History History

The Celts of the Boien tribe settled in the geographical area covered by present-day Bohemia. They only stayed there for a short time, but the name of the region derives directly from that of this people. The Germans succeeded them and Bohemia was agitated by violent tribal wars for many centuries. Chased away by the Huns of Attila, the Slavs arrived in the region at the beginning of the^5th century and stabilized it by building the first organized state structure.

According to legend, one of the Czech tribes in Bohemia, without a male heir, had to entrust power to Princess Libuše, daughter of a magician and gifted with prophecy. Forced to take a husband, she chose against all odds a poor ploughman named Přemysl. From their union was born the first prince of the Přemyslid dynasty, and Libuše then predicted, on the present site of Vyšehrad, the birth of a splendid city.

In 855, Bořivoj I, heir of the Přemyslids and then ruling only a small part of Bohemia, allied himself with the king of Greater Moravia against the Carolingian Louis II of Bavaria, which resulted in the region becoming a duchy. He founded a first castle in 870 and converted to Christianity in 883. His son Spytihnev then turned against his father's former ally to take control of Greater Moravia and Bohemia. This rapprochement was short-lived, as Spytihnev soon broke away from the Slovak part of his empire to become closer to the Carolingians.

Saint Wenceslas, nephew of Spytihnev, born in 907, came to power at the age of 19. His reign lasted only a few years, but it left a lasting mark on the history of the country, to the point of making him THE historical figure of reference even today. He peacefully liberated Bohemia from the Germanic yoke by signing a treaty of non-aggression in exchange for an annual tribute. A fervent believer and a convinced pacifist, he had the gallows destroyed and favored culture, the economy and above all religion. In doing so, he stirred up hatred and jealousy, especially that of his brother, who murdered him when Wenceslas refused to defend himself. Very popular, Wenceslas was canonized and became the patron saint of the Czech Republic.

By the middle of the tenth century, the Přemyslid rulers controlled not only Bohemia but also Moravia and much of Silesia. Prague became a bishopric and finally, during the reign of Ottokar I (1192-1230), the Duchy of Bohemia was established as a kingdom by the Golden Bull of Sicily of Frederick II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1306, the assassination of Wenceslas III, who had no male heir, abruptly ended the Přemyslid dynasty. A war of succession began.

After four years of war, John of Luxembourg emerged victorious from the conflict thanks to a skilful marriage with Eliška, the sister of Wenceslas III. Allied with the French, John of Luxembourg died in 1346 while fighting against the English during the battle of Crécy. His son Charles IV succeeded him.

King of Bohemia, then emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles IV left an indelible mark on his country. Married to Blanche of Valois, this patron of the arts, polyglot, cultured, religious and peaceful sovereign was called "Father of the Fatherland" by his people. He proceeded to embellish Prague, developing the castle, creating a university, building the Charles Bridge, St. Vitus Cathedral and a large number of churches and monasteries. Prague was the third largest city in the West after Rome and Constantinople. By the time Charles IV died in 1378, the city had doubled in size and was economically and culturally important throughout the world.

In March 1402, Jan Hus, a professor of theology at the University of Prague and a reformist preacher, denounced the abuses and opulent life of the clergy hierarchy. His ideas spread quickly among the Czechs, but under pressure from the church, Jan Hus was eventually arrested, convicted and burned alive on July 6, 1415. His death sparked a national uprising and the Hussites, organized in armed bands, destroyed the convents. Led by General Jan Žižka and later by Prokop Holý, they resisted for more than twenty years. The Hussite revolution lasted until 1437 and had a profound effect on the history of the country.

With the accession to the throne in 1526 of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand I of Habsburg, a dynasty began that would last until 1918. Ferdinand I contributed to the introduction of the Renaissance style in Prague, but it was not until his successor, Rudolf II, that Prague became the capital again, in 1586, at the expense of Vienna. In 1611, under the reign of the Catholic king Ferdinand II of Habsburg, political and religious conflicts became more and more serious, and the crisis broke out openly at Prague Castle, during the defenestration of May 23, 1618.

The defenestration marked the beginning of the Thirty Years' War: Protestant Bohemia rose up against Catholic Austria. The decisive battle of White Mountain in 1620 sealed the defeat of the Protestants and brought the kingdom of Bohemia under Austrian rule. The heads of the twenty-seven decapitated Protestant leaders were impaled on the Charles Bridge to discourage any attempt to resume hostilities. The German language and culture were imposed! During the long reign of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, any beginning of a protest movement in Prague was severely repressed.

When Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II, acceded to the throne, he again authorized Protestant worship and restored the civil rights of non-Catholics, especially Jews. Unfortunately, the reforms were short-lived and were abolished by Franz II, while at the same time the emergence of Czech culture began to be felt: plays were once again written and performed in the Czech language, and historians and politicians such as František Palacký (1798-1876) led a movement for the revival of Slavic culture. This was the beginning of the national revival.

This movement began in the last quarter of the 18th century and affected society from all angles: through the Czech language, which was once again spoken in the streets, but also through the arts that conveyed it: music, literature, theater, and those that represented the identity of the Czech nation: painting, architecture, sculpture, etc

During the First World War, three Czech politicians, Masaryk, Beneš and the Slovak Štefánik went into exile in Switzerland and then in Paris, where they organized a Czech-Slovak National Council. They succeeded in convincing the Allies of the need for a Slavic country between Austria and Germany. The Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed in Prague on October 28, 1918, following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and on November 14, T.G. Masaryk was elected the first president of the new Republic. It united Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia.

The Czechoslovak Republic became a democratic pillar in Central Europe. The political line is maintained mainly by the influence of its president Masaryk, a democrat and philosopher. The country experienced an exceptional economic situation in the years 1925-1929, before being hit by the world crisis. But in October 1938, in Munich, Great Britain and France agreed to Hitler's confiscation of the Sudetenland, a territory heavily populated by Germans.

Beneš, who had succeeded his friend Masaryk in 1935, set up a government in exile in London, while Czech communists sought protection in Moscow. During this period, Slovakia became a fascist and theocratic state, controlled by Hitler. One of his would-be successors, Reinhard Heydrich, was appointed Gauleiter in Prague to crush the resistance movements. He installed a veritable regime of terror before being shot dead by a commando of Czech soldiers parachuted in from England. When the war ended in May 1945, the Czechs enthusiastically welcomed the Red Army as their liberator. The Communist Party won 38% of the electorate and became the country's leading political party.

The assassination of Heydrich gave rise to a vast operation of reprisals. The village of Lidice, wrongly suspected of having sheltered the commando, was completely razed and its population massacred. Faced with this tragedy, England and Free France decided to denounce the Munich Treaty and to recognize Czechoslovakia as a state in its own right. In the United States, many young girls were named Lidice in the following years.

The illusion of freedom only lasts for a short time. When the Iron Curtain came down on Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia tried in vain to revive the dream of the short-lived independence it had enjoyed in the two decades following the First World War. In February 1948, it was the "Prague coup". Klement Gottwald obtained the appointment of Communist ministers from Beneš and took power. A new constitution came into force and the nationalization of enterprises began.

A second national awakening of the Czech people occurred in 1963, when the Czechoslovak leadership attempted to reform the economy and rehabilitate the victims of the 1950s trials. These years (1963 to 1968), known as the Five Golden Years, saw a liberalization of the media and a renaissance of cultural life in Prague.

The idea of socialism with a human face has many followers. The first secretary of the Party, Alexander Dubček, tries to bring this concept to life, but the momentum is broken on August 21, 1968 by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. From then on, the Communists began the "normalization", which will immobilize the country for many years. Only a group of dissidents, led by Václav Havel, founded an opposition movement called Charter 77.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a large movement was created to overthrow the communist regime. The writer Václav Havel was the man behind this revolution, which led to the resignation of the communist government on November 24, 1989. The Soviet period in Czechoslovakia came to a peaceful end, which earned the nickname "Velvet Revolution".

On July 5, 1990, Václav Havel was re-elected President of the Republic for a two-year term at the head of the Czechoslovak state. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country marked the final end of the Warsaw Pact and opened the country to democratic Europe. In 1992, the Slovak Nationalist Party claimed independence for its people. Inevitably, against Havel's wishes, partition was officially decreed on January¹, 1993.

The country, which has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1991, showed increasing signs of its desire to join the European Union after partition. The new Czech Republic joined the United Nations (January 19, 1993), then UNESCO (February 22, 1993). In 1995, the Czech Republic became the first former Eastern Bloc country to join the OECD. In 1999, the Czech Republic joined NATO.

In February 2003, Václav Klaus was elected President of the Republic. Klaus is far from having the aura of his predecessor. He is openly liberal and advocates massive privatization of enterprises. On the international scene, the Czech Republic officially joined the European Union in 2004.

The former president and emblematic figure of the Velvet Revolution died on December 18, 2011. Until his last breath, Václav Havel remained a defender of freedom and a dissident. Three days of national mourning are decreed. The farewell ceremony takes place in the Cathedral of St. Vitus in front of an audience of political leaders from five continents and a Czech nation united in mourning.

The Czechs elected their president by universal suffrage for the first time in late January 2013. The president of the Civil Rights Party, Miloš Zeman, won and became the new tenant of Prague Castle with a sharp division between Prague, which voted mostly for the candidate Schwarzenberg, and the rest of the country for Zeman.

Prague invites itself to the cinema with the 75th anniversary of the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich (May 27, 1942), Hitler's favorite. The subject is treated through two films: Anthropoid (Sean Ellis, 2016) and HHhH (Cédric Jimenez, 2017). Two years later, the memory of Jan Palach, the student who set himself on fire to protest the Prague Spring, will be brought to the screen to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring.

Petr Fiala takes power as Prime Minister. This right-wing politician from the "Together" coalition defeated billionaire populist Andrej Babis.

The 2022 municipal elections follow in the footsteps of previous ones, demonstrating the impossibility of governing Prague with any vision whatsoever. At the end of September, the government coalition parties came out well ahead at the polls, with a comfortable lead and an ideal candidate, Bohuslav Svoboda, who had already been mayor of Prague between 2010 and 2013. But the problem arose during the post-election negotiations, which were not successful. Instead of agreeing on the name of the mayor, the majority of the elected councillors agreed to postpone the appointment until February 2023... Zdeněk Hřib lost his post after months without any means of action, and 79-year-old Bohuslav Svoboda regained his seat thanks to an agreement with the Pirate party and the Independent Mayors movement.

With Miloš Zeman ineligible for re-election, the presidential elections saw two new candidates: Petr Pavel, a former general running under the banner of the Independents, and Andrej Babiš, former prime minister from 2017 to 2021. In the second round of voting, the Czechs turned out in unprecedented numbers, with a 70% turnout - a record in a country where absenteeism is king. Petr Pavel won by a wide margin in the second round, with almost 60% of the vote: two scores that clearly illustrate the Czechs' desire for change. The new president's very Europhile stance contrasts with that of his predecessors, but the vagueness of his program still leaves some doubt as to the direction he will take the country.