Chapter Two: The Premyslids
Okay, the oppression didn’t last that long this time. The long stretches of rule by foreigners won’t come until later. After the fall of the Great Moravian Empire, the Premyslids gradually came to power. The Premyslids were a ruling family, residing in what is present-day Prague, of a tribe of Slavs in Bohemia called the Czechs. According to legend, the Premyslid dynasty began with Libuse, their first queen. It seems that a well-regarded tribesman had three daughters, Libuse and two others whose names I forget. Let’s call them Ethel and Loretta. The story goes that their father was getting old and wanted to pass on his power to one of his daughters. It seems that each of these daughters had a special gift. Ethel’s gift was that she was quite adept at making duck calls, Loretta could fit 20 marshmallows into her mouth at the same time and whistle “Good King Wenceslas” (which was all the more impressive because this later Premysl prince was not even born yet, and the aforementioned Christmas carol wasn’t written about him for several years after that), and Libuse was a prophetess. While impressed by the gifts of Ethel and Loretta, the Czechs decided that Libuse had what they most wanted in a monarch, so she got the job.
Actually, that is not entirely true. She didn’t have what they most wanted in a monarch, because what they most wanted was a man. Libuse, a real take-charge kind of woman, solved this problem quickly by marrying Premysl, a man who she found plowing in a field one day. Thus, the Premyslid dynasty was born.
The Premyslid dynasty was not without its troubles, however. They soon found out that you don’t unite a country without breaking some eggs. Several years after the charming love story of Libuse and Premysl, along came WENCESLAS. Before I tell you who Wenceslas was, I will tell you who he was not. He was not a king, as certain Christmas carols would have you believe. He was a prince. And it is not very well documented what he ever did on any feast of Stephen in his life. He was killed on September 28, 929, not because of a rivalry between Christians and heathens, but because of the tragic soap opera that was politics in tenth century Bohemia. He ruled the Czechs for a while, and was doing a good job of it in the estimation of most people, but there was a faction which wanted him out of power. This faction found a rival to Wenceslas in his brother Boleslav. So, on September 28, they invited Wenceslas over to Boleslav’s place under the pretense of a barbecue and asked him if he could bring the potato salad. He said yes, and showed up that afternoon, a little put off by the fact that the only other people there were Boleslav’s henchman, and there was not a weenie being roasted anywhere he could see. Some say he was stabbed, and some say he was smothered by Boleslav’s “Kiss the Chef” apron, but one thing that almost everyone agrees on is that he died while hanging on to a door knocker. Later, Wenceslas was canonized and became the patron saint of Bohemia. He is still one of the cornerstones of Czech culture, and statues of him abound in Prague.
Boleslav then became ruler of most of Bohemia. I say “most of Bohemia” because that is exactly what I mean. Though the Premyslids were the most powerful force in Bohemia, they did not yet rule the entire territory, and they would not for several more years. Eventually they managed to run those tribes clinging to land in South and East Bohemia. A little later on, Boleslav’s grandson, Boleslav the Bold, attempted to bring his dreams of uniting Poland and Bohemia to fruition. This was thwarted by a German king, Henry II, who accomplished his thwarting by bringing back all those people whom Boleslav and his successors had evicted from their land.
Between this time and 1200, about 200 years later, lots of the same things happen over and over. Once again, the Premyslids try to unite Bohemia and Poland, and once again they are thwarted by a German king named Henry (III this time, but still Henry). One new development was that the Premyslid princes began to attain the rank of king, beginning with Vratislav in 1085.
However, oppression would once again rear its ugly yet familiar head in the last thirty years of the twelfth century. A German king, Friedrich Barbarossa, appeared not to care whether the Czechs were ruled by princes or kings, and squelched them under his thumb. Despite the political and cultural advances made by the Czechs, there was nothing new under the Bohemian sun.