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| k. Bohemia |
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(See 1462)| |
| 1471–1516 |
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| LADISLAS II, son of the king of Poland, first ruler of the Jagiello family, a boy of 16 at his accession. Ladislas continued the persecution of the Bohemian Brotherhood but made no progress toward unifying the country. As king of Hungary also, he spent most of his time at Pressburg (today Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia), leaving open the way for the domination of Bohemia by powerful nobles. During the entire later 15th century the aristocracy extended its possessions and power at the expense of the crown and Church. The towns declined in power and the peasantry sank back into serfdom or a status close to it. Great influx of German peasants in the west and north and in the towns. | 1 |
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| 1516–26 |
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| LOUIS, son of Ladislas, who ascended the throne of Bohemia and Hungary at the age of ten. Conditions continued as under Ladislas, further complicated by the spread and persecution of Lutheranism. | 2 |
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| 1526 |
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| Louis was defeated and killed by the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Mohács. Ferdinand, brother of Emperor Charles V and brother-in-law of Louis, was elected king, beginning a long period of Habsburg rule. | 3 |
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| 1547 |
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| The Bohemian crown was proclaimed hereditary in the house of Habsburg. Constant growth of the royal prerogative at the expense of the diet and town government. | 4 |
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| 1618 |
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| Defenestration of Prague and beginning of the Thirty Years' War (See 1618, May 23). Ferdinand II was declared deposed and the Protestant Frederick of the Palatinate was elected king (the Winter King). | 5 |
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| 1620, Nov. 8 |
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| BATTLE OF THE WHITE MOUNTAIN; defeat of Frederick and the Bohemians. Bohemia was virtually deprived of independence, and a wholesale confiscation of the lands of the native nobility took place. | 6 |
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| 1627 |
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| A new constitution confirmed the hereditary rule of the Habsburgs and strengthened royal power. The incorporation of Bohemia with the Habsburg empire was completed in the 18th century with the extension of the imperial administration under Joseph I (1705–11) and with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1720 (See 1712–23). (See Poland) | 7 |
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