had done, and specially claimed a right of protection over the Bohemian nobles, who, as mentioned before, had rebelled against King Ottokar. The only choice that now remained to the king was between renouncing his inherited independent sovereignty over Bohemia, or again appealing to the fortune of war. Ottokar chose the latter alternative. In the year 1278 he entered Austria with a large army, and advanced to the banks of the river March, near the scene of his former victory at Kressenbrunn. Rudolph was not unprepared, as, not thinking that the former settlement would be final, he had remained in Austria. His army was almost immediately joined by a large Hungarian contingent. On the advance of the Austrians, Ottokar retreated as far as Durrenkrut, and near this place a decisive battle took place on the day of St. Rufus (August 26), a day destined then, not for the last time, to be fatal to Bohemia's kings. Ottokar was decisively defeated, principally through the treachery of Milota of Dědic and other Bohemian nobles. When the Bohemian king saw that the battle was lost he plunged into the thickest ranks of the enemy, and died fighting desperately.
The reign of Přemysl Ottokar II, one of Bohemia's greatest kings, ended with complete disaster; and it is
difficult to understand the complete and sudden downfall of such a powerful empire. The fact that Ottokar had, by the privileges he granted the towns, alienated many of the powerful Bohemian nobles, who therefore deserted him in the hour of peril, was undoubtedly one of the principal causes of his downfall. Another still more potent consideration was the question of nationality. Ottokar was, justly or unjustly,[1] accused of favouring the Germans to the disadvantage of his own countrymen, and he had thus become unpopular with the Bohemians. The stimulus of national pride, which has sometimes animated the Bohemians to most heroic deeds, did not therefore incite them to rally round their king, whom many of them considered nearly as much a German as his opponent. Rarely has the death of one man had such melancholy results for a whole empire. The Bohemian people, vanquished by their enemy in a murderous struggle, were suddenly deprived of the strong hand which for twenty
- ↑ Palacký, whose national feeling is very strong, yet denies that Přemysl Ottokar II unduly favoured the Germans.
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