"DALIMIL"
33
will she teach my children — Then there will be division of languages — And thereby certain ruin to the state." Of interest also is the author's account of the reign of the great King Ottokar II. He writes as a violent enemy of that king, and attributes the disastrous close of his reign to the fact that he neglected his Slavonic countrymen and showed too great favour to the Germans. The geographical position of Bohemia, which is the outpost of the Slavonic race that advances farthest westward, has been the cause why that country has always been the scene of racial feuds. National animosities were as violent at the beginning of the fourteenth as they unfortunately are at the end of the nineteenth century. Ottokar's part in this struggle belongs to the political history of Bohemia ; but it may be incidentally remarked that, as regards the accusation of having unduly favoured the Germans to the detriment of his own countrymen, the greatest of Bohemia's kings has found an eloquent defender in Palacky, the greatest Bohemian The so-called Dalimil thus describes the historian. " Then the king began to close of King Ottokar's reign : heed no longer his own (countrymen) — Towns and vil— lages he began to give to the Germans The Germans appeared to surround him — Against the nobles he used violence — His officials he instigated against the lords of Vitkovic — Against other nobles also he began to use violence. — Therefore many nobles became angry — They appealed to Rudolph, king of the empire {i.e. of the ' Germans), against him — Saying, It is better that the land should be a desert — Rather than that by the king's order the Germans should hold it.' — Rudolph arrives in Austria — On the advice of the Germans the king goes to meet
him — Then the king makes over all his lands to Rudolph
