Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of course, the good times rolled and Prague was endowed with numerous Baroque palaces,
churches, monasteries and monuments, many of which still grace the city today.
The Enlightenment
After a century of iron-fisted Habsburg rule, dispute arose over the accession of Charles VI's
daughter,
MariaTheresa
(1740-80), to the Habsburg throne, and Prague, as usual, found it-
self at the centre of the battlefield. In November 1741, Prague was easily taken by Bavarian,
French and Saxon troops, but the occupation force quickly found itself besieged in turn by
a Habsburg army, and in January 1743 was forced to abandon the city. By November 1744,
Prague was again besieged, this time by the Prussian army, who bombed the city into sub-
mission in a fortnight. After a month of looting, they left the city to escape the advancing
Habsburg army. During the Seven Years' War, in 1757, Prague was once more besieged and
bombarded by the Prussian army, though this time the city held out, and, following their de-
feat at the Battle of Kolín, the Prussians withdrew.
Maria Theresa's reign also marked the beginning of the
Enlightenment
in the Habsburg
Empire. Despite her own personal attachment to the Jesuits, the empress acknowledged the
need for reform, and she followed the lead of Spain, Portugal and France in expelling the or-
der from the empire in 1773. But it was her son,
Joseph II
(1780-90), who, in the ten short
years of his reign, brought about the most radical changes to the social structure of the Habs-
burglands.His1781EdictofTolerance allowedalargedegreeoffreedomofworshipforthe
firsttimeinmorethan150years,andwentalongwaytowardsliftingtherestrictionsonJews
withintheempire.Thefollowingyear,heorderedthedissolutionofthemonasteries,andem-
barked upon the abolition of serfdom. Despite all his reforms, Joseph was not universally
popular. Catholics - some ninety percent of the Bohemian population by this point - viewed
him with disdain, and even forced him to back down when he decreed that Protestants, Jews,
unbaptized children and suicide victims should be buried in consecrated Catholic cemeter-
ies. His centralization and bureaucratization of the empire placed power in the hands of the
Habsburg civil service, and thus helped entrench the
Germanization
of Bohemia. He also
offended the Czechs by breaking with tradition and not bothering to hold an official corona-
tion ceremony in Prague.
The Czech national revival
TheHabsburgs'enlightenedruleinadvertentlyprovidedthebasisfortheeconomicprosperity
and social changes of the
Industrial Revolution
, which in turn fuelled the Czech national
revival of the nineteenth century. The textile, glass, coal and iron industries began to grow,
drawing ever more Czechs from the countryside and swamping the hitherto mostly German-
speaking towns and cities, including Prague. A Czech working class and even an embryonic
Czech bourgeoisie emerged, and, thanks to Maria Theresa's reforms, new educational and
economic opportunities were given to the Czech lower classes.
