lead of Bismarck, who showed that he realised the significance of Bohemia when he said that her master was the master of Europe. Bismarck having, by his policy after 1866 and 1870, secured close alliance with Austria-Hungary, became the master of Vienna, and in that way would really have become the master of Bohemia and Europe if Bohemia had accepted this mastery. But she did not, and she never will!
Bohemia, as a Slav country, has a peculiar geographical and ethnographical position in the midst of Europe. Lying farther west than the rest of the Slavs, it forms a barrier against Germany and a wedge between German lands. Since the seventh century the Bohemian nation has been able to resist Germany’s push towards the east and south; and, thanks to its inherent qualities, it has not merely proved equal to this great historical task, but has even grown in political wisdom and ability to resist.
1. The first Bohemian State, founded by Samo (627–652), stretched as far as Carinthia, and comprised part of the South Slavs. Samo defeated the Avars and held his own against Frankish aggression. It must be remembered that at that time the Slavs inhabited almost half the Germany of to-day; on the Elbe the Slavs were neighbours of the Angles and Saxons, near Liibeck and Kiel; even parts of Hanover were Slav. South of Magdeburg the whole of the territory bounded by the Saale and the north of Bavaria, as far as Regensburg, was Slav. All these vast regions, during a struggle that lasted for centuries, have been Germanised. The last remains of the Elbe Slavs disappeared as lately as the eighteenth century; to-day, all that remains of the Slavs in Prussia and Saxony are the Lusatians or Sorbs.
This Germanising tendency was checked by Bohemia, which was able to resist the Holy Roman Empire—a continuation, in Teutonic garb, of the Roman Empire. Charles the Great joined hands with the Church, thus forming the strong organisation of the medieval theocracy; and Pangerman writers are full of praise for Rome and its Church, in that it helped the Emperors to Germanise the Slavs.
The revived empire organised its eastern outposts as Marches, notably those of the East (Ostmark, Oesterreich), and later Brandenburg—the foundations of Austria and Prussia. The Slavs of Bohemia and the other Bohemian countries (Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia) organised their State in
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