France at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries. Revolt of the Kabochiens

HOW THEY FOUGHT AT THE END OF THE 14TH CENTURY

Here we will dwell in more detail on how, in fact, the war was waged in the era we are studying. In order to most fully illuminate this issue, we will consider successively the military affairs of the western, then the eastern neighbors of Rus', and only then the differences and features of military affairs in Rus' during the era of the Battle of Kulikovo.

In Western Europe of the 14th century, knighthood dominated as the main branch of the military. The strength of the army was measured not by the number of soldiers, but by the number of knights, that is, “spears”. In the “spear” there was one knight, who, in fact, was considered a full-fledged warrior, and a very arbitrary number of his servants: sergeants, squires, horse handlers, spearmen and shooters. There could be from two to ten such servants, depending on the wealth of the knight and his needs. Actually, the servants were an auxiliary force under the knight and rarely fought on their own. Their main task was to maintain the combat effectiveness of the knight, arm him before the battle and provide all possible military support in battle. The knight himself had to arm and support the servants of his “spear”.

In the knightly army there was no strict division into types of troops. Each knightly “spear” was a special combat unit and, for the most part, conducted combat operations independently. Large battles between such armies were rare. For the most part, the war consisted of predatory raids on enemy territory and the siege of fortified points. But even during big battles, knights often fought not in a dense cavalry formation, but with separate “spears”. Inside the “spear” there was quite high coherence of actions - the warriors were the knight’s personal servants - well-trained, understanding their lord at a glance. But the interaction of the knights with each other was a problem. The fact is that the knight and his small personal squad could devote quite a lot of time to joint military training. But the feudal militia gathered together, consisting of hundreds of knightly “spears,” was a very loose organism, undisciplined and fickle. The free service of a knight to his lord in Europe was 40 days a year, and sometimes less. In order to keep his knights in service longer, the ruler who called them to war usually had to pay them a considerable salary. As a rule, the kings and princes of medieval Europe did not even have enough money to wage wars. And there was no question of constantly gathering knightly militias for the sake of drill exercises.

Knight's helmet. Milan, 1361 – 1366

Knight's armor. 1390

Sword XIV-XV centuries.

However, sometimes knights and their most well-armed and trained equestrian servants - sergeants - were separated into a separate equestrian formation. In this case, all the rest, the foot soldiers of the “spears,” either remained in the fortified camp or were placed in a formation separate from the knights.

The knights themselves were armed in the best possible way for Western European cavalry. The body was covered with a solid cuirass, brigantine or chain mail. The iron armor of the arms and legs was attached to the body using leather straps, loops or buckles. Knights of the 14th century preferred to wear “bascinets” - conical helmets with a lowering visor, which protected the head from both a spear blow and a sword strike. The knight's main weapon was a spear. In battle, he tried to use it to kill or knock an enemy knight out of the saddle. If the spear broke, the knight took up the sword. If there was a need to break through the enemy’s particularly strong armor, then he could use a mace, a six-feather or a klevet.

One medieval novel describes the battle of knights as follows:

No, spears are not for beauty!

The blow and the shields cracked,

The chain mail is falling apart,

The girths almost burst.

The spears suddenly broke,

Debris falls from your hands.

But neither of them blinked an eye,

The swords flashed like lightning.

It's getting harder to defend.

The shields were left without straps,

Almost shattered.

There is no protection for bodies in battle.

No, does not cut the sword blindly,

And to cut the enemy's helmet.

Mace-six-operator, XIV-XVI centuries.

The knight's horse was also protected by armor, often not only quilted, but also metal. But in general, during a knightly duel, striking the enemy’s horse, and not the enemy himself, was considered dishonorable. Moreover, trained knightly horses, capable of carrying a heavily armed knight for a long time, were very expensive. Every knight tried to take such a horse alive as a trophy.

With the skill required

The horse remains unharmed.

I'll pierce the enemy's armor,

Without harming his horse.

No wonder the law says:

In battle, a horse on horseback is always more beautiful.

Hit the rider - don't touch the horse!

And every horse is unharmed

In this bloody fight

Remained as if in the picture.

Knight's horse. 1450 – 1460

In the West, wars were divided into “noble” and “deadly”. The “noble” war was a kind of duel both between individual knights and between entire kingdoms. In such a war, both sides usually adhered to a number of conventions, the strict implementation of which turned the war into simply one of the entertainments of the nobility, only slightly more dangerous than a tournament or a hunt. If possible, they tried not to kill enemy knights, but to capture them. At the end of hostilities, and sometimes even earlier, such a captured knight was released home, taking his war horse and all his military equipment as a trophy. Often a ransom was taken for the captured knight himself. Thus, the winning knight profited, and the loser remained alive, although he suffered serious losses.

When describing such “noble” wars, chroniclers sometimes even downplayed the losses of the losing enemy, since it was believed that the killing of noble knights, even enemy ones, does not honor the winners.

“Deadly” wars were waged in the West against the rebel commoners, as well as against any non-believers, which the knights included heretics, pagans, Muslims, Orthodox Christians - in short, everyone who did not obey the Roman Catholic Church and did not belong to the select circle of the European nobility.

In “deadly” wars, all means were good, and the murder of an enemy, even a valiant one, as well as inhumane treatment of captives was not considered a sin and shame.

Knight in armor. Modern reconstruction

Knight in a helmet. Modern reconstruction

In addition to the knightly army itself, which constituted the main force, Western armies also used militia: city or land. It consisted of foot armed commoners. If the knights and partly their servants included in the “spear” had some combat experience and time for military exercises, then the militias were purely civilian people and had almost no military experience. The combat effectiveness of militias, and indeed any infantry in general, was traditionally considered low in medieval Western Europe. Usually the militia, and even the knightly servants, if they were built separately from their knights, were herded into some kind of phalanx - into a rectangle or square bristling with spears. The only combat task of this formation was not to run away. Disappointed detachments of knights could take cover behind such a formation, and then, after resting a little and coming to their senses, attack the enemy again.

When the knightly cavalry of one of the armies was defeated, its infantry formed in this way, as a rule, fled, and if it remained standing in place, it could not provide long-term resistance to the mounted or foot knights attacking it. Sometimes, in order to increase the stability of the foot formation against enemy attacks, the knights themselves dismounted and dismounted. It was this technique that ensured victory for the British at Poitiers and Agincourt. Confident that when it came to hand-to-hand combat, the knights would fight with them, the English foot archers did not flee at the sight of the French cavalry attacking them and fired to the last possible opportunity, from the closest and most dangerous distance for the enemy.

But the battles of Poitiers and Agincourt are rather an exception. And English archers are professionals, mercenaries, and not militias. Knowing the low qualities of the mobilized militia infantry, Western European military leaders did not seek to take them into the field unless absolutely necessary. Often the infantry was left behind by the knights to defend the fortified camp. In general, the militia, if they were called up, tried to use it during earthworks or in the convoy. The main task of the city militia was to protect the city walls from the enemy.

The urban militia was more disciplined and organized than the rural one. The townspeople, who produced their own weapons and had significant financial resources, were better armed than the rural militias. The weapons of wealthy townspeople were sometimes no less expensive and good than those of the most noble knights. It was also much easier to mobilize and organize an urban militia than a rural one. The townspeople were already organized by streets or workshops and were in the habit of obeying their superiors. Gathering the city militia took not several days, but several hours or even minutes. After all, cities were the most delicious prey for the enemy and were often attacked.

At a certain signal - usually an alarm bell - the townspeople gathered in the square, and sometimes immediately stood on the city walls to protect their property and lives from the enemy. But far from their hometown, the value of such a militia was much lower. After all, the main strength of the militias was their numbers. While defending their city, the townspeople ate from their own supplies. But during the campaign this was impossible. Supplying a large army is a very troublesome and difficult task in the conditions of a medieval subsistence economy.

Thus, rural militias were used extremely rarely in Western Europe, and almost always unsuccessfully. And the city militia was used mainly to protect the hometown and sometimes for military operations in its immediate surroundings.

Another type of Western European army of the 14th century were mercenaries. As a rule, these were detachments of professional warriors - natives of one country. The Swiss, Flemings, Bretons, Gascons, Scots, Albanians, Croats, Arabs, English - this is not a complete list of those peoples who supplied their warriors to neighboring countries.

The mercenaries were specialists: marksmen, spearmen, light cavalry. The military units of the mercenaries were undoubtedly much more combat-ready than the militias, but still could not resist on their own main force European Middle Ages - knights. The most famous among these mercenaries are the English, or more precisely, the Welsh from Wales) arrows. They gained their fame thanks to the victories of the English army at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. But without the active support of the English knightly army, none of these victories would have been realized. The knightly army in Western Europe of the 14th century constituted the main military force.

A trebuchet is a siege weapon for throwing large stones. Such weapons were used during long sieges. They were brought disassembled and assembled, or built on site from scrap materials

The Swiss infantry, able to attack the enemy in an organized manner without breaking its own formation, entered the battlefields of Western Europe only in the second half of the 15th century. But in the 14th century the main acting force Western Europe undoubtedly consisted of knightly cavalry, and the infantry was capable only of auxiliary and defensive actions. Even those who by this time had become independent political force German and Italian cities preferred to hire neighboring knights to fight land wars and arm some of their citizens according to the knightly model.

Arcballista is a vice. Used for throwing small cannonballs. Usually the cores were stone or, in the absence of stones, wood, clay, and sometimes lead

Since the 14th century, firearms began to develop in Europe, mainly artillery. But in the era under review, artillery is still an auxiliary weapon, very imperfect and cumbersome, giving more of a psychological than a practical effect. The main artillery of the 14th century was a variety of throwing machines. Mainly trebushets and arcballists in Russian chronicles are called vices).

In the Middle East and the Great Steppe, stretching from the Balkans to the Pacific Ocean, military affairs were built on completely different principles than in Western Europe. If in Europe of the 14th century the main weapons of battle were the sword and spear, then in Asia and Eastern Europe the main type of weapon can rightfully be called a bow.

The fact is that Western European bows in this era are much less perfect than Asian and Eastern European ones. The famous English yew bow, glorified by Western European fiction, had a length of one and a half to two meters and was a rather heavy and inconvenient design. The Asian compound bow did not exceed a length of 107 cm and was, accordingly, noticeably lighter and more convenient. It is impossible to shoot a long all-wood bow from a horse. In order for an infantryman to shoot from such a bow, he must rest it bottom part into the ground. And from a compound Asian bow you can shoot not only from a standing position, but also while running, as well as while moving on horseback. The firing range of Asian bows is also significantly greater than the firing range of European solid wood bows. If we take into account all these factors, it turns out that in terms of its fighting qualities, the European bow is approximately half as inferior to the eastern composite bow.

He takes out, Poking,

From the beam your tight bow,

From the quiver - a tempered arrow,

And he takes the tight bow in his left hand,

I shoot an arrow to the right,

Places silk on the bowstring,

He pulled the tight bow behind his ear...

The damask stripes creaked

And the horns of the bow howled.

This is how the Russian composite bow is described in the Russian epic about Mikhailo Potyk. In Rus' and the Great Steppe, the use of a bow during battle was widespread. And in Western Europe, the use of a bow was considered the work of commoners - mercenaries and militias. The knights considered the use of a bow in battle to be shameful (although they used bows and crossbows during hunting).

In Western Europe, preference was given to resolving battles through hand-to-hand combat, and the bow was seen as a not very effective auxiliary tool. Knights from the European epic do not use bows. But Russian heroes and steppe warriors, judging by epics and epic legends, often use a bow.

This is how the duel between the legendary Iranian knights Rustam and Suhrab is described in the epic Iranian poem “Shah-Nameh”:

Men rose to the challenge of honor,

They took up copper bows.

Let's go shoot.From their feathered arrows

The steppe onager would not have had time to hide.

The arrows flew thicker than the falling leaves.

Say: “They enjoy shooting at each other!”

An undoubted advantage eastern armies there was availability large quantity horse archers, and in general a large number of lightly armed mobile cavalry. Horse archers could provide reconnaissance and protection of the main forces of their army, and also constantly disturb the enemy, showering their formation with arrows from a distance, from a distance at which an aimed shot at a moving target was impossible. Moreover, given that the range of a shot from an Asian composite bow is greater than from a European one, when meeting with Europeans, Asian warriors could even fire at enemy archers without risking anything.

The only salvation from such a tedious shooting battle was to approach the enemy horse archers and engage in hand-to-hand combat with them. But the Mongol, and other Asian horse archers were trained to retreat in an organized and quick manner from a superior enemy, luring him into an ambush or to an inconvenient place for battle, and then, at the right moment, attack again. Heavily armed European knights on their large but sluggish horses could not catch up with the retreating light horsemen and force them into the usual hand-to-hand combat.

That is why Batu’s small army in 1240–1241 easily dealt with the knightly armies of Poland, Germany and Hungary. Unlike the Europeans, the Mongols entered into hand-to-hand combat only by maximizing the advantage of their small arms.

Only the equally mobile light cavalry of sedentary peoples could resist the lightly armed horse archers of the nomads. Sedentary peoples with a direct border with nomads were forced to acquire such cavalry. Thus, even in the pre-Mongol period, the Russian princes had corresponding detachments of lightly armed horsemen on fast horses, both from their own warriors and from mercenaries - Polovtsians, Black Klobuks, etc. There were also detachments of horse archers in the Chinese, Iranian, and Byzantine armies. But Western European states that did not directly border the nomads did not have this kind of troops.

Training and maintaining professional mounted riflemen in constant combat readiness for sedentary peoples was quite expensive. They had to be fed and paid quite highly.

The nomads, thanks to their way of life and way of farming, were already ready-made cavalrymen - archers. The farmer, who worked all his life on arable land, had no combat skills. The nomad, forced by life itself to hunt and protect his herds from wolves with a bow, was already a fully trained warrior.

The Mongols, who surpassed not only sedentary but also nomadic peoples in their art of warfare, had a custom of driven hunting. Here is how the famous researcher Harold Lem describes it:

“The Mongolian raid hunt was the same regular campaign, but not against people, but against animals. The entire army took part in it, and its rules were established by the khan himself, who recognized them as inviolable. Warriors (beaters) were forbidden to use weapons against animals, and letting an animal slip through the chain of beaters was considered a disgrace. It was especially difficult at night. A month after the start of the hunt, a huge number of animals found themselves herded inside the circle of the beaters, grouping around their chain. We had to perform real guard duty: light fires and post sentries. Even an ordinary “pass” was given. It was not easy to maintain the integrity of the line of outposts at night in the presence of an excited mass of representatives of the four-legged kingdom in front of it... It is clear how favorable such a situation was for the warriors to display their youth and daring; for example, when a lone boar, and even more so, when a whole herd of such angry animals rushed at the beaters in a frenzy.”

Driven hunt

At the end of the drive, the khan was the first to open the hunt. Having personally killed several animals, he left the circle and, sitting under a canopy, watched the further progress of the hunt. Next, the princes and temniks entered the circle, then junior commanders and ordinary warriors. The hunt, thus, sometimes continued for a whole day, until, finally, according to custom, the khan’s grandchildren and young princes came to him to ask for mercy for the surviving animals. After this, the ring opened, and the hunters began collecting carcasses.

Such a hunt was a kind of military exercise - an excellent school of interaction in an environment as close as possible to military operations. Such a hunt was carried out annually, and sometimes several times a year.

In general, in the countries of the East, discipline and interaction during battle were much more developed than in Western Europe. Russian princes, Byzantine emperors, Arab rulers and Mongol khans maintained quite large squads at state expense, which, in fact, formed the backbone of their army. European sovereigns did not have such large squads. Their army mostly consisted of feudal knightly militia, generally very undisciplined and unable to act coherently during battle. This explains the different combat tactics of the eastern and western armies.

Western strategists, having gathered the mass of equestrian knights into a single fist, preferred, having discovered the enemy, to immediately throw all their forces at him. Almost always the bet was placed on the first massive strike, and it was this that decided the outcome of the case. The fact is that the knightly militia, due to their indiscipline, was unable to remain in sight of the enemy for a long time without rushing to attack him. The knights whom the military commander tried to keep in reserve for a long time would simply not obey him. After all, being in reserve, they may be left without prey and without glory. At the same time, the knight's cavalry, put to flight, could no longer stop, since none of the knights could count on the help of others during the flight. Moreover, even the feigned retreat of the knightly cavalry, due to its general lack of discipline, could easily turn into a stampede, and therefore the military leaders of the West almost never decided to use such a technique in battle.

Tatar helmet and spear of the 14th century.

From a tactical point of view, the Mongol army was the complete opposite of the knightly army. The Mongols were trained to attack and retreat on the orders of a military leader. Feigning flight in order to lure the enemy into an ambush was their usual technique. The same was true for the use of reserves. Actually, as a rule, there were several of these reserves - the Mongols, gradually introducing more and more new forces into the battle, attacked the enemy in waves, each of which was stronger than the previous one. If the attack was unsuccessful, they retreated in an orderly manner, but, having received reinforcements, they immediately turned their horses around and again rushed to attack the enemy, who was already celebrating victory.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the Mongol army demonstrated its superiority to the whole world by conquering most of the Eurasian continent, after which many peoples who encountered it hastened to adopt the fighting techniques of the Mongols. In the middle of the 13th century, the papal legate Plano Carpini, who was personally convinced of the advantages of the Mongol system of warfare, devoted a significant part of his book to its description. In his “History of the Mongols,” he advised all European monarchs and military leaders to study and adopt the military art of the Mongols, seeing this as the key to saving Europe from Mongol rule.

But the Mongol conquest of Europe, which the papal legate who visited Karakorum was so afraid of, did not take place. The empire of Genghis Khan collapsed, and the Mongols had no time for Europe. But Western Europe was never able to adopt the Mongolian combat system.

At the same time, in Rus', which became part of the Golden Horde, the basic principles of Mongolian war tactics were adopted. However, for Rus' this was just a modernization of an already existing system. In the pre-Mongol period, the princely horse squads could quite successfully resist the Polovtsian light cavalry. However, they were powerless against the much more well-organized Mongols. But several decades later, the warriors of the Russian princes were armed and trained no worse than their steppe colleagues - the khan’s nukers.

Atrocities of the Mongols. Illustration for an English manuscript from the 13th century.

During this period, the Russians actively used mounted reconnaissance. In front of each military unit is a vanguard of mobile mounted riflemen. Hand-to-hand combat, as a rule, is preceded by intense shooting combat, and the hand-to-hand combat itself becomes longer, consisting of several gatherings - sums, with the sequential introduction of more and more new forces that were in reserve. When storming cities, crossbows and throwing machines begin to be used en masse. The horses of the warriors, according to the Mongolian model, are protected by armored blankets. All the prerequisites for such a development of military affairs were present in Rus' in the pre-Mongol period, but the Mongol invasion, apparently, gave the development of military affairs in Rus' a powerful impetus. First fighting against the Mongols, and then participating in their military operations as part of the Golden Horde army, Russian soldiers quickly adopted all the progressive elements of the Mongolian system of warfare.

The basis of the army in Rus' in the 14th – early 15th centuries was the squad. Each prince had his own squad. The warriors are both bodyguards and direct executors of princely orders. The prince fed them, clothed them, and paid them salaries from his treasury. The most distinguished could become boyars (the original meaning of the word boyar is ardent in battle). Actually, the very institution of boyarism arose when the princes began to give their senior, most loyal warriors additional assignments, especially rewarding them for this. So the prince's warrior, not just a simple one, but an ardent one in battle - a boyar), who replaced the prince in the city in his absence, became the prince's governor. Another boyar was appointed by the prince to the position of governor - leader of a separate military detachment. The third - to the position of kravchey - manager of princely feasts. And each of the boyars received a reward for fulfilling these special duties. For example, a village to feed or a vast plot of uninhabited land to own. Such a boyar continued to serve the prince and went on campaigns on princely orders, but often with his own small retinue. An analogy can be drawn between the boyar’s squad and the knightly spear of Western Europe.

The significant difference is that the knights were sent home after 40 days of service, while the squad served the prince constantly. The boyars and their servants, of course, could be released if necessary. But even after this, a significant part of the squad still remained with the prince. And the boyars were tied to the prince by stronger bonds of subordination than a Western European vassal was to his lord. The knight served the lord for 40 days, and then spent his time at his own discretion. And the boyar was constantly in the prince’s service. So the boyars, by order of the prince, probably participated not only in hostilities, but also in the training of the squad. At least, such facts are known from later sources - the end of the 15th - 16th centuries.

Thus, the prince could train his squad to take organized actions during battle. The level of discipline and coherence of the actions of the princely squads was close to the level of regular armies of a later time, and sometimes even exceeded them, since almost every year the prince led his squad on a military campaign.

The richer and more significant the prince was, the larger his squad was. The Grand Duke's army, therefore, consisted of the prince's squad and the squads of appanage and service princes and boyars subordinate to him. These were disciplined, professional mounted warriors who, however, knew how to fight on foot.

Russian helmet of the 13th century. Belonged to Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich

In Rus', infantry was used much more actively than in the West and East in field battles. This feature was also characteristic of Rus' in the pre-Mongol period. The foot armies of the Russian princes were quite numerous and combat-ready, and, unlike Western Europe, in Rus' they were assigned not a secondary, but sometimes a decisive role in battle. Apparently, this infantry was staffed not only and not so much from rural or urban militias, but from professional warriors, the so-called “hunters” or “warriors” who went to war for the sake of prey.

In Europe, the suppliers of mercenaries were the mountainous or forested territories of Wales, Scotland, Brittany, Gascony, Switzerland), whose inhabitants, due to their main occupations, already had military skills. It is easier for a shepherd, hunter or trapper to learn the military craft than for a peaceful farmer. That is why it was cheaper for European sovereigns to hire foreign soldiers who already knew something than to train their subjects from scratch.

In Rus', with its endless forests, there were always enough hunters, excellent archery shooters, who more than once walked with a spear, or even with one knife, to hunt a bear. Therefore, in Rus' there have always been many people willing and able to fight. In case of war, fishing artels of fishermen and trappers could easily turn into foot warriors. After all, these warriors not only knew how to shoot a bow, wield a spear, an ax and a knife. Such hunters knew how to build river boats - nasads and ushkis, walk in them along rivers and, if necessary, on our own drag these large boats over rapids or even along portages into neighboring bodies of water.

Russian infantry units have always constituted a significant part of the army. In addition, in the conditions of the forest and forest-steppe zone, cut by numerous rivers, such a semi-professional “landing force” was a great help for the princely equestrian squads. And even without princely support, the Russian river infantry army was a formidable force, as the Ushkuin campaigns on the Volga soon showed.

During the “Great Rebellion,” the Russian principalities did not put forward their contenders for the khan’s throne. But nevertheless, they actively participated in the political vicissitudes of the Golden Horde, supporting one or another Genghisid claiming the throne. The princes were guided purely by their own interests, acting, as we will see, not only political, but also military methods. Russian princes entered into alliances both among themselves and with the rulers of the non-Russian Horde uluses. The Russian princes also fought against each other and against the neighboring Horde rulers. And in the course of this struggle, full of drama, Moscow acquired increasing importance and power among the Russian principalities.

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3. Development of Russia at the end of the 19th century Innovations also affected the power of governors. Self-government in cities and provinces was limited, but this was not of a strictly principled nature. Moreover: it was during this period that very significant changes took place in the economy.

Epidemics led to an imbalance between city and countryside and a general devaluation of money. The death of Charles IV and the subsequent decline in royal authority accelerated the development of the crisis. His economic reason there was a disproportion in the division of labor between city and countryside. Prices for agricultural products did not change or decreased, but prices for handicraft products increased. The peasant could not pay the dues to the feudal lord, and he moved on to more severe forms of exploitation. The growth of agricultural production under these conditions has already reached its ceiling; the entire form of feudal economy has lost prospects for further development. The level of development of agricultural technology, in principle, could not be increased under feudalism. The number of people needed for the feudal mode of production reached its maximum, the total amount of feudal rent was limited by the capacity of the market, cities could produce only a limited number of goods. Foreign trade of the Czech Republic weakened, which was especially felt in Prague. Interclass and intraclass contradictions intensified.

After the death of Charles IV, power over the Czech Republic, Silesia, Upper and Lower Lusatia and over the Czech fiefs in Saxony and the Upper Palatinate passed to his eldest son Wenceslas IV. The second son, Sigismund (Sigmund), received Brandenburg with the title of Margrave, and the third, Johann (Jan), became Duke of Gerlitz. Moravia went to the nephews of Charles IV. In the difficult economic and political situation that had arisen, Wenceslas IV was unable to retain his vast possessions. In the political situation of Europe, the decisive moment was the papal schism. Seeking to continue his father's policies, Wenceslas IV openly sided with Pope Urban VI (1378–1389) and against Avignon Pope Clement VII (1378–1389). In July 1383, an embassy of the French king arrived in Prague, trying to win the court of Wenceslas IV to the side of Clement. It had an effect. Wenceslas IV refused to be crowned in Rome and entrusted control of Italy to his cousin, who stood on the side of France. All this undermined the position of Wenceslas IV in Europe. In addition, the Prague bishop Jan of Jenstein firmly supported Pope Urban VI, and Wenceslas came into conflict with him. The new Pope Boniface IX did not support the Prague archbishop, and he abdicated his post.

However, the indecisiveness of Wenceslas IV, as well as his orientation toward the lower gentry, aroused the indignation of the lords. A gentry opposition arose, supported by the Moravian Margrave Joscht and the Hungarian king, Wenceslas' brother, Sigismund (Sigmund). In 1394, the Pan's Union captured the king and interned him in Prague Castle. Then Wenceslas’s younger brother, Duke of Gerlitz Johann (Jan), invaded the Czech Republic and besieged Prague, and when the lords took the captive Wenceslas to South Bohemia, and then to Austria, Jan began to devastate the possessions of the largest lords from the Rozmberk family, who were at enmity with the king. The lords entered into negotiations, but in 1396 Jan suddenly died, and Wenceslas was forced to make major concessions to the gentry, which greatly limited royal power. The decisive place in the royal council was given to the Archbishop of Prague, the bishops of Olomouc and Litomysl. The decline of royal power continued. In 1401, Wenceslas IV transferred power in the Czech Republic to a council of four. Wenceslas's authority also fell in the empire. On August 20, 1400, the ecclesiastical electors, in alliance with Count Palatine Ruprecht, declared Wenceslas IV deprived of the imperial throne, and the next day elected Ruprecht emperor, who captured most of the Czech fiefs in the Upper Palatinate, while the Czech lordship began to fight against Wenceslas within the country. In 1410, after the death of Ruprecht, Sigismund (Sigmund), the king of Hungary, was elected king of Rome.

The elements of stagnation that emerged in the Czech Republic starting in the 60s of the 14th century were a reflection of the crisis phenomena that engulfed the whole of Europe. The economic decline in the countries of Western and Southern Europe dragged on due to epidemics and the long conflict between England and France. In these countries, as in Italy and Germany, there are acute social contradictions. In the Czech Republic crisis phenomena became especially acute at the end of the 14th century, and in the 15th century. developed into the Hussite movement.

The economic crisis also had serious social consequences. The first of these was the differentiation of the entire society. The stratification affected the peasants, feudal lords, clergy, and urban class.

The peasants were divided into the wealthy (saddlers) and the poor (khalupniki, zagradniki, servants). Most of the village were owners of small and dwarf plots of land. In addition to cash rent, taxes in kind, and labor, peasants bore a large burden of taxes. They were not owners, but only holders of the land. Legally, they were subject to the feudal lord and his court, which was characterized by extreme cruelty; peasants were subjected to barbaric corporal punishment, tortured to death or given death sentences. In fact, the power of the feudal lord over the peasant was unlimited, which caused hatred towards representatives of the ruling class.

There were three social groups in the cities: the patrician, the burghers and the poor. The patriciate held in his hands the city administration and the court. The burghers, united into guilds, had property, but were deprived political power, for the possession of which they fought with the patriciate, and the patriciate consisted mainly of Germans, and the burghers of Czechs. 40–50% of the city's population were poor, living in constant hunger and languishing in slums. The patriciate and the burghers brought down the most cruel punishments on her.

The ruling class of the country included feudal lords and patricians. The spiritual feudal lords were especially distinguished by their wealth and power. The Church owned a third of all cultivated land or half of all land holdings in the country and was the most sophisticated exploiter. In addition to the usual peasant duties, she collected tithes from all segments of the population and received payments for performing rituals. The secular nobility was represented by the lord and knightly classes. The lords sought to seize the state apparatus into their own hands, acted actively in the Sejm, and limited the power of the king. It was almost impossible to move into the lord class from the lower nobility. The lords seized the most important positions in local government.

The number of families of the lower gentry reached several thousand; they farmed on small estates and had modest incomes. There were completely poor knights who had lost their possessions and earned their livelihood through military service or even highway robbery.

Formally, the feudal lords and the lower gentry had one right, the right of the community of the free. In fact, the lower nobility occupied a secondary position and were dissatisfied with their social status.

In a situation of social crisis, relations between all layers of society have become extremely strained. The peasants dreamed of liberation from their hated masters. The burghers wanted to overthrow the power of the patriciate in the cities, preserving property and dominance over the poor. The urban poor were ready to fight for a fundamental change in the existing order. Representatives of the nobility fought among themselves for land and power. All segments of society expressed dissatisfaction with the church, seeking to free themselves from its exploitation, extortions, or seize its property. Thus, at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, the crisis manifested itself in the economic, social and political spheres. Church life was also captured by him. Popular and scientific heresy developed, which testified to the crisis of church ideology. All this amounted to the most important reasons Hussite movement.

The Hussite movement, which filled about 70 years of Czech history, is a multifaceted social phenomenon. This is the struggle of classes, the reformation of the church, attempts to change the socio-political system, as well as the movement national character, against the dominance of the Germans in the country. The movement got its name from one of its leaders, Jan Hus, who spoke at the first, preparatory stage, which can be dated back to 1400–1419. This was primarily a period of church reformation, by the end of which Hus died, a time of alignment of class forces, formation of the main directions of the movement. The second period – 1419–1471 – is the Hussite revolution, in which three phases are distinguished: 1. 1419–1421: the phase of the highest scope of the revolution and the initiative of radical layers. 2. 1422–1437: the phase of struggle within the country and the transition of the Hussites to the offensive against Europe, an attempt to give the movement an international scope. 3. From the mid-30s. before 1471: the path of a changed Czech society to the internal organization of relations, to a compromise with the outside world, the struggle to maintain the achieved boundaries.

Hussite Revolution

The aggravation of intra-class and inter-class contradictions in Czech society caused dissatisfaction with the existing orders and their criticism. The protest, naturally, took on a religious form; other forms were simply excluded. The existing situation was compared with “divine decrees.” The discovered inconsistencies served as justification for dissatisfaction. The Church was not only powerful, but also immoral. After the end of the Avignon captivity of the popes in 1373, a church schism began, which lasted 40 years and opened the eyes of the whole world to the essence of the Catholic Church. More and more bold criticism began to be expressed against the clergy. In the Czech Republic, the first such critic was Conrad Waldhauser (d. 1369), a German, a representative of the Augustinian Order. In the 60s, he spoke in one of the Prague churches exposing the hypocrisy of the mendicant orders - the Franciscans and Dominicans. He did not touch upon the essence of the Catholic Church, wanting only to correct it in the spirit of the morals of the first times of Christianity. Subsequent critics went further. Jan Milich of Kroměříž (1320–1374), a Czech who, unlike Waldhauser, preached in Czech, believed that the general deterioration of morals in society was a sign of the approaching end of the world. Milich has already touched upon the topic of the causes and true culprits of the corruption of the church and has developed his own program for correcting society. This example was taken up by Matthew of Yanov (1350–1394), a master educated at the University of Paris, who opposed corrupt Christianity and some of the rituals of Catholicism, and the author of the “Rules of the Old and New Testaments,” a work in which the need for church reform was argued. This is how reformation thought matured in the Czech Republic.

One of the prerequisites for the Hussite movement was also the teaching of the English reformer John Wyclef, whose writings found a great response among the intelligentsia, as they confirmed the justice of the critics of the church. At the turn of the XIV and XV centuries. The anti-church opposition makes a sharp leap forward, which is in no small part due to the entry into public life of the master of the University of Prague, Jan Hus.

He was born in 1371 in the south of the Czech Republic into a peasant family, graduated from the University of Prague and received a master's degree. When at the beginning of the 15th century. When Wyclef's ideas spread in the Czech Republic, Jan Hus, who later became a supporter of the views of the English reformer, also joined the circle of Czech Wyclefites at the University of Prague. Having received the rank of priest, Hus began his preaching work, which was especially successful in the Bethlem (Bethlehem) chapel. Hus strongly criticized the church, exposed the dark sides of its life, its greed and greed, its feudal character, the contradiction of its life with the institutions of the Bible and church authorities, and the exploitation of its subjects. Hus delivered his sermons in Czech, influencing the widest segments of the population. It is clear that ill-wishers began to collect evidence against him. In 1403, the Archbishop of Prague received a complaint from the priests against Huss, they demanded that he be punished for his “heretical” statements.

At the University of Prague at this time there were endless debates. Reformers and adherents of the old order fought. The Czech masters advocated for the reformation, relying mainly on the teachings of Viklef. Anti-Wyclephites - primarily German professors and masters - in 1408 achieved the condemnation of Wyclef's teachings and a ban on reading his works at the University of Prague. The disputing parties were divided along national lines - into Czechs and Germans.

King Wenceslas IV, overthrown from the imperial throne in 1400, supported the reformation party for political reasons, and the Czechs supported the line of the king. The Germans began to claim that the entire Czech nation had fallen into heresy. Controversies extended beyond the university to reach society as a whole.

Czech masters got the king to reform the university. On January 18, 1409, Wenceslas IV signed the Decree of Kutnogorsk, according to which the Germans lost all privileges at the university. Then German masters, bachelors and students left Prague, so that the university became the center of activity for supporters of the reformation. But a division occurred among them, and a radical group led by Hus was formed. By this time, his teaching had basically developed. Hus believed that the existing order must be changed, people must return to the life that Christ bequeathed, the norms of which are formulated in the Bible; there should be no injustice, exploitation and immorality in society. As for the methods of struggle for a new society, Hus was mainly a supporter of peaceful means, but sometimes spoke about the possibility of violent influence on those who persist in sin. Hus adapted his teaching to a specific situation; it is clear that very different followers relied on his ideas.

The Archbishop of Prague soon recognized Hus's statements as inflammatory and subject to trial by the Inquisition. The Pope issued a bull that cursed Hus. But Hus continued his sermons, and he was supported by large sections of the population. The idea of reformation took possession of the people.

The indignation of the masses was also caused by the sale of indulgences by representatives of the pope, who was collecting funds to wage war against the Neapolitan king. Hus announced that the pope is not God, and therefore cannot forgive sins. After the arrival of indulgence sellers in Prague in May 1412, unrest began in the city. To make matters worse, the authorities executed three apprentices, and Hus was again anathematized, and he had to leave Prague, as the city was threatened by an interdict. In 1414, Hus was summoned to a church council in the southern German city of Constance, taken into custody there, after 8 months of imprisonment, condemned as a heretic and on July 6, 1415, burned at the stake.

The news of Hus's death reached the Czech Republic and caused great unrest. The nobility sent a protest to the Council of Constance against the massacre of Hus, the University of Prague did not recognize the justice of the council's decisions, and the masses began to refuse to pay tithes and rents in favor of the church. Attacks began on monasteries and on representatives of the church hierarchy. Thus, after the death of Hus, a revolutionary explosion grows and political parties are formed. The wealthy strata of society sought to deprive the church of its property and privileges and retain political power, as well as dominance over the masses. The latter advocated the abolition of all exploitation. This led to the division of the Hussites into two main camps. Feudal lords, burghers, university masters and other wealthy strata formed a moderate camp, which declared its main task to achieve communion from the chalice for the laity (that is, “under two types”) - of course, with all the economic and socio-political consequences of such a measure. This camp began to be called the party of the Utraquists (Podoboyev, Chashnik). The masses, who wanted a radical restructuring of society, were not satisfied with the chashniki program. Also advocating for the deprivation of the church's privileges and for a cup for the laity, the masses demanded deeper reforms and the establishment of a social system based on the Bible. This radical wing of the Hussites received the name “Taborites” after the city of Tabora, in which their center was subsequently formed. Both Hussite camps included the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Czech Kingdom.

Wenceslas IV was not able to suppress the uprising; he had to recognize the change of power in Novo Mesto. On August 16, 1419, Wenceslas died. Prague became the center of revolutionary action. The right-wing Hussites (lords, lower gentry, burghers) at the end of August 1419 developed demands that offered Sigismund of Luxembourg the following conditions for recognition as the Czech king: 1. Guarantee of communion for the laity from the chalice; 2. Freedom of God's law (that is, worship); 3. Secularization of church property; 4. Recognition of the established order in cities. These demands became known as the “Four Articles of Prague” program. But the radicals did not agree with this program. At this time, crowds of peasants and plebeians came to Prague and were greeted with jubilation by the Prague poor. Then the Catholics captured Prague Castle and Lesser Town and stationed their troops there. New Town radicals occupied Visegrad on October 25. The war has begun. The radical Hussites took control of Mala Strana, and Queen Sophia had to flee Prague. After 10 days a truce was concluded.

By this time, new Hussite centers had emerged: Hradec Kralove in the east of the Czech Republic, Pilsen in the west and a number of other cities. Chiliast ideas about the second coming of Christ revived among the masses. Preachers began to organize pilgrimages to the mountains in the spirit of the Gospel of John. More than 40 thousand Hussites from all over the country gathered at Tabor Hill in June 1419. Since Christ did not appear, it was decided to take fate into our own hands. On February 21, 1420, the Hussites captured the town of Sezimovo Usti and created a community there as a prototype of an equal society of brothers and sisters. However, the position of the city did not ensure its successful defense. Therefore, the Hussites chose another place and began to build a fortification there, called Tabor.

On March 25, 1420, in the battle of Sudomerz, the Hussites defeated an enemy superior in strength. Already in this first victory the military genius of the knight Jan Žižka was revealed, who became one of the hetmans upon his arrival in Tabor. A commune, a society of brothers and sisters, arose in Tabor. Everyone who came here threw their valuables into a common tub. The main principle of the commune was “God’s law”; everything that contradicted it was destroyed. The military communities were headed by 4 hetmans, and priests and preachers had great influence. His own bishop was also elected. The program of the Tabor commune provided for universal equality, the expulsion of the vicious church and the bodies of feudal law.

However, very soon the utopian ideas of the Taborites collided with reality. It was necessary to move away from egalitarian principles and to subordinate the interests of individuals to general circumstances. This development of events was predetermined by the real historical situation. The need to provide Tabor with weapons, clothing, and food contributed to the development of production there. This also changed the social structure of the city. Controversies began between the Taborite preachers. The group uniting around Mikulas from Pelhřimov assessed the situation more soberly than the radicals; and the priest Martinek Guska and his like-minded people took extreme radical positions. In the spring of 1420, when hostilities reached a large scale, the Taborites were led by 4 hetmans from the lower nobility, loyal to the popular wing of the movement, but at odds with the Chiliast preachers. Martinek Guska and his supporters were declared violators of order and discipline. In the spring of 1421, Hetman Jan Žižka physically exterminated the most radical elements, declared extremist. This circumstance, together with the need to provide material support for the troops, led to the liquidation of the original revolutionary plebeian commune.

Since 1419 there were marches in the Czech Republic Hussite wars. On the one hand, it was an armed struggle between the Czech Hussites and the Czech Catholic lords, and on the other, the struggle of the Czech Hussites against international reaction and foreign intervention.

The right party was ready, under certain conditions, to accept Sigismund (Sigmund) of Luxembourg as the Czech king. But he decided to suppress the Czech “heretics” by force. On March 17, 1420, he began a crusade against the Hussites. The Hussites began to prepare for resistance. Sigismund with a huge army approached Prague on June 30. The Taborites moved to help her. On July 14, the battle that took place on Mount Vitkov was lost by the emperor. The military talent of Jan Zizka of Trocnov, an impoverished Czech knight who went over to the side of the Hussites during the period of Hus’s sermons in Prague, was again revealed.

After this, fighting resumed between the Hussites. The moderate wing wanted to establish a monarchy in the Czech Republic, while the radical wing was against it. The citizens of Prague even declared the Taborite teaching heretical, and the Taborite army left Prague. In June 1421, the Sejm met in the city of Časlav, which proclaimed 4 Prague articles as a land law and officially rejected Sigismund’s candidacy for the Czech throne. He began to prepare a second crusade, which began on August 28, 1421. But the army of the crusaders again suffered a severe defeat and on January 10, 1422 was almost completely destroyed. And again discord began between the Hussites. On March 9, 1422, Jan Zhelivsky was killed in Prague, and with his death the period of radicalism in Prague ended. Thus ended the first phase of the Hussite revolution, characterized by the hegemony of the poor and a decisive revolutionary program.

A new phase of the revolution was marked by the separation of Žižka from Tabor in 1423, as well as the war between the Hussites and internal Catholics. Zizka, who led the Hussites, always emerged victorious. But in 1424 he died, and with his death the balance of revolutionary forces was disrupted.

The victories of the Hussite army over the armies of reaction are explained not only by Zizka’s military talent. Declaring all Czechs as heretics meant the threat of their wholesale extermination. To preserve themselves, the Czech people had to strain themselves to the limit. It is known that during periods revolutionary movements Popular forces, previously shackled by oppression and prejudice, are awakening. During the period of the Hussite movement, the Czech people felt free, resolutely stood up for the defense of new ideals and put forward remarkable leaders from their midst, including Zizka, the creator of the new army. The Hussite army consisted of peasants and the urban poor and received a fundamentally new organization. The basis was infantry, there were cavalry and artillery, and a completely new weapon was “battle carts,” which provided the infantry with the ability to successfully fight the enemy’s heavy cavalry. The interaction between military branches was also new. The army was held together by strong discipline, determined by the military regulations developed in 1423 by Zizka. The moral factor was of great importance, determined by the enthusiasm of ordinary people who took up arms in the name of achieving the kingdom of God on earth. A deep conviction in the justice of the goals of the struggle ensured high discipline. In addition to war carts, agricultural implements were used as combat weapons. All this made the Hussite army invincible and allowed them to defeat the armies of the five crusades.

From 1426, Prokop Golyi, who came from a patrician family with a university education, became the main hetman of the Taborites. From the end of 1420 he belonged to the moderate Taborites. Military and diplomatic abilities put this person at the head of the Hussite Czech Republic.

On June 16, 1426, the Saxon Elector launched the third crusade against the Hussites. And he was defeated. Military operations were even moved outside the Czech Republic. On March 14, 1427, in Austria, the Hussites defeated the army of the Austrian feudal lords.

At this time, the Franconian Elector Frederick of Hohenzollern began preparing the fourth crusade. The Taborite army hastily returned to the Czech Republic. Having learned about the approach of Prokop's troops, the crusaders concentrated near the city of Takhov, but on August 4, 1427 they fled, and the Hussites defeated the troops of the Czech Pan Union. Thus, the hegemony of the Taborite army was established throughout the Czech Republic. In 1428, the Taborites made a successful campaign in Silesia, attacked the Upper Palatinate and part of their forces approached Vienna. Emperor Sigismund entered into negotiations, which took place in early April 1429, but did not lead to anything. At the end of 1429, five independent Hussite armies crossed the Czech borders and invaded Germany. When the Hussites approached the city of Bamberg, its poor drove out their oppressors and seized power. The Hussites received a huge ransom from Nuremberg for abandoning the assault. In their campaigns abroad, the Hussites attached great importance to the propaganda of their ideas - both by word and by sword. Returning from Germany in February 1430 with large trophies, the Hussites then made more campaigns in 1431 in Silesia and Lusatia.

The very constant waging of war and the large number of people for whom war had become a craft caused an inevitable demand for replenishment of all kinds of supplies, and it was no longer possible to find them in the devastated Czech Republic. Under these conditions, trips abroad became a means of satisfying urgent needs and an effective measure against the economic blockade carried out by Catholic countries. Therefore, at the first stage foreign trips were a forced requisition action, and as Tabor decomposed, they also took on an openly marauding character, although the Hussites did not forget about their revolutionary propaganda. The need for requisitions led to a decline in the popularity of the Hussite fighters, and the disintegration within the troops weakened military power and led to the isolation of the army from the people.

Feudal Europe did not abandon its attempts to suppress the Hussite Czech Republic by force. In 1431, the fifth crusade was organized under the leadership of Cardinal Caesarini. On August 14, a huge army of crusaders, without entering the battle near Domazlice, fled from the battlefield. This led to a turn in relations between the Czech Republic and feudal reaction. In Basel, from July 1431, a church council met, inviting the Hussites to negotiations. At the beginning of 1433, the Czech embassy led by Prokop the Naked arrived at the Basel Cathedral. The negotiations came to nothing. They were then transferred to Prague. Here the Catholic and Hussite masters agreed on a joint action against the Taborite army. On May 30, 1434, near the village of Lipany near Prague, a battle took place between Taborite troops and the forces of the Pan Union. It ended with the complete defeat of the Taborites. The reason was not only the betrayal of one of the hetmans, but also the contradictions within the Hussite camp, the fatigue of the people from prolonged wars, the isolation of the Taborites as a result of constant requisitions, and the desire of the right-wing Hussites to come to an agreement with the church and Sigismund. But despite the defeat of the radical wing, the Hussites continued to be the decisive force in the country. The moderate Hussites agreed, subject to significant concessions from Sigismund, to recognize him as the Czech king, and on June 5, 1436, they reached an agreement with the Catholic Church in the form of the so-called. Basel Compactata. For the first time in history, the Catholic Church was forced to recognize heretics as authorized to profess their faith. The ideological hegemony of the church was broken.

Lipany and the Basel Compactata were a transition to a new phase of the Hussite movement, which was a struggle to consolidate the gains and for their recognition by feudal Europe. Changes in Czech society concerned land ownership, social status individual layers and government structure.

The land wealth of the church was seized by the gentry and cities. For the Hussite lords, the secularization of church lands was the basis of their program. The Catholic lords did not hesitate to appropriate the estates of the monasteries under the pretext of “protecting” them. Representatives of the lower gentry seized crown lands, as well as some church lands, and from this layer of society the “Pohussite aristocracy” grew. The Hussite cities seized church property not only in the cities themselves, but also in their surroundings. turning into feudal lords. They also took possession of the property of the fleeing Catholic burghers.

It was no longer possible to restore the property position of the church.

In general, the foundations of the class structure of feudal society were not violated, but significant changes occurred in the class structure. The influence of the church hierarchy fell, some unprivileged strata and lower strata of the privileged class rose to prominence, cities received representation in the Sejm and government institutions, got rid of administrative and political control from the king and feudal lords, and began to decide on the issue of elections of the council and the lordship. The social role of the lower gentry increased in proportion to the intensity of military operations, and it itself began to occupy a significant number of places in the governing bodies of the country, became a political class and began to be represented in the Sejm. The highest gentry no longer constituted such a unanimous group as before, before 1419.

The peasants and urban poor received nothing when the “revolutionary spoils” were divided. But nevertheless, among the commanders of small units, people from the peasantry also appeared in the field troops, which was previously impossible. A very small part of the peasantry managed to move into a higher social stratum of the population. The main gain of the peasantry from the Hussite movement was deliverance from the exactions of the church and from the deterioration of the situation as a whole, which was pushed into the distant future.

The Hussite movement is the most powerful anti-feudal movement in Europe in the 15th century. It was different the following features:

– a clear, clearly formulated ideology directed against the church, secular feudal lords and the king;

– struggle simultaneously against social and national oppression;

– cooperation between the urban and rural poor;

– nationwide;

- longer duration than all previous performances comparable to it.

Political struggle in the period from 1437 to 1471

On August 23, 1436, Sigismund (Sigmund) of Luxembourg took the Czech royal throne. Despite the signing of the electoral capitulations, he began to re-Catholicize and restore the previous order. He installed his proteges in city councils and expelled the head of the Hussite church, Jan of Rokycan, from Prague. But on December 9, 1437, Sigismund died. Anarchy arose in the country, which made it possible for the Hussite and Catholic gentry to strengthen their positions at the expense of royal power. In 1440, a document was adopted according to which power in the country was divided between groups of gentry, which was carried out through “landfrids”, that is, political unions of lords, knights and cities of individual regions. Their congresses replaced the central zemstvo government.

The head of the Catholic party in the Czech Republic was the powerful feudal lord Oldrich from Rožmberk. Landfried of the Chashniks recognized in 1444 the head of the Hussite church, John of Rokycany. In the same year, 24-year-old Jiri from Poděbrady was elected supreme hetman of the East Bohemian Union.

In 1448, the Roman Curia refused to recognize John of Rokycan as archbishop in the Czech Republic. Then, on the night of September 2-3, 1448, Jiri from Poděbrady, unexpectedly for the Catholics, captured the capital and became the ruler of the entire land. Rozmberk tried to provide armed resistance to this act, but was defeated. In 1452, Jiri from Podebrady was officially recognized as the county governor under the minor Prince Ladislav Pogrob. The council of 12 persons established in the Czech Republic, headed by the zemstvo governor, was equal in powers to royal power.

After the recognition of Jiri from Poděbrady as the ruler of the country, the Chashniki united their forces, creating the preconditions for maintaining the results of the Hussite revolution. Objectively, the political line of Jiri from Poděbrady had positive value, suggesting the strengthening of central power, capable of limiting the self-will of the lordship and ensuring the security of the state. In 1453, Ladislaus of Habsburg was crowned king, but the regency of George of Poděbrady was extended for another 6 years, and in 1457 Ladislaus suddenly died. On May 7, 1458, Jiri was elected king, promising to leave the crown and church lands that they had seized to the Panama Catholics. Relations soon became tense between the new Czech king and Pope Pius II. The latter considered all Utraquists to be heretics. On March 31, 1462, he liquidated the Basel Compactata, and the threat of new crusades loomed over the Czech Kingdom. In 1466, the new pope, Paul II, excommunicated Jiri from the church. In the Czech Republic, the so-called Zelenogorsk Union of Catholic Gentlemen was formed against Jiri. A war began, in which the Hungarian king Matthew Corvinus also opposed Jiri. The war continued until 1470 with varying success, and then unsuccessfully for Matvey, whose campaign did not achieve success. On March 22, 1471, Jiri from Poděbrady died. The Podoboy estates and part of the Catholic party elected Vladislav Jagiellon, the son of the Polish king, to the Czech throne. With his coming to power in 1471, the Hussite period of Czech history ended.

In 1490, Matthew Corvinus died, and Vladislav was elected king of Hungary. A new vast state arose, but a lasting unification did not work out. Vladislav moved his residence to Hungary, and a class monarchy was formed in the Czech Republic. The king shared his power with the lord, knightly and petty bourgeois classes. Economic, religious and legal issues were decided by the Sejm, which met annually, and sometimes more often. To announce the next tax collection, the king had to turn to the Sejm each time. He did not have the right to replace senior zemstvo officials. In the Czech Republic their head was the “high purkrabiy”, and in Moravia the zemstvo hetman. The Zemsky Court consisted of 12 representatives of the lord and 8 knightly classes. In 1500, the Vladislav Resolutions were adopted, legally establishing the power of the gentry and the powerlessness of royal power.

Czech Republic at the end of the 14th – beginning of the 17th century.

1. Economic and political situation at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries

Already in the last two decades of the reign of Kal IV, stagnation was observed in the economic sphere of the Czech Republic. Gradually, it was affected by the crisis that gripped all of Europe from the middle of the 14th century. Because of this, it was impossible to carry out many of the economic measures of Charles IV. The Czech lands remained on the periphery of European economic life. Charles's attempt to include the Czech Republic in the system of main European trade routes was unsuccessful. True, in terms of consumption growth, the Czech Republic has adapted to the economically mature countries of Europe, but in terms of production it lagged behind them. The export of silver increased the import of goods, but slowed down the production activity of cities. The superiority of trade over production became permanent. The craft could not compete with the products of the advanced regions of Europe. Thanks to the export of silver, this lag did not directly affect the development of consumption, but deformed the economy of the Czech lands. The one-sidedness of trade relations with the German lands led to the predominance of German and other foreign merchants in the Czech Republic. There was a gradual devaluation of the Czech penny. The economic situation in the Czech lands was associated with the general stagnation of Western Europe from the middle of the 14th century. Epidemics led to an imbalance between city and countryside and a general devaluation of money. The death of Charles IV and the subsequent decline in royal authority accelerated the development of the crisis. Its economic cause was the disproportion in the division of labor between city and countryside. Prices for agricultural products did not change or decreased, but prices for handicraft products increased. The peasant could not pay the dues to the feudal lord, and he moved on to more severe forms of exploitation. The growth of agricultural production under these conditions has already reached its ceiling; the entire form of feudal economy has lost prospects for further development. The level of development of agricultural technology, in principle, could not be increased under feudalism. The number of people needed for the feudal mode of production reached its maximum, the total amount of feudal rent was limited by the capacity of the market, cities could produce only a limited number of goods. Foreign trade of the Czech Republic weakened, which was especially felt in Prague. Interclass and intraclass contradictions intensified.

The elements of stagnation that emerged in the Czech Republic starting in the 60s of the 14th century were a reflection of the crisis phenomena that engulfed the whole of Europe. The economic decline in the countries of Western and Southern Europe dragged on due to epidemics and the long conflict between England and France. In these countries, as in Italy and Germany, there are acute social contradictions. In the Czech Republic, crisis phenomena became especially acute at the end of the 14th century, and in the 15th century. developed into the Hussite movement.

There were three social groups in the cities: the patrician, the burghers and the poor. The patriciate held in his hands the city administration and the court. The burghers, united in guilds, had property, but were deprived of political power, for the possession of which they fought with the patriciate, and the patriciate consisted mainly of Germans, and the burghers of Czechs. 40–50% of the city's population were poor, living in constant hunger and languishing in slums. The patriciate and the burghers brought down the most cruel punishments on her.

In a situation of social crisis, relations between all layers of society have become extremely strained. The peasants dreamed of liberation from their hated masters. The burghers wanted to overthrow the power of the patriciate in the cities, preserving property and dominance over the poor. The urban poor were ready to fight for a fundamental change in the existing order. Representatives of the nobility fought among themselves for land and power. All segments of society expressed dissatisfaction with the church, seeking to free themselves from its exploitation, extortions, or seize its property. Thus, at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, the crisis manifested itself in the economic, social and political spheres. Church life was also captured by him. Popular and scientific heresy developed, which testified to the crisis of church ideology. All this constituted the most important reasons for the Hussite movement.

The Hussite movement, which filled about 70 years of Czech history, is a multifaceted social phenomenon. This is the struggle of classes, the reformation of the church, attempts to change the socio-political system, as well as a movement of a national character against the dominance of the Germans in the country. The movement got its name from one of its leaders, Jan Hus, who spoke at the first, preparatory stage, which can be dated back to 1400–1419. This was primarily a period of church reformation, by the end of which Hus died, a time of alignment of class forces, formation of the main directions of the movement. The second period – 1419–1471 – is the Hussite revolution, in which three phases are distinguished: 1. 1419–1421: the phase of the highest scope of the revolution and the initiative of radical layers. 2. 1422–1437: the phase of struggle within the country and the transition of the Hussites to the offensive against Europe, an attempt to give the movement an international scope. 3. From the mid-30s. before 1471: the path of a changed Czech society to the internal organization of relations, to a compromise with the outside world, the struggle to maintain the achieved boundaries.

2. Hussite revolution

The death of Jan Hus in 1415 stimulated the reform aspirations of society. King Wenceslas IV refused to satisfy demands for the suppression of “heretics” in the country. The population seized church lands, expelled Catholic priests and replaced them with Hussites. At the turn of 1418 and 1419. Czech Catholic lords, the patriciate, the Roman Church and the German Emperor Sigismund (Sigmund) joined forces to attack the Hussites, began to expel Hussite priests, and achieved the appointment of determined opponents of Hussism as Prague conshels. Then the radical Hussites began to prepare an uprising. On July 30, 1419, they gathered in arms for the sermon of the priest Jan Želivski and moved to the New Town town hall, demanding the release of people imprisoned for protesting against the old order. The Conchels refused to comply with this demand. Then the crowd took the town hall by storm, threw government officials out of the windows and finished off those who were still alive. Thus began the revolution. Wenceslas IV was not able to suppress the uprising; he had to recognize the change of power in Novo Mesto. On August 16, 1419, Wenceslas died. Prague became the center of revolutionary action. The right-wing Hussites (lords, lower gentry, burghers) at the end of August 1419 developed demands that offered Sigismund of Luxembourg the following conditions for recognition as the Czech king: 1. Guarantee of communion for the laity from the chalice; 2. Freedom of God's law (that is, worship); 3. Secularization of church property; 4. Recognition of the established order in cities. These demands became known as the “Four Articles of Prague” program. But the radicals did not agree with this program. At this time, crowds of peasants and plebeians came to Prague and were greeted with jubilation by the Prague poor. Then the Catholics captured Prague Castle and Lesser Town and stationed their troops there. New Town radicals occupied Visegrad on October 25. The war has begun. The radical Hussites took control of Mala Strana, and Queen Sophia had to flee Prague. After 10 days a truce was concluded.

Since 1419, the Hussite wars raged in the Czech Republic. On the one hand, it was an armed struggle between the Czech Hussites and the Czech Catholic lords, and on the other, the struggle of the Czech Hussites against international reaction and foreign intervention.

The victories of the Hussite army over the armies of reaction are explained not only by Zizka’s military talent. Declaring all Czechs as heretics meant the threat of their wholesale extermination. To preserve themselves, the Czech people had to strain themselves to the limit. It is known that during periods of revolutionary movements, popular forces awaken, previously fettered by oppression and prejudice. During the period of the Hussite movement, the Czech people felt free, resolutely stood up for the defense of new ideals and put forward remarkable leaders from their midst, including Zizka, the creator of the new army. The Hussite army consisted of peasants and the urban poor and received a fundamentally new organization. The basis was infantry, there were cavalry and artillery, and a completely new weapon was “battle carts,” which provided the infantry with the ability to successfully fight the enemy’s heavy cavalry. The interaction between military branches was also new. The army was held together by strong discipline, determined by the military regulations developed in 1423 by Zizka. The moral factor was of great importance, determined by the enthusiasm of ordinary people who took up arms in the name of achieving the kingdom of God on earth. A deep conviction in the justice of the goals of the struggle ensured high discipline. In addition to war carts, agricultural implements were used as combat weapons. All this made the Hussite army invincible and allowed them to defeat the armies of the five crusades.

The very constant waging of war and the large number of people for whom war had become a craft caused an inevitable demand for replenishment of all kinds of supplies, and it was no longer possible to find them in the devastated Czech Republic. Under these conditions, trips abroad became a means of satisfying urgent needs and an effective measure against the economic blockade carried out by Catholic countries. Therefore, at the first stage, foreign campaigns were a forced requisition action, and as Tabor decayed, they took on an openly marauding character, although the Hussites did not forget about their revolutionary propaganda. The need for requisitions led to a decline in the popularity of the Hussite fighters, and the disintegration within the troops weakened military power and led to the isolation of the army from the people.

Lipany and the Basel Compactata were a transition to a new phase of the Hussite movement, which was a struggle to consolidate the gains and for their recognition by feudal Europe. Changes in Czech society concerned land ownership, the social status of individual layers and the state structure.

It was no longer possible to restore the property position of the church.

The Hussite movement is the most powerful anti-feudal movement in Europe in the 15th century. It was distinguished by the following features:

– a clear, clearly formulated ideology directed against the church, secular feudal lords and the king;

– struggle simultaneously against social and national oppression;

– cooperation between the urban and rural poor;

– nationwide;

- longer duration than all previous performances comparable to it.

3. Political struggle in the period from 1437 to 1471

After the recognition of Jiri from Poděbrady as the ruler of the country, the Chashniki united their forces, creating the preconditions for maintaining the results of the Hussite revolution. Objectively, the political line of Jiri from Poděbrady had a positive meaning, suggesting the strengthening of central power, capable of limiting the self-will of the lordship and ensuring the security of the state. In 1453, Ladislaus of Habsburg was crowned king, but the regency of George of Poděbrady was extended for another 6 years, and in 1457 Ladislaus suddenly died. On May 7, 1458, Jiri was elected king, promising to leave the crown and church lands that they had seized to the Panama Catholics. Relations soon became tense between the new Czech king and Pope Pius II. The latter considered all Utraquists to be heretics. On March 31, 1462, he liquidated the Basel Compactata, and the threat of new crusades loomed over the Czech Kingdom. In 1466, the new pope, Paul II, excommunicated Jiri from the church. In the Czech Republic, the so-called Zelenogorsk Union of Catholic Gentlemen was formed against Jiri. A war began, in which the Hungarian king Matthew Corvinus also opposed Jiri. The war continued until 1470 with varying success, and then unsuccessfully for Matvey, whose campaign did not achieve success. On March 22, 1471, Jiri from Poděbrady died. The Podoboy estates and part of the Catholic party elected Vladislav Jagiellon, the son of the Polish king, to the Czech throne. With his coming to power in 1471, the Hussite period of Czech history ended.

In 1471, the son of the Polish king Casimir, Vladislav Jagiellon, was elected to the Czech throne, who ruled until 1517. At the same time, Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia were in the hands of the Hungarian sovereign Matthew Corvinus, who was preparing for war for the Czech throne. But in 1478 the Peace of Olomouc was concluded, which maintained the previous situation. Vladislav, who previously relied only on the supporters of the late Jiri from Poděbrady, compromised with the lordship of the Zelenogorsk Union. The royal council gradually weakened the sovereign's power, opposing his alliance with the lower gentry and townspeople. The struggle between Catholics and Utraquists intensified again. In 1483, an uprising of the latter broke out. In 1485, the Kutnogorsk religious peace was concluded, which ensured equality of rights for the Catholic and Utraquist churches. This stabilized the feudal class, which subsequently acted as a united front, and contributed to the fact that in 1487 the pope recognized the royal title of Vladislav. In 1490, Matthew Corvinus died, and Vladislav was elected king of Hungary. A new vast state arose, but a lasting unification did not work out. Vladislav moved his residence to Hungary, and a class monarchy was formed in the Czech Republic. The king shared his power with the lord, knightly and petty bourgeois classes. Economic, religious and legal issues were decided by the Sejm, which met annually, and sometimes more often. To announce the next tax collection, the king had to turn to the Sejm each time. He did not have the right to replace senior zemstvo officials. In the Czech Republic their head was the “high purkrabiy”, and in Moravia the zemstvo hetman. The Zemsky Court consisted of 12 representatives of the lord and 8 knightly classes. In 1500, the Vladislav Resolutions were adopted, legally establishing the power of the gentry and the powerlessness of royal power.

4. Structure of the Czech state and political situation certain layers of society in the 15th – early 16th centuries

The Hussite Revolution accelerated the process of creating in the Czech Republic a form of state that is called an estate monarchy and is characteristic of Europe in general; in the Czech Republic it had some specific features.

“Estate” refers to a social stratum of society united by a certain legal position in the social system and organized into corporations to protect this position. For the XV–XVI centuries. estates are the privileged strata of the feudal state, having the right to free organization of their members and participation in the legislative, executive and judicial powers in the country, and thereby to dominance over the unprivileged strata of society. In the XV–XVI centuries. in the Czech Kingdom there were three classes: lord, knight and city; their totality constituted an estate community. The estate state is a form of government in which the estate community (or several communities) participates (participate) through its institutions in a significant way in the legislative, executive and judicial powers. The king also had some power, but the dualistic rule was not stable; Depending on the circumstances, either the power of the sovereign or the power of the estates acquired greater authority. From the 15th to the beginning of the 17th century. in the Czech Republic there was a class opposition, which was represented by individuals, individual classes or the entire class community. Its main goal was to expand class rights and counteract royal power. The program and structure of the class opposition changed depending on the circumstances.

The power of the king in the Czech Republic from 1419 to 1526 was extremely limited. The king lost most of the estates, castles and other property that previously belonged to him. The cities were freed from royal tutelage, and the sovereign was deprived of most of his legal rights. In the post-Hussite era, economic and political supremacy was in the hands of the class community. The king could not levy taxes and form military forces without her consent, which was the most effective weapon of the gentry in the fight against the king.

After the Hussite revolution, the main political body of the Czech Republic became the Zemsky Sejm, representatives of three classes: the highest gentry, the lower gentry and the royal cities. In Moravia, representatives were also added to them senior clergy- prelates. At the Zemstvo Sejms, the estates acted under the leadership of the Prague Purkrabi and the Moravian Hetman. The class community discussed foreign policy issues; the king was in charge of foreign policy. The highest legal body was the zemstvo court, and the decisive institution of the entire system was the royal council, which gave recommendations to the king and controlled his actions. The king sought to fill the council with his supporters, its composition often changed, both in the council and in the zemstvo court the aristocrats played the main role, and they held the main positions in the Sejm.

Peasants and plebeian strata of the city and countryside did not take part in government. After many years of wars and some improvement in the economic situation, they did not show activity, even weakly responded to the peasant war in Hungary in 1514, in Germany and Tyrol in 1524–1525. After Husism, the organization of estate management changed: peasants could transfer citizenship to another feudal lord, who was considered more just. The burghers of the master's cities had almost the same self-government as the inhabitants of the royal cities. The arbitrariness of feudal lords, which became commonplace in the pre-Hussite period, was limited by new legal norms.

As a result of the Hussite revolution, the royal cities strengthened economically, politically and militarily. The urban community, especially the patriciate, became feudal landowners, exploiters of their subjects, and politically completely independent. They had their own armed forces. The city council became the highest authority in the city itself and its estates. There was an extensive apparatus of officials; the resolution of important issues depended not only on the patriciate, but also on the artisans and their guild organization. Compared to the pre-Hussite period, the internal life of cities was significantly democratized. The townspeople achieved participation in the Zemstvo Sejm and in solving all the issues discussed. Cities became the main competitor of the authorities, but still could not ensure their participation in the state apparatus, higher zemstvo institutions and courts on an equal basis with the gentry. Competition has become very intense.

The lower gentry improved their property status and turned into the knightly class. Its elite sought to penetrate the gentry class, and the noble knights stood closer to the bourgeoisie. If during the Hussite revolution the lower gentry was a member of the bourgeois-knightly coalition, then from the 70s of the 15th century. she went over to the side of the upper classes. But the financial capabilities of most knights remained low, as did their political influence. The main arena of their political life were local, “territorial” organizations.

The highest gentry in the Hussite and post-Hussite times appropriated more property to themselves than other strata of society. The largest noble families became so strong that each of them could politically compete with the sovereign. The composition of the post-Hussite aristocracy was limited to several dozen nobles. The highest gentry again strengthened its power, but for it there was a struggle both between individual feudal groups and between entire class corporations.

A specific feature of the Czech state of the 15th - early 16th centuries. there was dual faith, based on the Basel Compacts, which - despite their abolition by the pope in 1462 - were zemstvo law. However, they operated only in the Czech Republic and Moravia, where the majority of the population belonged to the Utraquists, and in Silesia and Lusatia the Catholic Church held a monopoly. Czech Catholics received support from abroad, as well as from all the Czech kings, except George of Poděbrady. Essentially, religious disputes were a struggle for socio-economic benefits and for power. The Kutnogorsk Agreement of 1485 recognized the equality of Catholicism and Utraquism, but the Community of the Czech Brothers was constantly persecuted, and the St. Jakub Mandate of 1508 was in force against it until the 17th century. But still, religious tolerance has reached a high level, and the basic principle class politics independence from church ideology and the subordination of the church to secular power began.

Thus, for the history of the Czech state of the 15th - early 16th centuries. characterized by the weakening of royal power, its limitation by classes, balance in the division of power between the lordly, knightly and petty bourgeois classes, the decline of the political influence of the clergy, the stabilization of class institutions, which made it possible to resolve internal political conflicts by peaceful means.

In 1516 Wladyslaw Jagiellon died. There was a kind of anarchy in the country, which resulted in a bitter struggle between the gentry and the philistinism, between the gentry and the knighthood. Under the influence of the Reformation that was penetrating the Czech Republic, the Chashnik Church was divided into the Old Utraquist and the New Utraquist. This split was reflected in the struggle between classes for power. Louis Jagiellon turned out to be powerless to reconcile the warring parties, but here circumstances of an international nature intervened in the events.

For the economic development of the Czech Republic at the end of the 15th – beginning of the 16th centuries. characterized by the growth of land ownership by large feudal lords. Their main income was cash rent, but the development of cities and towns was also stimulated, which began to claim the role of centers of craft and trade along with the royal cities. Feudal lords also engaged in fish farming, especially at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Sometimes fish ponds were built on lands taken from peasants.

Agricultural and livestock production increased on small peasant farms, which was caused by an increase in external and internal demand for it. In farming technology, the scythe began to replace the sickle, and the soil began to be better fertilized and plowed. The position of the Czech peasantry did not worsen compared to the previous period. Along with peasant farms of average income, there were also wealthy sedlaks. The upper stratum of the peasantry belonged to the “svobodniki” without own land, followed by dependent holders of large land holdings, headmen and tavern holders. The rural poor were quite numerous - landless people, holders of small plots and hired servants. The peasants had the right, having paid off their debts, to leave the lordship.

Royal cities until the 30s of the 16th century. developed along the old path. The basis of their handicraft production was the production of food, clothing, textiles, iron and leather goods. These crafts accounted for 80% of all participants in craft production. Most of them worked only for the local market, but in some cities they still produced cloth for export. The largest lordly cities did not differ in structure from the royal ones. Most crafts had a guild organization, and clothmaking and brewing were distinguished by a division of labor of a pre-manufacturing type.

In small towns and towns, agriculture still played a significant role. In the “mining towns” (Kutná Hora and others), the full population played a large role in public life.

From the end of the 15th century. relations between the royal cities and the feudal lords worsened; Fully participating in the Sejm and political life, these cities also competed with the entrepreneurial activities of the feudal lords and their cities. In 1500, according to the “Law on Zemstvo Organization,” cities were deprived of their voice in the Sejm and in the election of the king. An armed conflict arose, which led to a compromise agreement in 1517. The urban class was recognized with the right to vote in the Sejm, but all city markets were declared free, which was beneficial to the gentry.

The election of Ferdinand I of Habsburg as the Czech king and his policies

In the 15th century The Turks began an intensive offensive in southern Europe. They had already captured the Balkan Peninsula and in 1526 opened a campaign against Hungary. The Hungarian and Czech king Louis Jagiellon was defeated on August 29, 1526 in the battle of Mogač, and he himself drowned. The Czech-Hungarian personal union collapsed. The Hungarian gentry elected Jan Zapolsky as king, and the Czech estates elected Ferdinand of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria. The brother of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Spanish King Charles V, a capable politician, he owned all the Austrian lands and sought to create Central Europe a strong foothold for the Habsburg dynasty, which already dominated much of western continental Europe, and to establish Habsburg hegemony over the entire continent. A small part of the gentry also elected Ferdinand the Hungarian king, and a multinational unification of the Czech and Hungarian states and Austrian lands, led by a single king, arose in Central Europe.

The election of Ferdinand Habsburg as the Czech king under the name Ferdinand I took place on the terms of his signing the electoral capitulations, which he undertook to fulfill. He promised that his heir would not be crowned on the Czech throne during Ferdinand's lifetime, so that the estates protected the right to elect the king; pledged not to deprive anyone of their positions, to have a residence in Prague, not to use the services of foreign advisers in Czech affairs, to recognize the previous competence of the Czech Chancellery, to pay off the zemstvo and old royal debts, and to respect religious freedom. The requirements were, like law, written down on the zemstvo boards. But, having strengthened his position in the monarchy by winning the war against Jan Zapolski in 1527–1528, Ferdinand began to harshly expand centralism at the expense of class freedoms. Bodies of the Czech state began to become subordinate to central institutions. In 1528, the king divided the Prague cities and prohibited the convening of meetings of a single city community and regional congresses. In 1530, he removed the highest purkrabiy, Zdenek Lev of Rozmital, from his position. Ferdinand's active foreign policy required large amounts of money, and he began to collect an annual bern, contrary to custom. Taxes increased - primarily from cities, but also from peasants. Since the 30s, Ferdinand began to persecute non-Catholic sects and reform movements in the country. Opposition has matured against all these actions.

The first open conflict between the Czech estates and the Habsburg government arose in 1546. To help his brother Charles V, who was waging war, Ferdinand demanded money and military force from the Czech estates. They did not give any money at all, and provided only small quantities of military force. In January 1547, Ferdinand demanded troops from the Czechs to help the Habsburg ally Moritz of Saxony. The demand was illegal; it was not agreed upon by the Sejm. On February 17, the estates issued a protest proclamation in Prague and created an alliance against the king. The Diet in Prague was scheduled for March 17th. He formulated a program of struggle, which listed the king’s violations of class privileges and zemstvo freedoms throughout his reign. A semblance of a provisional government was formed - a committee of lords, knights and councilors of Prague, which was supposed to manage class affairs in the intervals between sessions of the Sejm. Soon the committee, succumbing to panic, announced the mobilization of military forces against the king, which was already beyond the scope of the law. Meanwhile, the Habsburgs won important military victories, which frightened the Czech classes. The king achieved the isolation of the leaders of the uprising and sent troops into Prague for reprisals. But the people, whom the army could not cope with, rose up against the atrocities of the soldiers. However, the Prague residents surrendered after 4 days. The king took away all privileges from Prague, obliged Prague residents to surrender their weapons, deprived the city of real estate and city revenues, took away privileges from the workshops, established the royal positions of hetman and richman in the cities, who were to control the management and political life. The same destruction was carried out on other royal cities. The urban class was essentially destroyed as a political force. Ferdinand punished the gentry by confiscating their estates or turning them into fief, and condemned many nobles to lifelong home imprisonment. The height of the reprisal was the execution of two zemans and two townspeople on August 22, 1547. At the Diet that met after this, class unions were prohibited, zemstvo officials and judges were ordered to swear allegiance not only to the king, but also to his heir, and he could now be crowned during the lifetime of the current king . But still, the principles of dualistic governance of the country remained intact. Ferdinand forced the opposition to go on the defensive, but did not ease the contradictions between the classes, on the one hand, and the royal power, on the other.

5. Economic development of the Czech Republic in the 16th century.

In the 16th century in Europe there is a tendency towards the creation of a world market and the establishment of a capitalist mode of production. The Czech Republic belonged to the economically backward parts of Europe. Agriculture and small-scale production occupied the main place in its economy. The majority of the gentry already sought to produce products for sale, to develop the commercial activity of Velkostat. In brewing, it pushed the city out of the local market, increasing the exploitation of peasants. Other products were also sold.

The extraction and export of metals was of key importance. At the end of the second decade of the 16th century. New silver deposits were discovered and a new mining town, Jáchymov, was founded, which soon became a center of European importance. In 1521–1544 In Jáchymov, 900 kg of silver were mined annually - 19% of European or 15.4% of world production. However, soon the production figures in Jáchymov decreased. The Czech Republic also provided more than 68% of all tin production. The extraction of other metals was only of secondary importance in the Czech Republic.

For the 16th century characterized by weak development of Czech trade with other countries and transit trade through the country. There were no centers of world trade in the Czech Republic. Craft production satisfied only the needs of the local market. Food and clothing production predominated in the cities. Urban crafts were in decline due to competition from Velkostats. Nevertheless, clothiers found sales for their products in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, but by the beginning of the 17th century. Only the clothiers of Ihlava and Broumov retained their positions. But the production of linen in the Northern and North-Eastern Czech Republic has increased, stimulated by mass demand on the world market. But in general, Czech craft production experienced stagnation, which was facilitated by the preservation of workshops.

At the same time, scattered manufacturing began to emerge in Northern and Northeastern Bohemia, in Lusatia and Silesia. The weavers gave the goods to traders, who sold them, creating the initial capitalist cooperation. Manufacturing also developed in the mining of metals and minerals, as well as in related areas. But specific gravity it was very small and did not introduce new elements into the economic structure of the Czech Republic. For the intensive development of manufacturing, there was a lack of free labor and raw materials, as well as the initiative of commercial capital.

In the 16th century The Czech Republic is experiencing population growth due to the birth rate and immigration, especially of Germans due to the development of mining entrepreneurship, as well as to border areas and large cities. There was also Italian immigration - only to the cities. With the arrival of the Habsburgs in the Czech Republic, the number of representatives of foreign gentry increased. Immigrants from Austria, Germany and Silesia adapted to local conditions, but retained their German character.

The process of property differentiation continued within the gentry, as well as among the peasants. But this process did not reach such a level as to lead to mass expropriation of the peasantry.

Feudal lords exploited peasants in various forms. Rents increased, new duties were imposed, and the zemstvo berna, paid to the king, was transferred to the shoulders of the peasants. In the commercial estates, subjects were forced to consume food and goods produced on the estate.

For the social life of the Czech Republic and Moravia in the 16th century. characterized by struggle between religious movements. The Czech Utraquists approached the Catholic Church and turned out to be very conservative in comparison with the Lutherans in Germany. In Czech society, adherents of Lutheranism also appeared - neo-Utraquists. Conflicts arose between both groups. Then it existed since the middle of the 15th century. A community of Czech brothers, whose spiritual father was Peter Helczycki (c. 1390 - c. 1457), an opponent of the Catholic Church and oppression of the people, who, however, stood for peaceful means of changing society. Little information has been preserved about Khelchitsky. There is controversy about his origin, education, name, dates of life. Only at the beginning of the 20th century. Russian scientist N.V. Yastrebov managed to recreate the picture of Khelchitsky’s literary activity. Its supporters appeared in the Czech Republic only in the 40s of the 15th century. In 1453, a group of supporters of Helcicki's ideas founded the Community of Czech Brothers. Jiri from Podebrady allowed them to settle on the border with Silesia, where the brothers were engaged in agricultural work. In 1467 the Community was officially formed. She developed her doctrine, elected a bishop and a council.

Initially, propertied people were not accepted into the Community. After 1474, a reform was carried out and a new dogma was developed, which gained predominance in 1490 at the synod of the Community. The brothers were now allowed to engage in trade and fishing. The majority of the Community, which accepted the new rules, began to be called “Boleslav brothers” - after their center in the city of Mlada Boleslav. By the beginning of the 16th century. The community united approx. 10% of the total population of the Czech Republic, including representatives of the nobility.

In the 20–30s of the 16th century. two lines again appeared in the Community. Supporters of the new direction emphasized the importance of education and proximity to all other sectors of society. They won, and in 1532–1533 it became clear that the teachings of the Community were approaching the views of Zwingli and Luther, the European Reformation. But the struggle of the Community against the Czech Utraquists continued throughout the entire 16th century.

Many small radical sects also appeared in the Czech Republic. The Anabaptists became especially strong in Moravia. Ferdinand I opposed all non-Catholic movements and sought to merge conservative Utraquism with Catholicism. Only the Community of Czech Brothers opposed the royal policy in 1546–1547. She demonstrated her disagreement with the royal policy in religious matters and her solidarity with the evangelical camp in Germany. Repression followed. The Bishop of the Community, Jan Augusta, was imprisoned for a long time.

Ferdinand I decided to renew the Archbishopric of Prague, which was carried out in 1561. The Jesuits were invited to Prague. In 1562 the king attacked the Utraquists, but in 1564 he died. His successor, Maximilian II, was less zealous in his persecution of non-Catholics, but still remained within the framework of Habsburg policy. He did not confirm the Augsburg Convention, nor did he approve the confession of the Community of Czech Brothers. In 1575, the Lutherans and Czech Brethren developed a common confession. This document, theological in form, was purely political in content and became the subject of a long struggle between the king and the estates. The king eventually agreed to respect the religious freedoms articulated in the confession, but refused to confirm his agreement in writing. The religious question became the main subject of dispute between the class opposition and the king. Since the 80s of the 16th century. Re-Catholicization was supported in the Czech Republic by the Spanish-Catholic camp, and the evangelical classes found allies in the camp of opponents of the Habsburgs.

6. Exacerbation of political contradictions at the end of the 16th – beginning of the 17th centuries.

International situation in Europe at the end of the 16th century. was extremely tense. The Habsburg camp and the Catholic Church took a strict course towards re-Catholicization and counter-reformation. The Spanish Habsburgs, not without success, sought to influence the Viennese court, contributing to increased tension in the Czech Republic. Czech Catholics, feeling strong support, did not make any compromises. The Dutch Revolution directed against Spain caused a tightening of the political course of Catholics. This caused a backlash in the Protestant camp. Estates in all lands began to understand their relationship to the European Reformation in a political sense. In the Czech evangelical community, efforts to establish contacts with possible allies are intensifying. At the end of the 16th century. Significant political figures stand out from this environment - Vaclav Budovets (1551–1621), Karel the Elder of Žerotin (1564–1636).

After the death of Maximilian in 1576, Rudolf II became king of the Czech Republic and moved the imperial residence to Prague. Together with Rudolf, many fanatical Catholics arrived in Prague, whose actions provoked protest from the evangelical classes. The Spanish-Catholic party was headed by lords from the Lobkowitz family. The Catholic Party at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. captured the most important positions in the country and guaranteed an influx of new forces into her camp: representatives of the gentry of the new generation began to come to it. Catholics forced evangelists out of minor positions and organized provocations against the evangelical class opposition. In 1602, the activities of the Community of Czech Brothers were again banned, and persecution of its members began. In 1603, Vaclav Budovets at the Czech Sejm strongly condemned the entire policy of the new zemstvo rulers on the religious issue.

At the beginning of the 17th century. The war with Turkey began again. A significant part of Hungary was recaptured. Rudolf banned all non-Catholic religions in this part, to which the evangelists responded with an uprising that swept throughout Hungary. In addition, the Turks launched a new attack on this country. In 1606, Rudolf II's brother Matthias made peace with the Hungarians, recognizing their right to religious freedoms. This did not suit Rudolf at all, and a conflict began between the brothers. In 1607, a confederation of Austrian and Hungarian estates arose against the emperor, and in April 1608 Moravia joined it. On May 8, 1608, the Confederate army crossed the borders of the Czech Republic, and Karel the Elder of Zherotin called on the Czech estates to go over to the side of Matthias. The latter refused such a step, since Rudolf promised to fulfill their demands - except for the right to religious freedom. Negotiations between Rudolf and Matthias of Habsburg led to an agreement. Rudolf gave power over all the Habsburg lands except the Czech Kingdom to Matthias. The Moravian and Austrian estates received only verbal assurances that their demands would be met. At the Sejm in January 1609 there was a conflict over the approval of the Czech confession of 1575, the issue was not resolved. On May 1, the estates met at the New Town Hall without the permission of the emperor. They brought military detachments with them to Prague and, due to the intransigence of the Catholic party, created their own government of 30 “directors”, concluded a confederation with the estates of Silesia and began to prepare for armed struggle. On July 9, Rudolf II was forced to issue a maestat for religious freedom to the Czech estates, and on August 20, the estates of Silesia received a similar permit.

Rudolph II decided to take revenge. On January 30, 1611, the army assembled on his initiative captured part of the Czech Republic. But the entire Habsburg camp had already moved away from Rudolf. In March 1611, the troops of the Moravian estates and King Matthias approached Prague. Rudolf had to renounce the Czech crown in favor of his brother, and at the beginning of 1612 Rudolf died. However, Matthias, having achieved the throne, returned to the counter-reformation, centralizing and absolutist tendencies of dynastic politics. New conflicts began between Catholics and Protestants. The Czech lands have become an area of interest for international diplomacy. The class opposition was already clearly aware that in the event of an open conflict it would seek help against its sovereign abroad.

After 1615, disagreements in Europe reached great intensity. The militaristic circles of the Spanish-Catholic and anti-Habsburg-Protestant camps were preparing for war, and it was clear that it would capture a significant part of the continent. In the Czech Republic, the provocative policies of the government, on the one hand, and the determination of the class opposition, on the other, created the preconditions for an armed conflict.

On March 6, 1618, a congress of non-Catholic classes meeting in Prague sent a complaint to the emperor about violations of the maestat and scheduled a new meeting for May, acting within the framework codified by the maestat. Therefore, the emperor's ban on gathering in May caused extreme excitement. The violation of freedoms was used by the radical wing of the opposition to win over the moderate majority to their side. However, only a handful of radicals were ready for decisive action.

On May 21, 1618, the congress of the Protestant estates nevertheless took place, but the cities did not dare to send their delegations to it. At first the work of the congress proceeded calmly, but the radical group did not want to be satisfied with the usual forms of protest. Its head G.M. Thurn called on the estates to take active action. On May 22, the radical leaders of the opposition developed a plan for action against the royal governors. On the morning of May 23, a crowd of representatives of the estates moved to Prague Castle. Of the 10 governors of the emperor, four were found there. Two of them, as well as the secretary of the chancellery, were thrown through the window, but they remained alive. "Defenestration" of the royal governors meant a declaration of war. At the same time, the classes from the very beginning refused the help of lower social strata.

On May 24, the congress of estates elected a government of 30 directors - 10 from each estate. However, serious contradictions soon emerged within the non-Catholic classes. The majority believed in a purely political solution to the conflict. Also, the directory was dominated by supporters of the indecisive center; it was unable to use the factor of surprise and provide effective assistance from abroad.

On May 25, 1618, the directory approved the text of the Apology, which accused the governors of gross violation of the laws, but denied the direction of the uprising against the emperor. Editions of the Apology, along with a request for help, were sent to all lands of the Habsburg Monarchy and to the Netherlands. However, of the Protestant princes, only the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick V, sent two thousand mercenaries to the Czech Republic, the rest took a restrained position. The Saxon elector declined to help for political reasons; the Netherlands were too busy with internal struggles. The English King James did not even respond to the message. In general, the reaction of Protestant governments showed the groundlessness of hopes for help.

In addition, Karel the Elder of Zherotin condemned the uprising in Prague. In this regard, the Austrian estates also took a wait-and-see attitude. Hungary refused to help both the estates and the emperor. The Czech rebels could only rely on themselves.

The Habsburgs could expect help from Spain, Rome, and other Catholic states. In August 1618, the imperial army invaded the Czech Republic, and additional forces joined it on August 25. So far, however, no decisive battle has taken place, and when the estates received reinforcements sent by Frederick V, the autumn campaign ended generally in favor of the Czech rebels. Turn even approached separate detachments to Vienna. In the field of diplomacy, the estates obtained some support from Frederick V for promising him the Czech crown, and the Netherlands agreed to financial assistance. But Habsburg diplomacy achieved more. She isolated England. Madrid and several imperial princes provided monetary support to the emperor, and by the summer of 1619 the Habsburgs had achieved great military superiority.

The estate directory found itself in an acute financial crisis. The nobility did not want to give up their income. The crisis was delayed by the confiscation of the property of obvious opponents of the uprising and the sale of church estates.

In March 1619, Emperor Matthias died. Ferdinand II was to take the imperial throne, which did not suit many. This prompted Moravia to join the Czech uprising, all the lands of the Czech crown united against the Habsburgs. Also in Upper Austria, the opposition carried out a coup and expressed solidarity with the Czech uprising, sending troops against the imperial army. On July 31, 1619, the General Sejm of the Czech Crown adopted a new constitution. The kingdom became a confederation of five equal lands with a common sovereign and a significantly weakened central government. But the creators of the new constitution created an already outdated type of political structure with the hegemony of estates. Frederick of the Palatinate was elected as the new king, which happened on August 26, 1619. However, already on August 27, Ferdinand of Styria was elected emperor, and this meant a deterioration in the international position of the Czech uprising. In its essence, it was fundamentally different from the early bourgeois revolutions in the Netherlands and England, being a typical uprising of feudal lords, excluding an alliance with the urban and rural population and transformation into a nationwide revolutionary struggle. The hegemon of the uprising was a narrow group of representatives of the gentry class. To attract allies, she resigned herself to the restoration of the regional diets and the strengthening of the influence of knighthood in local government. But the mutual distrust of representatives of the classes did not disappear during the struggle. Expenses for mercenary troops grew rapidly, the rebel government also demanded money from the philistinism, and they were very reluctant to make emergency payments - like most of the gentry. The war also brought other troubles: trade froze, mercenary troops looted, etc., and the rebel government did not provide political benefits. In 1619, the Prague townspeople formulated the demands of the Third Estate, in particular, the complete restoration of the privileges, rights and freedoms of the royal cities, limited in 1547. In July 1619, the demands were presented to the Zemstvo Sejm, which had to reluctantly agree to eliminate the dependence of the free cities on the royal Comoros and the power of the royal richmen and hetmans, to restore the equality of the third estate to the extent that existed before 1547. But with the election of King Frederick of the Palatinate, the directory was abolished, the cities lost their places in it, and their representatives were recalled from local authorities. Zemstvo institutions began to interfere in the affairs of cities, especially in the collection of taxes. Meanwhile, the financial crisis led to increasing looting of troops, so that the population began to defend their property with arms in their hands, and clashes escalated into mass actions.

For some time, the forces of the rebels increased due to an alliance with the Transylvanian prince Bethlen Gabor, who with large army advanced west and joined forces with the Czech rebels. At the end of November 1619 allied army besieged Vienna and had a real chance of success. But then the Polish king attacked Transylvania, Bethlen had to urgently return home, and the plan to take Vienna collapsed. And at the end of September 1620, Bethlen concluded a truce with the Habsburgs, which was a big blow for the Czech rebels. In addition, the Netherlands refused to support the uprising, and the English king James I decided not to support Frederick of the Palatinate. The Czech classes found themselves almost isolated. The decision of the estates of most Central European states to support the uprising turned out to be formal.

The new Czech king, Frederick of the Palatinate, announced that he was transferring a significant part of his property to fight the Habsburgs. He gave the leaders of the uprising the highest government positions. But the Moravian estates, even after electing Frederick as king, promised to place only a small army at his disposal. The Silesian estates gave nothing at all.

The combat effectiveness of the class troops fell day by day, the mercenaries rebelled due to non-payment of salaries. In April 1620 it was expected that several regiments would simply disband. Meanwhile, Philip III of Spain sent large military forces to Central Europe, the Bavarian Archduke Maximilian signed an agreement with the emperor on October 8, 1619, the entire Catholic League was ready to provide him with major military assistance. The papal curia doubled financial subsidies. The Protestant Elector of Saxony went over to the side of the Catholic camp. Thanks to the mediation of France, on July 3, 1620, a non-aggression agreement was concluded between the Evangelical Union and the Catholic League, so that Maximilian of Bavaria was able to complete military preparations.

On July 24, 1620, the army of Maximilian of Bavaria invaded Upper Austria, captured the main strongholds there and moved to Lower Austria. On September 10, Spain began military action against the Rhine Palatinate, which was a violation of the agreement between the Union and the League. At the end of August, Bethlen Gabor, elected king of Hungary, resumed the war with the emperor, but his army was so large that it could fight on two fronts. In September, the Saxon Elector occupied Lusatia, promising to preserve religious freedom for Lutherans. At the same time, the united army of the League and the Emperor moved towards the Czech Republic. The forces of the estates quickly retreated from South Moravia to the Czech Republic. They were no match for the emperor's army. Mercenary troops under the command of Mansfeld betrayed the Czech king and concluded a truce with the emperor. The position of the army of the Czech estates turned out to be hopeless. The Moravian estates decided to capitulate.

At the beginning of November 1620, the League army approached Prague. The demoralized army of the estates was unable to use progressive Dutch tactics. On November 8, within just two hours, the Czech defense on the slopes of the White Mountain fell. On November 9, Frederick of the Palatinate fled to Silesia. The Czech army ceased to exist. The Belogorsk defeat was the pinnacle of the crisis of the Czech class uprising. The estates of all the lands of the confederation immediately capitulated. Most of the leaders of the class uprising fled from Prague to emigrate, but some still remained, hoping for the mercy of the emperor. But Ferdinand II had already begun reprisals against the Czech kingdom. On February 20, 1621, all members of the directory who had not fled from the Czech Republic were taken into custody, and on April 5, all the leaders of the uprising were sentenced to death and confiscation of property. 27 of them were executed on June 21, 1621: three from the gentry class, seven from the knightly class and seventeen from the bourgeois class. In Moravia, too, several people were sentenced to death.

In March 1622, the emperor announced that he would not prosecute those guilty if they themselves admitted their guilt. The result was the conviction of 680 people for confiscation of property. The royal cities were especially hard hit. Also in Moravia, property was confiscated from 250 people. All this brought significant income to Ferdinand's treasury. The confiscated goods were purchased by the largest feudal lords, including Albrecht of Wallenstein (Wallenstein), who created for himself a huge complex of profitable estates in North-Eastern Bohemia. Other feudal lords also significantly expanded their domains.

In 1627 for the Czech Republic and in 1628 for Moravia, the “Updated Zemstvo System” was published. It created the preconditions for the establishment of absolutism.

The defeat of the uprising of 1618–1620 led to the loss of political independence by the Czech Republic. The Habsburgs established a regime from which the entire Czech people, their freedom, their culture, their religion, suffered. Therefore, in an objective sense, the estates fought for Czech national identity and against the reactionary option for the further development of Czech and European society. At the same time, the struggle of the Czechs against the Habsburgs was not national movement in the modern sense of the word. In the 17th century the fighting parties were united by similar political, class and religious aspirations, and all this was expressed primarily in the form of protecting religious freedom and freedom of religion.

7. Czech lands during the period Thirty Years' War

The victory over the class uprising in the Czech Republic strengthened the position of Ferdinand II of Habsburg and the Catholic League in general. This fact put some Protestant countries in a difficult situation, especially the Netherlands, which feared a renewal of the war with Spain - the twelve-year truce with it was ending. Now Spain could concentrate its military and financial resources, freed up in Central Europe, and begin aggression again. The Netherlands were looking for allies; they promised Frederick of the Palatinate assistance to resume military operations against the emperor. Spain actually started the war. Then the formed detachments of mercenaries and Czech emigrants opened military operations, defeated the emperor’s troops and occupied a significant part of Eastern Moravia. But overall the action was not a success. The center of the European war shifted to imperial and Dutch territory. Frederick of the Palatinate, the former Czech king, lost his lands. In 1624, the war entered a new phase: England, France and Denmark joined in, supporting the Netherlands. In 1625, the “Hague Coalition” was created against the Habsburgs from the Netherlands, England, Denmark and the Lower Saxon principalities. France, Transylvania, and Türkiye sympathized with this bloc. In such a situation, Ferdinand II accepted the proposal of the Czech lord Albrecht Wallenstein and instructed him to form an army at his own (Wallenstein's) expense, declaring him generalissimo of the imperial troops. The Habsburgs achieved superiority over the forces of the Hague coalition. Having defeated the troops of the Danish king Christian IV and forcing him to make peace in Lübeck on May 22, 1628, Habsburg diplomacy achieved the collapse of the Hague coalition. Almost all of Central and Northern Europe (in Northern Europe - Mecklenburg and the Baltic coast) was in the hands of the Habsburgs - or rather Wallenstein's army. The Habsburgs decided to restore the old order in the occupied lands.

On March 6, 1629, the so-called edict of restitution was issued, according to which all estates that had belonged to it before 1552 were returned to the Catholic Church and the Calvinist religion was prohibited in the territory of the empire. The danger of implementing the Edict of Restitution united Lutherans, Calvinists and some Catholics, which led to the creation of a new anti-Habsburg coalition, in which France and Sweden played the main role. Ferdinand was forced to make concessions: he recalled Wallenstein from the post of commander-in-chief, and the edict of restitution did not come into force. But these concessions no longer helped the emperor. On June 6, 1630, a strong, well-armed army of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf landed on the coast of Pomerania and began to quickly move deeper into the continent. The politically active part of the Czech emigrants joined the ranks of the Swedish troops. Brandenburg and the Electorate of Saxony went over to the side of the Swedes. On September 17, 1631, at the Battle of Breitenfeld, the Swedes defeated the emperor’s troops and moved on. And the Saxon army invaded Northern Bohemia in 1631.

There were almost no imperial troops on the territory of the Czech Republic, and the Saxon army occupied Prague on November 15, 1631 without a fight. Many Czech emigrants hoped that, under the cover of Saxon troops, it would be possible to restore an estate government in the Czech Republic. The gentry and townspeople of the Czech Republic returning from emigration seized property confiscated from them after the defeat of the uprising, the evangelical clergy occupied churches and restored their worship in them. But the plans and actions of the returnees did not meet with sympathy from the Saxon Elector. In addition, discord began in the anti-Habsburg coalition, which united the Catholic camp. At the end of 1631, the Viennese government again invited Wallenstein to take over leadership of the army. Within a few months, Wallenstein created a huge army and began military operations. The Saxon army was driven out of the Czech Republic, and the main offensive forces concentrated in the direction of Bavaria, which by that time was occupied by the Swedish army. In the Battle of Lützen on November 16, 1632, the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf died. But the Swedish chancellor Oxenstern (Oksenstierna) managed to unite the Protestant and imperial princes for further struggle. At the same time, Wallenstein did not want to be an instrument of Habsburg policy in Spain. His true plans are unknown to us, but it is possible that he sought to create his own state within the empire, for example, as the Saxon elector. In any case, he established contact with the French and Swedes, although he did not dare to make an open break with Vienna. Such indecision ended in disaster for the brilliant commander; he was killed by the emperor's agents.

Meanwhile the war continued. In the course of its further events, the Saxon elector betrayed the Protestant camp and went over to the side of the Habsburgs, concluding peace with the emperor in Prague on May 30, 1635. According to this peace, the Saxon elector received Upper and Lower Lusatia, separated from the Czech crown.

The position of the Habsburgs in the empire was strengthened again. But France entered the war. On February 25, 1635, Cardinal Richelieu concluded an alliance with the Netherlands, and then renewed the alliance treaty with Sweden and declared war on Spain. The Protestants again launched an offensive, and in the spring of 1639 the Swedish army invaded the Czech Republic. The Swedes turned to the Czech people with a call for an uprising against the Habsburgs and a promise of help in liberating the country. But the population, exhausted by military pogroms, no longer believed in the possibility of liberation and looked at the Swedish advance with caution. The Swedes nevertheless captured part of Moravia and planned to unite with the Transylvanian prince Gyorgy Rakoczi in order to jointly attack Vienna. But at the end of 1643, the Danish king Christian IV, as well as Poland, sided with the Habsburgs, and the Swedes were forced to withdraw troops from Moravia to protect the lands of Northern Germany. Swedish troops were present on the territory of the lands of the Czech crown more than once. All of Central Europe was devastated by the war, but neither side achieved a decisive advantage. General economic exhaustion and internal political difficulties forced the warring parties to begin peace negotiations. Czech emigrants tried to attract the attention of leading politicians of the anti-Habsburg coalition to the Czech issue and discuss the problem of restoring pre-Belogorsk order in the Czech Republic. But for large European states the Czech question has lost any importance.

During the period of peace negotiations, hostilities in Central Europe did not subside. In the summer of 1648, the Swedish general Königsmarck attacked Czech territory, took Prague Castle and Lesser Town, capturing many valuables, especially art, stored in the Castle collections. Having also plundered Southern Bohemia, the Swedish army left, and on October 24, 1648, peace was signed in Münster and Osnabrück, ending the Thirty Years' War. This peace, known as the Peace of Westphalia, significantly changed the balance of political forces in Europe. Plans to establish Habsburg hegemony in Europe collapsed. Spain lost its dominant position. France and Sweden came to the fore. The Peace of Westphalia confirmed the sovereignty of the Netherlands, the first state where the bourgeois revolution was victorious. But the position of the Habsburgs in Central Europe strengthened. European states recognized the emperor's victory over class regimes in the so-called hereditary lands and sanctioned the changes that the Habsburg government carried out in the Czech kingdom after the White Mountain.

As a result of the Thirty Years' War, the territory of the Czech Kingdom decreased, since Lusatia was transferred to Saxony in 1635. The suppression of the class uprising did not, however, lead to the liquidation of the Czech state, and the “Updated Zemstvo Organization” for the Czech Republic (1627) confirmed the existence of a state entity called “Land of the Czech Crown” and connected with the Kingdom of Hungary and other lands of the monarchy by the personality of a single sovereign. Within the borders of the Czech state, the Habsburgs were recognized as Czech kings.

However, the relative “freedom” of individual parts of the monarchy within the latter was formal. The Habsburgs pursued a policy of centralization. After the defeat of the uprising, the Sejm of the Czech Crown no longer met, the dualism of class and royal power, characteristic of political development Czech lands from the end of the 13th century. The free election of the king was also abolished. The most important political and financial issues began to be decided by central royal bodies, secret and palace councils, and especially the “palace comora” (chamber). Legislative power belonged to the sovereign. The highest zemstvo officials were also appointed by the king, and they were responsible to him, and not to the Sejm. The Zemsky Court lost its sovereignty, since the sovereign again became the highest court of appeal. The clergy class was introduced into the Sejm, and, moreover, as the first. The philistinism now had no independent voice. The Sejm retained the functions of approving taxes, but the gentry, frightened by the Pobelogorsk repressions, did not use this means for political pressure. The administrative apparatus of the estates would be replaced by the royal one. The Czech Chancellery, located in Vienna since 1624, became the highest executive body, and the highest chancellor became the most important official of the Czech state. Negative meaning had an equation between German and Czech. The royal institutions, occupied by German officials, put the German language in first place, while Czech gradually faded into the background in the activities of the institutions.

The territory of the Czech Republic was repeatedly the scene of military operations, so that the devastation of the country became general. In addition, the economy was undermined by confiscations of land property, high fines for participation in the class uprising or even sympathy for the rebels. The cities suffered greatly from the Pobelogorsk repressions and military actions. The general decline prevented the economic revival of the townspeople. High war taxes and forced loans were a heavy burden for all segments of the population. Cities especially suffered from taxes, since feudal lords preferred to rob their subjects themselves. Many years of hostilities disrupted trade ties between the Czech lands and the rest of the world. The traditional import and export of goods was disrupted. Domestic trade weakened. All this reduced the production of goods and their exchange and thereby worsened the position of cities and townspeople in the economic sphere.

During the war, the agricultural population suffered just as much as the urban population. Numerous villages were destroyed in the fire, all kinds of equipment were destroyed; The situation was aggravated by heavy indemnities and the cost of maintaining troops. They were carried by all segments of the village population without exception. However, during the period of military calm, farmers who managed to save some of the livestock, hiding it from the marauding troops in the forests, as well as some agricultural tools and seeds, again began to cultivate the land and produce products for their own needs and partly also for the market. But the total volume of agricultural production has not reached the pre-war level. The absorption of farmers' income by high feudal taxes and state taxes so reduced the purchasing power of the rural population that peasants purchased only the most necessary goods from artisans. The exchange of goods between city and countryside became one-sided. This meant a significant reduction general level economy, the replacement of highly developed commodity production with a situation in which agriculture prevailed over urban production, which meant a clear economic regression.

During the war, significant changes occurred in feudal land tenure. Several hundred noble families lost their property or a significant part of it for participation in the class uprising or sympathy for it. New changes in land ownership came after the murder of Albrecht Wallenstein, when confiscations were again made. Many formerly powerful feudal families sank to the lower rungs of the social ladder, and several previously insignificant individuals became major magnates. There was also a large influx of foreign gentry into the Czech lands, loyal to the Habsburgs and who had military and political services to them. In the 50s of the 17th century. in the Czech Republic, the ratio between the old and new noble families was 169 to 136, and between the old and new knightly families - 457 to 116. In both classes, the old families thus had a numerical superiority, but the representatives of the new gentry were more prosperous. In Moravia a slightly different picture was observed. In the gentry class, the ratio of foreigners who came to the country as a result of the war to the old local families was 39 to 27, in the knightly class - 35 to 30. But only a few foreigners received large-scale holdings. In general, both in the Czech Republic and Moravia, land holdings were concentrated in the hands of a small layer of feudal lords. The concentration of land holdings increased, and property differentiation among the gentry deepened. The lordship owned more than 60% of all subjects, while the knightly class owned only 10%, and the church about 12%. Number of persons nobility decreased overall.

The defeat of the class uprising contributed to the strengthening of the feudal class in Czech society. On White Mountain, the forces that relied on the most reactionary strata of the feudal system, who sought to strengthen this system by any means, were victorious. These layers supported the most conservative elements of society - the Catholic Church, and, using force, weakened those social groups, who were carriers of opposite socio-economic trends. These same layers undermined the political and economic potency of the philistinism, supported the process of ruining small knightly estates and contributed to the enslavement of the peasantry. Already during the war, the largest magnates began to focus their economy on the production of marketable products, mainly food, which was in short supply in the country. They expanded the lord's arable land, forming master's courtyards, added land plots left by peasants to the courtyards, and built new courtyards on rustic land. The feudal lords forced the peasants to cultivate all these lands, and since during the war there was not enough labor, the duties of the peasants were increased several times.

The feudal lords sold bread at the local market or to the troops. Part of the wheat and barley was processed in Pan's breweries, since the sale of beer brought in large incomes. The feudal lords established a monopoly on the sale of beer and the grinding of grain. In some lordships, sheep were raised, fish were raised, timber was sold, and iron ore was mined. All these enterprises of the master's farms were serviced by the labor of dependent peasants.

The lords were the unlimited masters of their subjects. Compared to the pre-Belogorsk period, the labor obligations of peasants increased significantly. The latter were forced to carry out all the work necessary for the needs of production and in the master's yards, fishmongers, sheep sheds and other objects - and at the same time the work was carried out with peasant tools and livestock. The number of velkostatkas gradually increased, where peasants worked for free 2-3 days a week throughout the year. No less difficult were the payments, which the administration of the lordship increased with the help of various tricks.

But feudal landowners were not the only oppressors of the peasantry. State taxes were constantly increasing, and the demands of the Catholic Church were also growing. Such exploitation of the peasants caused uprisings in some areas, especially frequent in the period from 1621 to 1628. But local uprisings of poorly armed peasants were easily suppressed by troops.

As a result of the Thirty Years' War, demographic changes occurred in the Czech Republic. People died from hunger and epidemics, often brought into the country by troops. In addition, after 1620, as a result of the Belogorsk defeat, dozens of noble and middle-class families emigrated from the country for fear of reprisals for participating in the uprising. In the second half of the 20s, after the publication of the anti-reformation patent, a second, more powerful wave of emigration followed. Numerous peasants of the evangelical faith, who did not want to renounce their religion, left secretly. After Peace of Westphalia The struggle against non-Catholics intensified again, and in the 50s many of them emigrated. In general, several thousand bourgeois and peasant families left the Czech lands; the exact number of emigrants is impossible to determine. Czech evangelists found refuge in Saxony, Brandenburg and other German states, some settled in Silesia, Slovakia, Poland, and Prussia. Scattered throughout Central Europe, Czech emigrants nevertheless retained a sense of belonging to their homeland. But in the second and third generations, they still, as a rule, merged with the local environment.

The total number of people lost in the Czech Republic cannot be counted, since there were no statistics. The most cautious historians believe that the population decline was no more than a quarter, others say one third.

The cultural situation in the Czech lands turned out to be extremely unfavorable for the development of the national element. Soon after the Battle of Belogorsk, the Jesuits returned to the Czech Republic. In 1623, the Czech province of this order arose, and Jesuit institutions began to be created throughout the country - the residence of the order and its school (“tracks”). Until 1653, 23 Jesuit schools operated in the Czech province. The government entrusted the Jesuits with censorship of all published literature and control over printing houses. In March 1622, all non-Catholic masters were forced to leave the University of Prague, which was transferred to the Jesuit order in November of the same year. The Jesuits united the University of Prague with the Clementine Jesuit College and completely subordinated higher education to your goals. Also, other monastic orders - Premonstratensians, Capuchins and others - strengthened their positions in the Czech lands, increased the number of corresponding monasteries, and sought to acquire land holdings. The Viennese government understood that the re-Catholicization of the Czech Republic and Moravia, where there were over 90% non-Catholics, would take a lot of time, and acted gradually. The first blow was dealt to non-Catholic priests, who were expelled from the country during 1621–1622. In 1624, Catholicism was proclaimed the only religion allowed in the country, so residents of the cities and villages of Bohemia and Moravia were prohibited from practicing any non-Catholic faith. A new archbishop, elected in August 1623, a graduate of Jesuit schools, Arnost Count from Harrach, stood at the head of the Catholic Church. The Church replaced city parishes with Catholic priests. The royal city lords carefully ensured that non-Catholics did not enter the city and guild councils. In 1627, the government issued a patent ordering all nobles to convert to the Catholic faith or sell their property and leave the Czech Republic within six months. Most of the Czech and Moravian gentry renounced their original faith and converted to Catholicism, but dozens of families and many individuals decided to emigrate. In general, in 1628, several hundred people—representatives of the gentry—left the Czech Republic. At the same time, many citizens of the bourgeoisie and evangelical preachers, who lived under the protection of the non-Catholic gentry, also left. Among them was John Amos Comenius. Also, many peasants secretly left the country. This circumstance caused a protest from part of the Catholic gentry against forced re-Catholicization, since the flight of the subjects of the bourgeoisie and peasants deprived the feudal lords of labor and, consequently, income. Therefore, in the future, the line was taken to carry out ideological forms of re-Catholicization. A network of urban and rural schools was created, missionary activities were carried out, and the main attention was paid to the education of youth. Thus, over the course of several decades, it was possible to Catholicize the gentry, the majority of the townspeople and part of the peasantry, especially the younger generation.

The recatholization of the Czech Republic caused big damage national culture. In the pre-Belogorsk period, the culture of the Czech Republic grew out of European humanism and the Renaissance, based on reformation ideology. The Catholic Church, which took over the school and printing houses during the Pobelogorsk period, made it impossible to publish works that expressed views different from the official church ideology. Direct contact with the pre-Belogorsk cultural development was maintained only by part of the intelligentsia and creative emigration. Thus, Czech culture was divided into two branches: the official direction, which served Catholic ideology and the interests of the ruling circles, and the direction that continued the pre-Belogorsk traditions. But this last branch had no prospects and gradually died out. In the first post-Belogorsk years (until 1628), Jan Amos Komensky was still writing his works in the Czech Republic. In 1626, Mikulas Daczycki from Geslov completed his chronicle. But the most important works that continued the traditions of pre-Belogorsk writing were created by emigrants - Pavel Skala from Zgora, Pavel Stransky and others. In the Czech Republic, literary creativity ended up in the hands of the Jesuits and turned into an instrument of counter-Reformation propaganda. Religious subjects predominated in it, and official literature, largely focused on topics close to the urban and rural masses, largely continued the tradition of medieval church creativity. The cult of religious mysticism revived - legends about the lives and torments of saints instilled in readers a belief in miracles. The ideological and artistic level of this literature was very low. A more effective means of educating the masses was fine art in the spirit of pathetic baroque, which originated in Italy. Church institutions that invited artists to build and decorate churches encouraged creators to emphasize the religious content of works of art and express the ideological principles of the church. Secular feudal lords also built their palaces in the early Baroque style. Classic example Such buildings are the castle of Albrecht Wallenstein, which has survived to this day. This vast palace in Prague's Lesser Town, with a garden, riding hall and other elements, grew up between 1623 and 1630.

This outstanding personality made a huge contribution not only to Czech but also to world culture. Comenius was born on March 28, 1592 in Nivnica near Uherský Brod, was educated at fraternal schools and then at Calvinist universities in Herborn and Heidelberg, after which he taught at fraternal schools in Přerov and Fulnek. After the Belogorsk defeat, Comenius, as a priest of the Community of Czech Brothers, emigrated to the Polish city of Leszno in 1628. In accordance with the philosophy of humanism and the Renaissance, Comenius dreamed of improving society through moral education. He saw this as the task of pedagogy, and even in the pre-Belogorsk period he developed a school reform program. He outlined his thoughts on this matter in several works, primarily in the famous “Great Didactics” (published in 1657), emphasizing and developing the positive experience of modern schools. Many of Comenius’ principles, especially the requirement of clarity in teaching, accounting mental development children, depending on age, the need for moral education of youth, have enriched modern pedagogy and have not lost their value to this day. Comenius created a new pedagogical system and achieved European fame with his progressive views on education. He was invited to set up schools in England, Sweden, and Hungary. After the fire in Leszno in 1656, when a significant part of his manuscripts and already developed works burned, Comenius settled in Amsterdam. He achieved European fame primarily for his language textbooks - “The Open Door of Languages” (1631) and “The Sensual World in Pictures” (1658). Comenius also worked on the problems of re-educating society and correcting social order. He never forgot about his homeland and sought, with the help of European politicians, especially Swedish ones, to influence in the 40s of the 17th century. to resolve the Czech issue, without realizing, however, that the revival of the pre-Belogorsk order in the current situation is unrealistic. He expressed his disappointment with the results of the Peace of Westphalia in the essay “Testament of the Dying Mother of the Fraternal Community” (1650). One of the most important works of Czech literature of that era is Comenius’ work “The Labyrinth of Light and the Paradise of the Heart” (1623). Here, in allegorical form, a picture of the modern world and society is depicted and the path to correction is proposed, which Comenius saw in the “union of man with God.” Like other philosophical works of Comenius, “Labyrinth” is imbued with deep religiosity. It was Comenius’s religious beliefs that prevented him from consistently defending sensationalism and empiricism, so that his views in many respects lagged behind the progressive trends of contemporary European philosophy. But his pedagogical creativity overtook his era.

The development of human culture is associated with the development of personality in it. Changes of formations are stages of human liberation. Man is liberated from the power of the clan, from the power of corporations and estates, from class oppression. This corresponds to various forms of “discovery of man.”

Old Russian literature of the era of early feudalism was associated with the liberation of man from the power of clan and tribe. A person realizes his power by becoming part of a feudal corporation. The hero of literary works of this period is a member of the corporation, a representative of his class.

This is a prince, a monk, a bishop, a boyar, and as such he is depicted in all his greatness. Hence the monumental style of depicting a person.

The extent to which a person’s dignity was valued as a member of a corporation is illustrated by “Russkaya Pravda,” where insults with the hilt of a sword, a flat sword, a blow with a horn or a bowl were considered several times more offensive than a “blue” or bloody wound, since they expressed extreme contempt for the enemy.

But there comes a period in Russian history when a person begins to be valued regardless of his affiliation with a medieval corporation. A new “discovery of man” is taking place—his inner life, his inner virtues, his historical significance, etc.

In the West, this discovery occurred with the development commodity-money relations. Money, while enslaving a person in other respects, freed him from the power of the corporation. In principle, anyone could acquire money, and it gave power over others. Money broke down corporate barriers and made the concept of corporate honor unnecessary.

In Russia, the conditions for the liberation of the individual from the power of the corporation were created, on the one hand, by economic growth, the development of trade, crafts, which led to the rise of the “cities-communes” - Novgorod and Pskov, and on the other hand, by the fact that in conditions of constant military anxieties and difficult moral trials of the Mongol-Tatar yoke, the inner qualities of a person were increasingly valued: his perseverance, devotion to his homeland to the prince, the ability to morally resist those temptations of exaltation that were abundantly offered by foreign power, which tried to rely on traitors, the qualities of a military leader, the abilities of an administrator and etc.

The princely power nominates worthy people, regardless of their origin and affiliation with the corporation. The chronicle notes the Surozhan merchants who stood for the defense of Moscow during the invasion of Tokhtamysh, describes the feat of the keymaster of the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir, who did not hand over church treasures to the enemies, and increasingly notes the reaction of the population, and in particular the townspeople.

That is why in literature, and especially hagiographic literature, which reveals the inner life of one person, more and more attention is paid to the emotional sphere; literature is interested in the psychology of a person, his internal states, his inner agitation. This leads to expressive style and dynamic descriptions.

An emotionally expressive style is developing in literature, and in ideological life “silence”, solitary prayer performed outside the church, and going into the desert—to a monastery—are becoming increasingly important.

These phenomena cannot be identified with the Renaissance, since religion dominated the spiritual culture of Ancient Rus' until the 17th century. In the XIV-XV centuries. There is still a long way to go before the secularization of life and culture; the liberation of the individual takes place within the framework of religion. This initial period of the process that, developing in favorable conditions, passes into the Renaissance, this is the Pre-Renaissance.

Attention to the inner life of man, demonstrating the fluidity of what is happening, the variability of everything that exists, was associated with the awakening of historical consciousness. Time was no longer represented only in the forms of changing events. The character of the eras changed, and first of all, the attitude towards the foreign yoke.

The time has come to idealize the era of Russian independence. Thought turns to the idea of independence, art - to the works of pre-Mongol Rus', architecture - to the buildings of the era of independence, and literature - to the works of the 11th-13th centuries: to the “Tale of Bygone Years”, to the “Sermon on Law and Grace” by Metropolitan Hilarion, to “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, to the “Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land”, to the “Life of Alexander Nevsky”, to the “Tale of the Ruin of Ryazan by Batu”, etc. Thus, for the Russian Pre-Renaissance, Russia of the period of independence, pre-Mongol Rus' became its “antiquity” "

All medieval literature was characterized by the phenomenon of abstraction - the generalization of the phenomena described, the desire to reveal in reality the general instead of the individual, the spiritual instead of the material, the internal, religious meaning of each phenomenon.

The medieval method of abstraction also determined the features of the depiction of human psychology in works created during the Pre-Renaissance period. D. S. Likhachev defined this feature of the literature of the Russian Pre-Renaissance as “abstract psychologism.”

“The focus of attention of writers of the late XIV - early XV centuries. turned out to be individual psychological states of a person, his feelings, emotional responses to events in the outside world. But these feelings, individual states of the human soul are not yet united into characters. Individual manifestations of psychology are depicted without any individualization and do not add up to psychology.

The connecting, unifying principle - the character of a person - has not yet been discovered. Human individuality is still limited by its straightforward classification into one of two categories - good or evil, positive or negative.”38

Pre-Renaissance phenomena in the cultural life of the country, which awakened at the beginning - the first half of the 14th century, made themselves felt with particular force at the end of the century - the first half of the 15th century.

Climb national identity after the Battle of Kulikovo contributed to the flourishing of culture, aroused increased interest in the past, and awakened the desire for revival national traditions, while simultaneously strengthening cultural communication Russian lands with other states. Traditional ties between Rus' and Byzantium and the South Slavic countries are being renewed.

Revived in the first half of the 14th century. By the end of the century, monumental stone construction became widespread. Particularly flourishing at the end of the 14th - first half of the 15th century. reaches the fine arts, where pre-Renaissance ideas were most clearly manifested.

At the end of the XIV - the very beginning of the XV century. The remarkable medieval artist Theophanes the Greek works in Rus', in whose work pre-Renaissance ideals found brilliant embodiment.

Theophan the Greek painted the churches of Novgorod, Moscow and other cities of North-Eastern Rus' (the Transfiguration of the Savior on Ilyin in Novgorod in 1378, the Nativity with the chapel of Lazarus in Moscow in 1395, the Archangel and Annunciation Cathedrals in Moscow in 1399 and 1405 .). The frescoes of Theophanes the Greek still amaze with their grandeur, dynamism, significance and severity of the characters he depicts.

At the very end of the XIV - first quarter of the XV century. the work of the great Russian artist Andrei Rublev took place. His activities are connected with Moscow and with cities and monasteries close to Moscow. Andrei Rublev, together with Theophan the Greek and Elder Prokhor, painted the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin (1405).

Together with Daniil Cherny (his constant friend), he created frescoes and painted icons in the Assumption Cathedral of Vladimir (1408) and in the Trinity Cathedral in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery (1424-1426).

His famous “Trinity” dates back to the time of Andrei Rublev’s work at the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. The work of Andrei Rublev is distinguished by deep humanism and humanity. “Painting of this time,” writes D. S. Likhachev, “has been enriched with new themes, its plots have become significantly more complex, there is a lot of narrative in them, events are interpreted psychologically, artists strive to depict the experiences of the characters, emphasize suffering, sorrow, melancholy, fear or joy and ecstatic excitement. Sacred subjects are interpreted less solemnly, more intimately, more mundanely.”

The general rise of enlightenment and the awakening of the desire for a rational explanation of natural phenomena led to the emergence of rationalist movements in cities. At the end of the 14th century. The Strigolnik heresy appears in Novgorod.

Strigolniki rejected the church hierarchy and church rituals, some of them apparently did not believe in the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and the divine essence of Christ. Their speeches featured social motives.

Cultural flourishing at the end of the XIV-XV centuries. contributed to the expansion of cultural ties between Russian lands and Byzantium and the South Slavic countries (Bulgaria, Serbia). Russian monks often and for long periods visited the monasteries of Athos and Constantinople, and a number of South Slavic and Greek figures moved to Rus'.

Theophanes the Greek came to Rus' from Greece. Among the persons who played a major role in Russian literature of the late XIV - first half of the XV centuries, the Bulgarians Cyprian and Gregory Tsamblak, the Serb Pachomius Logofet should be named.

A large number of South Slavic manuscripts and translations appeared in Rus' during the period under review. Russian literature closely interacted with the literature of Byzantium and the countries of the southern Slavs. This cultural communication between Rus' and other countries is defined as the period of the second South Slavic influence.

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.