Moravian History

History of Nova Hradecna Area

Location

   Nova Hradecna and Nova Dedina are located in the Sumperk district of the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. To find it easily, you can enter the following coordinates on a map: Lattitude 49.85,  Longitude 17.10.

    Here is a summary of the history of the region, as pieced together from various internet sources, mainly the Wikipedia and New Advent Encyclopedia.

Ancient History

    The oldest known residents of Moravia were the Celtic Boii and Cotini, who withdrew from the area around 60 BC. The Celts were followed by the Germanic Quadi who lived there before they were driven out by Attila the Hun around 440. Slavic Tribes moved in after the death of Attila after 453.

    The Eurasian Avars invaded from the east around 550, where they remained until the Avars were defeated by Charlemagne, King of the Franks in 796, enabling Moravians to return to their land. Moravia became a kingdom at this time, under Moimir.  Moravians tried several times to become independent, but without success.

The Moravian Kingdom was Christianized by the Franks and Italians with the help of Cyril and Methodius of Greece, who took time to learn the Slavic language.

Middle Ages

    The Moravian Kingdom fell apart with the death of King Svatopluk I in 895 and was taken over by the Magyars who were from what is present-day Hungary. The Magyars are credited with demonstrating that castles could be defeated by a successful siege, that is, surrounding the castle and waiting until the castle inhabitants starved and gave up. The Magyars were in turn defeated by the German Emperor Otto I the Great at the Battle of Lechfield in 955, near Augsburg in Bavarian Germany.

    The ally of Otto I, Duke Boleslaus I the Cruel, the Premyslid ruler of Bohemia, received Moravia in return for his help. The Premyslids were a Czech Royal family. King Boleslaus I is also known for ascending the Czech throne by killing his brother King Wenceslas, who is today known as Good King Wenceslas of Christmas carol fame.  King Wenceslas was later canonized a Catholic saint. Boleslaus eventually repented and had his son educated as a priest. Control of this remote area was weak and Duke Boleslaw I of Poland took over Moravia and Bohemia in 1003, and ruled it until 1029, when the Bohemian Duke Bretislaus I recaptured it from Poland.

    For a long time Moravia was governed as a Dukedom in Olomouc, but it was subservient to the Duke of Bohemia.

    In 1182, Moravia became a Margraviate, independent of the Bohemian Crown, subject only to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I.  That did not last long.  In 1197, Moravia again became subject to Bohemia in order to settle disagreements regarding who should be Emperor, but Moravia remained a margaviate.

    Moravia was pretty much “Germanized” during this period, with occasional interruptions when the Mongols invaded from the east around 1241 and the Cumans in 1252.

    The Premyslid dynasty died out with the death of Wenceslas III in 1306. His daughter, Elizabeth married John of Luxembourg, the son of the reigning German Holy Roman Emperor. This made him King John of Bohemia and thereby Moravia. This dynasty lasted until 1437 when Alfred of the Habsburgs was elected to be Holy Roman Emperor.

Renaissance

    By this time, the Catholic Church had become very powerful and aligned itself with the ruling Holy Roman Empire, whose Emperors were now being crowned by the Pope. This church-state collaboration ruled all aspects of the life of the citizens.

    A famous Czech religious philosopher from Charles University in Prague, Jan Hus, campaigned for reform in the Catholic Church but was excommunicated for his efforts in 1411. The Emperor convened a Council of Bishops to, among other things, deal with the fact that there were two or three popes during what is referred to as the “Western Schism”.  Hus was burned at the stake on July 6, 1415. Chaos descended upon the area following Hus’ execution, as his followers kept up the fight, leading to the Hussite Wars from 1420 to 1434.

    Hus wrote extensively and is considered a National Hero in the Czech Republic and is honored with a statue in Prague’s Old Town Square.  The day of his death, July 6th is a National Holiday.

    One follower of Hus, George of Podebrady was elected King of Bohemia in 1458 (and thus Moravia) only to be excommunicated by Pope Paul II in 1466. Three years later, in 1469, the King of Hungary, Mattias Corvinus, conquered Moravia, detaching it from Bohemia.  King George’s successor, Wladislaw Jagellion, took Moravia back in 1491… as well as Hungary.

    Wladislaw’s son, King Louis II, was killed in battle in 1526. The result was the election of a Spaniard (and Louis II’s brother-in-law and a Hapsburg) Ferdinand I as the Emperor of Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary. This marked the “possession” of Moravia by the ruling Habsburgs family in Vienna; it was not relinquished until after World War I.

    In 1633, the southern part of Moravia was devastated by the invasion of the Turks and Tatars as far north as Olomouc and Brno.

    Starting in 1642, Moravia was the scene a devastating war between the Empire’s forces and the Swedes, who occupied the city of Olomouc for six years until the Peace of 1648.  Olomouc had been the traditional capital of Moravia, but it was moved to Brno when the Swedes occupied it. This war saw sixty-three castles, twenty-two large towns, and three hundred and thirty villages destroyed.  The plague also swept away thousands of the inhabitants whom the war had spared. 

    Maria Theresa, 1717 - 1780

    One memorable monarch was Empress Maria Theresa, 1717-1780, who among other things was Queen of Bohemia and thus Moravia. She broke the rules to become Empress and pushed financial, educational, business and agricultural reforms.  She reorganized the army and consolidated authority in Vienna.

    She also had 16 children on the ‘Royal Bed’ in Vienna. One daughter was Marie Antoinette who married King Louis 14th of France and a son who became Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II.

    In 1742, most of Silesia, a sliver of land in the north of Moravia, was seized by King Frederick the Great of Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession. Silesia was occasionally part of Moravia and very near Nova Hradecna, which is south and west of Silesia by a few miles.  It was also known as the Sudetanland and a pawn of Hitler’s during WWII. To complicate matters even more, in 1782 Moravia and Silesia were united for purposes of administration, but not politically.

    The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, in part a reaction to Napoleon’s crowning himself Emperor in 1804 – Francis II did not want Napoleon to succeed him.  Austria and thereby Moravia had been defeated by Napoleon, and became subservient for a while, ending with Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815.

    The early 1800’s saw a lot of unrest and a wave of nationalism, perhaps inspired in part by the American and French Revolutions.

    Meanwhile things were getting strange. In 1835,  Ferdinand, despite being mentally retarded and an epileptic, was crowned Emperor of Austria.  His parents were Holy Roman Emperor Franz II and his first cousin, Maria Theresa of Two Sicilies.  That worked for a while, but unrest all over caused continuing pressure to find a competent ruler.

    Franz II’s nephew, Franz Joseph, was named the Emperor as soon as he was old enough, 18.  He was born in 1830 and started a military career at age 13.  In 1848, the people of Vienna started a revolt against the Hapburgs, which forced some changes.  Franz Joseph was named Governor of Moravia, which was separated from Bohemia and made a land owned by the Crown.  The Royal Family first left Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna for Innsbruk and later to Olomouc in Moravia.

    Soon, this lead to more changes:  Emperor Ferdinand was forced to abdicate and the young and vibrant 18-year-old Franz Joseph was installed as Emperor of Austria.  He was immediately given the task of putting down the uprisings in Vienna, Hungary and Italy, in which he was eventually successful in 1849.

   Emperor Franz Joseph,

Austro-Hungarian Empire

    In 1850, the young Franz Joseph, 20, with the guidance of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, concluded the “Punctuation of Olomouc”, in which Prussia agreed, for the time being, to stop trying to consolidate German lands and to submit to Austria.  With all of these military successes, Franz Joseph consolidated power, took back some reforms, but recovered a lot of influence on the world stage. The death of his mentor, Schwarzenberg, two years later lead to a gradual decline in prestige and military power with many defeats.  The 22-year-old was not a military genius in his own rite.

    One of Franz Joseph's biggest defeats took place in Moravia, perhaps 60 miles from Nova Hradecna, near present-day Hradec Kralove, known in German as Koniggratz.  In 1866, Prussia again reasserted their desire to unite the German-speaking people, but without Austria. The battle saw over 450,000 men on the battlefield, with an estimated 54,000 men killed, wounded, or missing in one day.  It exceeds the estimated 51,000 casualties at Gettysburg a few years earlier in the United States.

Austro-Hungarian Empire after 1867

    Franz Joseph made peace with Hungary, resulting in his becoming King of Hungary in addition to being Emperor of Austria. This resulted in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. His wife, Queen Elisabeth (Sisi) of Bavaria, became a favorite of the common people, not unlike Princess Diana of England. Her story is a favorite.

    Franz Joseph reigned for 68 years, dying at age 86 in 1916.  His wife Queen Sisi was assassinated, his son and heir Prince Rudolf committed suicide, and his next heir, a nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, triggering World War I.  Franz Joseph himself was nearly assassinated once, but the attacker's knife was blunted by a medal on his omnipresent military uniform.

    The last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Karl I, was Franz Joseph’s grand nephew.  Karl I reigned only two years 1916-18, with the break-up of the Empire at the end of World War I.  Moravia, as a political subdivision, disappeared completely into Czechoslovakia in 1918.  Following World War II, in 1948, Czechoslovakia became a communist country.  It remained under Soviet domination until the "Velvet Revolution" in 1993, when the communist regime collapsed, and the Czech Republic separated from Slovakia.   In 2004, the Czech Republic became a member of the European Unionand is now recognized as a developed country.