Bohemian people; but he was not popular during his lifetime. Though coming to Bohemia at so early an age, he never appears to have shown any affection for the country, nor indeed to have thoroughly mastered its language—a matter on which then as now popularity in Bohemia perhaps depends more than on anything else. The Bohemian chroniclers complain that his short residences in Bohemia were solely for the purpose of obtaining financial supplies, and that having secured this object he then immediately left the country in search of new adventures His dominant idea seems to have been that of chivalry. The English King Edward III called him corona militiae. His nature was that of a knight-errant or a Don Quixote; if that type, in many ways so touching, had not through being misunderstood long since acquired comic associations.[1] It will be sufficient to give a mere outline of the various warlike expeditions of King John, which extended from Lithuania and Hungary to Italy and France. As Palacký says: "It would be necessary to write the history of all Europe if we attempted to describe all the feuds into which King John entered with chivalrous bravery, but also with frivolity. It then became a proverb, that 'nothing can be done without the help of God and of the King of Bohemia.'"
King John's reign was from its beginning disturbed by internal dissensions, mainly caused by the enmity between his wife. Queen Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, widow of Venceslas II and Rudolph I. One of the great Bohemian nobles, Henry of Lipa, had obtained unlimited influence over the widowed Queen Elizabeth, and he aspired to play a part similar to that of Zavis of Falckenstein during the reign of Venceslas II. King John having caused Henry of Lipa to be imprisoned, a great insurrection of the Bohemian nobility broke out shortly afterwards, while the king was in Germany. Recalled by his consort, King John hastily returned, and after much desultory fighting the differences with the nobles were settled by a compromise under the mediation of the German King Louis (1318). Henry of Lipa regained his liberty, and was reinstated in the offices he had held at court. He seems, indeed, soon to have
- ↑ We are told on good authority that King John intended to establish the Round Table of King Arthur, and that he (1319) invited all the most celebrated knights in Europe to a tournament at Prague; nobody appears to have responded to the call.
