first part of the Czech version of the Dějiny Národu Českého v Čechách a v Moravě, appeared in March, 1848. It was chiefly a translation of the German text. Later, Palacký reversed this method of work; he wrote the history in the vernacular, the German version being a translation. This method he pursued to the end nothwithstanding the objection of certain critics who demanded that the author write his work in German and translate it into Czech. In the years 1848–50 which were years of comparative constitutional freedom he devoted himself with redoubled energy to the history of the Hussites, wishing to complete the chapters dealing therewith, before the censorship was reintroduced. The history, which reaches only to 1526, the year the Hapsburgs ascended the Bohemian throne, was completed in 1876.
As long as the Czech language continues to be spoken this historical work will be read and treasured. It is not only a mirror of Bohemia’s past; it is a monument to the man who wrote it and of the times in which it was written.
Palacký’s early political program might be described as Austrophil. He believed that the safety of Bohemia, like that of the other Hapsburg states, anchored most securely in a strong Austria. Dread of absorption by Prussia no less than fear of submersion in the Russian sea worried him and induced him to elaborate, in 1855, his oft quoted work, the Oesterreich’s Staatsidee, (Idea of the Austrian State). In it he planned the unification of the small nations, “none of which were strong enough to resist the encroachment of powerful neighbors.” To his conationals who ranked next to the Germans in number and culture, he assigned, in his mind’s eye, a leading role in the government of this state. “But”, says the historian, “Austria must cease to be the centre of absolutism, the home of reaction, the eldorado of bureaucracy.” The author of the Idea of the Ausstrian State had persuaded himself to believe that the monarchy would at last realize its historic mission of being the sheltering guardian of small nations, irrespective of creed or race.
As Palacký’s political vision expanded with maturer years and as acts of aggression against the Slavs multiplied, his enthusiasm for Austria gave way to a feeling of scepticism. He realized, among other things, that his theories had been faulty in that they failed to take into account the strong historical individuality of the Czech nation. Again, he erred in assuming that the government would abandon its anti-Slavic policy. Toward the close of his life he frankly, almost penitently, admitted his mistake. His original political program, he characterized as “a grave and fatal error, the greatest blunder of political judgment which I have ever knowingly committed.” The Czech nation, Palacký subsequently maintained, survived not because of help from Austria, but because of its own will and determination to live. He deplored his delusion that he had phantasied about Austria. He emphasized that he had lost faith in the preservation of the empire in which the absolutism of the monarch, as it existed prior to 1848, had given place to the absolutism of a favored race. One day, though it may be too late, he said, the dynasty and the monarchy will realize how really indispensable to the safety of the state the Czechs were.
The consummation of dualism (1868) which implied, primarily, a lasting political and economic bondage of the Czechs, disillusioned him completely. “I, too, am now beginning to lose hope that it will be possible to preserve the Austrian Empire,” he stated. Still later he expressed himself that “the Czechs having placed their trust in Vienna, had deceived themselves grievously.” And shortly before his retirement from public life, he addressed to Vienna those memorable words, which sent a thrill of pride through every Czech heart: “We were before Austria and we shall exist after her.”
Such, then, was the mental evolution of the man who defined his early political program by saying that, “If Austria ceased to exist, we should have to create an Austria.”
The Frankfort Parliament of 1848, pursuing the dream of a Greater Germany, invited Austria to elect deputies. The Austrian Germans, always eager for a closer union with Germany, accepted this invitation; the Czechs, chief among them the publicist Charles Havlíček, opposed the plan, insisting that Bohemia’s claim to a separate existence was as good as that of Germany. “The aim which you propose to yourselves”, wrote Palacký to the Frankfort Parliament speaking for the Czech nation, “is a substitution of the federation of peoples for the old federation of princes, to
