It was Charles IV too who brought the cultivation of the grape and the wine industry to the beerdrinking Czech lands That isnt to say that he neglected the beer industry  under his reign stiff prison sentences were meted out to those caught exporting cuttings of prize Czech hops  essential to the brewing of great Czech beer  abroad 

Charles IV had no fewer than four wives and any number of progeny both legitimate and il Of these his oldest legitimate son Vaclav IV was naturally chosen as his successor 

Wenceslas IV 13781419 son of Charles IV and heir to the Czech and Roman crowns was a weak and ineffective ruler He was also mean a drunk and wildly unpopular He was imprisoned twice during his reign Had times been different this may not have mattered much As luck would have it however he became king during a particularly turbulent time in Czech history 

 Unfortunately Wenceslas IV was much more interested in drinking than in ruling He was terribly spoiled and even as an adult he would throw fits when people didnt do exactly as he wished them to He is remembered by history today in two ways: sometimes as a wishy washy goodfornothing drunkard and sometimes as a benefactor of the common man The way in which this latter reputation was earned is usually explained in this way: Wenceslas IV used to go around Prague dressed as a commoner He would go to pubs and shops this way and whenever he found a merchant giving the public short measures he would punish them by having them thrown off Charles Bridge into the river to drown If this legend is based on fact then it is probably likely that Wenceslas IV pursued this hobby not so much to help the common man but rather from the pleasure he derived from having people thrown into the river 

 

Probably the most famous person Wenceslas IV had thrown into the river was an insignificant court clerk by name of John of Pomuk During the CounterReformation the Catholic Church recovered the story of John of Pomuks death and entirely overhauled it  making Johns name John of Nepomuk making his job the confessor to the Queen instead of an office clerk and making the reason for his execution the fact that John refused to divulge the Queens secrets  told in Confession  to the king John of Nepumuk was eventually made a saint on the basis of this story but the Vatican rescinded the decision in 1961 explaining that testimony of his miracles and other evidence of his deeds was fishy  

Its hard to say what the common people of the time really thought of Wenceslas IV as common people dont usually have much of a say in the writing of history It is known that he was wildly unpopular with the nobility who had him imprisoned not once but several times during his reign 

He wasnt exactly revered by his brother Sigismund either Even as the careless blood of his grandfather John of Luxembourg coursed through Vaclav IVs veins  so did the powerhungry blood of the early Przemyslide rulers flow freely through the arteries of Sigismund In short he wanted to be king and it was he who was behind at least one of the conspiracies to imprison King Vaclav IV  

While this court intrigue was going on things couldnt really have been all that good for the common man else hed not have been spending much of his leisure time listening to the rabblerousing preachers who started travelling around the country at this time full of criticism for the excesses of the Catholic Church 

One such religious reformer was to play a pivotal though posthumous role in deciding the countrys fate for the next several hundred years 

Jan Hus had been greatly influenced by the writings of John Wycliffe and he began conducting his sermons at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague in Czech rather than in Latin so that the common man could understand them He also advocated the giving of communion in both species and was critical of the church for its excessive policies  of amassing wealth selling indulgences and allowing the rich to tithe their way out of even mortal sins 

Even as these ideas were gaining popularity in the Czech lands they were becoming most wildly unpopular in other areas of the Holy Roman Empire especially the Vatican This led to the burning of Master Jan Hus at the stake at the Council at Constance on July 6 1415 when he refused to recant his words and despite that he had letter of safe conduct from Wenceslas IVs brother Sigismund 

The brutal killing of Jan Hus only served to incense and unite his followers who came to be known as the Hussites 

 The Hussites were highly critical of the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church and in the Four Articles of Prague they demanded that 1 all believers be permitted to receive Communion in both species; 2 all mortal and public sins be punished equally regardless of the sinners status 3 the Word of God be freely preached; and 4 the clergy give up their worldly wealth 

This situation culminated in 1419 with the First Defenestration of Prague in which Hussites threw 7 members of the Czech Town Council out of Pragues New Town Hall window  and to their deaths on the points of Hussiteweilded pikes below  To make the situation more interesting King Wenceslas IV had an apopleptic fit and died of a heart attack upon learning of the defenestration 

But even after the death of his brother Wenceslas IV King Sigismund of Luxembourg who also inherited the title of Holy Roman Emperor never really got to be king of Bohemia The situation with the Hussites had gone too far and he spent the rest of his life fighting them in the hopes of taking control of the throne hed inherited from his brother When his initial attempts to do this met with failure he beseeched the Pope to send help 

The mighty Hussites led by the oneeyed military genius Jan Zizka defeated five waves of crusaders in a row: in 1420 1421 1422 1427 and in 1437  

Actually the fifth army of crusaders sent to battle the Hussites turned tail and fled before even catching sight of the famed warriors  because they were so terrified at hearing the refrain of the terrible Hussite battle song Ye Warriors of God It was either that or maybe just that the warriors didnt sing very well 

Well in addition to fearinspiring songs and the other tricks the Hussites had up their sleeves they also had the thing that matters most  conviction that their cause was the Just one Their symbol was the chalice and their motto Truth Prevails this motto was later used by the first President of Czechoslovakia Tomas Garrigue Masaryk as well as by a later President of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel  during the Velvet Revolution 

Well despite this and despite their brilliant military successes all was not well within the Hussite movement itself From the very start the Hussite movement had been divided into factions  the most prominent division was along economic lines 

A number of peasant Hussites were nothing more than hooligans at best  terrorists at worst  who joined the cause only so that they could have a good excuse to go around robbing churches and setting them aflame with Catholics inside These practices were considered to be rather in poor taste by the aristocratic Hussites Over time the movement splintered even more  even spawning an early nudist sect the Adamites The history books usually divide the Hussites into radical Taborites  named for the town of Tabor a city the Hussites founded for the occasion of the Second Coming which many considered imminent  and the moderate Utraquists  derived from the Latin sub utraque specie for their belief that communion should be given in both kinds  made up mostly of the nobility In reality though the situation on the ground just was not that simple 

This infighting came to a head at the Battle of Lipany on May 30 1434 at which the Czech Hussite factions fought among themselves This battle is considered by some to be the single most tragic event in all of Czech history 

Well the victory at the Battle of Lipany went to the moderates and this paved the way for an agreement to be reached between the Utraquist Hussites of Bohemia and the Roman Catholic Church 

The Basel Compact ceremoniously announced in 1436 permitted the Utraquist Hussites to take Communion in both kinds to have their church services conducted in the Czech language and absolved them of having to pay dues to Rome The Pope later refused to recognize the agreement but not before it had served to bring an end to the costly Hussite wars 

The extremist Taborite Hussites were not a party to this agreement and refused to accept it While the moderates stayed in the Catholic Church the extremists went underground forming their own church ordaining their own bishops pioneering public education sending out missionaries even to the 13 original American colonies and secretly printing Czechlanguage copies of the Kralice Bible  named for the town of Kralice in which it was printed This translation is still in use in the Czech lands today despite that it is often hard for modern speakers of the language to understand 

Slovakia all this while was known simply as Upper Hungary Though the Czechs and the Slovaks had been nextdoor neighbors since the time that Ancestor Cech and his brothers had come to the area they have historically had very little in common until 1918 Similarly neither country has historically ever had much to do with Poland which borders both to the north It is at this point in history  beginning in the 14th century however closer cultural contacts between Slovakia and Bohemia were formed Especially during the turbulent Hussite period of the 15th century many Hussite followers found refuge and support in the Slovak lands and some of the Slovak nobility fought on the side of the Hussites 
 

After the Compact of Basel forced King Sigismund of Luxembourg to concede to the Hussites demands the position of the regional nobility and of the towns a grouping known as the Estates was strengthened to the detriment of the centralized royal authority For some time after Sigismunds death in 1437 anarchy reigned in Bohemia 

Then after the very brief rule of Ladislav the Posthumous 14537  so named because he was born after his father had died   the Bohemian throne was occupied by the heretic King George of Podebrady 145871 George also known as the Hussite King was the first freelyelected Czech ruler He was chosen as Czech King from among the countrys nobility without regard to any previous agreements hereditary claim to the throne family connections or dynastic origin George of Podebrady won recognition throughout the Lands of the Czech Crown through his skillful diplomacy and gained the respect of all of Central Europe He also in the 15th century authored an ambitious Peace Plan for all of Europe sort of a medeival equivalent to a NATOlike organization 

But few people then as now were interested in peace and nobody subscribed to his plan On the contrary  the Hungarian monarch at this time Matthias Corvinus  with the support of the disgruntled Czech Catholic opposition who didnt like the idea of a Protestant on the throne  declared war against George of Podebrady who happened to be Matthias fatherinlaw The Hungarian campaigns against Bohemia ceased only after the death of the beloved Hussite King George of Podebrady and the ascent of Vladislav Jagellon to the throne 

CzechSlovak relations were strengthened at this time with the forming of the CzechHungarian union under the Jagellons after the death of Matthias Corvinus in 1490; and after the Kralice Bible began to be used by the Slovak Evangelical Church 

In spite of conflicts both foreign and domestic and even under the rule of the Jagellon dynastys two Catholic kings Vladislav and Ludwig religious pluralism and freedom of religion were maintained in the Czech lands with Protestants and Catholics living together in harmony All during this time of weak royal leadership the power of the nobility and towns the Estates continued to increase  even as central authority diminished 

With the death of Ludwig Jagellon he drowned in a swamp running away from the Turks at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 the shortlived CzechHungarian Union fell to pieces leaving both the Bohemian and the Hungarian thrones unoccupied