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1290 CE
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The Great Crossroads
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The Bronze Age had begun to spread throughout Europe from about 1800, partly through the influence of the Unetice culture, the name given to an early Bronze Age culture, preceded by the Beaker culture and followed by the Tumulus culture.
The eponymous site is located at Únetice, northwest of Prague, and is focused around the Czech Republic, southern and central Germany, and western Poland.
The Unetice culture represents a farming and metalworking people living close to the ore sources; their culture had in about 2300 BCE supplanted the earlier European copper workers associated with the Beaker culture.
From 1950 BCE, the culture has produced daggers with metal hilts, flanged axes, halberds, pins with perforated spherical heads, and solid bracelets.
The Unetice culture is succeeded in around 1650 BCE by the Tumulus culture, distinguished by the practice of burying the dead beneath burial mounds (tumuli).
Borivoj, as the head of the Premyslids who dominate the environs of present-day Prague, had declared himself kníže—in Latin dux, which means sovereign prince—around the year 870.
His title will be later translated by German scholars as "duke" of the Bohemians (Czechs).
Although the German dukes of the era hold the same title, the meaning of his title is in fact completely different.
In contrast to the German dukes, the Czech dux denotes a sovereign ruler.
Borivoj is recognized as such around 872 by his overlord Svatopluk I of Great Moravia, who dispatches Bishop Methodius to begin the conversion of the Bohemian Slavs to Christianity.
As with most of the early Bohemian rulers, Borivoj is a shadowy figure; exact dates for his reign and vital statistics cannot be established.
Nonetheless, several major fortifications and religious foundations are said to have dated from this time.
In old Czech legends, he is said to have been son of a Bohemian prince named Hostivít.
The Przemysl family is (according to legend) descended from a Czech plowman of the same name who was chosen by Libuse, a royal princess, as her husband.
As the head of the Přemyslids who dominate the environs of present-day Prague, Bořivoj had declared himself kníže—in Latin dux, which means sovereign prince—around the year 870.
His title will be later translated by German scholars as "duke" of the Bohemians (Czechs).
Bořivoj had been recognized as such around 872 by his overlord Svatopluk I of Great Moravia, who had dispatched Bishop Methodius to begin the conversion of the Bohemian Slavs to Christianity.
Borivoj and his wife Ludmila had been baptized by Methodius, probably in 883, and the latter had become an enthusiastic evangelist, although the religion fails to take root among Bořivoj's subjects.
Borivoj had been deposed in the years 883/884 by a revolt in support of his kinsman Strojmír.
He was restored in 885 only with the support of his suzerain Svatopluk of Moravia.
When Borivoj dies about four years later, his sons still minors, Svatopluk takes over the rule of Bohemia himself.
As with most of the early Bohemian rulers, Borivoj is a shadowy figure; exact dates for his reign and vital statistics cannot be established.
Nonetheless, several major fortifications and religious foundations are said to have dated from this time.
In old Czech legends he is said to have been son of a Bohemian prince named Hostivít.
Spytihněv I, the eldest son of Duke Bořivoj I, the first historically documented Bohemian ruler of the Přemyslid dynasty, and his wife Ludmila, had still been a minor upon his father's death in about 889, and the Bohemian lands had been placed under the regency of their suzerain Prince Svatopluk I of Great Moravia.
After Svatopluk died in 894, an inheritance conflict had arisen between his sons Mojmír II and Svatopluk II.
Spytihněv has taken advantage of the situation to free himself from Moravian vassalage.
According to the Annales Fuldenses, he appears at the 895 Reichstag in Regensburg and pays homage to the East Frankish king Arnulf of Carinthia.
Wenceslas is the son of Vratislaus I, Duke of Bohemia from the Přemyslid dynasty.
His father had been raised in a Christian milieu through his own father, Borivoj I of Bohemia, who had purportedly been converted by Saints Cyril and Methodius.
His mother Drahomíra is the daughter of a pagan tribal chief of Havolans and had been baptized at the time of her marriage.
In 921, when Wenceslas was thirteen, his father had died and he was brought up by his grandmother, Saint Ludmila, who had raised him as a Christian.
A dispute between the fervently Christian regent and her daughter-in-law had driven Ludmila to seek sanctuary at Tetín Castle near Beroun.
Drahomíra, who was trying to garner support from the nobility, was furious about losing influence on her son and had arranged to have Ludmila strangled at Tetín on September 15, 921.
Wenceslas is usually described as exceptionally pious and humble, and a very educated and intelligent young man for his time.
According to some legends, having regained control of her son, Drahomíra had set out to convert him to the old pagan religion.
According to other legends, she was a Christian herself; however, very little is known about her rule.
After the fall of Great Moravia, the rulers of the Bohemian duchy had had to deal both with continuous raids by the Magyars and the forces of the Saxon duke and East Frankish king Henry the Fowler, who had started several eastern campaigns into the adjacent lands of the Polabian Slavs, homeland of Wenceslas's mother.
To withstand Saxon overlordship, Wenceslas's father Vratislaus had forged an alliance with the Bavarian duke Arnulf the Bad, then a fierce opponent of King Henry; however, it had become worthless when Arnulf and Henry reconciled at Regensburg in 921.
Wenceslas assumes government for himself in 924 or 925.
The joint forces of Duke Arnulf of Bavaria and King Henry I reach Prague early in 929 in a sudden attack, which forces Wenceslas to resume the payment of a tribute which had been first imposed by the East Frankish king Arnulf of Carinthia in 895.
Henry had been forced to pay a huge tribute to the Magyars in 926 and he therefore needs the Bohemian tribute that Wenceslas had probably refused to pay any longer after the reconciliation between Arnulf and Henry.
One of the possible reasons for Henry's attack is also the formation of the anti-Saxon alliance between Bohemia, the Polabian Slavs and the Magyars.
The German kingdom integrates the Bohemian state, ruled at this time by Duke Wenceslas of the Czech Przemysl dynasty.
Wenceslas’ continuation of the Christianization of Bohemia, coupled with his submission to German king Henry I, arouses strong opposition from a faction of the nobility, and leads to his assassination on September 28, 935, by his brother, who succeeds him as Prince Boleslaw.
(The date will become the annual feast day of the later canonized Wenceslas, whom the Czechs will come to regard as their patron saint.)
Significantly, the bishopric of Prague, founded in 973 during the reign of Boleslav II (967-99), is subordinated to the German archbishopric of Mainz.
Thus, at the same time that Premyslid rulers utilize the German alliance to consolidate their rule against a perpetually rebellious regional nobility, they struggle to retain their autonomy in relation to the empire.
The Bohemian Kingdom acquires Moravia in 1029 after a struggle with Poland and Hungary.
Moravia, however, continues to be a separate margravate, usually ruled by a younger son of the Bohemian king.
Because of complex dynastic arrangements, Moravia's link with the Bohemian Kingdom between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries will occasionally be severed; during such interludes Moravia will be subordinated directly to the Holy Roman Empire or to Hungary.
Although Moravia's fate is intertwined with Bohemia's, in general it does not participate in Bohemia's civil and religious struggles.
The main course of Czech history will evolve in Bohemia proper.
Boleslav's daughter Dobrawa had in 965 married the pagan Piast prince Mieszko I to strengthen the Bohemian-Polish alliance, and has helped bring Christianity to Poland.
Boleslav's wife may have been Biagota.
He is succeeded in 972 by his oldest son Boleslaus the Pious.