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language closely related to their own. Nevertheless the Czecho-Slovaks are in a strong strategic position, being surrounded with high mountains like a fortress deeply wedged in between Vienna and Berlin, on the road from Berlin to Bagdad. They form the most Western outpost of the Slavs right in the heart of Europe, in the centre between the Baltic and the Adriatic sea.
Czecho-Slovak History.
Since the fifth century the Czecho-Slovaks inhabited as an independent nation the territories of the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia, which boasts of a glorious history. Christianity was introduced very early in Slovakia and Bohemia by the Slav apostles, Cyril and Methodius, and it was the Czecho-Slovaks’ lot to repulse the onslaught of the Teutons, Tartars, Huns and Magyars in their early history. An interesting episode is connected with the life of the Bohemian King John of Luxemburg, the famous European Knight errant, who fought with the French against the English at Cressy in 1346. His plumes, taken by the Black Prince during this battle, form the coat-of-arms of the Prince of Wales. Of greater importance for Bohemia, however, was his son, Charles IV., who founded the University in Prague, in 1348, which is the oldest in the whole of Central Europe, and which played an important part in Bohemian history.
The most glorious times of Czecho-Slovak history were the Hussite wars, which were both
