Austria by Passau, and, rapidly traversing Upper Austria, soon arrived before Vienna.
Ottokar, who appears at first to have expected to be attacked in Bohemia, now hurried to the aid of Vienna, which town bravely resisted the invaders, and seems almost alone to have remained faithful to the Bohemian king. Unfortunately, while the king was in Austria an insurrection against him broke out among the Bohemian nobility. This last blow induced Ottokar to seek for peace and not to risk a battle, the result of which was absolutely certain—seeing that his army, in consequence of numerous defections, consisted of only 20,000 men, while that of his enemies numbered five times that amount.
The conditions of peace were very onerous; Ottokar was obliged to renounce all claims to Styria, Austria, Carinthia, Carniola, Istria, and the towns of Eger and Portenau (Pordenone). He only retained his hereditary lands, Bohemia and Moravia, and recognized Rudolph as his over-lord. A marriage was arranged between Ottokar's son, Venceslas, and one of the daughters of King Rudolph.
On November 26, 1276, Ottokar appeared in the German camp to do homage to the German king. In presence of the German princes, most of whom were his bitter enemies, the King of Bohemia bent his knee before Rudolph, who was seated on the throne, swore fidelity to him, and was invested with Bohemia and Moravia as fiefs of the Empire.[1]
It was almost impossible that this settlement should prove definitive. It was difficult for Ottokar to reconcile himself to the loss of the vast dominions of which he had been deprived almost without having struck a blow; on the other hand, Rudolph, and still more Ottokar's enemies at Rudolph's court, did not consider their victory complete till they had completed the humiliation of the proud king of Bohemia.
Dissensions broke out almost immediately. Rudolph attempted to interfere in the internal government of Bohemia to a far greater degree than any of his predecessors
- ↑ The story, which has been often told—in a most amusing way by Carlyle (History of Frederick the Great, Book II, chap. vii)—that Přemysl Ottokar requested to do homage to King Rudolph privately, and that the ceremony took place in a tent, the sides of which were suddenly drawn up, is entirely unhistorical. Aenaeas Sylvius (Historia Bohemiae, chap. xxvii), who wrote two hundred years after these events, is the first historian who mentions it.
