Speaker 1: Hello, what's up?
Speaker 2: Oh, not much.
Speaker 3: You know, it's another beautiful day here on Turf Island and.
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, that's what's up.
Speaker 1: How are you you know about the same another beautiful
Speaker 1: day here? And uh, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you call it anymore.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, we got we've got a snappy name, at
Speaker 3: least for our our particular bigotries.
Speaker 2: But you know, hey, ho, what can you say?
Speaker 3: It's beautiful? It's beautiful over here. Yeah, like yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: like I was texting you about this all last week.
Speaker 2: But it's like.
Speaker 3: The highs are high and the lows are low. We
Speaker 3: had a good Seann Freud a high the other week,
Speaker 3: which was very funny. So our Chancellor Rachel Reeves, So
Speaker 3: she is responsible for saying I'm afraid we're going to
Speaker 3: have to like starve every poor person in the UK
Speaker 3: because the line is sad, right, Like that's that's her job.
Speaker 3: And she is notable because so she's the first woman
Speaker 3: to ever run the Exchequer or whatever. And when she
Speaker 3: was like gearing up, her big move was to like
Speaker 3: write a history of women in economics.
Speaker 2: And then it like immediately came out that.
Speaker 3: She plagiarized a lot of it from Wikipedia, and everyone
Speaker 3: was like I'm sure it'll be fine, right, And like
Speaker 3: her big deal is like I'm tougher than the Tories,
Speaker 3: like what I do, Like I just do evil things
Speaker 3: even more than the Tories, which for some reason we're
Speaker 3: supposed to like, so it's like she's doing she's doing
Speaker 3: kind of like turbo austerity again, like in the hopes
Speaker 3: that it will make the line happy, which it won't
Speaker 3: because it doesn't. But so anyway, like all sorts of
Speaker 3: bad stuff has been happening, like and one of the
Speaker 3: big things they were going to do was like cut
Speaker 3: a bunch of benefits to people with disabilities, and finally
Speaker 3: like five of the labor MP's were.
Speaker 2: Like, wait a minute, this sounds evil, and like.
Speaker 3: Rebelled and then there was like a so so as
Speaker 3: a resultable as there was like you know, the Parliament
Speaker 3: got together and Kara Star wars like saying a bunch
Speaker 3: of stupid shit, and people were asking questions and they
Speaker 3: were like, well, Rachel Rrie's gonna have to go, and
Speaker 3: he was like, well, I don't know, and she sat behind.
Speaker 2: Him and starts crying.
Speaker 3: And then like the way the Center responded, this is
Speaker 3: if she was upset over an unrelated, different matter, and
Speaker 3: then they all got like really mad at you online.
Speaker 3: If you were like, oh, yo, I think it's funny
Speaker 3: that this woman who's the architect of misery for so
Speaker 3: many millions of us, is sad, they were like, oh,
Speaker 3: because you're sexist and you hate women. Like, she's just
Speaker 3: doing a very hard job. So anyway, that was really funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, I can't hear you anymore. I've lost you.
Speaker 4: I was muted there go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very funny.
Speaker 2: It's very funny.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, I like it's very hard working
Speaker 3: down at the children's starving factory, Okay.
Speaker 1: I you know, yeah, you guys, I mean, and then
Speaker 1: you guys got a new party. Who knows, you know,
Speaker 1: the efficacy of such things. Yeah, I mean, see if
Speaker 1: mister Corbyn can keep from apologizing his way out of
Speaker 1: the yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's the way that this is
Speaker 3: going to have to work, is that as Zara Sultana
Speaker 3: is going to have.
Speaker 2: To really be.
Speaker 3: Like the face of it, because she's a bit more
Speaker 3: good at attacking I would say, And you know, my
Speaker 3: good friend JC, it's a lovely guy.
Speaker 2: But that's the trouble.
Speaker 3: Like, that's the trouble, right, It's like he's just like
Speaker 3: such a nice boy, and we actually need someone who
Speaker 3: can break legs, which which he isn't you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's yeah, the classic put upon imperial core socialist.
Speaker 4: You know, he's like.
Speaker 1: He you know, he's a great heart and everything, but
Speaker 1: you know, his first inclination seems to be to apologize
Speaker 1: for a lot of things. And you can't do that
Speaker 1: in front of these people, No, no, at all. You
Speaker 1: can't give them even like the slightest inch. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I hope, you know, I hope
Speaker 1: it works out whatever, you know, whatever's working over there.
Speaker 1: It's it's nice that you guys can just have like
Speaker 1: a new party pop up, you know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like that's a good thing.
Speaker 3: There is also some hope in terms of like entryism
Speaker 3: at the Green Party at the moment, because there's a guy,
Speaker 3: Zach Polanski who is for the leadership of the Green Party,
Speaker 3: which could in theory turn it into a leftist vehicle.
Speaker 3: Because like the trouble is at the moment, it's a
Speaker 3: real broad church and you've kind of got like Tories
Speaker 3: who like the Newts in their stream on one hand,
Speaker 3: and you know, people who wish to bring about the
Speaker 3: fall of capitalism, because ultimately, if we're going to save
Speaker 3: the planet, that's what has to be done, right, And
Speaker 3: so perhaps.
Speaker 2: That's like one way of going in. So I've got some.
Speaker 3: Friends who are doing that, who are like joining the
Speaker 3: party in order to vote for him, and then we'll
Speaker 3: see what happens.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I don't know what I'm going
Speaker 2: to do yet.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of like having a look at all sides,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, just like trying very hard not
Speaker 3: to despair.
Speaker 2: Stuff's bad here, but it is.
Speaker 3: It feels good to like maybe have options, even in
Speaker 3: a limited sense, I guess, get it again.
Speaker 1: God, Yet, you know, I don't want to burpen in
Speaker 1: the mic and you know.
Speaker 2: That, but I mean that's what the workers being professional.
Speaker 2: He's being professional over here.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's uh. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, it's uh. Just
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff right now is really uh and
Speaker 1: it's really fucked up. But that's a technical term. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. You know, it's the term of art.
Speaker 4: It's real fucked up. Dog.
Speaker 3: I've noticed I noted on related but not the same
Speaker 3: news that Linda Why the hot Dog diva herself has
Speaker 3: just stepped down as head of Twitter CEO of Twitter.
Speaker 1: Where have where have you gone? Linda yeck are renewing?
Speaker 1: Like a nation turns its only eyes to you.
Speaker 2: Diva down?
Speaker 3: You know, Like I gotta say, it's very I I
Speaker 3: find very funny to to like leave now. I think
Speaker 3: it's really funny where it's like it's basically like the
Speaker 3: AI going full of Hitler is what did it?
Speaker 2: Apparently? I mean, like do you think that's what it is?
Speaker 2: Or do you think it's.
Speaker 1: Just like I mean, like she was always just a
Speaker 1: fig leaf there and like yeah do like no, like
Speaker 1: you can like you can tell because like nobody even
Speaker 1: the media didn't really treat her as like the CEO
Speaker 1: of the thing until like like they did for like
Speaker 1: a few months and then they were like, okay, anyway
Speaker 1: back to actually talking to Eline about this stuff because
Speaker 1: this is just a fig leaf. I mean, so like
Speaker 1: on the one hand, it's like I expected her to leave.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, like that was an embarrassment, even
Speaker 1: though they apparently have uh turned all that off due.
Speaker 3: To yeah, we turned the back of Hitler off guys,
Speaker 3: so don't worry to uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't worry about it due to I don't know,
Speaker 1: the threats of lawsuits and stuff like it was saying
Speaker 1: like prescribed stuff in Turkey. Uh hell yeah, anti anti
Speaker 1: Urdawan ship over there.
Speaker 4: It's just so like.
Speaker 2: That's it's harding to kill the king of Thailand.
Speaker 1: Just like it's like it's just one of those things
Speaker 1: where you look at it and you're like, man, you
Speaker 1: guys are fucking idiots, like like like, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: it's horrifying to be led by such idiots. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's kind of like, I mean, if you guy,
Speaker 1: if this is how you guys run everything.
Speaker 4: Good, God like.
Speaker 1: You got you guys. Like, I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: it's probably a bad idea overall to implode the economy
Speaker 1: while kicking a bunch of people off Medicaid and using
Speaker 1: like a carrot and the stick approach to try and
Speaker 1: like get them to like work awful jobs. They don't
Speaker 1: want to work that nobody in Uh you know that
Speaker 1: a lot of people in medicaid can't even work because
Speaker 1: they don't because it's like grueling farm work and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and it's just like you just you get,
Speaker 1: you get all this stuff. But I mean, at the
Speaker 1: same time, like this structure is looking more rickety by
Speaker 1: the day, and like it like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen, but like this cannot
Speaker 1: continue for long. I mean it, frankly, just it can't.
Speaker 1: Like things are grinding to a halt here and you know,
Speaker 1: the inertia of world capitalism can't sustain, can't pull it
Speaker 1: along for there's too many there's too many contradictions now
Speaker 1: and it's being pulled apart at the top and from below.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what it's going to look like
Speaker 1: after that, but yeah, it's gonna be something. I don't
Speaker 1: have any fucking clue. They don't. They don't tell me
Speaker 1: anything at the at the big Illuminati world meetings, nobody.
Speaker 2: You gotta work your way up. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Hurtful stuff, hurtful stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, let's uh, you want to talk about people doing
Speaker 1: you want to talk about Slavs being Slovs.
Speaker 2: Do you know what?
Speaker 3: Like there are very few things that I like to
Speaker 3: talk about more than that, So I'd say.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, yeah, it's so weird, little guys, weird little guys.
Speaker 2: Weird little guys.
Speaker 1: They're little because they're squatting.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Uh, folks, welcome back to We're Not So Different, a
Speaker 1: podcast about how we are all wearing our ceremonial adidious
Speaker 1: track suits today and squatting. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: stereotype still holds weight. If it doesn't, most of you
Speaker 1: are old enough to get it.
Speaker 4: Just go along.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm delighted to announce that it is still true.
Speaker 1: Yes, good for them, good, good for the Slavs. Folks. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're back in We are heading back to ye old Bohemia.
Speaker 1: You know, Eleanor is pumped. Bohemia mentioned vaguely, Central European,
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe and border lands mentioned. No questions, because we'll
Speaker 1: get them. We'll get to them in the course of
Speaker 1: the show. But folks, at the beginning of the year,
Speaker 1: we promised to visit various places and times during the
Speaker 1: medieval era that we haven't really focused on in the
Speaker 1: show before.
Speaker 4: This previously brought.
Speaker 1: Us on a visit to Constantinople in the Eastern Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: as well as the seven hundred year long period of
Speaker 1: Muslim rule on Alan deLuce and now it takes us
Speaker 1: to Bohemian the Czech Lands. Now now, now, now, now,
Speaker 1: Before you remind me that we've been literally dozens of
Speaker 1: episodes in Bohemia talking about Prague, the Habsburgs, the Holy
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, the Thirty Years War, et cetera, let me
Speaker 1: finish today. Our trip takes us to Bohemia and the
Speaker 1: Czech Lands of the early medieval era. As much as
Speaker 1: we love them and as they serve as a homeland
Speaker 1: for one of the hosts of the show, we barely
Speaker 1: even hinted at the history of the region before Prague
Speaker 1: became a world renowned religious, cultural, scientific, and economic hub
Speaker 1: in the High Middle Ages, back before the famous Yawns
Speaker 1: miliic Kus and Jushka among you know, certainly millions of
Speaker 1: others turned the Kingdom of Bohemia into a rebellious haven
Speaker 1: of religious heterodoxy that would eventually birth the downfall of
Speaker 1: the Catholic churches hegemonic grip on Europe, both from the
Speaker 1: Hussite Wars and then from the Third Disfinistration. Yep, folks,
Speaker 1: they loved to demonstrate, they love to definishtrate what were
Speaker 1: Bohemia and the surrounding Czech lands, even like before, they
Speaker 1: had buildings barely tall enough for a proper definistration. Well
Speaker 1: we're gonna find out now, tries On. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: a sufficiently spectacular natural disaster, geography, geologic event with which
Speaker 1: to lead off this episode, so instead you're stuck with
Speaker 1: the other thing that leads me all struck, the enduring
Speaker 1: human spirit of discovery and the random happened stances that
Speaker 1: conspire to bring us together. And Bohemia, a central European
Speaker 1: region that in medieval times was composed of the western
Speaker 1: half of the modern day Czech Republic, along with parts
Speaker 1: of Greater Moravia and Czech Silesia, is a perfect example
Speaker 1: of that, as it serves as something as a crossroads
Speaker 1: of humanity and even our forebears, and really, who could
Speaker 1: blame them. If the inviting hills and expansive valleys of
Speaker 1: resource rich land nestled against picturesque mountains of Bohemia don't
Speaker 1: appeal to you, then the vast plains of Western Europe
Speaker 1: Ripe for farming, herding, and even more resource exploitation most
Speaker 1: certainly will. And it's not just humans that have so
Speaker 1: interest in the area, as tools dating back to eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years ago have been discovered. Cave and Bruno
Speaker 1: human camps cropped up around two hundred thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and since then we haven't stopped inhabiting or at least
Speaker 1: passing through the region. Excavations in Bohemia have shown that
Speaker 1: basically every major European archaeological culture, meaning groups who left
Speaker 1: discernible archaeological remnants but no other records, so they are
Speaker 1: grouped together by broad commonalities and pottery or art styles,
Speaker 1: has inhabited the area for at least some time. Everyone
Speaker 1: from the Gravedians some twenty five thousand years ago with
Speaker 1: their beautiful venus figurines, to the Linear pottery culture and
Speaker 1: the funnel beakers in the Stone Age. Thereafter the courted
Speaker 1: where people arrived, then the Boden, the bell beakers that
Speaker 1: urn fills, the Tumulus culture, and lastly, among many others,
Speaker 1: the hallstat showed up circa eight hundred BCE to round
Speaker 1: out the Bronze Age. In total, the grounds of Bohemia
Speaker 1: are littered with the remnants of more than a dozen
Speaker 1: separate pre Iron Age cultures, which is far were the
Speaker 1: most places still the start of recorded history and antiquity
Speaker 1: in the region didn't stop people from coming, as Celtic
Speaker 1: tribes from Western Europe soon invaded. One such tribe, the
Speaker 1: Boye boy I. Boy boy Ye, settled and eventually gave
Speaker 1: their name to the lands of Bohemia, though they were
Speaker 1: soon chased away by the Germanic Marcomanni and Lombard peoples.
Speaker 1: By the outset of the verse century BCE, the Romans
Speaker 1: expanded north, but never conquered Bohemia or the Marcomanni despite
Speaker 1: years of clashes, and the area stayed much the same
Speaker 1: until at long last, the Slavs began their great migration
Speaker 1: from the Eurasian step into Central and Western Europe. Though
Speaker 1: the migration began earlier, the Slavs didn't target Bohemia for
Speaker 1: permanent settlement until the late sixth century CE, when a
Speaker 1: group known as the Czechs invaded it, took over and
Speaker 1: assimilated themselves with the remaining Celtic and Germanic peoples in Bohemia,
Speaker 1: later the Western Slavic Peoples. Another Slavic group settled Great
Speaker 1: Moravia to their west, and a beautiful friendship with form,
Speaker 1: mostly over their mutual hatred of Germanic peoples and being
Speaker 1: constantly confused for one another. But you know, you know
Speaker 1: how that goes, Folks. Even this area, which was still
Speaker 1: a provincial backwater, was a melting pot of diversity even
Speaker 1: before the Middle Ages began. And that's where we pick
Speaker 1: up our story as we look at Bohemia from the
Speaker 1: six hundreds through the end of the Premislids Premaclea dynasty
Speaker 1: in thirteen oh six. This episode was requested by our
Speaker 1: patrons Arc Arcturus and Alas Sahir Alsa Heir. We'll have
Speaker 1: a couple of questions from Arc later, while Alsa here
Speaker 1: was basically asking for a more deep dive into the
Speaker 1: earlier era. So here you go, eleanor me think of Bohemia.
Speaker 1: We typically think of the later medieval Bohemia with all
Speaker 1: its pomp and luxury and political power. But what are
Speaker 1: we missing when we fail to take these earlier years
Speaker 1: into account.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really interesting place, is the thing. And
Speaker 3: one of the big reasons that we tend to go
Speaker 3: kind of like straight to the High Medieval period is
Speaker 3: because it is so important and rich and interesting, and
Speaker 3: there's so much stuff going.
Speaker 2: On with that.
Speaker 3: And also fundamentally, look, we we just didn't get literate,
Speaker 3: okay until until the ninth century, we had other stuff
Speaker 3: to do, okay, probably farming.
Speaker 1: Perfect perfect encapsulation of why like all the oh these
Speaker 1: people are destined for great and blah blah blah, like
Speaker 1: White Europe. It's like they didn't even learn how to
Speaker 1: they didn't even learn how to write in Prague until
Speaker 1: like the eight fifties. Like, y, it's okay, and then
Speaker 1: we'll tell you within five hundred years or like one
Speaker 1: of the most important political centers on the planet, you know,
Speaker 1: like right, you know, look what you can do if
Speaker 1: you just happen to settled in a really resource rich
Speaker 1: area and find yeah, silver and also well anyway, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that that is the thing.
Speaker 3: Right. One of the things that is most important about
Speaker 3: it is it's incredibly resourced rich, Like the living is
Speaker 3: easy in Bohemia, that's the thing. Tons of fresh water,
Speaker 3: really great woodlands, so that's important for stuff like heating
Speaker 3: homes and things at the time, like right, for coppicing,
Speaker 3: incredibly rich soil. And it is also in the middle
Speaker 3: of very very many trade routes, so you get a
Speaker 3: lot of back and forth going in terms of people
Speaker 3: need to come in and out of the area, and
Speaker 3: when they do they spend money, right, So it is
Speaker 3: a major east west trade route, it's a major north
Speaker 3: south trade route, and so it's just incredibly rich in resources,
Speaker 3: which is why we have so many varying civilizations who
Speaker 3: lived there over time, you know. And like the first
Speaker 3: thing I ever did when I moved to the Czech
Speaker 3: Republic was lived in Moravia and did a Bronze Age
Speaker 3: burial mound dig, which was cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was fucking hype, I'll tell you
Speaker 2: that much.
Speaker 3: So it's like you can and you can go, and
Speaker 3: there's just like, oh yeah, here's the like remnants of
Speaker 3: the hilltowns from the Bronze Age, and here's all of
Speaker 3: these burial mounds, and here's this and here's that, and
Speaker 3: it is just this place where people always wanted to
Speaker 3: live because it's just not hard to do so, right,
Speaker 3: And so as a result, I think it's really easy
Speaker 3: to kind of discount it now because people don't want
Speaker 3: to learn check fair enough, and also because like we
Speaker 3: come into literacy a little bit later, but you know,
Speaker 3: we were just too busy eating pigs presumably to to
Speaker 3: learn how to write things down.
Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There are worse ways to live so yeah, what what
Speaker 1: from this pre kingdom era still sticks around into the
Speaker 1: modern and postmodern world today.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the basic outlines of what will become the
Speaker 3: Czech Republic are kind of in action and what you
Speaker 3: can see from what we call Great Moravia, Great Moravia Balin.
Speaker 3: We simply love to see Great Moravia. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a huge I'm a huge fan of my Moraverian brethren, Missen.
Speaker 3: But basically we know that at some point in time
Speaker 3: in the eight thirties or so, we have this empire kingdom.
Speaker 2: It's difficult to know what to call it.
Speaker 3: Great Moravia that is founded, and we don't know how
Speaker 3: big it was, weirdly, because you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of people who like write a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: But we've got this guy a Moynier, the first of
Speaker 3: Moravia right now. He does a bunch of conquering and
Speaker 3: either like he's within the kind of traditional boundaries of Moravia,
Speaker 3: which is kind of like from the Morava River over
Speaker 3: towards like outside of the Elba basin zone, but it
Speaker 3: might have gone down as far as Serbia. It certainly
Speaker 3: took in a lot of the Hungarian plains. It definitely
Speaker 3: covered Bohemia and up into parts of Poland. Like it was,
Speaker 3: it was huge, right, and they're doing incredibly well for themselves, right.
Speaker 3: They managed to link up a lot of desperate peoples
Speaker 3: and they've got they got themselves with a nice little
Speaker 3: kingdom going. And so basically then you hit in the
Speaker 3: eight forty six, the Prince of Russi'slav comes to the throne.
Speaker 3: Russislav also one of my favorite names of all time.
Speaker 3: Name your pets, Russislav. Why wouldn't you do that?
Speaker 2: And basically he is like, you know, I see what.
Speaker 3: The krolin Jeans are doing over there, We're doing a
Speaker 3: similar thing over here. And one of the things that
Speaker 3: he thinks that he wants to do, because he keeps
Speaker 3: getting in all of these like battles with the Frankians,
Speaker 3: like because that's rather the thing as he's like, look,
Speaker 3: I think that we're gonna have to like Christianize, We're
Speaker 3: going to have to get booked to the fuck up
Speaker 3: because we can't be we can't be dealing with these
Speaker 3: Frankish people.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: So the first.
Speaker 3: Thing that he kind of does is he writes down
Speaker 3: to Rome and says, hey, could can he spare any
Speaker 3: any like priests to come to teach us how to read,
Speaker 3: and Rome is like, now, which is very funny, right,
Speaker 3: and also like this is a this is a real
Speaker 3: story like about how you know, when everyone is like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, the medieval church so powerful and rich and stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's like it's the middle of the ninth century
Speaker 3: and they can't even like see the utility of like
Speaker 3: christianizing this huge block of land or then they're like no,
Speaker 3: we absolutely, we absolutely cannot do that. And so they say, okay,
Speaker 3: well fuck you then and they write down to Constantinople
Speaker 3: and say, hi, interested in christianizing, Got any priests, got
Speaker 3: any anyone who can like teach us how to write?
Speaker 3: And Constantinople says, yeah, apps of fucking lutely uh, And
Speaker 3: that's when your boys Cyril and Methodius show up. So
Speaker 3: Cyril and Methodius show up. They teach everybody how to
Speaker 3: read old Church Slavonic. They're using the Galgolitic alphabet at
Speaker 3: this point in time, and it will eventually turn into
Speaker 3: some lock. They christianize everyone up, and as a part
Speaker 3: of this, Bohemia gets christianized up. So this is all
Speaker 3: very well and cool, but we you know, then Moravia
Speaker 3: basically just kind of falls apart, and it's because it's huge.
Speaker 2: We don't actually really know why we don't.
Speaker 3: We don't know as much about Great Moravia as we
Speaker 3: would like to do, basically because they get.
Speaker 1: Great Marivia is one of those funny historical oddities that
Speaker 1: you know existed, people write about it. It had a name,
Speaker 1: like it was talked about, you know, the all all
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, but like where, how long.
Speaker 2: What they were doing existed, what they.
Speaker 1: Were doing, how they controlled like because if you look
Speaker 1: at it like just a map, it's like it's a
Speaker 1: huge territory, but like there's no way they directly controlled
Speaker 1: all of that. So like you know, what kind of
Speaker 1: successor state thing did they what did they have going on?
Speaker 4: Like what what is that?
Speaker 3: And yeah, info and it's like it's one of these
Speaker 3: things where you can really understand why people used to
Speaker 3: call the Early Middle Ages the Dark Ages, because literally,
Speaker 3: what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 2: Guys, like we don't have the sources, we don't know.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of it is a in honest to
Speaker 3: god lakut, right, and we can't we can't see it there.
Speaker 1: So and if you if you talk to a regular
Speaker 1: person and you tell them this, like it's somebody like
Speaker 1: somebody like just just like a normal person, like maybe
Speaker 1: they have a slight interest in history or something, maybe
Speaker 1: they don't whatever, Like you tell them this, You're like,
Speaker 1: this is great. Moravia. It was a thing. It literally is.
Speaker 1: U is a direct line predecessor to Bohemia and Prague
Speaker 1: and the Hossites and the Thirty Years. It's a direct
Speaker 1: predecessor to all of that stuff. However, we don't know
Speaker 1: how long it existed. We don't know if everyone within
Speaker 1: this boundary considered themselves to be part of it. We
Speaker 1: don't know how they interacted. We don't know the exact
Speaker 1: contours of it, and we don't even like have names
Speaker 1: for all the rulers that are supposedly took Like it's
Speaker 1: it's nope, you're just you're just like you get why
Speaker 1: people are just like, Okay, dark ages, I got it,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, that's fucking stupid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's stuff.
Speaker 3: It's definitely just kind of shows that you're dealing with
Speaker 3: the civilization that just doesn't have the same priorities that
Speaker 3: we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's confusing and weird, right, it's so like,
Speaker 3: I totally get it, and it's it's a shame because
Speaker 3: I would really like to know more about Great Moravia.
Speaker 3: I think I'm hardly alone in that, but yeah, there
Speaker 3: there are these massive limitations based on sources, and indeed
Speaker 3: they the same thing is true of Bohemia before the
Speaker 3: ninth century. Like we just you know, we know that
Speaker 3: they're lumped in with Great Moravia. We know they christianize
Speaker 3: as a result of it, we know when people come
Speaker 3: through and you know, the generalized population changes, but we
Speaker 3: don't know a whole lot more than that. To be honest,
Speaker 3: it's all archaeological. It's not it's not historical.
Speaker 2: It's the point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very it's a very interesting place because in
Speaker 1: five hundred years they do go from a place where
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, we have like we're piecing archaeological pieces
Speaker 1: of pottery together and going, okay, so yeah, people were
Speaker 1: definitely here in eight hundred CE, but what were they doing? Eh?
Speaker 4: How do they live?
Speaker 1: Eh? And and then like in five hundred years it's
Speaker 1: fucking prague, Like it's you know, birthing.
Speaker 4: Fucking the fucking Reformation.
Speaker 1: Any Yeah, yeah, yeah, before we before we go any
Speaker 1: deeper into it. I have an unironic question that's going
Speaker 1: to sound mean when I say it eleanor.
Speaker 4: What is the slav exactly?
Speaker 1: Like what It's a word that gets thrown around nowadays,
Speaker 1: euphemistically and otherwise. But like when we talk.
Speaker 4: About it here, who are the chicks?
Speaker 1: Who are the Western Slavic peoples?
Speaker 2: Well, look, we're alcohol fueled fuck machines, thank you.
Speaker 1: I really I was like, I was like, I think
Speaker 1: she's making a joke. I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: it a respect laughs.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so this is an annoying thing, right, so
Speaker 3: that we what we definitely know about the Slavic people
Speaker 3: is we can't we we don't come off the.
Speaker 2: Step all right, like we were we were.
Speaker 3: We were on the step, we were hanging out, speaking
Speaker 3: varying Slavic languages and eventually duriling the migration period we
Speaker 3: were came off the step and we moved in uh
Speaker 3: west into Europe. So checks more particularly as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: we are West Slavs uh so uh the we also
Speaker 3: the Slovax of which I am also one the polls
Speaker 3: people like the Salesians who it's like God bless them,
Speaker 3: like they're just always getting lumped in with someone you know,
Speaker 3: like that that that's us, right, and we more particularly
Speaker 3: speak a version of Slavic languages that you know, we
Speaker 3: don't use alphabet for example, we use the Latin alphabet.
Speaker 3: And we were under Roman Catholicism, so you know, we
Speaker 3: we don't really like you know, the East Slavs they
Speaker 3: went Orthodox.
Speaker 2: We didn't, a bit of a shame, but you know,
Speaker 2: there it is.
Speaker 3: And so a good way of kind of thinking about
Speaker 3: the West Slavs is we're the beer Slavs, right, and yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're like the beer and wine Slavs. And then like
Speaker 3: the South Slavs are like they're they're like wine and
Speaker 3: yogurt Slavs.
Speaker 1: Uh So like okay, okay, So like if I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a chart, like you're all initially wine Slavs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're all initially wine Slavs, and then when you move
Speaker 1: further into Central Europe it breaks out you both retained
Speaker 1: the wine aspect.
Speaker 4: Of it, yes, but yeah they but.
Speaker 1: The Southern ones take the Greek yogurt aspect of yes,
Speaker 1: and you guys took the Germanic beer aspect of it.
Speaker 1: And look at that the melting the melting pot of humanity.
Speaker 1: You think I probably sound like I'm joking, but I'm
Speaker 1: really not like it, Like it's yeah, it's gorgeous, Like
Speaker 1: you can you can track you can track that in
Speaker 1: the movement of humans. And like, I mean, Greeks still
Speaker 1: do a lot of yogurt past ship today they're so
Speaker 1: famous for beer, Like, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Crazy what Bulgarians are doing things with yogurt that'll blow
Speaker 3: your mind, which is incredible. But you know, and then
Speaker 3: you've also got your like and then you've got like
Speaker 3: your vodka Slavs, you know, who are more who are
Speaker 3: more Eastern? We do, Look, we all do be distilling fruits.
Speaker 1: If you can't, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna sit
Speaker 1: here and besmirch the rich culture of people who look
Speaker 1: at fruit and go. But what if what if when
Speaker 1: I drink it my eyes crossed?
Speaker 3: It's so important, right, it's so important, right, So yeah,
Speaker 3: like basically we are we're just kind of like a
Speaker 3: group that made it further west. There are like some
Speaker 3: varying things that we know from architecture. Like for example,
Speaker 3: before we Christianized, our temples used to be.
Speaker 2: A little bit more like.
Speaker 3: Long and like Eastern saws oftentimes were more round. But
Speaker 3: you know, like no one knows shit, Like we don't
Speaker 3: know anything, right, So but anyway, like we showed up
Speaker 3: and we threw down in the area, and like that's
Speaker 3: what it is. So it's basically step people's who europeanized.
Speaker 2: That's that's that's it, you know, which.
Speaker 3: But I guess we end up being kind of like
Speaker 3: contingently white, you know, depending Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys, you guys took contingent white status after
Speaker 1: after nineteen ninety one, when you were no longer a
Speaker 1: part of the Great State, the Great Satan e that's right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you took contingent white status and you were like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: So like that means we get to participate in all
Speaker 1: this stuff. And it's like, well, kind, but we're still
Speaker 1: gonna call you evil mongol hordes when we need someone.
Speaker 1: You're like, god damn it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, do not we reserve the right to
Speaker 3: sexualize all the women, Okay.
Speaker 1: Cool, cool, cool cool?
Speaker 4: Great?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaking of incredibly non consensual processes, christianization of yeah,
Speaker 1: Eleanor mentioned it a little so by the eight fifties
Speaker 1: eight sixties, the Church was like, hey, uh, what if
Speaker 1: we all those people in like northern central eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: what if we went and talked to them and uh
Speaker 1: tactfully And by tactfully I mean by force asked them
Speaker 1: to convert and lo and behold that happened so eleanor
Speaker 1: just before this. Uh, since the Czech lands fall outside
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire, uh and we're later invaded by
Speaker 1: the Slavic peoples of the step it was decidedly pagan
Speaker 1: before this. Huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like what we don't exactly fucking know what
Speaker 3: that means though, right, So, like they were definitely doing
Speaker 3: so they were up to something, right, Uh.
Speaker 2: We figure that it might have.
Speaker 3: Might look something a little like what they ended up
Speaker 3: having going on like up for example, in the Baltic
Speaker 3: States later, which is kind of like the most we
Speaker 3: know about any of the pre Christian relators. So I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe we were worshiping snakes or some shit.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, Like like I don't know. So, like
Speaker 3: we definitely know that they have that they are building
Speaker 3: like sanctuaries, you know. They we are building these kind
Speaker 3: of like long buildings where we're like, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's like a sanctuary.
Speaker 2: Where we do religious stuff in there. What are we
Speaker 2: doing in there? I don't know, right, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you don't have writing. It's really hard to
Speaker 1: say like exactly what people are doing because like for
Speaker 1: a long time with archaeology, it was like anything you
Speaker 1: didn't understand or anything that was like vaguely centralized that
Speaker 1: had like a temple type feature, you're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a religious display, and it's like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is for some things, but there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the world whose religions were
Speaker 1: like out in the trees and you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, is that is that a
Speaker 1: religious institution or a temple or is that just some
Speaker 1: building may have where they chated you know what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's very difficult to tell because like when
Speaker 3: anything gets written about it, it's usually written from antagonistic
Speaker 3: sources like the church, and then they're like, oh, they're
Speaker 3: killing babies in there, and they are pagans, and it's like,
Speaker 3: what the fuck's a pagan?
Speaker 2: You know, like who knows? And it's like a likely
Speaker 2: if you look at.
Speaker 3: For example, what's going on up in the Baltic region,
Speaker 3: once again. You know, they're all like, this forest is sacred,
Speaker 3: we like all the animals in it. You can't go
Speaker 3: hunting here. We got a big fire. You like that fire,
Speaker 3: big fire.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like that's that's what their religion is.
Speaker 3: So it's difficult to say because nobody wrote it down,
Speaker 3: and people start writing down things when they're like, we're
Speaker 3: all Christian, right, yeah, yeah, that's right, you know. And
Speaker 3: you know, obviously with any Christianization story, it starts with
Speaker 3: the elites, and the elites are the ones writing things down,
Speaker 3: so we only really know from their perspective. And then also,
Speaker 3: you know, you get for example, we'll talk about people
Speaker 3: who are still pagan in air quotes and it'll be like, uh,
Speaker 3: wenches Sla, Saint Wencheslaus's mom draw home Era is still.
Speaker 2: An evil Pagan and then like, you know, does evil things.
Speaker 3: Right, so you have to be like these bad people
Speaker 3: or his brother boy Slaus the cruel is a Pagan
Speaker 3: and that's why he's so bad, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah. The it's funny because all of
Speaker 1: this centers on Moravia, which is to the west and
Speaker 1: south of what we typically think of as Bohemia. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when they christianized the area, they specifically were trying to
Speaker 1: Christianize Moravia, and getting Bohemia was just like a nice
Speaker 1: little treat on the side. Eleanor mentioned the brother saints
Speaker 1: Cyril and Methodius who showed up in eight sixty three,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're considered you know, the I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess the founding saints.
Speaker 4: Of the area or whatever.
Speaker 1: There were churches there, yeah before that, a few you know,
Speaker 1: thirty or forty years before that, So it wasn't a
Speaker 1: Christianization even though it officially started in like the eight sixties,
Speaker 1: was happening beforehand in fits and starts, but you know
Speaker 1: it's yeah, absolutely, yeah. And that brings us to our
Speaker 1: first question of the show from Arcturists about Great Moravia,
Speaker 1: which we've been discussing here as much as we can
Speaker 1: and a very important historical invention known as the Old
Speaker 1: Church Slavonic language. So, yeah, Eleanor, what is Old Church
Speaker 1: Slavonic and why is it so important?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So it is really great and useful because it's sort
Speaker 3: of like Latin for Orthodox people, right, like, yeah, in
Speaker 3: you know, if you consider the way that Latin functions
Speaker 3: in the medieval period, like not not in the Roman period,
Speaker 3: in the medieval period, and it functions as this form
Speaker 3: of like legalese and way of writing back and forth.
Speaker 2: That's what Old Church Slavonic is doing.
Speaker 3: So basically Cyril and Methodius invent it because they're like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: all of these guys are they're speaking various Slavic languages,
Speaker 3: and what you can kind of do is like squint
Speaker 3: your ears and like if you just were like, how
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 2: Does it sound like words? What do you think you know?
Speaker 3: Because we have a lot of overlap in a lot
Speaker 3: of our languages, so that things are really similar, right.
Speaker 3: And then this also means that they're kind of using
Speaker 3: these kind of like Galgolitic and then siru like letters
Speaker 3: for it. And this sticks around for really quite some time.
Speaker 3: So my good friend doctor Claire Griffin, who is a Russianist,
Speaker 3: she's got excellent Old Church Slavonic because she works on
Speaker 3: like early modern and late medieval Muscovie and you still
Speaker 3: need it, right, So it really really sticks around in
Speaker 3: the East. But because of the way things work out
Speaker 3: in the Czech Lands and us kind of like coming
Speaker 3: under the sphere of influence of the Holy Roman Empire
Speaker 3: and things like that. Then we end up going with
Speaker 3: the Western ways of doing things, and so we kind
Speaker 3: of abandoned it eventually. But the earliest records of Great
Speaker 3: Moravia are are all in Church Slavonic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yes, the modern cyrillic alphabet that
Speaker 1: you know, Russia and other countries still use is based
Speaker 1: on Glagolithic.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it's just like.
Speaker 1: You know, they just showed up created this cool church
Speaker 1: language in the eight sixties, and yeah, it's spread out
Speaker 1: from there. It's I mean, yeah, it's it's the church
Speaker 1: language for for the Orthodox, you know, in non uh
Speaker 1: you know, in non.
Speaker 4: Greek Orthodox places.
Speaker 6: It's.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's just a big deal.
Speaker 3: And you know, maybe we should have stuck with it,
Speaker 3: because my thing about calling it cyrillic, it's like cyrial
Speaker 3: and Methodius, they're like the delusion guitari of the early Church.
Speaker 3: Like everyone always says delude a short term. No one's
Speaker 3: ever talking about guitari, you know, everyone's always saying cyrillic.
Speaker 3: No one's calling it cyril and Methodick. Yeah, where's my
Speaker 3: method justice for methodius?
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, oh, just because the other guy's name
Speaker 1: comes first.
Speaker 4: To get it.
Speaker 1: It's so not fair, not fair, not fair. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's how modern. The modern cyrillic alphabet was invented by
Speaker 1: Greek guys going into the Slavic lands to forcibly christianize people.
Speaker 2: I love Eastern Europe. It's so so good, it's so good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But here about here is when we have to say
Speaker 1: goodbye to Great Moravia because a group called the Magyars
Speaker 1: we know them now as the Hungarians, they came in
Speaker 1: and invaded, and uh, they wipe Greater Moravia, Great Moravia out,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, ripped to this political entity of some
Speaker 1: kind that existed. Probably thanks for all the memories. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is when the Bohemian lands they start to
Speaker 1: instead of looking east to the Slavs and the Slavic
Speaker 1: peoples or the Magyars, they are instead looking a bit
Speaker 1: to the west. And yeah, our arcturists ask us to
Speaker 1: cover the Premislids, the Premislid dynasty in some people, in
Speaker 1: some details. So here we go, eleanor who are the
Speaker 1: premise Slids And how did they turn this from like
Speaker 1: a real super backwater in like the eight eighties into
Speaker 1: like an actual into a real duchy Soon.
Speaker 3: Enough Okay, so this dynasty features the sound that only
Speaker 3: checks have. Okay, so are with a hat hot check
Speaker 3: over it. The way to think about making the sound
Speaker 3: is it's like the z in azure, but you're rolling
Speaker 3: your tongue.
Speaker 2: So they are the chemi slids.
Speaker 1: Premis shimmy slid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good. Shimmy yeah, chemmy slid is like, that's
Speaker 3: good to say.
Speaker 2: Do not worry about it.
Speaker 3: I do not expect anyone to do it. Literally, this
Speaker 3: is our sound, thank you very much. It comes up
Speaker 3: all the time, Like you know.
Speaker 1: There weren't even my brain can't even form the like
Speaker 1: there in my head. I can literally see the two
Speaker 1: wires and they're sitting there and no electrons will fire
Speaker 1: across them. They're like, no, it's we're.
Speaker 3: Not Yeah, it's our our our brains are not wired
Speaker 3: as English speakers to hit the role on that one.
Speaker 2: Uh does it?
Speaker 1: Does? It almost come out as like a ship like him?
Speaker 2: It's like sh yeah.
Speaker 3: Like so if you if you just don't, like, if
Speaker 3: you don't want to do the rolling, no one's gonna
Speaker 3: be mad at you. But so I just hit with
Speaker 3: the ship, like just just think of it like a
Speaker 3: dizy and azure yes, so so yeah, the chemmy Slids, Uh,
Speaker 3: the fir chevy Slid was a plowman called Chemisil obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where the paper. Yeah, like Emma, lady man.
Speaker 1: Medieval early medieval, like like early medieval state formation was
Speaker 1: so cool because you could just be like the like
Speaker 1: the wealthiest plowman of some tribe or whatever. Right, yep,
Speaker 1: I'm moving into Prague a castle like what now, like
Speaker 1: a center of culture and refinement. And in eight in
Speaker 1: eight eighty it was like a rock and a couple
Speaker 1: of steaks hill, it's some hill jack Central European farmer
Speaker 1: was like, I'm I'm the king of this hill and.
Speaker 2: Like, okay, look, I'm gonna be real with you.
Speaker 3: This story comes to us from our good friend Cosmus
Speaker 3: of Prague. And Cosmos of Prague he wrote the chronicle
Speaker 3: Boe Morum in the twelfth century, which is an excellent
Speaker 3: source which I used a lot of. Shout out to
Speaker 3: Cosmis of Prague and his stories. So you got chevy
Speaker 3: Sel the plowmen, right, and Chevysil is out one day
Speaker 3: he's you know, looking yoked a ship. He's shirtless, he's
Speaker 3: glistening in the sun. And who should come along but
Speaker 3: a fairy named Lebusha. Okay obviously, and Lebusa is like,
Speaker 3: gotta get me some of that can't wait to get plowed,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: They get together and they form like basically a dynasty.
Speaker 3: And then we have a number of after these people,
Speaker 3: like the seven mythical Bohemian Princess. Okay, so you got
Speaker 3: chevy sil first, then you have his son Nezamisil them
Speaker 3: not the Voyan, Nislav Scheesmo, Misil, Neklon and Holstevite. Okay,
Speaker 3: like so Cosmis lets us know that all these guys,
Speaker 3: it's just.
Speaker 1: Sure they're all definitely really great.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah right.
Speaker 3: So basically what we do know is that these are
Speaker 3: people who get really rich farming in the area around Prague.
Speaker 2: And the area around.
Speaker 3: Prague is good because it is pretty easily defensible because
Speaker 3: of the Watava River and everything. The Franks do come
Speaker 3: over here and fuck with you a little bit, but
Speaker 3: it's it's easier because of the hills and the river
Speaker 3: situation to kind of make a defensible play for it.
Speaker 3: So there are some people who were farming and living
Speaker 3: in this area. The first actual previously that we know
Speaker 3: about is bouchevoy the first, okay, and Bouchevoi.
Speaker 2: Bouchevoi is also like a fun thing, a fun.
Speaker 3: Name because like the way you say kind of like
Speaker 3: my god and check is Bourgemoi. So Bouchevois he gets
Speaker 3: baptized in eight seventy four by specifically Methodius not cereal,
Speaker 3: so in your face cereal like Methodius gang. And like
Speaker 3: in this period, great Brabia.
Speaker 2: Kind of starts to fall apart.
Speaker 3: You know, there's the issues with the Huns is probably
Speaker 3: one of the biggest things, and it's a large group
Speaker 3: to try to keep together. So what ends up happening
Speaker 3: is that the texts get their independence, like the Bohemians
Speaker 3: get their independence right sometime in kind of like the
Speaker 3: late ninth century. Okay, So there is a not very
Speaker 3: cool interregnum around one thousand and three two thousand and
Speaker 3: four where Bulletslaus of Poland takes over, but this is
Speaker 3: thankfully short lived.
Speaker 2: But you know, the point is you got your Bougevoi, right,
Speaker 2: So you've got Bouchevoi, who is like nominantly pretty Christian.
Speaker 2: Then you get.
Speaker 3: The first, Then you have Rothi, Slaus the first. Now
Speaker 3: ro Slas is important because his wife is Milla, and
Speaker 3: Milla shout out, that's my grandma's name. We love it,
Speaker 3: shout out Milla Landmila christianizes and now, which is also
Speaker 3: a funny thing to be talking about because Bouchevoy was Christianized.
Speaker 3: But the point is it takes a while to take
Speaker 3: it too, takes a couple of generations. Not everyone from
Speaker 3: all of the noble families who are going to be
Speaker 3: marrying in are necessarily going to be Christianizing, but Limilla,
Speaker 3: Ludmilla does right.
Speaker 1: And it was like you were talking about on that
Speaker 1: Chapo episode you and Derek were on when you were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're we're going to do this ironically. Oh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be Christian And then it's like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah this literally yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So actually, sorry I missed books. So Landnila mary s
Speaker 3: who's boys son. Sorry, And then she has her son, Roislaus,
Speaker 3: now Rosislaus the first who is not Ludmilla's fucking son,
Speaker 3: not not husband you sorry everybody, But so Rodislaus marries
Speaker 3: this woman, Drajo Mira and is like drawn from one
Speaker 3: of the other noble families, and dra uh is an
Speaker 3: evil pagan boo boo boo uh and dies kind of young,
Speaker 3: and Ventroslaus uh is is their son, So save VLAs
Speaker 3: you know Voxlav in Czech, you know him of the
Speaker 3: Christmas Carol.
Speaker 1: That's a.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Steve, Yeah, exactly, that's it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, he was showing signs of being real Christian,
Speaker 3: and so Ludmilla is like, yeah, you come live with
Speaker 3: me and stay away from your like evil pagan mother.
Speaker 3: You know, we're gonna we're gonna christian you up, real good. Uh.
Speaker 2: We are going to make like a ruling European a
Speaker 2: leade of you.
Speaker 3: Uh. The legend is that Dravamira then like orders the
Speaker 3: death of Ludmilla and that like three nights go and
Speaker 3: kill her, and like the idea being that like then
Speaker 3: she'll have control of ventus Laus and as he's the
Speaker 3: heir apparent, then she'll like control him or whatever. But
Speaker 3: because uness Slaus is so holy, doesn't pan out like that,
Speaker 3: Ludmilla becomes a saint because obviously she does, and then
Speaker 3: you've got your ventus less So wenteess Laus is very holy,
Speaker 3: very pious, that's what his deal is. But he's also
Speaker 3: ruling at a point in time when the Franks are
Speaker 3: really like Holy Roman Empire, tonight, Hoily Roman Empire, Queen
Speaker 3: Hili Roman Empire, and he's like.
Speaker 2: Not really, hey, you know, And a thing I.
Speaker 3: Kind of consider at this point in time is where
Speaker 3: we are considering the the Chevyslds at this point in
Speaker 3: time like this is technically a dukedom because they've kind
Speaker 3: of like been dealing with the Franks by being like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm your vassal like whatever, you know.
Speaker 2: And basically the hr.
Speaker 3: Wants to take over as is their wont Check's not
Speaker 3: so into this, and so Ve just slus like it
Speaker 3: goes out and is supposed to be like fighting a
Speaker 3: battle against Henry the Fowler, Now get ready for some legends, okay.
Speaker 2: So basically it's.
Speaker 3: Like, uh, they're like, no, get the fuck out of here,
Speaker 3: and then like wnce Slaus rides out in battle and says, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, let's not like kill everyone in our armies
Speaker 3: over the stupid thing.
Speaker 2: Why don't you and.
Speaker 3: Me just fight a duel and then whoever wins will
Speaker 3: just be the winner. And then uh, the Emperor sees
Speaker 3: angels behind Wenceslaus, it is.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, shit, I shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Oh shoot it.
Speaker 3: Oh real though, And so basically he's like, Okay, you know,
Speaker 3: we're gonna keep things as they are, and like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know you you're just gonna be amalgamated more particular,
Speaker 3: but we're not going to like try to take you over.
Speaker 2: So yay, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: And then there's like a whole thing about him like
Speaker 3: coming to a banquet late because he was up praying
Speaker 3: all night, and the same thing happens again, and that's
Speaker 3: how he gets the arm of Saint Vitas and starts
Speaker 3: the cathedral. It's it's whatever.
Speaker 2: Anyway, long story short.
Speaker 1: Was the arm like just an arm gifted to him? Corpore,
Speaker 1: Is that what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: So basically Henry the Fowler had this arm. Right, he's
Speaker 3: got the arm you do, He's got the arm of
Speaker 3: Saint Vitas. And so basically, like there was a big
Speaker 3: meeting of everyone in the lower Room and empire.
Speaker 2: They were supposed to be having a banquet.
Speaker 3: Wenches saus came late because he doesn't eat food and
Speaker 3: he was up all night praying. And then uh, once again,
Speaker 3: Henry the Fowler was like, you're a little bitch. And
Speaker 3: then it was like, oh shit, there's angels behind you.
Speaker 3: And then he was like never mind, and actually you
Speaker 3: can have any treasure for my treasury you want, and
Speaker 3: Saint wentres Sauce is like, I'll have that arm, thank you.
Speaker 2: And that's why want.
Speaker 1: To I want to believe this story, I really do.
Speaker 1: And the angels appearing behind him is not the proper
Speaker 1: part I have trouble with. The part I have trouble
Speaker 1: with is that this guy just like had an arm
Speaker 1: sitting in like a.
Speaker 2: Glass uncommon loot you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like you like you're pulling that out and
Speaker 1: you're like, how did this survive? How have you kept
Speaker 1: this this song? Like regardless of who the hand actually
Speaker 1: arm actually belonged to, like and that's just sitting my god.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe dazzled it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You get those ones that they've like golded up and stuff.
Speaker 1: You don't know what an amazing people.
Speaker 4: I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not what an amazing people. It's like, yes, here
Speaker 1: is my collection of oddities. Everybody has like a Ripley's
Speaker 1: believe it or not, you know, like yeah basic one
Speaker 1: of those roadside attractions. It's like obviously fake stuff. But
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, Wow, a bigfoot and it's like fake
Speaker 1: doll hair glued onto a human foot or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly exactly. You know it's like a shrunken head
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, but you know.
Speaker 3: That's what the prog Cathedral is called Saint Vidas, Saint
Speaker 3: Ventis Lass and Saint Adilbert is because it got founded
Speaker 3: with like Saint Vitas's arm.
Speaker 2: He's like not a particularly interesting.
Speaker 3: Saint, but so and it's like that's why I always
Speaker 3: just tend to call it the pro Cathedral, because it's
Speaker 3: like we don't need to be getting into like every
Speaker 3: single saint that it's consecrated to, right because like it
Speaker 3: really it should just be Saint Frentis last, but that
Speaker 3: would be a great insult to him, right because he
Speaker 3: loves Saint Vidas and Adelbert got in there because basically
Speaker 3: he comes from like the other big dynasty other than
Speaker 3: the Shemy Slids, and they were mad.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. Unfortunately, a good king
Speaker 1: Wincess Loss met his end prematurely as he was good King.
Speaker 2: Wen Wells got killed by his bier bro. Both lost
Speaker 2: the crewel, which is how you get that's how you
Speaker 2: got the name of the cruel.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be stabbed me, bro, the guy who
Speaker 1: just got stabbed. You're not gonna commit re commit richicide,
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 3: Bro? Yeah, it's like one hundred percent he committed regicide
Speaker 3: and like uh and and the thing that's funny about
Speaker 3: it is everyone's like, did you just kill your fucking brother?
Speaker 3: And he's like I sure did, and everyone's like hmm,
Speaker 3: how about that.
Speaker 6: It's just like and then like something the king Now,
Speaker 6: I guess it would just be fine with stuff like this,
Speaker 6: like you killed this like beloved like local figure.
Speaker 1: Your brother, and they're all just like, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 1: And then like like ten fifteen years later, like they're like,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna become part of the Holy ro Roman
Speaker 1: empar burn this ship to the fucking crap, and you're
Speaker 1: just like, I mean, fine, that's fine too, but like
Speaker 1: where was this when they killed your beloved Vincess Laus?
Speaker 1: Like yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's really funny because it's like he gets called
Speaker 3: bois Loss the Cruel because they're like this is so
Speaker 3: fucked up, man, Like this fucking sucks, and I's like
Speaker 3: you're gonna do anything about it? N no, Oh, And
Speaker 3: it's like that. But then his son, who is also
Speaker 3: a Bolislaus, he gets really into the religious aspects of it,
Speaker 3: so he's voice lost the pious and uh so he
Speaker 3: kind of like really gets things rolling again.
Speaker 2: Then his son boys Loss the red Haired.
Speaker 3: Is the one who like loses the kingdom to the Poles,
Speaker 3: which isn't great, but we got it back pretty fast.
Speaker 3: So like Yaromir comes in and like takes care of it.
Speaker 3: And then you just kind of like have you know,
Speaker 3: a litany of of them basically up until the twelve
Speaker 3: cents Tree, and like this is this is what's going on, right,
Speaker 3: It's just like Duke after Duke Chevy slid after shemy slid.
Speaker 3: Most of them are called ventous loss or odcar or
Speaker 3: like you know, spot the book Bourchevois. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like it's all you have the occasional Conrad in there,
Speaker 3: which is always funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, before we get before we get to
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Bohemia and all that. In ten o two,
Speaker 1: the uh the Duchy of Bohemia, which was formed in
Speaker 1: like the late ninth century. It formerly became a part
Speaker 1: of the Holy Roman Empire and UH and people a
Speaker 1: lot of the people weren't weren't happy about.
Speaker 3: That noworth, Yeah, people don't fucking like that.
Speaker 2: People don't like to be amalgamated into empires.
Speaker 3: No, it turns out and so and also this is
Speaker 3: just like one other case of like the Germans pushing
Speaker 3: us around, which were not big on.
Speaker 2: No, we don't love it.
Speaker 3: So it's quite funny because like all the stories about
Speaker 3: Saint Eve just less.
Speaker 2: They kind of like show this.
Speaker 3: Up where they're like, fucking these German guys came over
Speaker 3: and it's like, you know, part of his mirror. Girls
Speaker 3: are just kind of like keeping the Germans sufficiently in
Speaker 3: Czech like just being like I am not gonna kill
Speaker 3: everyone in the country over this, but also like could
Speaker 3: you get out of my face sort of a deal.
Speaker 3: And so like it's funny because it's it's political playmaking
Speaker 3: back and forth that keeps them. I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 3: keep them independent, but it keeps them. It gives them
Speaker 3: a little bit more power right there. There are certain
Speaker 3: things that will last for a really long time. Like
Speaker 3: technically the Prague is under the auspices of minds, like
Speaker 3: the cathedral my minds is like the where all the
Speaker 3: big decisions get made, which is fucking bonkers.
Speaker 1: Uh, they don't get to be a real boy for
Speaker 1: a few more years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, and it's it's it's one of these things
Speaker 3: where the checks are happy that there is not that
Speaker 3: much Holy Roman imperial control. And you know, it really
Speaker 3: kind of shows up when if you just look at
Speaker 3: the maps, so you know, like if you go and
Speaker 3: you look at those fifteenth century maps and it's like
Speaker 3: everything is carved out within twenty miles or so, Bohemia
Speaker 3: is Bohemia, and it's like because we just do different
Speaker 3: things over here, because that's that's not how it goes down, right,
Speaker 3: Like not everybody gets to have like their little their
Speaker 3: tiny little postage stamp of power, right, so it just, yeah,
Speaker 3: people really don't like it, and being the Duke of
Speaker 3: Bohemia as they are at this point in time comes
Speaker 3: with a lot of attempting to balance that and just
Speaker 3: trying to always play your cards right to keep as
Speaker 3: much of your own power as you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's they got they got assimilated, and they weren't
Speaker 1: even like they weren't even special yet. Because like it's
Speaker 1: one thing if you get brought in and you have
Speaker 1: special powers and special rules and special everything, but you
Speaker 1: don't and you just you're just you know, uh, you're
Speaker 1: just there. You're under the same dukes that you've the.
Speaker 4: God damn it.
Speaker 2: Uh, I don't understand.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how I can read Japanese more easily
Speaker 1: than I. It doesn't matter anyway.
Speaker 4: Uh, it's.
Speaker 1: They just you got the same people. But you know,
Speaker 1: you're fighting these kind of battles against the Holy Roman
Speaker 1: Emperors and you know, you don't you're not special yet.
Speaker 1: But like we have come a long way from like
Speaker 1: we don't really know exactly what's happening before eight eighty
Speaker 1: to now, like we're a duchy and we've you know,
Speaker 1: we've fought back against the hr We didn't win, but
Speaker 1: you know we maybe got a little uh you know,
Speaker 1: maybe got a little respect, a little something like that,
Speaker 1: like how how are we doing that? And you know, listeners,
Speaker 1: keep in mind the silver minds that the Bohemia was
Speaker 1: famed for. We're not discovered until around the year thirteen hundred,
Speaker 1: So this is happening before they had like Kopious, the
Speaker 1: biggest silver strike in Europe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's absolutely true. So you know, one of
Speaker 3: the big things that is true though, is they're still
Speaker 3: pretty rich. We definitely know, you know, because because there's
Speaker 3: such a huge crossroads. So for example, they have a
Speaker 3: really large Jewish population, which means that like that opens
Speaker 3: things up for banking. And we certainly know, at least
Speaker 3: in the late tenth century that we see from travel
Speaker 3: chronicles that talk about like, oh yeah, Prague is really rich.
Speaker 2: Like this is one of the most important. There's a.
Speaker 3: Travel chronicle from a Spanish Jewish person who comes across
Speaker 3: and he claims that Bohemia is the richest country and
Speaker 3: Prague is the richest city north of the Alps, is
Speaker 3: what he claims. So so there's like something going on
Speaker 3: in there, just like in terms of like what trade is.
Speaker 3: The other thing that the Jimmy Slidz managed to do
Speaker 3: really well is they do some pretty okay fighting for
Speaker 3: the Holy Roman Empire. And in particular, this comes down
Speaker 3: to the Battle of Lechfield, which happens in nine to
Speaker 3: fifty five.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, everybody, I had to look it up. I
Speaker 2: did not remember. I was like, when the fuck did
Speaker 2: the Battle of fuck Field takebak?
Speaker 3: But basically, so this is this like here, you know,
Speaker 3: the Magyars are once again like out of pocket and
Speaker 3: Boyslat the cruel goes out for Emperor out of the great,
Speaker 3: and he does rather a lot of killing, and so
Speaker 3: basically Auto as a sign of you know, yeah, you're
Speaker 3: doing great, sweetie gives him Moravia. So then Moravia becomes
Speaker 3: like guts underneath the tremy slids, and then that gives
Speaker 3: them more power again as well, and then so that
Speaker 3: means that it's like a richer and more powerful place.
Speaker 3: So basically they've got a lot of money and they're
Speaker 3: good at fighting, which is kind of like the two
Speaker 3: best things that you can be. And it's like and
Speaker 3: they're doing enough for.
Speaker 2: The Holy Roman Empire that they're like, do we really
Speaker 2: want to get into it with these guys?
Speaker 3: Like so, to a certain extent, the Franks are looking
Speaker 3: at them as a useful buffer, right where it's nice
Speaker 3: to have some non Germans in between you and the
Speaker 3: Magyars fundamentally, like it's nice to have some guys that
Speaker 3: you just don't have to give as much of a
Speaker 3: fuck about and you can still take some taxes. But
Speaker 3: if you're just thinking about them as a buffer, then
Speaker 3: that that is kind of like what happens. And then
Speaker 3: when you know things like the Mongol invasions continue to happen,
Speaker 3: that they're more and more happy that these guys are
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's the thing, you know. So you're you're
Speaker 1: the duchy, You're under the you're chafing under the those
Speaker 1: haughty dipshits and minds who think they're better than you.
Speaker 1: But in twelve twelve, one auto car the first gets
Speaker 1: the hereditary title of the King of Bohemia from Holy
Speaker 1: Roman Emperor Frederick the Second. And now you get a kingdom.
Speaker 1: Now you're the extra special boys. This is the only
Speaker 1: kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire. This is a big deal.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of Dutch she's margraviates, principalities, free cities,
Speaker 1: you name it. But there's only one kingdom and that
Speaker 1: is Bohemia. So eleanor.
Speaker 2: We're special?
Speaker 1: What is what? What is it like?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: What is what?
Speaker 4: What? What?
Speaker 1: Why is? Why is Bohemia special enough to be accorded
Speaker 1: this honor? And what what kind of treatment did they
Speaker 1: did they get from it?
Speaker 4: If if if anything?
Speaker 3: So basically, this had been kicking around as a bit
Speaker 3: of an honorific for a little while.
Speaker 2: So Roislaus the.
Speaker 3: Second in theory got called king by Henry the fourth first,
Speaker 3: and basically that was again like duties in the line
Speaker 3: of like being a.
Speaker 2: Shield for Germans.
Speaker 3: Right now, Frederick the second, you know, our second favorite,
Speaker 3: the Holy Roman Emperor, he is embroiled in rather a
Speaker 3: lot of intrigue, right, Like, he is constantly beefing with
Speaker 3: the papacy here, always trying to make him go on
Speaker 3: a crusade, which he doesn't want to do. He is
Speaker 3: trying to avoid being forced to go out and like
Speaker 3: fight Batu Khan. You know, he just wants to take
Speaker 3: his fucking baths with his bitches and be left in peace.
Speaker 3: Right And basically this was a way of kind of
Speaker 3: like trying to he was able to sort of play
Speaker 3: Frederick's desire to kind of get one up on Innocent
Speaker 3: the third, right, Like, basically this is kind of like
Speaker 3: a way of getting around the weelfs and the ho
Speaker 3: ins dolphins, right, like, who are beefing it out and
Speaker 3: there's all this political intrigue going on. So Frederick the
Speaker 3: second is like, all right, look, i am going to
Speaker 3: go ahead and I'm going to call these guys like
Speaker 3: these are definitely these are definitely kings. Here's the Golden
Speaker 3: Bull that puts this down. But Hem and Moravia are
Speaker 3: like autonomous within the Holy Roman Empire, and what this
Speaker 3: does is it gains him an incredibly powerful friend. Yeah right,
Speaker 3: so this is this is a one of the prince
Speaker 3: imperial electors. And any time that you end up calling
Speaker 3: a reichshag, then you, like the Boho means are gonna
Speaker 3: be like yep, wave it through whatever it fucking takes,
Speaker 3: because they they want to maintain their soverenity and their
Speaker 3: caeserenity over this area.
Speaker 2: So basically it's just a really good.
Speaker 3: Bit of statescraft, both on Otocar's part and and on
Speaker 3: Frederick's part, because they both realize what's going on like
Speaker 3: the European scene, and they're like, okay, well this is
Speaker 3: this is the best way to do these things. And
Speaker 3: fundamentally Frederick doesn't give a fuck he wants to be
Speaker 3: in Sicily.
Speaker 1: He doesn't. Yeah that doesn't okay, Yeah, now you have
Speaker 1: your own you have your vote for Holy erman Ember.
Speaker 1: There's still only seven of you that I have to
Speaker 1: deal with. I'm going back.
Speaker 4: To Italy alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, leave me alone. I do not want to
Speaker 3: come up there. I don't want to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Not like European winters or European falls or European summers.
Speaker 1: I want to be right here on yes, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to Bedean Coast.
Speaker 3: I am in Palermo eating lemons, you know. And so
Speaker 3: it's it basically, it is just a way of making
Speaker 3: friends and that works very successfully through him, basically because
Speaker 3: after that auto cars like that's right, boss, you know,
Speaker 3: because why wouldn't you right, So basically he and also it.
Speaker 2: Isn't that much of a change.
Speaker 3: It's mostly just like codifying what had customarily been in
Speaker 3: place for a couple of generations too, so he can't
Speaker 3: Frederick also can't be accused of Korean favor.
Speaker 2: Right because he's like what you're already called it? What
Speaker 2: this is? Where here? What it's It's it's quite funny,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Fun fact the title King of Bohemia lasted as first
Speaker 1: a reel and then adjure title until the end of
Speaker 1: World War One. That is hash sh it went on
Speaker 1: like it is just.
Speaker 2: That's why we had to have World War One. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: it is it.
Speaker 1: Is same, you know. Yeah, it's folks, Yeah, they they
Speaker 1: they're they're coming up the late premishld's they they've they've
Speaker 1: they've come up there. They're real, they're real big boys now,
Speaker 1: real regional players on the stage. As I said earlier,
Speaker 1: around the year thirteen hundred, there were massive silver deposits
Speaker 1: discovered in Kunta Horra, and uh yeah, that allowed the
Speaker 1: proge Grossian, their denomination currency at the time, to be
Speaker 1: a really big part of not early monetization, but I
Speaker 1: guess proto monetization of Europe that happened on very in
Speaker 1: small scattered instances before fourteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it eventually ended up giving us the word
Speaker 3: for dollar, because there's also another denomination called the taller.
Speaker 3: So that's a great that's a great check invention. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like, uh, you know, these are mentally wealthy and
Speaker 3: important people who play the system incredibly well.
Speaker 1: Uh successfully defended against the Mongols, like the like the
Speaker 1: literal like.
Speaker 2: Like natural Mongols. Yeah, the Mongol Mongols.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like whatever, everyone's like, damn, they're so unstoppable,
Speaker 3: like checks are like what, like it's hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, well I mean sure, like you know,
Speaker 1: well sure, maybe they got to raise all of Moravia
Speaker 1: and like Hungary is or wasteland and everything, but we're
Speaker 1: just built different the Moai.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like it's just yeah, k being like pissed off
Speaker 3: that Frederic the Second will come up there, Frederic the
Speaker 3: Second being like if I make you king?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like I don't want to know, like
Speaker 1: you can have it. I don't care, just take it.
Speaker 1: I do not want to leave the Mediterranean coast for
Speaker 1: any goddamn reason. Yeah. Uh sorry. The Battle of Mohai
Speaker 1: Uh it was a Mongol victory. Uh really shaped so
Speaker 1: much of the world and would have probably would have
Speaker 1: been a much, much, much bigger deal had uh who
Speaker 1: was it that died this time?
Speaker 4: Was it Oka Day?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, died and they had to ski daddle back
Speaker 1: for a you know, a big, a big con meeting.
Speaker 4: I forget what they're called.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they had to go sit down and talk about
Speaker 3: who was the bestest boy after that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they Yeah, but you know, would the
Speaker 1: Mongols have kept riding right on through had that not happened. Probably,
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. Uh, And the Czechs got
Speaker 1: to uh live to tell the tale and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought the I fought the Mongols and there and
Speaker 1: their relatives like oh yeah, well, who won, Like, that's
Speaker 1: not important.
Speaker 2: I don't see any Mongols here, do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I must have won, Like, well, what about
Speaker 1: the Battle of Mohai. Didn't you lose, like all of
Speaker 1: your shut up, shut up.
Speaker 3: Well you know what else, I lost track of any
Speaker 3: Mongols in the area because they're gone.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's yeah anyway, Eleanor you were saying they
Speaker 1: were they were getting money. They had survived this, uh.
Speaker 2: The money bitches.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the horrors of the thirteenth the fourteenth century were
Speaker 1: not upon them just yet.
Speaker 3: No. And and one of the things that they managed
Speaker 3: to do with this is, yeah, you get your boys.
Speaker 2: They're like beginning to eat up.
Speaker 3: More territory in the area, especially Odakar the second, who
Speaker 3: is like Odakar the First, the one who gets the
Speaker 3: Golden Bull's grandson. He is like, I've got Bohemia, I've
Speaker 3: got Moravia, I've got Austria. He's like and like, basically,
Speaker 3: at this point in time, the Bohemian lands make it
Speaker 3: down to the Adriatic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is yeah, they have they have seaports in
Speaker 1: the North Sea and the Adriatic. It is not a
Speaker 1: small thing to be sneezed at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, and so this is kind of
Speaker 3: like a late thirteenth century and they are just like
Speaker 3: incredibly wealthy and they've got all of this land. They
Speaker 3: do end up losing Austria unfortunately to the hated Hobsburgs.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's it's very difficult to overstate how
Speaker 3: important this is and how incredibly fucking wealthy this makes.
Speaker 3: You Like this is the bread basket of Europe. You know,
Speaker 3: you can just float down the Danube like and end
Speaker 3: up in all of these places, you know, if you've
Speaker 3: got your own seaports, so then you can just kind
Speaker 3: of move things up and down like with impunity. So
Speaker 3: they're just unimaginably wealthy.
Speaker 2: It is the basic thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't talk about it as much earlier, but
Speaker 1: like you are in uh, the you're in a river
Speaker 1: basin for you know, the the Valdoslava, the Odor, the
Speaker 1: the Elba, all that sort of stuff. You like, you
Speaker 1: have all you have all of these rich riverine trade networks.
Speaker 1: You are the gate basically the gateway to like the
Speaker 1: central part.
Speaker 4: Of the Alps.
Speaker 1: Even like we've talked about it for how the happen.
Speaker 1: The real way the Habsburgs made their money at first was.
Speaker 4: By being the.
Speaker 1: Gatekeepers along the Alps. You want to go farther into
Speaker 1: our beautiful majestic lands, you want to get down to Italy, Fine,
Speaker 1: you got to come through here. And the the people
Speaker 1: of Bohemia, the Czechs and the Slovaks, they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can do that too, and so they were able
Speaker 1: to charge for it. And it's you know, like you
Speaker 1: you have, as I said, even if people aren't stopping,
Speaker 1: even if they're like, oh, the beautiful land, the beautiful
Speaker 1: foothills of the Alps, I could never stay here. Oh
Speaker 1: it's so hideous, my god, why would you ever say that?
Speaker 1: But like, even if they did that, you can still
Speaker 1: tax them to like go on to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: northern Germany or the Dutch Lowlands or wherever the fuck
Speaker 1: they're going. And yeah, you know, there's a whole fuckload
Speaker 1: of money to be made in that, especially with all
Speaker 1: the fleeing from.
Speaker 3: The Yeah, exactly, especially with all these motherfuckers being scared
Speaker 3: of mongoles. Right, so you've got this huge chunk of
Speaker 3: land that you can you know, charge people to get through.
Speaker 3: You've got you are minting your own silver. You know,
Speaker 3: you can bring things up through the Asriatics, so you
Speaker 3: can have anything you want, you know, essentially, and you know,
Speaker 3: so the living's pretty good, is the answer.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3: It's like it's essentially a riverine culture, like the contours
Speaker 3: of Bohemia are like it's essentially Bohemia is like the
Speaker 3: Elber River basin. Like if you look at it on
Speaker 3: a map and you're like, it's that's sort of a
Speaker 3: weird shape, it's like, yeah, it's because of rivers. It's
Speaker 3: like everything is like a river boundary or like you
Speaker 3: know that sort of thing, and it's very much like
Speaker 3: defined by that fact. So that makes for excellent trade
Speaker 3: networks and you can kind of move around really easily.
Speaker 3: And it's just a huge chunk of land. For quite
Speaker 3: some time, you know. Now when we say Bohemia, everyone
Speaker 3: you know, just imagines the state in the Czech Republic,
Speaker 3: obviously because everybody knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: But you know, for quite some time, like that also.
Speaker 3: Meant like parts of what is now Italy and Croatia, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was big land. But unfortunately all things, all
Speaker 1: things do come to an end, and by the end
Speaker 1: of the thirteenth century, the Premislids were they were not
Speaker 1: doing so well.
Speaker 4: There was betrayals, child rulers.
Speaker 1: Regents who you know, weren't acting in good faith. It
Speaker 1: was you know, it was a shit show. So like
Speaker 1: how did they how did they end up falling? You know,
Speaker 1: how did that? How did that go?
Speaker 3: So the last tremi slid is a bunch of Saus
Speaker 3: the third because we basically so we start over again
Speaker 3: with our bunch of Sauses when they become kings. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it was, you know, there there were many other
Speaker 3: bunch slus just don't worry about it. But it's vent
Speaker 3: Slus the third. And he what was Charles the Force's granddad, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, raised to like be a king, was gonna
Speaker 3: Mary Elizabeth of Hungary. Really smart decision making there, He's
Speaker 3: so that is like gives him the kingdom of Hungary
Speaker 3: as well as Croatia.
Speaker 2: Like hello, that not not bad, not.
Speaker 3: Bad and so but unfortunately, like he ends up beefing
Speaker 3: with the polls about this, right, like basically, uh, the
Speaker 3: Pope gets mad about it, like he says that actually
Speaker 3: venture Slaus isn't gonna be the king of Henry and
Speaker 3: Charles of Anjou is the the rightful king which like
Speaker 3: a bitch, please, I cannot I cannot start with you
Speaker 3: on this. So anyway, they have a war it right,
Speaker 3: So what just last the second is like, Okay, we're
Speaker 3: gonna we're riding out at dawn.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go do these things.
Speaker 3: And so basically like Morabia gets invaded by the Hungarians.
Speaker 3: They're like beven with the Poles and the Hungarians. Everyone
Speaker 3: is fighting everyone. And then this at at this point
Speaker 3: in time when just lost the second dice, like he
Speaker 3: dies trying to defend his son's claims and he basically
Speaker 3: gets killed.
Speaker 2: This leads what.
Speaker 3: Just lost the third as king at sixteen, and he
Speaker 3: was a sixteen year old rich kid and he just
Speaker 3: spent all of his time getting drunk with his homies.
Speaker 3: He would be all like hey bro, bro, bro, I
Speaker 3: bet you, I bet you like this amount of land,
Speaker 3: I can't like throw this pot over a roof, like
Speaker 3: and then he would lose, and then like the nobleman
Speaker 3: would like get the.
Speaker 2: Land or whatever.
Speaker 3: Like he's like not doing shit in terms of like
Speaker 3: the claims within Poland. And so he's like, okay, well
Speaker 3: look I'm gonna give like goodanks to like this one guy.
Speaker 3: You know, like he's just like giving away like all
Speaker 3: these incredible lands. Like he's like, I'm giving goodanks to
Speaker 3: my mate Valdemar, and then that's gonna like help how.
Speaker 2: How's it gonna help that? Just us?
Speaker 3: Anyway, Eventually he's like, look, everyone's like, bro, Bro, they're
Speaker 3: disrespecting you in Poland, Bro, bro brouh. And so he's like, Okay, look,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go invade Poland and I'm going to like
Speaker 3: leave my brother in law, Henry of Corinthia, who's definitely
Speaker 3: not scheming as government, like the governor, and he like
Speaker 3: goes off and he's like, I'm I'm gonna go to Poland. Everybody,
Speaker 3: I'm doing it, and then he's like, ghost, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: It's really funny because he sucks so much. So he's
Speaker 3: like going to Poland by way of all emotes were
Speaker 3: in Moravia for some reason, and he just gets stabbed
Speaker 3: and ties.
Speaker 4: Whoops.
Speaker 3: So it's like basically he just sucked, like he just
Speaker 3: like but this is exactly what you expect from a
Speaker 3: sixteen year old, right, like we like probably also famous
Speaker 3: last words, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: Stab me? Like they never found out who killed.
Speaker 3: Him and like everything was in just complete disarraye because
Speaker 3: he was sixteen, so we didn't even have any time
Speaker 3: to knock anybody up.
Speaker 2: And this is what happens, guys.
Speaker 3: When you let a sixteen year old be in charge
Speaker 3: of one of the most important kingdoms. And so then
Speaker 3: basically what ends up happening is there is like a
Speaker 3: big showdown between Henry of Corinthy and John of Luxembourg,
Speaker 3: who are the sons in law of bunch of Slippers.
Speaker 3: So basically it's like the two surviving chemy slid princesses
Speaker 3: like their husbands battle it out and eventually John of
Speaker 3: Luxembourg wins, right, So and that's how you get Charles
Speaker 3: the Fourth on.
Speaker 2: The throne eventually.
Speaker 3: But see, this is the thing is that it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's such a shame that John of Luxembourg became king,
Speaker 3: and like, don't get me wrong, it is, but it's
Speaker 3: not like like Vegel sauce On the third was like
Speaker 3: a good guy, like he's a fucking idiot.
Speaker 2: It's like he was just like a.
Speaker 3: Drunk, gambling sixteen year old who was like constantly giving
Speaker 3: away his lands and like you know, in theory, you
Speaker 3: would think that this story would lend would lead to
Speaker 3: you know, his death on the battlefield doing something stupid,
Speaker 3: but that's not what happens.
Speaker 2: It's like just stabbed for being an idiot.
Speaker 1: Presumably I got yeah, I got, I got stabbed. This sucks.
Speaker 1: I yeah, that's it's such a funny. It's such a
Speaker 1: funny way for it to go down because like it
Speaker 1: clearly like it was clearly just an issue where like
Speaker 1: that family, that family Lime was like really struggling, like
Speaker 1: the mail end of that family, Lime is just having
Speaker 1: severe issues. And you came down to it because the
Speaker 1: Luxembourg's John of Luxembourg is never there, never dives at
Speaker 1: the Battle of Kresty, at the Battle of Kressy in
Speaker 1: the Hundred Years War, being a moron. And but then
Speaker 1: Charles comes in and it's just like yep, this is cool.
Speaker 1: Like here I am, I'm the House of Luxembourg, I'm
Speaker 1: the big dog. I made Prague the most important city
Speaker 1: in Europe at the time. Yeah, like you know, he
Speaker 1: just you know, it's amazing what you could do when
Speaker 1: you're not being when you're not skimming the dregs of
Speaker 1: in bred European fuck boys. Yeah, yeah, that's that is
Speaker 1: old Bohemia, they got Kingdom, the Premishlids came to an end,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, within within what fifty years of this,
Speaker 1: you get Yon Millic and then you know, within within
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty years, you get the Whosites. So
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, anything as possible if you're ornery
Speaker 1: enough and you and you kick back against the whole
Speaker 1: Rouman Empire and the church hard enough, any any anything, you.
Speaker 2: Could do anything that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful it's a beautiful thing. Uh yeah, folks,
Speaker 1: thanks thanks for coming along with us on this voyage
Speaker 1: of back to old Bohemia. That is going to do
Speaker 1: it for us today. Next week, I am not sure
Speaker 1: what we'll do, but we will be back. We'll definitely
Speaker 1: be back next week with the third episode in our
Speaker 1: series on season two of and or we'll be back
Speaker 1: with that next Friday. Yeah hell yeah, yeah. That that's
Speaker 1: about going to do it for us to day, eleanor
Speaker 1: what's going on with you?
Speaker 3: I wrote a blog everyone, please please pack so if
Speaker 3: you want to check out going Hyphenmidieval dot com right about.
Speaker 2: How crusaders are losers?
Speaker 3: A time to think about that. They are there, right,
Speaker 3: They are, so go check that one out. Otherwise, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I was on Culture Power Politics with a friend of
Speaker 3: the podcast, Jeremy Gilbert, talking about how techno feudalism is
Speaker 3: a stupid term. If you want to go check out
Speaker 3: Culture Power Politics. I think I've got to know God's
Speaker 3: no marries coming up soon, but I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: that's oppened anyway, I'll let you you know, but you know, otherwise,
Speaker 3: you know, your girls all the socials given it her
Speaker 3: all at Going Medieval.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's what's up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you can find me lucas amazing on the socials.
Speaker 1: You can find the limited series that we did with
Speaker 1: the American Prestige Boys at Welcome to the Crusades dot com. Right,
Speaker 1: it's ten dollars for the whole thing, eleven episodes.
Speaker 4: Check it out. You'll really love it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that uh, that is going to do it
Speaker 1: for us today. Thank you' all very much for listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 5: Bye.
Speaker 2: That was working.
Speaker 1: I liked it. It was fun, it was good.