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It is said that King Václav, whose unfortunate wife suddenly died three weeks after the coronation, wrote German poems in the intimate tradition of the chivalric love ritual (three of which have been preserved).
The royal poet was well informed about his predecessors and contemporaries, and he handled the traditional possibilities with unusual lucidity and artistic finesse. He is an ingenious traditionalist: “Like a rose thirsting for sweet dew,” the beloved offers her lips to him and yet, in melancholy joy, “he did not pluck the rose though it would have been in his power.” In a winter poem, the cold and the stillness of forests and meadows invite him “to the better joys” of a lively flirt, “playful glances which prompt mouth to mouth.” In his
Alba
, the traditional song of love and the break of day, Václav ironically, if not skeptically, goes a step beyond tradition: the morning dawns, and the watchman, who usually warns the lovers loyally of the end of night, offers a pompous speech about night and day, turns out to be a mercurial fellow who blackmails the lady, who must pay him off richly before she can return to bed and “to the friend of her delights.” We have entered a modern world in which protection for love must be bought, and the royal poet assures his listeners that he does not write of fiction but speaks from his own experience.
The royal poet was well informed about his predecessors and contemporaries, and he handled the traditional possibilities with unusual lucidity and artistic finesse. He is an ingenious traditionalist: “Like a rose thirsting for sweet dew,” the beloved offers her lips to him and yet, in melancholy joy, “he did not pluck the rose though it would have been in his power.” In a winter poem, the cold and the stillness of forests and meadows invite him “to the better joys” of a lively flirt, “playful glances which prompt mouth to mouth.” In his
Alba
, the traditional song of love and the break of day, Václav ironically, if not skeptically, goes a step beyond tradition: the morning dawns, and the watchman, who usually warns the lovers loyally of the end of night, offers a pompous speech about night and day, turns out to be a mercurial fellow who blackmails the lady, who must pay him off richly before she can return to bed and “to the friend of her delights.” We have entered a modern world in which protection for love must be bought, and the royal poet assures his listeners that he does not write of fiction but speaks from his own experience.
Many historians have asked why King P
emysl Otakar II did not use the conflict between the Curia and the Hohenstaufen imperial power—a conflict which dominated the last half of the thirteenth century and led to continuing conflict and division—to push his claim for the crown of the Roman king and emperor more energetically; it is possible that his ambition, more secret than revealed, prompted him to look to the Curia first and foremost. He grievously underrated the power of the German prince-electors whom he considered, of course, unequal to him, the mighty king of Bohemia. At the beginning of his reign, Otakar supported the candidacy of Wilhelm of Holland, who was also backed by a league of Rhenish towns, but by 1254 his own chances were propitious: the German princes were not unwilling to consider him, the rich son of a Hohenstaufen princess, secret negotiations were held, and Wilhelm of Holland suggested his willingness to withdraw his candidacy if paid off sufficiently. Otakar, who did not want to offend the Curia, was ready to become a candidate himself, but Pope Alexander IV, newly elected, did not appreciate the idea; Otakar submitted to his decision and lost a unique chance.
emysl Otakar II did not use the conflict between the Curia and the Hohenstaufen imperial power—a conflict which dominated the last half of the thirteenth century and led to continuing conflict and division—to push his claim for the crown of the Roman king and emperor more energetically; it is possible that his ambition, more secret than revealed, prompted him to look to the Curia first and foremost. He grievously underrated the power of the German prince-electors whom he considered, of course, unequal to him, the mighty king of Bohemia. At the beginning of his reign, Otakar supported the candidacy of Wilhelm of Holland, who was also backed by a league of Rhenish towns, but by 1254 his own chances were propitious: the German princes were not unwilling to consider him, the rich son of a Hohenstaufen princess, secret negotiations were held, and Wilhelm of Holland suggested his willingness to withdraw his candidacy if paid off sufficiently. Otakar, who did not want to offend the Curia, was ready to become a candidate himself, but Pope Alexander IV, newly elected, did not appreciate the idea; Otakar submitted to his decision and lost a unique chance.By 1272 and the death of another contender, Richard of Cornwall, the field was wide open again. In Prague, court poets and Henricus de Isernia were vying to praise the
emperor
Otakar poetically; Otakar himself,
unfortunately, relied on the reports of his diplomatic emissaries, who were far too inclined to read the signs in his favor. He certainly put his Italians to work; Jacopo Robba, son of a Ghibelline exile at the court of Prague, reported wrongly that the pope was ready to accept a Bohemian candidate if the princes elected him; Federigo Spigri, another of Otakar’s diplomatic messengers, was to sound out Charles of Anjou, ever close to the Curia; and the indefatigable Henricus de Isernia, possibly on the pretext of his brother’s demise, ventured as far as Bologna but had reason to fear the Anjou soldiers there and went back to the Hungarian front to report to Otakar what he had seen and heard. Otakar failed to deal with the German prince-electors, most of whom did not favor him because he was too powerful. For some time, they discussed a Bavarian candidacy and, finally, in 1273 unanimously voted for shrewd Rudolf of Hapsburg, who had patched together his lands in the Swiss and Alsatian regions along the upper Rhine. Otakar, fighting in Hungary, was informed, and with good reasons protested the unacceptable election procedures; the unanimous vote had been achieved by disregarding Bishop Berthold of Bamberg, who represented the Bohemian vote and whose ballot had been divided between two other princes. Otakar’s adviser, Bruno, in December 1273 submitted a memorandum to the Curia outlining Otakar’s great merits in defending Christendom in the north and the east, but this did not find much sympathy; impatient Pope Gregory X, who wanted to end the imperial interregnum, accepted the election of Rudolf in September 1274, but Otakar continued to insist on the illegitimacy of the results. Nonetheless, Rudolf, crowned Roman king without delay, demanded that Otakar return all lands acquired by his armies and administrators. By 1275 they were set on a course of inevitable collision, and it was prolonged only a little by a war in 1276 and tactical compromises the following year.
emperor
Otakar poetically; Otakar himself,
unfortunately, relied on the reports of his diplomatic emissaries, who were far too inclined to read the signs in his favor. He certainly put his Italians to work; Jacopo Robba, son of a Ghibelline exile at the court of Prague, reported wrongly that the pope was ready to accept a Bohemian candidate if the princes elected him; Federigo Spigri, another of Otakar’s diplomatic messengers, was to sound out Charles of Anjou, ever close to the Curia; and the indefatigable Henricus de Isernia, possibly on the pretext of his brother’s demise, ventured as far as Bologna but had reason to fear the Anjou soldiers there and went back to the Hungarian front to report to Otakar what he had seen and heard. Otakar failed to deal with the German prince-electors, most of whom did not favor him because he was too powerful. For some time, they discussed a Bavarian candidacy and, finally, in 1273 unanimously voted for shrewd Rudolf of Hapsburg, who had patched together his lands in the Swiss and Alsatian regions along the upper Rhine. Otakar, fighting in Hungary, was informed, and with good reasons protested the unacceptable election procedures; the unanimous vote had been achieved by disregarding Bishop Berthold of Bamberg, who represented the Bohemian vote and whose ballot had been divided between two other princes. Otakar’s adviser, Bruno, in December 1273 submitted a memorandum to the Curia outlining Otakar’s great merits in defending Christendom in the north and the east, but this did not find much sympathy; impatient Pope Gregory X, who wanted to end the imperial interregnum, accepted the election of Rudolf in September 1274, but Otakar continued to insist on the illegitimacy of the results. Nonetheless, Rudolf, crowned Roman king without delay, demanded that Otakar return all lands acquired by his armies and administrators. By 1275 they were set on a course of inevitable collision, and it was prolonged only a little by a war in 1276 and tactical compromises the following year.
In terms of physical and military power, Rudolf’s forces were no match for those of the king of Bohemia, but he skillfully negotiated with the Hungarians, fomented anti-Bohemian opposition in the Austrian lands, and was well informed about the Czech
fronde
against Otakar; Rudolf was also able to rely on the families of Styrian nobles whose relatives had been held or killed in the dungeons of Prague. In early 1276, Otakar, on his part, who had now for three years refused to recognize Rudolf’s royal rank, arranged a festive meeting of his Austrian allies in Prague, including delegates of the Viennese patriciate loyal to him (Vienna’s
Lumpenproletariat
was incited against him by mendicant friars). Later that year, his armies began to march, first as if seeking an engagement on the western frontiers of Bohemia but then going on to the Danube and Vienna,
where they came to a diplomatic halt. Vienna was held by forces loyal to Otakar, and Rudolf, on the plain outside the gates, was waiting for Hungarian help. The short war ended when many noble Czech clans revolted against Otakar at home. He was forced to negotiate and to accept the harsh condition of returning to the empire all the lands he had acquired after 1250 and receiving, in turn, inherited Bohemia and Moravia as fief from the emperor (to make his point, the legend asserts, Rudolf accepted Otakar’s formal obeisance in a shabby leather doublet). Yet sporadic fighting continued in the provinces before Bohemian garrisons were completely withdrawn and prisoners exchanged; Otakar, unwilling to accept his utter humiliation, used the time to sign additional peace protocols, to retaliate against the Czech nobles at home (Boreš of Riesenburk was put to death, and Záviš escaped to Rudolf’s camp), and to prepare for the ultimate battle.
fronde
against Otakar; Rudolf was also able to rely on the families of Styrian nobles whose relatives had been held or killed in the dungeons of Prague. In early 1276, Otakar, on his part, who had now for three years refused to recognize Rudolf’s royal rank, arranged a festive meeting of his Austrian allies in Prague, including delegates of the Viennese patriciate loyal to him (Vienna’s
Lumpenproletariat
was incited against him by mendicant friars). Later that year, his armies began to march, first as if seeking an engagement on the western frontiers of Bohemia but then going on to the Danube and Vienna,
where they came to a diplomatic halt. Vienna was held by forces loyal to Otakar, and Rudolf, on the plain outside the gates, was waiting for Hungarian help. The short war ended when many noble Czech clans revolted against Otakar at home. He was forced to negotiate and to accept the harsh condition of returning to the empire all the lands he had acquired after 1250 and receiving, in turn, inherited Bohemia and Moravia as fief from the emperor (to make his point, the legend asserts, Rudolf accepted Otakar’s formal obeisance in a shabby leather doublet). Yet sporadic fighting continued in the provinces before Bohemian garrisons were completely withdrawn and prisoners exchanged; Otakar, unwilling to accept his utter humiliation, used the time to sign additional peace protocols, to retaliate against the Czech nobles at home (Boreš of Riesenburk was put to death, and Záviš escaped to Rudolf’s camp), and to prepare for the ultimate battle.
On St. Rufus Day, August 26, 1278, Otakar and Rudolf confronted each other on the plains of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen, on the Moravian-Austrian border. Later schoolbooks suggested that it was a confrontation between Czechs and the father of the Austrian monarchy, but it was in fact a fierce, short clash between armies of many nations. Poles, Silesians, Brandenburgians, Thuringians, Saxons from Meissen, and Bavarians were fighting with Otakar’s Czechs and Moravians against a strong Hungarian army, mostly Cumans (with their famous horses and deadly arrows), supporting Rudolf’s Austrians. Otakar’s men shouted “Praha!” and the others “Rome and Christ!” including the Cumans, who were not yet Christians. In the opening engagement, the Czechs and Moravians fighting against Cuman light cavalry were unable to hold their ground; in the second engagement King Otakar himself rode with his heavily armed knights against the Austrians, who began to retreat (this encounter was entirely a matter of Germans versus Austrians). Rudolf, more patient, gave orders that Otakar’s forces be attacked by a special group of armored knights whom he had hidden in ambush against all the rules of chivalric warfare (he had considerable difficulties finding a willing commander for that particular group). These horsemen attacked the Bohemian flank, split its ranks in two, and when Otakar’s Poles and Silesians could not intervene, the Bohemian forces were overwhelmed by confusion. Many tried to save their lives by escaping to the vineyards or by retreating across the Morava River, but their king went on fighting “almost alone,” until, trying to escape, he was brutally killed by personal enemies—possibly by one Offo, sole heir to Siegfried of Mehrenburg, who had been murdered in a Prague
prison, or, as later pro-Austrian chroniclers insisted, by the Moravian noble Milota of D
dic. Roving camp followers, Cumans or others, robbed the dead king of his armor and clothes and mutilated his corpse, which was later brought to a monastery and ultimately to Prague, to be interred in St. Virus Cathedral in 1296. When his tomb was opened in 1976 by a team of scientists, they found traces of the blow that had killed him still visible on his skull.
prison, or, as later pro-Austrian chroniclers insisted, by the Moravian noble Milota of D
dic. Roving camp followers, Cumans or others, robbed the dead king of his armor and clothes and mutilated his corpse, which was later brought to a monastery and ultimately to Prague, to be interred in St. Virus Cathedral in 1296. When his tomb was opened in 1976 by a team of scientists, they found traces of the blow that had killed him still visible on his skull.Otakar II has been strangely absent from the historical imagination of his own people, and his life has not challenged important Czech playwrights and poets, many of whom prefer the condottiere and traitor Záviš of Falkenštejn: Václav Vl
ek’s professorial
Otakar
(1865) is not exactly an impressive piece. Once again, the Viennese Franz Grillparzer, that untiring student of Bohemian history, after studying the (mostly Austrian) sources wrote
König Ottokars Glück
und
Ende
(1825,
The Fortune and Fall of King Otakar).
In Grillparzer’s view, Otakar is a kind of Czech Richard III, especially in his conflict with Rudolf (Richmond), or, in the reverse image, like Napoleon, who divorced Josephine in order to marry the Austrian princess Marie Louise. The enlightened antinationalist Grillparzer came to regret that he had ever written this play, which brought out “the patriotic swine,” he said, and mobilized Metternich’s police, who insisted that the play fomented unwelcome nationalist conflict. Grillparzer clearly preferred sober Rudolf, characterized as a modest
empereur
bourgeois
liked especially by Viennese artisans (among whom we find a child named Kathi Fröhlich, with compliments to Grillparzer’s lifelong fiancée), but the play itself sides with Otakar, proud, ambitious, condescending (he treats the lord mayor of Prague like a personal valet), though, in a last monologue and prayer, Otakar is fully aware of his transgressions against the people: “I threw them away by thousands at a time, / to satisfy a folly, please a whim / as one would scatter refuse from a door” (v.2846— 48). The playwright ends the tragedy with a patriotic “Hapsburg forever!” yet after the Hapsburgs are gone, it is the defeated and saturnine Otakar who continues to trouble our imagination.
ek’s professorialOtakar
(1865) is not exactly an impressive piece. Once again, the Viennese Franz Grillparzer, that untiring student of Bohemian history, after studying the (mostly Austrian) sources wrote
König Ottokars Glück
und
Ende
(1825,
The Fortune and Fall of King Otakar).
In Grillparzer’s view, Otakar is a kind of Czech Richard III, especially in his conflict with Rudolf (Richmond), or, in the reverse image, like Napoleon, who divorced Josephine in order to marry the Austrian princess Marie Louise. The enlightened antinationalist Grillparzer came to regret that he had ever written this play, which brought out “the patriotic swine,” he said, and mobilized Metternich’s police, who insisted that the play fomented unwelcome nationalist conflict. Grillparzer clearly preferred sober Rudolf, characterized as a modest
empereur
bourgeois
liked especially by Viennese artisans (among whom we find a child named Kathi Fröhlich, with compliments to Grillparzer’s lifelong fiancée), but the play itself sides with Otakar, proud, ambitious, condescending (he treats the lord mayor of Prague like a personal valet), though, in a last monologue and prayer, Otakar is fully aware of his transgressions against the people: “I threw them away by thousands at a time, / to satisfy a folly, please a whim / as one would scatter refuse from a door” (v.2846— 48). The playwright ends the tragedy with a patriotic “Hapsburg forever!” yet after the Hapsburgs are gone, it is the defeated and saturnine Otakar who continues to trouble our imagination.
Only Dante, like Grillparzer in his magnificent fifth act, moved away from national feelings. In his
Purgatorio
, canto 7:91—102, he boldly sees Ottacchero and Rodolfo together, in the chorus of souls heavy with earthly burdens and trying to rise to spiritual incandescence. Here the defeated Otakar, who ruled the country “where the waters spring to be carried by the Molta [Moldau] to the Albia [Elbe],” in a moving and thoughtful gesture seems to comfort victorious Rudolf ( …
che nella vista lui conforta).
Rodolfo does not even care to sing with the rest.
Purgatorio
, canto 7:91—102, he boldly sees Ottacchero and Rodolfo together, in the chorus of souls heavy with earthly burdens and trying to rise to spiritual incandescence. Here the defeated Otakar, who ruled the country “where the waters spring to be carried by the Molta [Moldau] to the Albia [Elbe],” in a moving and thoughtful gesture seems to comfort victorious Rudolf ( …
che nella vista lui conforta).
Rodolfo does not even care to sing with the rest.
In the wake of the Battle of Dürnkrut, many chronicles tried to account for the fate of the great king; Austrians and Styrians usually take Rudolf’s side (especially Otacher oûz der Geul’s influential Styrian narrative in verse) and Bohemians the king’s, but there are notable exceptions to the rule. Abbot Otto, a German and Bohemian patriot, as well as the Austrian Heinrich von Heimburg, have pro-Otakarian views, and even in the Latin Colmar Chronicles, not exactly favorable to Otakar, a moving German elegy on his death is inserted to praise his knightly virtues: “ez
weinet milt und êre / den küng
ûz
Bêheimlant”
(“munificence and honor weep over the king of Bohemia”). The traditional Czech viewpoint, which is strongly critical of Otakar, was expressed early in the so-called
Dalimil Chronicle
of c. 1315, which lauded young Otakar but strongly argued against him, enemy of Czech barons and friend of the Germans, for he was willing to give villages and towns to the Germans and to build protective palisades around these settlements. Otakar was like a beautiful flower, a “rose in the meadow”
(“jako róži prost
ed /úky”),
but later alienated himself from his own people in his “irrational pride,” and suppressed the gentry and nobles; even such an honest man as Záviš, Dalimil says, had to seek protection abroad.
weinet milt und êre / den küng
ûz
Bêheimlant”
(“munificence and honor weep over the king of Bohemia”). The traditional Czech viewpoint, which is strongly critical of Otakar, was expressed early in the so-called
Dalimil Chronicle
of c. 1315, which lauded young Otakar but strongly argued against him, enemy of Czech barons and friend of the Germans, for he was willing to give villages and towns to the Germans and to build protective palisades around these settlements. Otakar was like a beautiful flower, a “rose in the meadow”
(“jako róži prost
ed /úky”),but later alienated himself from his own people in his “irrational pride,” and suppressed the gentry and nobles; even such an honest man as Záviš, Dalimil says, had to seek protection abroad.
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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