The lands encompassed by the
Bohemian Forest, the
Ore Mountains, the
Sudetes and the
Bohemian-Moravian Highlands were settled by Slavic
Bohemian peoples about 550. In the 7th century, the local
Czech people were part of the union led by the
Frankish merchant
Samo (d. 658).
Bohemia as a geographical term, probably derived from the Celtic (Gallic)
Boii tribes, first appeared in 9th-century Frankish sources. In 805, Emperor
Charlemagne prepared to conquer the lands, invading Bohemia in 805 and laying siege to the fortress of
Canburg. However, the Czech forces shirked from open battle and retired into the deep forests to launch
guerilla attacks. After forty days the emperor had to withdraw his forces for the lack of supplies. When the Frankish forces returned the next year burning and plundering the Bohemian lands, the local tribes finally had to submit and became dependent on the
Carolingian Empire.
Great Moravia While the Frankish realm disintegrated in the mid-9th century, Bohemia fell under the influence of the
Great Moravian state which was established around 830. In 874, the
Mojmir duke
Svatopluk I reached an agreement with the
East Frankish king
Louis the German and confirmed his Bohemian dominion. With the fragmentation of Great Moravia under the pressure of the
Magyar incursions around 900, Bohemia began to form as an independent principality. Already in 880, the Přemyslid prince
Bořivoj from
Levý Hradec, initially a deputy of Duke Svatopluk I who had been baptised by the Great Moravian archbishop
Methodius of Salonica in 874, moved his residence to
Prague Castle and started to subjugate the
Vltava Basin. Great Moravia briefly regained control over the emerging Bohemian principality upon Bořivoj's death in 888/890 until, in 895, his son
Spytihněv together with the
Slavník prince
Witizla swore allegiance to the East Frankish king
Arnulf of Carinthia in
Regensburg. He and his younger brother
Vratislaus then ruled over
Central Bohemia around
Prague. They were able to protect their realm from the Magyar forces which crushed an East Frankish army in the 907
Battle of Pressburg during the
Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin. Cut off from
Byzantium by the Hungarian presence, the Bohemian principality existed as independent state though still in the shadow of East Francia; the dukes paid tribute to the
Bavarian dukes in exchange for the confirmation of the peace treaty. Vratislaus' son
Wenceslaus, who ruled from 921, was already accepted as head of the Bohemian tribal union; however, he had to cope with the enmity of his neighbour Duke
Arnulf of Bavaria and his mighty ally, the
Saxon king
Henry I of Germany. Wenceslaus maintained his ducal authority by submitting to King Henry in 929, whereafter he was murdered by his brother
Boleslaus. and
Boleslaus II. Assuming the Bohemian throne in 935, Duke Boleslaus conquered the adjacent lands of
Moravia and
Silesia, and expanded farther to
Kraków in the east. He offered opposition to Henry's successor King
Otto I, stopped paying the tribute, attacked an ally of the Saxons in northwest Bohemia and in 936 moved into
Thuringia. After a prolonged armed conflict, King Otto I besieged a castle owned by Boleslaus' son in 950 and Boleslaus finally signed a peace treaty whereby he recognized Otto's suzerainty and promised to resume the payment of the tribute. As the king's ally, his Bohemian troops, together with those of the
Kingdom of Germany, fought in the 955
Battle of Lechfeld and after the defeat of the Magyars received the lands of
Moravia in recognition of his services. Overwhelming the marauding Hungarians had the same benefits for Germans and Czechs. Less obvious is what
Boleslav I the Cruel wanted to gain by participating in the war against the
Obotrite tribes in far north, when he crushed an uprising of two Slavic dukes (Stojgněv and Nakon) in the Saxon
Billung March. Probably Boleslav wanted to ensure that his German neighbors did not interfere with his expansion of Bohemia to the east. Significantly, the
Bishopric of Prague, founded in 973 during the reign of Duke
Boleslaus II, was subordinated to the
Archbishopric of Mainz. Thus, at the same time that Přemyslid rulers used the German alliance to consolidate their rule against a perpetually rebellious regional nobility, they struggled to retain their autonomy in relation to the empire. The Bohemian principality was definitively consolidated in 995, when the Přemyslids defeated their Slavník rivals, unified the Czech tribes, and established a form of centralized rule, albeit shaken by internal dynastic struggles.
Holy Roman Empire In 1002,
Duke Vladivoj was
enfeoffed with the Duchy of Bohemia from the hands of
King Henry II of Germany. With this act, what had been a fully sovereign duchy became part of the
Holy Roman Empire. After Vladivoj died the next year, the Polish duke
Bolesław I the Brave invaded Bohemia and Moravia and ruled as Boleslaus IV. In 1004, after the Poles were expelled from Bohemia with help from Henry II,
Duke Jaromír received the duchy in fief from the king.
Duke Bretislaus I of Bohemia re-acquired the Moravian lands in 1019 or 1029, which thenceforth were usually ruled by a younger son of the Bohemian duke/king. About 1031, Bretislaus invaded Hungary to prevent its future expansion and, in 1035, he helped the Emperor against the Lusatians. In 1039, he invaded
Poland, captured
Poznań and ravaged
Gniezno; after that he conquered part of Silesia including
Breslau. The destruction of Gniezno pushed the Polish rulers to move their capital to
Kraków. In 1040, Bretislaus defeated the German King
Henry's invasion into Bohemia in the
Battle at Brůdek. However, the next year Henry besieged Bretislaus in Prague and forced him to renounce all of his conquests except Moravia. In 1047, Henry negotiated a peace treaty between Bretislaus and the Poles. The son of Bretislaus,
Vratislaus II, supported Henry against the
Pope, anti-kings, and rebellions in Saxony in his long reign. The Bohemian troops showed conspicuous bravery and, in 1083, he entered Rome with Henry and their armed forces. Henry gave Vratislaus a lifetime appointment as the first
King of Bohemia in 1085 out of gratitude. For his successor
Bretislaus II foreign policy was largely concerned with the Silesian conflict, when the Poles did not pay a fee for areas once resigned by Bretislaus I. In 1147, the Bohemian duke,
Vladislaus II, accompanied the German king,
Conrad III, on the
Second Crusade, but halted his march at
Constantinople. Thanks to his military support against northern Italian cities (especially
Milan) for the emperor
Frederick Barbarossa, Vladislaus was elected king of Bohemia on 11 January 1158, becoming the second Bohemian king. ==Economy==