premyslid rulers as hereditary, formally raising Bohemia from a duchy to a kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire.

   [4]

Figures of the era

After the extinction of the Premyslid male line in 1306, the Bohemian crown passed to the House of Luxembourg. From this line came the realm's greatest sovereign, Charles IV, king of Bohemia from 1346 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1355. Raised at the French court and deeply attached to his Czech kingdom, Charles made Prague not merely a royal seat but the de facto capital of the Holy Roman Empire, ushering in what is remembered as the golden age of Bohemia.

Charles transformed Prague into one of the great cities of Christendom. In 1348 he founded the university that bears his name, Charles University, the first university in central Europe, granted the same rights and liberties as Paris and Bologna. He laid out the New Town of Prague, began the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral within Prague Castle, and ordered the building of the stone bridge across the Vltava, the Charles Bridge, that still carries his name. These works form the core of the Historic Centre of Prague, inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1992 for the architectural influence the city radiated across Europe from the Middle Ages.

Charles also gave the Empire its enduring constitution, the Golden Bull of 1356, which fixed the procedure for electing the emperor and confirmed the king of Bohemia among the seven prince-electors. The wealth that financed this flowering came in part from the silver mines of Kutna Hora, a royal mining town whose prosperity in the fourteenth century endowed it with monuments such as the great Church of St Barbara; Kutna Hora was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995. By Charles's death in 1378 the Kingdom of Bohemia stood at the summit of its medieval power and prestige.

Turning points

1. 1306Politics & Power

   End of the Premyslid dynasty

   The murder of Wenceslas III extinguished the male line of the Premyslids; after a brief contest the Bohemian crown passed to the House of Luxembourg, the dynasty of Charles IV.

   [13]

2. 1348Culture & Ideas

   Foundation of Charles University

   Charles IV founded the university in Prague that bears his name, the first university in central Europe, endowed with the same rights and liberties as the universities of Paris and Bologna.

   [6] [7]

3. 1355Politics & Power

   Charles IV crowned Holy Roman Emperor

   Already king of Bohemia, Charles was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in 1355, making Prague the principal residence of the Empire and the centre of European politics and culture.

   [5]

4. 1357Culture & Ideas

   Building of Charles Bridge and Gothic Prague

   Charles IV laid the foundation of the stone bridge over the Vltava and advanced St Vitus Cathedral and the New Town, creating the Gothic core of Prague later recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

   [7] [5]

Figures of the era

Out of Charles IV's university came the most influential figure of the Czech Middle Ages, the reformer Jan Hus. A preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague and rector of the university, Hus drew on the ideas of the English theologian John Wycliffe to attack clerical corruption, the sale of indulgences and the wealth of the Church, and insisted on the authority of Scripture and preaching in the vernacular. His work stands between the medieval and the Reformation eras and made him a national as well as a religious figure.

Summoned to the Council of Constance under a promise of safe conduct, Hus was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. Far from silencing the movement, his death gave the Czech reformers a martyr. Their cause, henceforth called Hussite rather than Wycliffite, spread rapidly and demanded, among other things, communion in both kinds, bread and wine, for the laity, the symbol that gave the Utraquists their name.

Between 1419 and the 1430s the Hussites fought a series of wars against the Catholic king and a succession of papal crusades. Under the brilliant blind commander Jan Zizka and his successors, the Hussite armies, with their war-wagon tactics and fervour, repeatedly destroyed the forces sent against them. The conflict ended in compromise: in 1436 the moderate Utraquist Hussites secured the Compact of Iglau (Jihlava), which conceded communion in both kinds and an independent Bohemian church. Bohemia remained largely under Hussite influence until the crown passed to the Catholic Habsburgs in 1526, an event that set the stage for the religious confrontation of the next century.

Turning points

1. 1402Religion

   Jan Hus preaches at the Bethlehem Chapel

   Appointed preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, Hus began to denounce church corruption and indulgences and to champion reform and vernacular preaching, drawing on the ideas of John Wycliffe.

   [9]

2. 6 Jul 1415Religion

   Jan Hus burned at the Council of Constance

   Condemned as a heretic despite a promise of safe conduct, Hus was burned at the stake at Constance on 6 July 1415, becoming a martyr whose death set off the Hussite movement.

   [9] [10]

3. 1419–1436War & Rupture

   The Hussite Wars

   Followers of Hus fought a series of wars against the Catholic crown and papal crusades; under Jan Zizka the Hussite armies proved nearly invincible before the conflict ended in compromise.

   ↗See the data

   [10] [13]

4. 1436Religion

   Compact of Iglau

   The moderate Utraquist Hussites secured a peace settlement, the Compact of Iglau, that granted communion in both kinds and an independent Bohemian Catholic church, ending the main phase of the wars.

   [10]

Figures of the era

When the Bohemian estates elected the Habsburg Ferdinand I king in 1526, Bohemia entered a personal union with Austria and Hungary that would bind it to the Habsburg monarchy for almost four centuries. Tension between the largely Protestant Czech nobility and their Catholic Habsburg rulers grew acute under Emperor Ferdinand II. On 23 May 1618 Protestant nobles, angered by the closing of Protestant chapels in breach of the Letter of Majesty of 1609, threw two imperial regents and their secretary from a window of Prague Castle, the Defenestration of Prague. The men survived, but the act launched a Bohemian revolt that became one of the opening acts of the Thirty Years' War.

The revolt was crushed at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague on 8 November 1620, where the Catholic and imperial armies destroyed the rebel forces in barely an hour. Defeat was catastrophic for the Czech estates: rebel leaders were executed in Prague's Old Town Square in 1621, Protestant nobles were dispossessed or exiled, and the kingdom was subjected to forced re-Catholicisation and the consolidation of Habsburg absolutism. The period that followed, in which German became dominant in public life and the Czech-speaking elite shrank, is remembered in Czech tradition as the 'Time of Darkness'.

Yet the Czech nation was reborn through culture rather than arms. From the late eighteenth century the Czech National Revival set out to rescue and codify the Czech language and to reconstruct Czech history and identity. The historian Frantisek Palacky, sometimes called the 'Father of the Nation', wrote a monumental history of the Czech people and made the Hussite age the centre of national memory; writers, scholars and musicians rebuilt a modern Czech literature and public life. By the later nineteenth century this cultural revival had become a political national movement within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, demanding recognition and autonomy for the Czechs.

Turning points

1. 1526Politics & Power

   Bohemia under the Habsburgs

   The Bohemian estates elected Ferdinand I of Habsburg as king, binding the kingdom to the Habsburg monarchy and to Austria and Hungary for nearly four centuries.

   [13]

2. 23 May 1618Religion

   Defenestration of Prague

   Protestant nobles threw two Catholic imperial regents and their secretary from a window of Prague Castle, sparking the Bohemian revolt against Ferdinand II and helping to launch the Thirty Years' War.

   [11]

3. 8 Nov 1620War & Rupture

   Battle of White Mountain

   Imperial and Catholic League armies crushed the Bohemian rebels at White Mountain near Prague, ending Czech estates' power and ushering in Habsburg absolutism and forced Counter-Reformation.

   ↗See the data

   [11] [13]

4. 19th centuryCulture & Ideas

   The Czech National Revival

   From the late 18th century, scholars led by the historian Frantisek Palacky rebuilt and codified the Czech language and national history, transforming a cultural awakening into a political movement within Austria-Hungary.

   [12] [14]

Figures of the era

As Austria-Hungary collapsed at the end of the First World War, an independent Czechoslovakia was proclaimed in Prague on 28 October 1918. Its chief architect was Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, who from exile had organised the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris and won Allied recognition for the cause; he became the new republic's first president. The state united the historic lands of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia with Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, and was a genuine multi-ethnic democracy. But it also contained some three million ethnic Germans, concentrated in the border region known as the Sudetenland, a fact Adolf Hitler would exploit.

In 1938 Hitler demanded the cession of the Sudetenland, threatening war. At Munich on 29-30 September 1938, the leaders of Germany, Italy, Britain and France agreed that Czechoslovakia must surrender its German-majority borderlands and defences to Germany. Czechoslovakia, the country whose fate was being decided, was not even a party to the negotiations and gave way only under intense pressure from Britain and France, an abandonment long remembered in Czech history as the 'Munich betrayal'. German troops occupied the Sudetenland in the first days of October 1938.

Munich was the prelude to destruction. On 15 March 1939 German forces occupied the Czech lands in violation of the agreement, and Hitler proclaimed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, while a separate clerical-fascist Slovak state was set up under German tutelage. Within little more than two decades of its founding, Czechoslovakia had vanished from the map. The occupation brought repression, forced labour and, for the country's Jews, deportation and murder: some 263,000 Jews from the prewar Czechoslovak Republic were killed in the Holocaust.

Turning points

1. 28 Oct 1918Formation

   Foundation of Czechoslovakia

   With Austria-Hungary collapsing, independence was proclaimed in Prague on 28 October 1918; Tomas Garrigue Masaryk became the first president of the new multi-ethnic democratic republic.

   [15] [21]

2. 29–30 Sep 1938Politics & Power

   The Munich Agreement

   Germany, Italy, Britain and France agreed at Munich that Czechoslovakia must cede the German-majority Sudetenland to Nazi Germany; Czechoslovakia was not a party and yielded under Anglo-French pressure.

   [17] [19]

3. 1–10 Oct 1938War & Rupture

   German annexation of the Sudetenland

   Following the Munich Agreement, German forces occupied the Sudetenland, stripping Czechoslovakia of its border defences and around three million inhabitants in its German-speaking borderlands.

   ↗See the data

   [19] [18]

4. 15 Mar 1939War & Rupture

   Occupation and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

   In breach of Munich, Germany occupied the Czech lands on 15 March 1939 and proclaimed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, while a separate Slovak state was set up under German control.

   ↗See the data

   [20] [19]

Figures of the era

Liberation in 1945 was followed by upheaval. Under presidential decrees issued by Edvard Benes and sanctioned by the Allies at Potsdam, the citizenship and property of the country's Germans were stripped, and around three million Sudeten Germans were forcibly expelled, the largest population movement in the history of the Czech lands. Reckoning with the wartime occupation, the expulsion permanently reshaped the borderlands and remains a sensitive subject in Czech-German relations. The fragile postwar democracy did not last: in February 1948 the Communist Party seized full power in a coup, bringing Czechoslovakia firmly into the Soviet bloc.

Two decades of Stalinist rule gave way in 1968 to an attempt at reform. Under Alexander Dubcek the Communist leadership pursued 'socialism with a human face', relaxing censorship and opening political debate in the movement known as the Prague Spring. Moscow would not tolerate it: on the night of 20-21 August 1968 some half a million Warsaw Pact troops, led by the Soviet Union, invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the reforms and imposing the harsh 'normalisation' that followed. Resistance never wholly died, sustained by dissidents such as the playwright Vaclav Havel and the Charter 77 movement.

The end came swiftly in 1989. A student demonstration in Prague on 17 November was beaten by police, igniting mass protests; within weeks the communist regime collapsed in the peaceful Velvet Revolution, and on 29 December 1989 Havel was elected president. Czech and Slovak leaders could not agree on the shape of their shared state, and on 1 January 1993 Czechoslovakia divided peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the 'Velvet Divorce'. The new republic completed its return to the West by joining NATO on 12 March 1999 and the European Union on 1 May 2004.

Turning points

1. 1945–1946Peoples & Migration

   Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans

   Under the Benes decrees and Allied agreement at Potsdam, Czechoslovakia stripped the citizenship and property of its Germans and expelled some three million Sudeten Germans, the largest forced migration in the history of the Czech lands.

   ↗See the data

   [16] [18] [22]

2. Feb 1948Politics & Power

   Communist coup

   In February 1948 the Communist Party seized full power in Czechoslovakia, ending postwar democracy and bringing the country firmly into the Soviet bloc for the next four decades.

   [13] [27]

3. 20–21 Aug 1968War & Rupture

   Prague Spring crushed by Warsaw Pact

   Alexander Dubcek's reforms of 'socialism with a human face' were ended when roughly half a million Warsaw Pact troops, led by the Soviet Union, invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

   ↗See the data

   [23] [24]

4. 17 Nov 1989Independence

   The Velvet Revolution

   A suppressed student march in Prague on 17 November 1989 set off mass protests that toppled the communist regime within weeks; Vaclav Havel was elected president on 29 December.

   ↗See the data

   [25] [27]

5. 1 Jan 1993Formation

   The Velvet Divorce and birth of the Czech Republic

   After a 1992 vote to divide, Czechoslovakia split peacefully on 1 January 1993 into the Czech Republic and Slovakia; the Czech Republic later joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004.

   [26] [29] [30]

Figures of the era