On the Czech King Přemysl Ottakar II the Stubborn / Arrogant but certainly Brave

 

Here is a great picture of Premysl Ottakar II one of the most important kings of Bohemia (Czechia) painted by Karel Řepka and posted on the FB group "Český Středověk" (the Czech Middle Ages).

Yes the Czechs had once been a kingdom.  Bohemia (Czechia) had become one of the six elector states of the Holy Roman Empire. Here Ottakar II thought that since his kingdom had become the most powerful kingdom of the H.R. Empire of the time, that he should be elected Holy Roman Emperor. Instead precisely because he was pretty powerful, the other Electors chose to elect a young upstart named Rudolph of Habsburg (the weakest among them) who was a mere Duke at the time to be Holy Roman Emperor.

 Ottakar II got angry, went to war against Rudolph as well as the other elector States of the H.R. Empire and ... died on the battlefield in the "Battle of the Moravian Fields." and history was largely written from there. The Habsburgs came to be one of the most powerful and longest lasting dynastic families in European history with their falling from power only in 1918 nearly 650 years later.

The Czech Premyslid dynasty came to an end though Ottakar's daughter Eliška (Elizabeth) married a young John of Luxemburg who became then the Czech king (King of Bohemia/ Czechia) and his son Karel (Charles) was laterelected as Charles IV as Holy Roman Emperor in the 1300s. Charles IV built (or completed the famous Charles Bridge in Prague as well as founded the famous Charles University in Orague, the oldest university in central Europe.

One thing that I like about the marriage of John of Luxemburg and Eliška of the Premyslids was that it consolidated the two greatest beer drinking peoples under one roof . And perhaps that was "an attraction" for (as remembered by the Czechs) the famously boisterous King John of Luxemburg who like Premysl Ottakar II (pictured here) eventually died in battle: 

With some battle somewhere beginning to go badly John of L was to have said: "Far be it for a Czech king to run from a battlefield..."

Course perhaps the other kings of the time and times since may have learned something from the examples if Ottakar II / John of Luxemburg ... you can't continue to rule if you're dead.

Still leading from the front seems far more inspiring than from the back.

Say what one will of Napoleon. He understood that too. While he did not die on the battlefield, he didn't ask his people to go where he wasn't willing to go himself. He went with his troops all the way to Moscow and later was captured with his troops at Waterloo.

Anyway all thus from a picture of a (to us) famous Czech king from the 1200s.

One final note Dante refers to Ottakar II / Rudolph of Habsburg in the Divine Comedy (Purgatorio Canto 7) He has the two _reconciled_ singing in choir (with the other Kings of history) in front of the Door to Purgatory waiting for all the other souls to pass to fulfill Jesus' saying:

"The first shall be last and the last shall be first" (Matt 20:16)

And final PS -- It turns out that Premysl Ottakar II was born in the same year as St Philip Benizi / the founding of the Servite Order ... 1233 ...