RAGUE was in holiday vein, happy and optimistic, its prevailing mood, on that day in 1311 when John, Count of Luxemburg, and Elizabeth, daughter of Wenceslaus II, were crowned. No doubt the ceremony took place on the HradŠany, and the steep approaches to the Castle Hill would be thronged with cheerful merrymakers; I wonder whether the Bohemians of those days said "Na zdar!" as frequently as they do to-day!

The Pragers had every reason to be happy and hopeful, for no change could bring about a worse state of affairs than that which had characterized the five years between the death of the last male Premysl and the elevation of the first Luxemburg to the throne of Bohemia. That period was a sort of interregnum which was filled up with civil war, with murders among relatives, and was bringing Bohemia to the verge of anarchy.

The troubles of the time were largely caused by the newly arrived House of Habsburg, and the state of the Empire at that period reflects German mentality. The seven German Electors had been careful to go outside their own charmed circle for a King, and one who would carry out their wishes. They therefore picked out what we may call a second-class magnate as likely to be amenable. They met with disappointment. Rudolph was out for himself. His victory over Premysl Ottokar II was welcomed by the Germans, who could never see a neighbour, especially a Slav, growing in importance, without showing signs of consuming jealousy. To break down the power of Ottokar the Bohemian was a meritorious act. To acquire for private and family use some of that King's finest possessions, Upper and Lower Austria, was not appreciated by the Electors. Therefore when Rudolph died the Electors turned down his son Albrecht, who put up for the imperial crown, and elected Adolph of Nassau instead. Adolph also tried to make something out of the post of Emperor, so the Electors threw him over, and he was shortly afterwards killed in battle. Albrecht of Habsburg then came to the throne, and taking up the family policy of profitable matrimonial alliances, married his son Rudolph to the widow of the Premysl Wenceslaus II, Elizabeth, whom we have already met. I am rather sorry for this Elizabeth. Whether she liked her second husband or not, it must have been uncomfortable to find him becoming more and more unpopular among the people, who in any case had not expressed undue enthusiasm over his accession to their throne. He was chiefly unpopular on account of his meanness; the Bohemians, though thrifty almost to the verge of parsimony among themselves, do not like that trait in a foreigner, especially one who comes to cut some sort of figure as King or what-not amongst them. However, Rudolph died before a year of sovereignty was out, leaving that poor lady Elizabeth a widow for the second time, and under even more trying conditions. Despite all Habsburg precautions towards settling the crown of Bohemia on their own house, the nobles of the country proceeded to assemble a Diet at Prague in order to elect a new King. Elizabeth had to attend that function, and must have had a lurid time of it; the nobles raised no end of a storm, according to the Bohemian historian Palacky. There was one Tobias of Bechyn leading the case for the introduction of another foreigner as ruler, the opposition calling on him not to favour the claims of foreigners, possibly enemies, to rule over Bohemia, whereupon Tobias shouted: "If you wish at any price to obtain a native Prince, go to Stadic, among the peasants; there you will perhaps find a relation of the extinct royal family; bring him here and seat him on the throne of your country." Thereupon ensued pandemonium. One Ulrich of Lichtenburg slew Tobias forthwith, and several other nobles were killed in the fray before the Diet settled down to the conclusion that Henry, Duke of Carinthia, should be called in to rule over Bohemia. Henry was supposed to be popular chiefly because he had married a Premysl, as we have already reported—Ann, daughter of Wenceslaus II; anyway, Prague received the couple with acclamations. Albrecht of Habsburg objected, as he had fixed on his son Frederick as heir to the Bohemian lands. There were the usual troubles: Albrecht's troops invaded Bohemia and Moravia, and some of them continued to hold a few frontier towns even after Albrecht had been killed by his nephew John and the Electors had gone elsewhere in search of an Emperor.

With characteristic distrust of each other or of any German of first-rate importance, the Electors went to the second-class magnates again, and this time their choice fell on Henry, Count of Luxemburg. Carlyle derives this name of Luxemburg via Luzzenburg from LÜtzelburg, which he translates into Littleborough. Carlyle is very pleased with this derivation, and uses it to "point a moral and adorn a tale." In all humility I differ from Carlyle in this derivation, my only excuse being that I happen to know the dialect as spoken round about Luxemburg and among the Eiffel people, sufficiently well, and that in their vernacular there is no such word as could be distorted from LÜtzel-via Luzzen-into Luxem-and then mean "little." It is really refreshing to be able to differ thoroughly, heartily, unreservedly, with a philosopher of old-established authority.

Carlyle likes to point out that this insignificant little dynasty of Luxemburg produced some great men as Emperors. He is quite right there too; but so also did Habsburg. As to the Luxemburgers, it must be borne in mind that though of German origin they were French by sentiment and upbringing—I quote Dr. Seton Watson from memory.

German origin, a phrase that has been very freely used of late years, is a somewhat elastic term, and frequently implies a mental rather than a racial qualification. Of the old original Teutons, the Germans of yore, there are few representatives left over—you may find some in Frisia and about the Porta Westphalica, on the east coast of Yorkshire, too, perhaps; the all-Germans, the Allemanni, as I believe they called themselves at one time, have seldom, if ever, formed a clearly defined political entity. The Franks in the early days of the Merovingians, by no means an estimable people, were probably purely Teuton; they separated more and more from their less civilized race-kindred, and by the time the Frankish Empire had reached its zenith its people had absorbed a good deal of other blood, which mixture crystallized into the French nation and soon broke away from any racial relations with the Teutons. Then the arch-enemies of the Franks, the Saxons, mixed freely with Slavonic races which extended well into the Hanover country and all over Mecklenburg at one time, so that those who are now called Saxons are, next to the Prussians, more thoroughly mixed with Slavs than any other Germans. The Bavarians, again, must have in them a good deal of the persistent Celtic element which they inherited from the Boievari who at one time left Bohemia for Bavaria. The amusing thing is that those who most loudly declaim on the subject of Deutschland Über Alles are the most thoroughly mixed of the lot. It is idle to speculate on what would have become of German imperial conceits if the German race and its admixtures, like that of our islands, had been isolated from its neighbours by water instead of being constantly exposed to inroads from all sides, and consequently moved to follow up any success at arms into a neighbour's country. It seems as if a permanent Germanic Empire—material, not only sentimental—were never destined to a long and prosperous existence. These speculations, however, are best left to the historian, and we will return to the city of Prague.

We have seen John of Luxemburg and his wife Elizabeth happily crowned on the HradŠany at Prague and the city relieved by this event from the prospect of prolonged internal disorder. Henry of Carinthia, who succeeded Rudolph, had not proved satisfactory. He also had taken the precaution of marrying a Premysl, was in fact John's brother-in-law, but he failed to maintain the popularity which he enjoyed when called to the throne, and was eventually chased out of Bohemia to make room for John. Now John was heavily handicapped and did little to remove his disabilities, in fact he rather aggravated them. He was only fourteen when he found himself a King and a married man. His father, a shrewd and enterprising monarch, died before John had really become acquainted with his capital, and so there was no unbiassed adviser to whom the young ruler could turn. John did not live on the best of terms with his mother-in-law, who from the dower-house at Kralove Hradec, called by the Germans KÖniggratz, interfered a good deal in the affairs of state; the trouble is said to have arisen originally between the two Elizabeths, mother and daughter, and even led to some fighting in which the city of Prague took an active part. By temperament John was not equal to his task; he was, it appears, thoroughly unpractical and entirely embued with all sorts of romantic notions. Those who watched John's doings from afar, and were not immediately affected by their results, could afford to approve of him and call him corona militiÆ as did King Edward III of England. John was what may be called the "soul of chivalry," in his opinion Paris was the most chivalrous city in the world, and that is probably why he felt called upon to roam Europe as a knight-errant instead of looking after his wife and her relatives, and incidentally his Kingdom of Bohemia. According to Count LÜtzow, John intended to re-establish the Round Table of King Arthur, and to this end he invited all the most celebrated knights of Europe to a tournament at Prague; "nobody responded to the call." So John went abroad for his amusement and found it in plenty. To begin with, there was always something doing in his line between rival German Kings and Emperors, so we find him helping Louis, Duke of Bavaria, at Wittelsbach, to victory over the Habsburger Frederick at MÜhldorf. Expeditions to Hungary, Italy, France and against the heathen Lithuanians all helped to pass away John's time pleasurably and unprofitably; as Palacky says: "It would be necessary to write the history of all Europe if we attempted to describe all the feuds into which King John entered with chivalrous bravery, but also with frivolity. It then became a proverb, that 'nothing can be done without the help of God and of the King of Bohemia.'"

John proved an expensive luxury to Bohemia, and he reigned for thirty-six years, so his country, although rich, yet peopled by a canny and thrifty population, must have been thankful when at last he was knocked on the head at Crecy. The story is well known to us all, so we need not linger on it. John bequeathed his motto to the Black Prince, who could well afford to pay a graceful compliment by accepting it; after all, not he, but Bohemia, had to pay for John's fun. John kept the mint of his country busy striking ducats, a coin of his own conception, a very good and full-weight coin too, but he probably took most of the ducats abroad for his various diversions; there are, however, a few left in the museum of Prague, I believe. John had quaint ways of raising money; one of them must have led to a great deal of inconvenience to the citizens of Prague, who on Sundays and holidays were wont to make excursions into the country. No one was allowed a drink within a certain radius of the capital; this was all very fine for the publicans of Prague, who no doubt had come to a suitable arrangement with the King, but it fills me with sorrow to reflect on the streams of excursionists and travellers doing the last lap home on a hot summer's day.

There is nothing of beauty in the panorama of Prague as seen from my terrace, which I can ascribe to Bohemia's chivalrous and eccentric King. He was too busy spending his country's wealth in trying to settle other people's quarrels, and raising others of his own, to think of beautifying his capital. Nevertheless I could point out to you traces of beautiful work for which John may indirectly derive some credit. This enterprising monarch had, as I have already mentioned, found occasion to go fighting about in Italy. He was induced thereto by the usual picturesque lack of sufficient reason just at the moment when he was attempting something useful. John's predecessor on the throne, Henry of Carinthia, with whom he had become reconciled, had no male heirs, so Bohemia's King called on Henry at Innsbruck in order to arrange a marriage between the former's second son John Henry and the latter's daughter Margaret, known in German history as Maultasche, of whom Carlyle speaks so unkindly. While at Innsbruck, John was invited by the Lombard town of Brescia to assist it against the Lord of Verona, Mastino della Scala. King John at once dropped the useful business, dashed in amongst the squabbling Italians and won a number of victories which gave him possession of a fair slice of Italy. He proved quite incapable of holding it, and his gains rapidly melted away like snow on the sunny southern slopes of those mountains that shut off the smiling plains of Venetia against the barbarous north. Here John's eldest son Charles comes upon the scene, and this is perhaps the only real good that ever came out of the first Luxemburg ruler of Bohemia, namely, an heir who should live to set up a Golden Prague as fitting capital to a happy and prosperous country.

Charles had had an unhappy childhood between his grandmother, the unfortunate widow Elizabeth, a somewhat uneven-tempered mother, and an erratic and unreasonable father. The unhappy lad had even been imprisoned by his father on suspicion of being concerned in a conspiracy with his mother to dethrone John. Charles must have been about five years at the time, for he was only seven when, a few years after his release, King John took him to the French Court for his education. Here Charles acquired his love of learning, his refined sense of beauty and steadfastness of purpose, all of which he devoted without stint to his country, and to him is chiefly due the glorious composition of the towers and steeples which rise up out of mysterious old Prague. Charles, and through him Prague, benefited by John's Italian venture, in that the gracious spirit of the Renaissance came to Bohemia out of his father's chivalrous exploits. Moreover, Charles, though only seventeen years of age, was thus given an opportunity of proving his metal in the field; he won several victories which, however, were fruitless, and above all learnt the art of governing. So when John and he left Italy, under pressure from the natives, Charles was competent to represent his father at home, while the latter went off on his knight-errantry.

As may be easily imagined, the people of Bohemia, and notably the burghers of Prague, had become discontented under the exactions imposed upon them by their extravagant King and were not inclined to look kindly upon a Luxemburg successor. Prague, like other continental cities, had become aware of its importance, and was quite prepared to resort to arms in order to emphasize its opinion. The city had already taken to arms in support of their native Queen Elizabeth against her stranger husband John, so Charles had no easy time at first. However, he had the qualities his father lacked, complete self-possession and steadfastness of purpose; moreover, unlike his father, he was in thorough sympathy with his people, which John never was, and spoke their language well, which feat, it appears, John never attempted. Father and son seldom agreed on any subject; probably John considered Charles no sportsman, and told him so frequently. I cannot imagine John's conversation as anything but ad hominem, and his jokes as weighty as a kick from a troop-horse, and as pleasant. With a little thinking you can find another, quite recent monarch, who takes after John of Luxemburg in some respects, though he failed to achieve such a picturesque ending. And the occasion of John's chivalrous exit arose out of his second marriage. It really makes a pretty picture if you try to figure to yourself John and his son Charles setting out together for Paris both with the intention of marrying a French Princess, for John, undeniably brave, was braced up for this second venture. John married Beatrice of Bourbon, Charles Blanche of Valois; if I know anything of John, he probably stayed in Paris, whereas Charles would hurry back to Prague to continue his programme of improvements. Amongst these improvements is one directly inspired by Blanche, his "snow-white" bride, which you may see to this day. I could just point it out to you, the Church of "St. Mary of the Snow," but it is difficult to pick out among the sea of roofs. Although it is the tallest church in Prague, it no longer has steeple or spire pointing to the sky; whatever of the kind there was disappeared during some street-fighting or other which frequently took place around this church. If you follow the Narodni Trida straight along from the river towards the VaclavskÉ Namesti you will see "St. Mary's of the Snow" on the right, tucked away behind some quaint old buildings formerly the Carmelite Monastery founded by Charles.

It would seem that Charles, when in doubt, either built a new church or restored an old one. There was a good deal to do in Prague in the latter line of business especially, and Charles, with the real founder's zeal, set about putting his capital in order. He was rather handicapped by an expensive father, who, however, had no particular objection to repairing religious institutions, his trouble being that he generally had no money left for constructive work after he had been round dealing out destruction, impelled thereto by his chivalrous conceit. I can quite imagine John as a man subconsciously religious and intermittently pious, so, for instance, he would probably invoke all the saints he could think of, to aid him in some warlike enterprise, then dash into the fray forgetting all about the saints; one does. He might perchance remember one or other of those he had invoked, after the fun was over, and stand them a candle or so, if he could borrow the money for this gift from his loyal subjects. I know of one case at least where John bestowed largess upon a deserving institution. This happened in 1342, six years before Bohemia's adventurous King had died in the King of England's tent on the battlefield of Crecy. The object of the monarch's generosity was the monastery of Emaus. John, though always jealous of his son's popularity, had handed a considerable share of the government of Bohemia and Moravia to the latter and probably let Charles carry on as long as he, John, was not bothered with domestic details, and always could touch a bit for any tempting military expedition that offered. Emaus seems to have been a favourite enterprise of Charles. You remember that I have pointed out the place to you; I can just see it from the terrace with its twin towers of raw sienna tone. I also told you about the heathen burial ground, Na Morani, about the Church of St. Cosmas and Damian, and how St. Wenceslaus worshipped at their shrine. King Charles seems to have acquired the same general regard for those two saints, and this may have decided him to found a monastery on the rocky eminence whereon Emaus has withstood many vicissitudes during the stormy course of several centuries of Bohemia's history. Charles must have conceived the plan of founding this monastery some time before the middle of the fourteenth century, for we find the following entry in its chronicles which speaks of John and Charles, and in a Latin quaintly picturesque and careless: "Nos Johannes dei gracia Boemie rex ac Lucemburgensis comes et Karolus eius primogenitus marchio Morawie." It would not be easy to get any more mistakes of grammar and spelling into this sentence. So John had made a donation to the new foundation—out of some one else's pocket; the butchers of Prague were privileged to pay for the King's generosity.

Charles was of a careful, saving disposition; he also raised funds out of other people's purses for his good works. So we find again among the records of Emaus that he called upon the butchers to find the necessary money; the meatstalls of the Mala Strana were privileged to find a revenue of sixteen Bohemian silver groschen, a coin dating from the days of Wenceslaus II, towards the new foundation. The different taxes and excise duties were also made to contribute, a tithe of the wine tax, some appropriate sums from bridge and water tolls; besides these sources of revenue Charles endowed Emaus with landed property, farms and fields and vineyards. Begun in the reign of John, the building and institution of this new monastery was not completed until 1372, when Charles had for many years been in a position to describe himself as "Carolus Dei gratiae Rom. rex, semper augustus et Boemiae rex." Monday after Easter 1372 was the great day on which the Church and monastery were solemnly consecrated and dedicated to Saints Hieronymus, Adalbert, Procop, Cyril and Methodius, but as the consecration gospel told the moving story of the Risen Saviour walking with two disciples, who knew Him not, towards Emaus, the name of that place clung to church and monastery ever after. Though Emaus started out under such very august patronage, it had to put up with many vicissitudes, among the minor ones being acts of trangression on its grounds by neighbours; so, for instance, we hear of one good man Odelenus, who would dig under the monastery wall to the endangering of the same, and as the stout burgher would not desist nor fill up the excavations he had made, he was excommunicated with all due solemnity.

It is said that Charles intended Emaus solely for the benefit of those who still held to the Slavonic liturgy, from the very outset. But I find that Charles did not approach the Pope on this subject and get his sanction for the Archbishop of Prague to grant the Benedictine monks of Emaus licence to perform the Slavonic ritual, until the papacy of Clement VI. I gather that he had waited until he could find an amenable pontiff; what is more, Clement VI as anti-Pope, probably did not cut much ice even had he been addicted to that practice. It was undoubtedly due to the fact that the Slavonic liturgy was still in force that Emaus escaped destruction at the hands of the Hussites, as the monks were Utraquists and remained of that persuasion until the last Slavonic abbot, Adam Benedict Bawarowsky, with two surviving monks, was turned out to make room for Spanish Benedictines from Montserrat under their abbot, Benedict di Pennabosa y Mondragon. These Spaniards were inducted by Emperor Ferdinand III, King of Bohemia, himself.

Of those early, ardent days in the annals of Emaus there is but little left to recall Charles and his works. The library of the Benedictines was destroyed by fire; only two works were saved, the "Emaus-Reimser Evangelium" and the "Registrum Literarum monasterii Slavorum." The frescoes which adorn the cloisters seem as fresh to-day as when the Italian masters, brought to Prague by Charles, stood aside to let the monarch see the finished work, and that was several years before the consecration festival. The interior of the church is beautiful, its slender Gothic columns vanishing into the hallowed shadows of the roof. The "plain song" of the remaining monks still rings with the fervour of simple, steadfast faith. The main building of the monastery is now an academy of music where the rising generation is being taught to appreciate the latest eccentricities of modern music.

Charles IV, first Bohemian King of that name, ruled from 1346 to 1378, so the building of Emaus covered pretty nearly all the years of his reign and in fact went back to the unhappy times before he ascended the throne. His father was evidently a difficult person to live with; not only his extravagance and erratic habits, but also a thoroughly unjustified suspicion of his elder son, must have caused the latter a great deal of misery. Instead of following the precedent of the Premysls in dynastic disputes, Charles wisely abstained from open opposition to John, although the people's affection had been transferred from father to son. Added to this there were the usual troubles caused by the German Princes. John had never even been "placed" in the running for the imperial crown; goodness knows what would have happened if the weal of the Holy Roman Empire had depended on him. Louis of Wittelsbach, who contested the imperial throne with Frederick the Fair of Austria, and had beaten the latter handsomely at Muehldorf, was nevertheless none too safely seated, and became involved in the unending squabbles with the Papacy, aggravated in his case by the removal of the Pope to Avignon. John, of course, sided against Louis and with the Pope, so Louis joined with the German Princes in trying to deprive John Henry of the Tyrol and Carinthia, which the latter considered his property on marrying Margaret Maultasche; he was lucky enough to retain possession of the Tyrol while the Austrian Dukes kept Carinthia. That little matter settled, John went off and fought the Lithuanians again—he called it a crusade—and came home from that campaign without the sight of one eye, which he had lost through illness, a loss which soon led to complete blindness but not to any disinclination to go out anywhere and fight anyone. Father John must have been a considerable nuisance in the family. In the meantime Margaret added her mite to the general gaiety of nations by falling in love with Louis of Brandenburg, the handsome son of Emperor Louis; she counterbalanced this by a violent hatred of her husband, the unlucky John Henry. So Charles had his hands full, and he seems to have been the only level-headed member of the family. With all these troubles about him he nevertheless continued to manage the affairs of Bohemia and Moravia, to straighten out the finances of the Kingdom while finding sufficient pocket-money for his father's hobby of serving any other cause but his own, and also to soothe the ruffled feelings of John Henry and keep some of that Prince's property for the House of Luxemburg. It was during this hectic time that Charles managed to get the Pope to raise the Bishop of Prague to the rank of Archbishop, an important step, as it set the new Archbishopric free from that of Maintz and thus gave it an opportunity of developing on its own rather than on German lines. Count LÜtzow points out the absurdity of the situation caused by keeping the Bishopric of Prague under the Archbishop of Maintz as follows: "It is curious to read that Charles was obliged to declare on his oath that the language of Bohemia was a Slavonic one, entirely different from the German language; that the distance from Prague to Maintz was of about twelve day-journeys; and that the road lay through other dioceses."

This concession on the part of the Pope was probably the result of the visit John and Charles paid to the pontiff at Avignon; it had as corollary that in future the Kings of Bohemia should be crowned by the Archbishop of Prague. The first Archbishop of the new See was a Czech and a strong man—Ernest of Pardubic. Another result of the trip which father and son took to Avignon together seems to have been a more complete reconciliation between the two.

We may linger for a while longer on that pathetic figure, the blind King of Bohemia, before his exciting but futile career closes on the field of Crecy. First we see him taking part in the solemn ceremony of installing the new Archbishop; this would have taken place at the Cathedral Church of St. Vitus on the HradŠany, amid surroundings bearing strong evidence of the harm John's reign had brought on Bohemia, and on Prague in particular, for we read that Charles found the castle, and probably the church as well, in a state nearly approaching ruin from neglect. Here again he had work to hand, and did it nobly; of this more later on. After Ernest of Pardubic had been safely installed, King John started off on another crusade against the heathen Lithuanians, probably as payment for the concessions on the part of the Pope. No sooner was John thoroughly engaged with his northern enemies than the German Louis stirred up Hungary and Poland, and several others, against him. John hurriedly returned home, beating Casimir of Poland and a Hungarian army on the way, made some sort of an alliance with other enemies of his, and eventually, with the aid of the Pope and five German Electors, got Louis chased from the throne and his son Charles elected as German King instead. All this happened in the early months of 1346. Meanwhile, by July of that year, on the day following Charles's election, King Edward III of England and the Black Prince had landed on the coast of France, and were setting out through Normandy for Paris. On August 26th, St. Rufus Day again, the anniversary of the death of Premysl Ottokar II, John, King of Bohemia, brave, chivalrous and utterly misguided, died in the tent of a knightly enemy, leaving him as device the appropriate motto "Ich dien!"

Indeed, John had served every interest but his own; and Charles his son, elected Emperor as fourth of that name, and first as King of Bohemia, took into his own firm hands the tangled coils of Central European affairs, making as centre of his activities his own city of Prague.